Aweekago—whatfelt like a year ago—I would have given anything to be left alone.
Just me in a lonely motel room and a door, that while closed, was really wide open and purring to me.
A gentle, shrewish, relentless purr.
I could leave and run and never come back.
I should leave.
So why wasn’t I leaving?
Instead, I got up and stood on jello-like legs in front of the bathroom entryway. The scrub brush was there waiting just as he said it would be and so was the uncapped jug of bleach. The floor looked like it’d been scratched with red fingernails that chipped on the way down and someone threw a wet sponge over the evidence.
I took a step inside, my bare feet hitting cold tile, and the chill it sent up my legs reminded me of Derek.
‘I wouldn’t have to rape you. You’d fucking like it.’
The memory faded to black and then pulsed to red, a bright, crimson, oozing red. I snapped my grip to the frame of the door so I didn’t fall over as the red blinded and stabbed a ruthless fury at my chest. Warmth flashed up and down my frame, and in that fiery flash, I was bathed in flames and glad he was dead.
Glad.
The heat was short-lived, but the feelings it left lingered like cigarette smoke. Revenge, hate, justice all stuck to my skin in tattoos of rage.
I crawled down to my knees and picked up the bleach in two hands, setting it in my lap. Staring down the barrel of the bottle, I wondered if Derek suffered as he was dying or if it had happened too fast. I wondered how much I would suffer if I pulled back a swig of that bleach.
I wondered what would happen if I took two.
The bleach in both hands, I tipped the jug upside down and felt the glug of liquid pouring out and splashing on the floor. I shook the bottle over the tub, coating the sides and wherever I could reach until the floor was wet in poison and the bottle was empty.
The smell was vile, and the hairs in my nose recoiled and tried to flee from the assaulting smell as it wafted down my throat and burned my everything.
I coughed on the stench alone, and there again came the curious thoughts of how much I’d choke if I swallowed a mouthful. All around me sat chemical wetness, lapping at my knees every time I shifted and raking its toxic fangs against my skin in tempered strokes.
I looked around the bathroom, all around my body at the bleach surrounding me. A shallow noxious lake that I had created with me at the center—a lonely sailboat ready to disintegrate and sink.
Setting the empty jug down on the toilet, my hands ducked their way beneath the layer of bleach as I flattened them to the floor.
And waited.
The sting was gradual, like a million needles growing sharper against every inch of submerged skin. My lips pulled back over my teeth as I held back a hiss, watching with fascination as my pale skin turned raw red.
And then stinging persisted.
And the pain multiplied.
The fire was on the outside of my skin now instead of beneath it, and a wave of anticipated pleasure dropped fast along my body. So fast it picked my stomach up in a twist of nausea as I made myself sick with what I had become over the years.
My body caught itself between a moan and a gag. I needed the pain so badly, I had become an addict to it.
The more it hurt on the outside, the less I felt it on the inside.
Eventually, I pulled my hands off of the floor and shook them in the air, bleach droplets spraying everywhere and searing my red shirt with white polka dots.
Dammit. I liked this shirt.
Sighing, I plucked the scrub brush between my fingers and got to work. I scrubbed until my knuckles cracked and my skin was parched. I scrubbed until I gagged on the toxins polluting the air and had to take a break.
In the end, I used the last of the towels James had left and polished the place cleaner than it was when we found it and ran the shower to wash my hands and feet.