Vein Fire (3 page)

Bubbles showed up at exactly 12:15, still wearing plastic food service gloves. She suggested they go into a bathroom stall in case anyone snuck in. Locking the door behind them, she turned, popped her tits out of the top of her shirt, and waited for Matt. He did nothing, so she sighed, placed his hands on her tits, and unbuttoned his pants. If she hadn’t already guessed he was a virgin, she knew for sure by then.

Matt got his first hand job from Bubbles while she was wearing food service gloves. She didn’t seem too eager to actually suck his dick, but since it only took him a minute before he blew his load, he wasn’t sure.

Bubbles met Matt nearly every day to give him a hand job. She kept insisting she really did want to give him a blow job, but confessed to having some sort of germ phobia, so he had to settle for hand jobs while she wore the food service gloves. He adjusted to the sound of the plastic and didn’t mind the crinkle noise so much.

One day, while Matt sat in the commons room watching TV, one of the newer vegetables kept bothering him. He towered above Matt and emitted these low, gravely laughs. Eventually, Matt had enough, stood up, and punched him in the face. The vegetable hit the ground like a sack of shit, and within minutes, the door locks clicked, a needle poked him in the ass, and two orderlies escorted him off to the restricted unit where he was tossed into solitary confinement.

CHAPTER  3

Frankenlegs

Hannah was skilled at pretending she was a good girl. He parents didn’t know about the criss-cross of scars on her arms, the drinking binges, or the careless way she passed out blow jobs. If only the perfect daughter act were true. Hannah was just like any other girl who had a playmate smash her legs with a cinder block. She was good at hiding everything, even from herself.

Inside, she blamed herself for the incident behind the salvage yard. If she had only kept her mouth shut. Hannah never started school that year. She spent months in the hospital, undergoing surgeries to put pins into her shattered legs, and to reconstruct her right knee cap. While she was still in traction, she was allowed to go home, and she completed the eighth grade with a homebound teacher.

Whatever popularity she could have gained through sympathy was forgotten by the time she entered high school. The gym class uniforms didn’t hide her scars and her nickname quickly caught on—Frankenlegs. Anyone who wanted to befriend her was afraid of the fallout from being associated with the class freak. She did have a few people courageous enough to talk to her regularly, but when the boys would yell “Frankenlegs” down the hall, those friends scattered.

Hating herself was easy. She could even do it during Sunday mass where her mother insisted she wear dresses. The pantyhose made her scars look an odd shade—ridges and pocks where scalpels and pins had split her flesh to make her whole. Hannah was very aware of all of her shortcomings, as well as a few she made up in her head. With all of the trips to the orthopedic surgeon, no one bothered to get her psychiatric help to overcome the trauma she lived through. Hannah smiled often, and was a pleasant and cooperative child, so she didn’t outwardly seem to need therapy.

She was relieved when her mother told her Matt would not be released from the psychiatric facility until he was eighteen. His family still lived across the street and she often felt awkward whenever she was in her yard if they were outside, so she stayed inside a lot. Brian and Joel still waved to her in the hallways and talked to her on the bus, but Olivia was on the varsity cheerleading squad and didn’t bother with anyone who didn’t wear the cheerleader’s trademark black and red pleated skirt.

It wasn’t until the end of her junior year of high school when she started doing her Spanish partner’s homework that she finally broke into a group of friends. Her partner’s name was Sam and he wore black motorcycle boots with a long knife tucked into them. Quickly, he became her best friend. Each day as his bus passed hers, he waved, and he ate lunch with her every day. Sam intimidated the other students, and those he didn’t, he beat up when they muttered “Frankenlegs”. Sam was two years younger than Hannah, but he was her protector.

At the end of the school year, she gathered the courage to ask him to a mutual friend’s keg party. He hesitated, and she wasn’t sure why, but he said yes and they agreed she’d pick him up Saturday night.

Sam took Hannah’s virginity the night of the party, but on Monday morning, he asked another girl out. They never spoke again, but she remained in his circle of friends, and they quietly acted as though the other was invisible.

The experience cut Hannah—literally. She waned between blaming herself and thinking she was ugly—never settling on which feeling made her more miserable. These cuts would become the deepest ones on her arms. By this time, she had learned how to cut herself properly. She’d take a disposable razor, hold it in a towel and snap the plastic apart, and bend the razor blades until they were free of the plastic. Often she had done this without the towel, but it led to cuts on her fingertips. Although she rather enjoyed the accidental cuts and she’d smile from the thought that she ‘deserved’ them, she knew purposeful cuts were better. She’d sit cross-legged on the bathroom floor—head down, with her hair falling like curtains on the sides of her face. Her tears buckled under their own viscosity, concaving the view of her task as they perched on her eyelashes. One blink and her vision cleared. It was a splitting of cells, out of necessity, really. She hated herself, and the guilt was overwhelming. This wasn’t want. It was need.

If she could brand this sort of euphoria, she’d be wealthy. The necessity of it would fill voids like plaster in wall-holes. Bottles of it would hover in the corner of every medicine cabinet, next to the other band-aids and aspirins. The satisfaction of a job well-done meant blood, burning cuts, and itchy scabs. They were nice to look at later on, but for her pleasure and no one else’s. The cuts on her arms meant long sleeves; the scars on her legs meant long pants—Hannah’s body lived in an eternal winter.

Hannah begged her parents to allow her to transfer to another school, but they thought she was over-reacting. She, after all, had one friend who showed up to her birthday parties—Angela. Hannah made an attempt to get close to the odd girl with dirt under her fingernails. Angela’s pale skin was dotted with black moles that matched her coal-colored hair. This distracted Hannah from maintaining eye contact with her, so Angela often snarked, “Are you listening to me?”

In an effort to bond with Angela, Hannah invited her
to hang out at the mall. After her mom dropped them off, Hannah drug Angela into a dressing room inside one of the anchor stores. She pulled out two plastic soda bottles, now filled with vodka and orange juice, and gave one to Angela as she chugged the other. Angela took one sip and handed the bottle back, so Hannah drank them both.

Hannah liked the mall. Kids from different schools hung out there and she felt like she had a chance to pretend she was normal. Angela whined she was hungry and wanted to go to Foxmoor to look at clothes, but Hannah took her to the arcade. That was where the
boys
were.

Angela refused to play anything besides Frogger and Pac Man. Hannah despised that it made them look like kids. They were, after all, nearly sixteen.

The employees walked around with clips of quarters on their belts and aprons stuffed with paper bills customers had exchanged for quarters. One Hannah had never seen before kept approaching the girls and commenting on their game.

“He’s kinda cute,” Hannah said.

“Eww…no way! He’s old. He must be thirty or something,” Angela squealed.

“I like older men.” Hannah turned and smiled at the guy. Within a few minutes, he was behind her, looking over her shoulder at their game.

“You girls need some help?” he asked.

Hannah arched her ass back until it rubbed against his cock. “I always need help,” she giggled. “Hey! Do you guys have a bathroom in here?”

“Nope, employees only.”

“Aww…c’mon…I won’t tell and I’ll be
so
fast,” she begged. Hannah didn’t even try to hide that she was drunk. She swayed from side to side and her eyes kept going out of focus.

“Okay, I’ll take you,” the guy said.

Hannah smiled as he led her through the maze of machines towards the back. As they passed another employee, he motioned towards the rear door and yelled, “Hey, cover for me for a few.” The other guy nodded in return.

First,
Hannah went pee, and giggled so she could hear it echo off of the walls in the bathroom. When she emerged, the guy was leaning against the wall, waiting for her.

“See, I was fast.”

He smiled, “Have you been drinking?”

Hannah laughed and held her finger to her lips, “Sshhh.”

“C’mere.” He pulled her close and kissed her. His tongue tasted like cigarettes as it explored her mouth until the vodka tang disappeared.

Hannah unbuttoned his pants and when he didn’t resist, she dropped to her knees and passed the entire length of his cock between her lips. She sucked…she sucked for a long time and he still didn’t cum. It was taking so long that she was getting bored and her mouth was going numb. Her mind wandered to Angela and if she’d still be waiting at the Pac Man machine, gobbling dots and running from ghosts, then her eyes focused on the guy’s curly brown pubic hair, but the image disgusted her, so she closed her eyes.

Her pace slowed as her mouth tired and he told her to stand up. Hannah didn’t want to fuck the guy, but she knew that if she kept sucking, she was going to vomit. He didn’t tell her what to do; he simply turned her around, pushed her against the wall, and pulled her pants down to the middle of her thighs. Hannah was thankful he didn’t yank them down completely, or else her scars would show.

In one smooth movement, he was inside of her. Sam was the only other person she’d slept with and this guy was much larger. Her body stiffened from the pain as he pushed further into her and she tried to move away, so he gathered both of her wrists into one hand and pinned them to the wall above her head. Each thrust hurt more than the last, and her body started to resist him, so he kicked her legs apart and pressed the full weight of his body against hers until the air was emptied from her lungs and he was fully inside of her.

The room was spinning and Hannah felt like she was going to pass out. The orange painted block wall felt cold against her cheek and the sensation kept her tethered to consciousness. Finally, the guy leaned back and Hannah inhaled. He reached his free arm around and started rubbing her clit as he sucked on her neck. Both acts aroused Hannah and she began to enjoy the stranger fucking her. When he started pounding her hard, the coins and paper bills rained at her feet. At the end, he took his finger off of her clit, gathered her long hair into his hand and twisted it until he had control of her head. He forced her head around so he was kissing her when he came inside of her. Hannah’s eyes were open and she saw his hat had fallen off of his head. The light shined off of the bald spot on his crown.
Angela was right,
he is old.

*

It took Hannah nearly twenty minutes to find Angela. She was standing at the fountain, throwing her left over quarters into the water. The silver glistened as they floated to rest among the other coins on the bottom.

“Sorry I took so long.”

Angela looked up and down the length of Hannah’s body. “You fucked that guy, didn’t you?”

“No,” Hannah laughed, “I didn’t.”

“You don’t have to lie. And besides, I can smell him on you.”

“Listen, I’m sorry—
I”

Angela cut her off, “Can we just walk to where your mom is meeting us? Maybe she’ll show up early.”

“Okay.”

The walk to the bench outside of the food court was the grueling sort of silence that filtered out the background chatter in the mall. When they exited the building, Hannah’s mother hadn’t arrived yet. The girls sat on the bench for ten minutes before Angela started to cry.

“I’m sorry, Ang. I’m not very good at being a friend.”

“Why do you do that fucked up stuff?”

“I don’t know.” Hannah felt horrible…sober and horrible. She wanted to explain it all to Angela to make her understand it wasn’t her that she dumped. “I hate myself so much. It’s worse than anyone knows.”

Angela sniffled and wiped away her tears, “Really?”

“Yeah, really. I hurt myself all of the time. It’s not just drinking and what I do with guys.”

“What do you mean?” Angela looked at Hannah.

Some things translate better with an image. Hannah couldn’t say it anyway, so she pulled the sleeve up on her shirt and showed Angela the rows of fresh cuts she’d made that week.

Angela’s eyes widened. “You do that…to yourself?”

“Yes.” Hannah pulled her sleeve back down as her mother’s car parked alongside the curb. Both girls jumped into the car. Angela politely replied to the motherly inquiry about what the girls did, and the clothes they looked at, but was quiet otherwise. When they pulled into her driveway, Angela bolted from the car yelling, “Thank you!”

Over the weekend, Angela didn’t answer Hannah’s phone calls, and that Monday at school, she realized why. Exactly twelve minutes into first period, Hannah was called down to the principal’s office. Angela and her mother sat to the left of the principal’s desk and Hannah’s parents sat to the right. The only remaining empty chair was in the middle. Hannah sat in it and let her eyes sway towards the left, then the right.
This is a kerfuckle sandwich.

Lie. Deny. Run. None of the alternatives to telling the truth seemed like viable options.
Too many adults in the room.

The principal spoke first, “Hannah, Angela and her mother are worried about you. Angela told us some disturbing stories about the trip to the mall you two had over the weekend. Would you like to tell us about it?”

“No.”
That was easy.

He continued, “Angela, why don’t you tell Hannah’s parents what you told me.”

Hannah narrowed her eyes and looked at Angela.
She wouldn’t. She’d not tell them. It would be too embarrassing.

Angela cleared her throat, looked at her mom, and then focused her eyes on Hannah. “Mrs. Simmons dropped us off at the mall and the first thing Hannah did was take me into a dressing room to drink bottles of vodka and orange juice. I didn’t drink any, so Hannah drank both bottles.”

Liar! She did drink some. Well, just a sip.