Beautiful Victim Read online

I swallow down the shudder that wracks my body. It is both my undying desire for her and my disgust with the mess. But for her it’s worth it. I clean myself up and turn off the stove, and I pour the minestrone soup into one of the chipped bowls that I have. I forgot to buy bread, I think as I make my way back to the living room. I forgot to buy bread because of the rain, and the bus driver and the rude woman with the stroller.

  The bed upstairs begins to bang against the floorboards as I spoon some of the soup into my mouth.

  It tastes like shit.

  The bed thumps.

  Another mouthful and I grimace as I try to work out the complexities of the taste.

  Thump, thump, thump…

  It’s a full-on liquid meal of pasta and vegetables. Perhaps that’s why people like it, I think.

  Thump, thump, thump…

  Because they’re lazy, and can’t be bothered making a real meal.

  Thump, thump, thump…

  Or maybe because they’re indecisive. They can’t decide if they want soup or pasta. Either option would make sense, I guess.

  Grunt, cry, yell, groan…

  I spoon another mouthful in and grimace. But it tastes so bad; surely no one is that indecisive.

  Yeah, this soup is the world. Looks confusing and tastes like shit. It rots in people’s stomachs until they have to heave and heave and throw up what little fucking humanity they started with.

  I glance up at the ceiling. The banging has stopped, but my light fixture is still swaying and I can hear murmuring. Muted footsteps as they get dressed. Maybe they didn’t even get undressed. Maybe he just bent her over the bed and let his pants fall around his ankles. Seems the quicker option. That’s what I would do if I were banging a woman like her instead of coming into my hand and thinking of her.

  The soft click of her door and then footsteps come down the stairs. I put my bowl down and go to my door. I look out through the peephole, watching as the man leaves. He glances at my door, his cheeks still flushed from sex and shame. I note the ring on his finger and I tut at him. He frowns at my door and then turns away, and I wonder if he heard me.

  The thought makes me smile.

  It’s only a minute or two later and she comes down the stairs, her skirt so short I can almost see her ass cheeks. Not that I’m looking. I like my women classy. She doesn’t look at my door, but continues on down, and I notice that her legs are still wet from the rain outside.

  I smile again, knowing that I was right. He must have bent her over the bed.

  But hey, who the fuck am I to judge? At least they had each other, if only for just a few minutes. At least they weren’t alone. Like me.

  Chapter three:

  When I was a kid, my mother used to bake the most delicious cookies. They were healthy, too, not the kind that are filled with sugar and colorings. High in additives and preservatives or whatever. They were made from beetroot and chocolate, which shouldn’t work, but it did. It’s another odd combination that I find myself lying awake thinking about at night.

  How can two opposites work so well together?

  They say opposites attract, and I think that’s how it was with Carrie and me.

  Carrie.

  She’s laughing. Or crying. I can’t be sure anymore. And there is so much blood.

  But I love her. I would do it all again for her.

  Right?

  Because if I wouldn’t, what does that mean? About her? About me?

  About everything?

  We were opposite in every way—a strange combination of personalities and looks. But we worked. We went together perfectly. Like my mother’s chocolate-and-beetroot cookies.

  My memories aren’t always red.

  Some of them are bright and pretty and full of color.

  Those are the best ones.

  The ones that didn’t ruin me.

  The first time I saw her, she was playing in the dirt with a stick. She was six and I was eight. Her hair was slicked back from her face, and it looked damp. She had been crying; I could tell because she had tear stains down her dirty cheeks.

  Those were probably the first things I loved about her.

  Her tears.

  They were real.

  The realest thing about her.

  Those tears would change my life.

  *

  “Why is your hair so wet?” I asked, my hands shoved deep into my shorts pockets. I’d been watching her for twenty minutes and my curiosity had finally got the better of me despite my mom’s words ringing in my ears about asking too many questions of people.

  She looked up at me, her eyes glassy and sad. “My mom said I have bugs in my hair,” she said, reaching up to scratch at her head.

  “Eww,” I replied, feeling sort of grossed out by the girl with dirty tear-stained cheeks and bugs in her hair.

  “She put some cream in it to make them go away,” she said.

  I sat down next to her then, making sure there was enough distance between us that the bugs couldn’t jump across onto me. “Why are you crying?” I asked.

  Her cheeks flushed pink and she looked away. “I killed a worm.” She poked the worm that was cut into two halves with a stick. It was gross and it made my stomach feel sick. I’d never known anyone to kill something intentionally before.

  “Why?” I whispered as if I might get in trouble by my mom if she knew about the worm.

  “Because it needs to suffer for being both the bottom and the top.” She poked the worm again, almost angrily.

  I didn’t know what she meant. Even then I think I knew I wasn’t supposed to. So I stayed quiet and watched her poke the dead worm.

  And then I went home and asked my mom what the little girl with the tear-stained cheeks meant, but Mom didn’t know.

  I didn’t see Carrie for three weeks and two days after that. But in that time my mom took me to the library and I checked out a book about worms. I read that thing from front to back and learned everything I could about worms. I learned that you can chop one in half and the front half will regenerate and the worm will live. But if you chop off its head it will just die. I learned that they can go forward and backwards, and that they have no eyes. But I didn’t learn anything about a worm being at the bottom and at the top.

  When I next saw Carrie, she was sitting in the dirt again. She had on shorts that were tied with string, and I could see bruises on her legs. I asked her about the worm thing, and she looked at me like she had no idea what I was talking about. So I told her the story of how we met, and what she had said about the worm.

  She said I was weird.

  I wanted to cry.

  I didn’t want this sad girl to think I was weird. Not her. Never her.

  She stood up and hugged me and told me not to be sad.

  Carrie said that all the best people were weird.

  I knew I would love her forever after that, not just for a short time before I loved something or someone else.

  My love for Carrie was the always kind. Even when I wished it wasn’t.

  Later that night, when my mom was washing my hair and getting rid of the mud from my knees, I thought about Carrie and decided that she was weird too.

  But Carrie was wrong.

  The best people weren’t weird. Sometimes the weird people were something else entirely.

  Chapter four:

  It’s still dark when I wake up.

  My alarm beeps approximately five seconds after I open my eyes, and I smile in satisfaction that I beat the clock again.

  The building is quiet, barring the crying. There’s always crying coming from somewhere in this place. No matter the time.

  It’s almost sad how people’s misery can become an afterthought. It slips into the background once you’re desensitized to it. The crying is like the ticking of the clock. Constant.

  Tears that go on and on, never stopping. It’s the soundtrack of my life.

  I shower and dry and then I get dressed, and when I check my sneakers they’re dry too, and
that makes me smile. I run my hands through my black hair to try and tease it into some kind of order. I brush my teeth with my blue toothbrush, spitting the minty foam into the sink. I like clean teeth and fresh breath. Personal hygiene is important, because honestly, there’s no excuse for smelling like crap. Anyone can afford a fifty-cent bar of soap. Even me.

  I think I must be okay, looks-wise. I remember my mom telling me that I was a handsome boy. And I’ve seen the way women look at me, and the disappointment in their eyes when I’m not interested. They think I’m a fag for not wanting to fuck them, which is both insulting and obnoxious.

  Why does a man have to be gay if he doesn’t want to sleep with a woman? Perhaps they’re just not his type. Perhaps he has a girlfriend and is actually a good guy for not wanting to bang everything that moves. Or perhaps he’s saving himself for that special woman.

  I grab my jacket as I leave my apartment. It’s supposed to rain again today.

  The building is no longer quiet, but alive with noise once more, the crying a constant drone in the background instead of the main event.

  Televisions blare from behind passing doors.

  Screaming babies.

  Yelling husbands.

  Shouting wives.

  Music pounds through walls.

  When will they ever shut up?

  Outside is no better as a car honks its horn, a dog chases a cat, and a pimp slaps his ho. It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

  I check my watch and see I’m early, and I feel good because I beat clock for the second time today. There’s no point rushing for a bus that won’t be there, but I don’t want to be late for a bus that will no doubt be, so I hurry on regardless.

  I leave my street and head uptown. The air is clear today, the damp still clinging to everything like mildew and cobwebs. But it’s nice. Refreshing, almost. As I move to a better part of town, the storefronts look less imposing. The graffiti is less graphic, less crude. Almost classy—for graffiti, anyway. The people are better dressed. Or at least wearing more clothing than a ten-dollar hooker.

  The smell of croissants cooking in a bakery across the street makes me smile, memories of my mom’s cooking so many years ago coming to the surface. I head to the bakery across the street. I fumble in my pockets for the change I know is there and I go inside, holding the door for an elderly lady on her way out.

  She says thanks, and I want to hug her for having some fucking manners. This is what it means to live somewhere nicer. People hold doors, and people say thank you. They smile. And they shake hands, and I say, ‘no problem, lady.’

  I order a croissant, and my mouth is salivating at the smell of the warm pastry. I can’t believe that I’ve never been here before, and I already can’t wait to come here again tomorrow.

  The woman behind the counter doesn’t smile at me. Not even when I smile at her. I say thank you but she still stays dumb. That annoys me, and I wonder what I’ve done to deserve her scorn. And then I get it: I’m not good enough for her, for her neighborhood, for a croissant. So I slam my change down on the counter and don’t put it in her hand nicely like a good boy should, and it rolls all over the counter noisily.

  She’s still picking up my coins while I wait impatiently for my croissant, when another man comes in. He says good morning and he orders some ridiculous coffee with a long list of things he wants added to it—a dash of this, a splash of that, half-fat, mocha, choca, latte with a splash of caramel and vanilla and a dusting of chocolate powder. It’s the most obnoxious fucking coffee in the world. I want to tell him so, but I don’t.

  The woman finishes picking up my change and she smiles at this other guy, in his smartly pressed suit and slicked-back hair, and his shoes so shiny I could see my face in them if I wanted. She smiles at him and she holds out my croissant to me with barely a passing glance, and I get even more annoyed.

  What does he have that I don’t?

  I snatch my croissant from her and the guy gives me an unimpressed look, and I want to tell him to go fuck himself, but I don’t. Instead I leave and I slam the door as hard as I can on my way out and I vow never to go back there, because she’s a stuck-up bitch who needs to learn some manners. And her customers need to mind their own damn business.

  I walk to work eating my croissant, because I can’t afford the bus now. And the croissant doesn’t even taste that great, so that bakery can go fuck itself too. I eat it all though, even though it annoys me when the crumbs flake onto my clean sweater.

  I’m almost at work, and I’m early, and it’s all going good again. I stand at the sidewalk and I wait for the light to change so I can cross, because I don’t believe in jaywalking. I like to follow the rules. When the light changes I walk, and I get to the other side and everything is still good.

  I turn and go around the corner and into work, the smell of the slaughterhouse hitting my senses full force.

  This place is clean, but even the scent of disinfectant can’t cover up the smell of death that surrounds this place. It stirs memories that are best left forgotten.

  “Morning, Ethan,” my boss, Charlie, says.

  “Morning, Charlie,” I reply and smile.

  Charlie’s a good guy. Three kids and an ex-wife. He drinks too much. Smokes even more. And says he’s going to die before he’s sixty. I find that strange though. The guy’s adamant that he’s going to die early, yet he doesn’t look after himself. He’s overweight too. Loves to gamble on anything he can—horses, dogs, chickens or cards, he doesn’t care.

  Sometimes he’s late paying us because he’s spent our wages already.

  I can tell he feels bad when that happens.

  He’s sick, I want to say when people get angry with him. He can’t help it. But people are cruel and hard and mean, and they don’t care that he’s sick. They only care that he didn’t pay them on time.

  I don’t like my job. Not even a little bit. But I turn up day after day and I earn my money. I’m never late, I’m always early, and I even stay after hours if I’m needed. And that’s more often than not. Though not too late, because my parole officer would get pissy about that.

  I think that’s why Charlie likes me.

  I’m his constant in an inconsistent world. I’m his sure thing. His winning horse, so to speak; unlike all of his other gambles, I seem to have paid off for him.

  “You’re early,” he says to me with a mouth full of cigarette smoke.

  “You shouldn’t be smoking in here, Charlie,” I reply.

  He looks down at his cigarette and then back up to me as if he didn’t even know he was smoking. “Sorry,” he says, and wanders outside to put it out.

  I sometimes wonder who is the boss here, him or me.

  Chapter five:

  The day passes in a blur of disinfectant and bloody carcasses. I buckle down and work, as always, refusing to think about the images that haunt me. The things that crawl just below the surface, nibbling away under my skin.

  Memories?

  Thoughts?

  Or delusions?

  Who the fuck knows anymore?

  Hours later and it’s raining again, and there’s a leak in the roof. When I look closer I see it’s actually a hole and not just a leak. The carcasses are going to get contaminated if Charlie doesn’t get it fixed soon. Things won’t be sterile. I can’t disinfect properly with a hole in the roof.

  I tell him so, and he doesn’t look happy about it. But he just sits there at his computer, drinking coffee and pressing buttons. I press the urgency of the matter and then he tells me to ‘get on with what you’re fucking paid for and mind your own damn business’ and I know he must have lost some money again. He leaves to go “somewhere: to do “something,” and he doesn’t tell anyone what or where. We’re all just expected to get on with our jobs.

  I wonder if we’ll be paid this week, I think as I sweep the blood to the drain. And I wonder how angry everyone will be if we’re not. I want to tell Charlie that if Health and Safety comes down and see
s the hole in the roof they’ll close this place down, and then he’ll have no money at all for gambling and we’ll all be out of work. But I don’t say that, because I know there’s no point when he’s in this sort of mood. It’s the trouble with this type of sickness.

  You can’t see the problem because of the problem.

  I lean my brush up against the wall and I drag over the mop and bucket. The scent of the disinfectant is strong and I swish it around to get more of the smell to come up into my nose.

  I’m not allowed to touch the knives in the slaughterhouse, not allowed near the blades at all. And that’s okay by me because I don’t like blood. Which is weird really if I think about it. Because everyone is made up of blood. The average human body holds between six to eight pints of blood. We can’t live without it. It’s the one thing that binds every human on the planet.

  Blood. So much blood.

  And it all holds such a strong link to my past.

  So I don’t go near the knives or any of the equipment here—not unless I’m cleaning it. That’s my job. I’m the cleaner. I shovel animal leftovers. Sweep the blood spills. I disinfect everything. And when I leave here, it’s always clean. Spic-and-span, some would say. I’m good at my job, because I like making things clean and I like my routine.

  I have a routine for cleaning. First I sweep the spills away, and shovel anything too big to go down the drain into the incinerator. Then I mop and wipe everything with industrial-strength cleaner. Most people skip parts. Like cleaning the parts of the machine that are hard to get to. Or shoveling the bigger parts into the bin instead of putting them in the incinerator where they should go.

  But I don’t.

  I’m thorough in my job. And in my life. I’ve lived with my routines for too many years to break the rituals now. And I wouldn’t want to break them anyway. I don’t want to be that moth that flits from light to light, unsure of what’s happening or where it’s going.

  I like a plan. I like strategy. I like to be in the know.

  And I know where I stand with my days; I know what to expect. I guess it’s the difference between my life now and my life then. It’s the difference between the past and the present. I wasn’t in control then, but I am now.