After Hope Dies Read online

  She runs with it: ‘Was it just money you wanted? Maybe it was my body too. It wouldn’t do just to escort me home, Ross; you could roll me over, strip me naked and have your way with a twelve-year-old, then get rid of her corpse and leave her to dry for the trash men.’

  Ross narrows his eyes, voice bitter like garbage. ‘Naw, fuck this. You ain’t gon play me.’ He kicks his bike out of the way and closes the distance.

  Oh. Janelle has made a mistake, and the instant fact of her second death brings new nausea to her belly. Maybe he’ll take her advice. Maybe he’ll just take her body and run. Maybe he’s sensed something else at play. All complications. And out comes the player’s knife.

  No, please don’t! Please don’t! Her body convulses; Janelle doubles over to hands and knees on asphalt. She vomits brown and red. But the sound on the sidewalk – ah. Not squishy, splodgey, wet like before. The texture in her mouth – neither runny nor smooth. No. Sound: hard and clanging and cut chimes, penny suicides. Texture cool and rough. Ross stumbles back as Janelle wipes her mouth on her bomber sleeve…and the two stare down at the pile of rubies splattered like crime-scene blood on the walkway. Ruby red.

  Man’s eyes widen like the moon. ‘No fucken way! Shiiit, are these…these are gems!’ And he falls to his knees, scooping up every loose stone he can find in the oily moonlight, laughing and laughing, mugging forgotten, disbelief suspended and overruled by greed.

  Janelle makes her exit, turning silent and pushing quick into the night. Safely away now, she listens as the man behind her laughs and laughs.

  Anger hits her hard – the very thing she wanted to avoid, but on a much bigger scale. Not just one low-cut nigga playing her for money but the entire neighborhood will soon know that she’s loaded with jewels and riches beyond capacity. They’ll say, ‘Hey, have you heard about Janelle the jewel-vomiter?’ How could she be so stupid…but she wasn’t to know…

  At the intersection of the next block, Janelle slaps the useless streetlight. Feels nothing, but after the gong dies another sound takes its place. It’s Ross calling out to the wind. Listen…not a cry of happiness of riches found. No. It is most certainly not a friendly call. It’s a scream. A deep, male, pain-drenched scream, like the kind of scream a man might give if, say, a handful of precious rubies suddenly turned into coals and burned through three layers of dark skin, cutting through muscle and fine parts and bone, and exiting the other side like slow bullets, leaving a gory hole. That kind of pain, that kind of curse. Just a guess.

  Janelle takes off lest the thug chase after the ghostly girl with an open throat who erupts lava jewels. She runs. She sprints. Naked feet slapping slapping the sidewalk like an overenthusiastic patron at the brothel. Breath plays games with her lungs – in out in out, quicker and faster until.

  Finally.

  After her feet turn blue and bruised from cold.

  After adrenaline and bile make love in her throat.

  After her legs stop seizing up and she just feels dead.

  After she never thought she would see this place again.

  This place is home in all its gray-hour glory.

  The front garden with the bicycle missing the wheel, the garage with no car in it, the screen security door that’s seen better days. Get inside, quick! Dark pressure mounts behind her as if shadows were coming to snatch her away. She finds the key hidden deep between the paneling cracks (guarded by the garden gnome family), unlocks the fly screen, steps inside as the claws make for her back! And double bolts the outside world behind a layer of muslin. Janelle stops.

  A shadow stands by the mailbox. A familiar face. Mirror Janelle is back. Yes, it is definitely her, wearing her slutty work clothes, jutting her hips out like a little teenager with hormoned poise. Motionless. She just stands there by the street, comfortable in the cloak of cold night. Janelle breathes fast and deep but her fear soon curdles and turns. What comes next is simply…curling her fingers around the doorknob, real Janelle whispers into the night, ‘I’m going to make things right. I won’t be like you, I refuse to be what you are. Starting right now, I will be everything that you are not.’

  The shadow nods but smiles wickedly. The kind of smile – ‘sure, sure’ – that erodes the confidence inside young Janelle’s heart. So the shadow waves, walks off into the night once more, leaving the girl with nothing more than a cold slap in the face as she stands inside looking out into death. Off she goes. Janelle closes the door and traps herself.

  Her feet are blocks of ice, her nose a chiseled rut of marble. Her underpants are sticky from the night’s work, jacket filled with sweat, new blonde hair all matte against her face.

  ‘I’m home,’ little Janelle whispers to the darkness of three in the morning.

  Nobody says hello back.

  Permission

  Should she shower? She should die. Half a tablet of Unwind affords the possibility for both. But there are none left by the kitchen sink. You reek like a cum dumpster, little slut.

  Shower, then death.

  Slow, quiet trudge through the house. Don’t wake Momma. Janelle finds the bathroom where she flips the light and stands on the little stool before the sink. Bzzzzzzzzzz, says the halogen friend, running on a battery beneath the sink. Ah, that reflection in the mirror. Hello brown girl with the blonde hair from roots down to your elbows. Now you’re a real American girl, ain’t you. My, my, look at your pretty red necklace! But why are your eyes so sore and wet? Dirt on your chin like a schoolboy in a fight. You need a wash, you smell awful! Take off your bomber. Slide down your underwear. Don’t think about what happened. Please don’t think about what happened. Get in the shower.

  Under the hiss of cold water now. Shhhhhhhhh. Deep below the house, Boiler groans, not yet awake. A layer of dirt and grime come clean from her body as if she were coated in mud. She can still smell it, the stuff stuck to her thighs, the glue honey-layered on labia, on perineum, caked in her flesh. Giving it a name affords it reality. If you call it stuff then it doesn’t have the same weight as

  Cum

  or

  Semen.

  Nobody wants to see the reality, least of all the girl to whom it is most real. Stuff feels rough as she attacks the substance of it. Coarse and flaky over soft fingers. It stings. It stings so much. Oh my god…

  Horrible fear cums in her stomach. Now adrenaline touches her chest as she tries to calm herself – focus on the water, focus on the – but there’s no stopping the specter from taking hold. Shower and water fold to starless blackness and she is alone and naked, nowhere, all ready for God Almighty to judge her wicked fucking soul. On her knees now as the men come for her. Just like before. Exactly the same. Hours ago, only hours…Panic: a knife at the throat that twists and breaks her ropey skin wide. A blunt wetness between the legs tearing her fresh skin. And the sound; ah that’s what cuts her open – that three-second loop when he groans into her ear and she tries to stifle her crying but can’t, like a stupid child who has wet her pants in public. No control over her own sounds and at the mercy of another, like this: he cums in a triplet grumble – hur-urhh-ha – but it’s underlaid with her whimpering, overlaid with the cameraman laughing. Her urine makes a slender sound as it trickles to the ground. Around and around the loop goes all movie-screen timed to perfection. Feelings edited in perfectly. Over and over.

  And then comes the cold kiss of death across her throat…

  Janelle: helpless, pathetic constellation on the shower floor while rain sweeps her mind away. Numb now. She stops counting time. Squeezed dry of tears. See, crying won’t help. And the sharp rage comes: what did she do to deserve this? In a flipsecond, every part of her soul rots to anger and some guttural throat beast makes war with the moon. It hisses and gurgles in the pool of water on the tiles. Fuck you, the creature says, but the words leave her wanting more blood…A monster stirs in her heart, a shadow clawing out from the seat of her throat, passing teeth, finding purchase and escaping—

  ‘Oh, you poor thing.’
r />   Those words strike her back to reality, but this reality is an alien dream. Mirror. Shadowy and naked here beside her, crouching down in the galaxy-dark shower. Janelle scampers back into the invisible walls and the creature pins her in. That horrible, familiar face, hidden in shadow. That wicked smile and black-eyed fury. Mirror extends a hand and brushes Janelle’s cheek. Child-tender, lush. The creature tut-tuts and murmurs over the roar of cold water, ‘What a mess you got youself into.’

  Janelle says nothing. She just shakes and quavers.

  ‘Now I heard you before – “I’m going to make things right, I refuse to be what you are,” everythin’ that you ain’t, all that nonsense. Hard, though, ain’t it? When you got somen dark inside your heart.’ A dry hand finds Janelle’s heart, squeezes light. ‘Hard to solve all your problems when your problems keep attacken you like this. So I got a proposal for ya. Listenin’?’

  Mirror takes a little scrunch of Janelle’s new hair and forces it back with expert control – ‘look at me, girl.’ The creature murmurs, ‘I take your pain from your heart. In return, you give me Permission.’

  ‘P-Permission?’

  ‘To solve all of our problems, my way.’

  Janelle feels her heart spring back into action with the hope of that uncomfortable promise. The child tries to free herself from Mirror’s diamond grip but hasn’t the strength to move. Her body is so very, very cold, so useless. Mirror leans in and whispers something into her ear:

  hur-urhh-ha

  Janelle’s stomach crumbles. Little girl whispers, ‘Can you take it all away?’

  ‘Oh, sweetie. I cayn’t do that. It’s a part of you now. Tell you what, though. I’ll take some. Not all of it – just the worst part. That’s what I want.’

  Janelle catches the horrible spark in Mirror’s eyes. She sees salvation, a lightness…a possibility for hope. What can she do but say, ‘You have my Permission. But I don’t want to be you.’

  ‘You don’ have to be.’

  Mirror releases the girl and straightens, smiles dry, and simply walks away into the dark part of this unreal place. The stars take her. Gone once more.

  Nothing now.

  In the emptiness, Janelle casts her mind back to the night’s pain, feeling the lines of anger and rage and hurt in her heart.

  But slowly…

  As time dies, as her heart beats on…

  Total panic is no longer her. This is not her place to curl up and die on the shower tiles. Some fundamental part of her refuses to take any more hurt, like a cup overflowing under the pressure of torrid water. There is no more room. The excess skims off, away. Taken by another. By proxy. Her heart rises just so, like a paper bird lulled by some quiet wind that says ‘everything will be ok, I promise, I will share this terrible pain.’ Just a tiny fraction. That is enough.

  The shower tiles snap back into place like a spring-loaded trap. Coldness from the water returns, and everything feels real once more. Janelle finds herself side-down with a hand covering sore eyes. Whimper everything away, sweet girl. Whimper everything out. Be brave, be light. That’s it. But you’ve got to stop now. You’ve got to ask yourself:

  What comes now? The water is running out. Stand up. Steady. Good girl.

  Stay here under the tepid water. What to do next? Call the police? Hah. No. Call Dani? Call Bax? Bax scares her – she knows precious little about the owner of their club. Dani always acts on her behalf. Dani then. She might be worried for her…but Jan doesn’t want to share news of her rape with the woman. Not yet. A problem shared is a problem both doubled and halved.

  Just wash all the evidence away, then. She’ll call Dani later.

  Focus now. Focus. Be light.

  A dollop of shampoo in the palm from a pink bottle; she’s never had to wash this much hair in her life. Taking a fistful of it and running ten fingers along the strands. Maybe the dye will come out. No, of course it didn’t – this is no dye, this is natural color.

  What did that monster do to her?

  Never mind for now. See? Easy as that. hur-urhh-ha. Oh my God. No, don’t crumble, don’t falter. Be light. Let the anxiety rise and fly. No, don’t crumble…

  Janelle lets the sour crush wash over her belly, and then feels it quiet down. Tidal. Soft, but only for now. Aftertaste of dead fear.

  How about we sleep, girl? It is so very late.

  All dry now, wrapped in Momma’s towel, standing in her tiny gray room. Put on your ghost-sheet top and crash through the membrane of the bed sheets into–

  Plan B

  Two cranes, their feather-soft wings brushing warm against the girl’s nose. A safe place. Enclosed again in this feathery bubble. Soundless, sealed. Naked Janelle stretches on the down and wonders how long they will take until they reach heaven. One of the birds opens a sin-black eye and peeps on the little creature; Janelle asks if they are friends or foes. A friendly answer. The air tastes sweet on the tongue and powerful in the lung – an elixir. And the wings of her friends open a fraction to make a window.

  Janelle catches a glimpse of heaven where thousands upon thousands of cranes soar and cut across the lands and stars and seas. Like the mural at school, a cathedral painting. So many birds. Each sings the same tune in a different voice and the noise actually hurts – the volume! – but it makes her so happy to see Unison’s love in the universe. But she is not allowed to stay. The window closes and the air turns dry and dark and–

  Wake.

  After the death of night, our sun wakes the world and parts the sleep from little Janelle’s eyes. Groggy, she throws back her sheets and sits upright. Gold. Her face is covered with the shower of soft, golden hair. The girl brushes the threads aside and–

  Golden hair. The unreal reality of last night kicks back to her, bee-furious and crazed inside her skull. Janelle rips her sheets away and bolts for the bathroom where she flips the light and stands on the little stool before the sink. Bzzzzzzzzzz, says the halogen friend. Ah that reflection in the mirror. Hello, brown girl with the blonde hair from roots down to your elbows. Hello, girl with your sleep shirt all billowy and covering your thighs. My, my, just look at you: a nice shade of healthy brown, the kind of color that all men can enjoy. Not too black, you know? Thank the mixed blood: one quarter white.

  Are you alive? I think you are. What happened to your slit throat? You have to strain your eyes to see that tiny pink line; hasn’t that healed nicely? Quite a sight yesterday, having your skin sliced, your body violated so. And you feel it now, don’t you. That poison, that horror bubbling away in your belly and up to your throat and…

  Janelle leans over the sink, doubled down in a blind sickness as the acid comes up. Unable to contain it, she vomits into the sink – a cloud of ash and shale that sticks to the sides. Girl hiccups. Quick, wash it all away. There. Breathe. Don’t cry. Please. Breathe. Jan splashes water onto her face and sees a flicker of life dance on the mirror.

  Golden hair. That is her. That is her new look. She hates herself.

  Standing now in her tiny room. Open the blinds and everything is still gray. The sun is a failure. Bed, tiny table, closet. Closet, what secrets do you hold? hur-uhh-ha as the door opens. Oh fuck. Focus now. Don’t worry, girl. See: clothes that mark work and play. On the left, we have the clothes purchased exclusively for Janelle’s employment. She pulls out a dress. Here’s something that gets all the eyes her way, all gaudy pink and purple and dark to match the tone of her body. Black on black on black, according to Lookbook. These stockings: Lolita black and white, pink and white, pink and black. Candy for men. Underwear tight. Bras all padded and enticing. Bangles: plenty, but again, that same tacky gaudiness. Fake gold, fake diamond, fake jade, fake sparkly stuff for the ears designed to catch light and break within a week.

  Let’s take a look at the other side of the closet. Her school uniform is blue and white with black stockings. Her school shoes are dead sneakers. Her school uniform is bland and uninteresting. Her school uniform was bought second hand and covers her tiny,
flat frame so she looks like a boy. Her school uniform is too expensive to buy brand new. Every school has them, now. Guess who gets rich selling uniforms? Not people like Janelle, that’s for sure.

  Janelle takes a step back and clutches her nightshirt. These are her clothing options. One total identity. Why had she never considered it before? It seems like a hypocritical oversight for somebody who stands on a stage in a club and shakes her little hips like a metronome, the center weight of attention. Indeed, now that she thinks on it, holding this particular crop top, that she had always considered how she looked. Dearly. Shopping for these clothes with Dani at the Outlet was a huge thrill, to see all the things that she could drape her body with. But they were the Emperor’s clothes, all glitzy and insubstantial. Why did she never realize that she was actually naked; what do all these clothes mean? If she wears this black top with those jeggings, how will she see herself, and how will others see her which, in the end, ends up meaning the same thing. Maybe it all means this: you, child, are nothing more than a slu–

  It is time to buy some new clothes. Let’s remedy the past. Janelle kneels down by the end of her bed and reaches up underneath the corner of the leg; there, a little box gives way and falls into her hands. She surfaces the secret stash and pops the lid of the cracker tin. Dry bundles of polyester banknotes all rolled up like sushi. Ten thousand. Janelle chooses five thousand and lays it out on her bed in a neat row – five notes – before returning the secret box to its rightful place, away from a heroin addict’s eyes.

  Yes, definitely time for a shopping excursion. She’s got something special in mind to add to her wardrobe, something she’s wanted for ages. After all, does she want to look like a prostitute on a Sunny Day like today?

  Sunday. Does that mean they’ll be going to church? Janelle thinks, thinks as she selects the most unobtrusive ensemble she has – white underwear and flat bra, jeans and a pink top with black hoodie – and thinks as she stuffs her five thousand into her right sock and pads to the front of the home. Should they go to church? Where is Momma? Oh, in the kitchen, wrapped in a bathrobe like a moth in perpetual chrysalis.