Outsider (10 page)

I fall on my knees. Have I done it again?
Have I killed Reb like I killed Jane? I glare at my bloody hands,
my killer’s hands, willing them to go away, far away from me. I
feel pain swelling in my heart.

She slowly moves her head up, one eye closed,
with eyelids so puffy that it will certainly take on many fancy
colours soon. The other one opens and prods mine. I can see pain in
the brown iris. Pain and questions.

“Kay,” she sighs and gulps some oxygen. Her
lower lip is split, with a trail of blood at the corner. “Kay, I’m
asking you again. “ Her voice sounds raw and slow. “What’s wrong
with you?”

Her head falls down again. I push it up with
tainted fingers, a sob ready to explode out of my throat, and
answers, with all the sadness of the world in my voice:

“I don’t know, Reb, I really don’t know.”

She looks at me, tired and weary. I carry on,
carefully:

“It’s like sometimes I am not myself anymore,
and I don’t know what I’m doing. And when I am myself again, I
don’t remember anything.”

With my other hand, I gently push her curly
red hair away form her face.

“Reb, what have I done to you?”

“You broke one of my shoulders and cut a few
slices elsewhere. I’m not gonna mention the punches, they were just
snacks, I guess.” With the hint of a sarcastic smile twisting her
mouth into a grimace. She winces reflexively.

Did she cry out or is she the strongest woman
on Earth as I have always imagined her to be? She whispers:

“Kay, unchain me. Let me go. We are friends.
I’ll help you.”

I let go of her head. Her hair falls down,
following the down movement of the neck. And then I feel the change
starting again.

“Kay?”

“It’s happening again!” I almost scream. The
dizziness is stronger than ever.

“Kay, fight it. You can beat it. Fight it,
bloody hell. Fight.” In a whisper.

I remember falling backwards.

“
Our dear Jane is rather drunk!” Red Reb
stated with a bright smile. “She’s gonna need help to get
home!”

“
No! I’m not!”

“
Hush, Child, let the adults decide, they
always know better.” I n a mock tone.

“
Alright, alright, let me get a cup of
coffee and it’ll be my privilege and honour to be her chauffeur. If
I remember where I parked my car!”

Red Reb, a tiny bit tipsy too, burst into
uproarious laughter.

In my next moment of consciousness, I
discover it is too late for Red Reb. She is dangling from the
chains like a broken puppet. A huge and red splatter marks the spot
on the wall where I have smashed her skull open. Fragments of brain
matters interspersed with her hair, fragment of brain matters
soggily stuck to the wall, fragments of brain matters exposed on my
red carpet. Blood red carpet.

Well, I have made quite a mess of my favorite
friends within the last twenty-four hours. They trusted me and they
loved me. Tears will never bring them back and there is no god to
implore for forgiveness.

I spend the next hour sobbing, the flat is
wonderfully soundproof. My neighbours will never know. They might
start wondering about the foul stench in a while. Darkness is now
all around.

I look at Reb, what I have done to her. I
haven’t destroyed her ribcage; even so she is covered with blood I
can see that. I haven’t touched it.

Then I know what to do. There is only one
way, even if it is too late for my friends, I have only one
possible way to get rid of the beast within. Forever.

There is a bridge in Bristol, the Clifton
suspension bridge. I have been told about depressed students
jumping off.

“
I wanna belong / I wanna be someone // If
I could just be strong / Until the morning comes” (Nikki Lamborn
and Catherine “The Been” Feeney)

In the corner of the neatly printed paper,
Sid had scribbled in a moment of sleeplessness: Please, forgive me.
And she meant it. She never wanted to hurt Dawn nor Terri, but she
had deliberately killed the two characters the musicians had
inspired her.

It was some time in the middle of the night
and the moon was missing from the starless sky. Dreams and oblivion
were eluding Sid. She felt knots tightening in her throat, in her
heart, in her stomach. The music she had switched on, the first
Second Look album, was no balm to her bruised soul. Her hands were
opening and closing into fists spasmodically. She felt anger, hate,
frustration, defiance, shooting through her mind back and forth.
Paranoia hot on their trail. She got up brutally, kicking a pile of
music tapes forgotten by the side of her bed. They crashed onto the
black carpet and into oblivion. Tension was running along her
limbs, clawing at her abdominal muscles, tensing her nostrils. Used
to darkness, she walked to the kitchen, eyes close to tears she
refused to shed. She opened the small fridge fitted into the too
small kitchen, almost wrenching the door out of its hinges, and
grabbed fiercely the bottle of pure vodka she always tried to deny
herself. No fruit juice left. Who cared. She had just killed the
most sacred people.

No, she reminded herself,
I haven’t REALLY
killed them, I only killed the characters they inspired me
. And
in actual facts, she had failed, because in order to kill Dawn, she
had to start the story with Dawn already dead.
No
, she
admonished herself.
It was just one of the many characters she
inspired. And I couldn’t even kill a character of fiction……

She drank a long sip of vodka, still
crouching in front of the open fridge, blind to the various items
of food necessary to her attempts at a balanced diet, albeit fresh
vegetables. She violently got up. The alcohol swirled in the
bottle. She slammed the fridge door and kept on drinking, long sip
after long sip, pure vodka burning her taste buds, slowly, but
surely, clouding her mind.

She knew she wouldn’t escape, she couldn’t
escape, the tantalizing call of the razor blade calling her from
the cabinet in the bathroom, where she kept it, along with the
first aid kit. And the call felt louder by the minute, almost
screaming in the silence of her flat.

She stood for a minute or two in the short
corridor, exactly positioned between the two painted doors, trying
to gain strength. Begging for the strength to leave unscathed this
strange plateau where she landed sometimes, this field of insanity,
this other realm where there was only one logical action. And
blooded consequences. But the Native American spirits were busy
elsewhere.

She drank more forcefully out of the bottle.
Waiting for the madness to overcome her weakness. She knew she
couldn’t fight. Resistance was futile…….

A digital clock swung to 3 am. Sid was now
sitting on her dark bed, in her darkened bedroom, her favorite CD
playing on a loop. She had no T-shirt on to hide the Navajo symbols
tattooed on her chest and abdomen. She had no T-shirt on to protect
her naked breasts from her deep hate. Was it self-hatred or was it
really what doctors denied her. She would have so gladly gotten rid
of her…….breasts. She hated the word as much as what they
designated. No, she wasn’t female, she wasn’t a woman, she couldn’t
identify, in a world where she was denied her real self, real life.
But she wasn’t a man. She couldn’t identify as such either. In a
world where choice wasn’t given, in a world where without money she
couldn’t obtain the full mastectomy she would have gladly done
with, in a world where you HAD to be male or female, one or the
other, but you were not allowed, never allowed, to stand in the
middle and be yourself, just you, yourself. Me, myself, I. NOT
ALLOWED TO HAVE YOUR LIFE!

She was screaming in her head, shouting,
begging the Second Look keyboard player for a forgiveness that
wasn’t hers to give. With a swift hand, she slashed at the
tattoo-free breast, clean razor blade, as deep as she could, but it
was never deep enough. She slashed. Sharpness of metal burning
through skin……. Cold metal meeting warm blood. Hard metal meeting
soft blood. Mingling. Once, twice, thrice. She stopped counting.
Physical pain was nothing.

When the fingers lost their grip on the razor
blade, tears slid forth and free from her drowned, brown eyes.
Feebly, slowly, her fingers touched the fresh, savage wounds,
feeling wet with blood.

Blood mixed with tears and a taste of alcohol
on her tongue.

(First Set)

“
She’s out of this world, she’s sometimes
here / But this is no sci-fi, she’s getting nearer / She knows you
know / If you’re out in the middle of the deep dark night / And you
come across this woman, be polite.”

(Catherine “The Been” Feeney)

Tattooed and sporting a green mohican, clad
in a sleeveless, old, black T-shirt with a huge spider all over the
front as usual, this time with a new creation: black, stretchable
trousers found on the street (she was always grateful to the Skip
Goddess for her many gifts) whose lengths she had treated with
scissors (they were too hot, she made them cool) and put back
together with all the safety pins she had found on a market stall
(she had a thing for metal), Sid stepped into the pub, got greeted
by the smiley woman with the dark pony tail who was working
alongside a tall guy setting up music and sound equipment, and
walked out within the same 30 seconds, running away from the
assault of the unbelievably concentrated energy mix of the
place.

She felt wary, more than premenstrual: manic.
She was wondering how she would behave during the gig. Would she be
a quiet, but bouncy dancer, or would she irrepressibly and
obnoxiously harass the singer, like a month earlier (only a
month?), the first time she ever saw Second Look on stage? There
was only one way to find out.

Tonight, she had brought her camera with her;
Sid was more than just a tattooed, 31-year-old writer with a green
mohican or a confused performer. There was so much more to her to
meet the eyes than anyone could ever imagine, but apparently that
was just for her to know. She was also a photographer and
photography was for her like everything else she did: something to
avoid boredom. She had looked at the band’s website, she had looked
at the CDs, and felt the same frustration: photos are so deceptive,
only a mere moment frozen in time. From one photo to the next, the
same person could look so different. She needed to find out for
herself.

It was only 8 pm and she was more than an
hour too early for the show. She walked back into the pub and
decided to get a bottle of schnapps, knowing that she knew better.
She knew that the combination of alcohol and SSRi was about to get
her drunk and out of control, but hell, she was gonna go for it.
Life would have been only a tad more exciting if she had been a
weredragon.

The idea of arriving at music venues before
the crowd of punters was to get used to the increasing energies and
thus avoid being shocked to collapsing by the excess and excesses
of people. Sid believed herself too sensitive, unable to protect
herself and as a result, she had a tendency to feel confused.

Tonight, Sid was also considering the
absurdity of going out from her non-smoker’s point of view: you get
all cleaned-up, all dressed to kill, and when you get back home,
you discard your entire outfit because it stinks and reeks of
smoke, alcohol and a collection of sweats. Of course, if you dance
barefoot as Sid was about to…….

Tonight she wanted to scout the joint for her
next work of fiction. Tonight, she had her camera to play
paparazzi. Tonight she was gonna drink on the job, even if drinking
was as hazardous to her mental health as some rock band could be to
punters’ current idols…….

* * * * * * *

A tall woman with short, dark hair and a big
smile across her innocent face walked into the pub. Despite getting
stuck in Clapham Common, thanks to the wonderful London public
transports, Judy had made it before the band. The Second Look crew
were still smoothing down T-shirts, rounding edges, correcting
angles, basically making sure that Dawn’s keyboards and other
technical gadgets were plugged in properly and Terri’s microphone
stand at the right height. They wheeled the last huge metal box
back to the unmarked, blue van parked outside.

The pub was still quiet. Only two dozens of
punters. The newcomer joined the writer by a tower of speakers and
sat on the bass one. She had a camera in her backpack.

“Great! We could have a competition!” Sid
exclaimed, a tad more manic than she expected.

Five minutes later two women stepped in, as
confident as if the world was their private oyster, and greeted the
crew. Terri with her wavy, red hair and freckles that suntan showed
off to great effect. Dawn with her blonde, uncooperative curls and
a shiny, black top. They looked around and Terri spotted Sid and
Judy.

The writer felt nervous but she would have
never acknowledged so, because people would misunderstand anyway.
Of course, she could explain, but she was tired of explaining
herself to every human being. Maybe she could wear a T-shirt
screaming
DON’T EVER TAKE ME FOR GRANTED.

The Second Look singer closed the distance to
grab Sid’s left hand for one of her firm handshakes. Sid liked
that. She loved to feel strength in a woman’s grasp. She started to
relax, but in a manic way.

* * * * * * *

The groupie presently buying a copy of each
of Second Look’s CDs and a black T-shirt sporting Terri’s and
Dawn’s eyes, was one nondescript baby dyke with bleached, short
hair, tattered and faded, blue jeans uniform. She was presently
raking the front pockets of her trousers for her last tenners. The
look in her eyes was a mixture of fire and Shit!
I haven’t got
the dosh for this crap!