Seven.

  HER LOVE FOR ME IS OXYACETYLENE

  Every time I open my eyes it’s a disappointment. Disappointment that I’m still here, that I haven’t been sucked from the world yet. I open my eyes and there is the cold, clinical ceiling of a hospital above me and I wonder how many people have died with that image burned into their retinas. I open my eyes and there are the stars and I don’t move as people walk past me, taking me for a bum or a dope fiend. I open my eyes and there are hateful faces staring down at me and I think maybe this time but soon enough I open my eyes again.

  This time a woman stood over me, arms crossed. My vision was blurred, I could only see her outline.

  “Which hospital am I in?”

  I realized it was sore to speak, my throat feeling bruised.

  “You’re not in hospital,” she replied. Her voice was hard like concrete. I knew she’d be staring at my forehead, like they all did.

  And I dared to dream that she might be the one to kill me.

  Later I am aware of her in the room again. She stays out with my line of sight, my neck too sore to move to see her. I can smell soup and notice a steaming bowl lying on the table next to the bed I am on. There are no restraints, as there have been in the past.

  “It’s homemade,” she says.

  I consider if this is a threat, that she might have laced it with poison and be daring me to take it. So I reach over and take a few spoonfuls.

  “Do you remember what happened to you?”

  I shake my head, little spikes of pain screaming their way down my spine. I think I do but all the attacks have blurred into one.

  “Some of the workers from the smelting plant a few blocks down jumped you, looks like. I’m amazed they didn’t kill you. You’re just lucky I found you before someone else did”.

  Lucky like I’ve been found all the times before. So lucky that I’m still alive.

  “But I guess it can’t come as a big surprise considering . . . ”

  She let her words drift off.

  Say it.

  “I’m assuming they didn’t do that to you. It doesn’t look fresh,” she said, nodding at the scarring on my forehead. When I didn’t say anything, she continued. “Look, I’m going to be honest with you here—I don’t know exactly why I brought you in, if it was the right thing to do or not. I still might call the cops. Are they looking for you? Have you escaped from somewhere? Because if you have I want to know right now.”

  “Nobody wants me,” I told her. “Nobody’s after me.”

  “Good. Because I’m going to work soon and I don’t care if you are here when I come back or not but I don’t want to find my apartment busted apart by the PD or Psych. Services.”

  Still she stood away from me, out of my line of sight. I stared down into the soup’s steam. And then finally she asked the question I knew she had been dying to ask ever since she had found me.

  “Is it true? What it . . . says?”

  I dropped the spoon back into the bowl, swallowed. ”Yes.”

  “Still here,” she says when she returns.

  When you didn’t belong anywhere, each place was as good as the next.

  “If you want me to leave . . . ”

  “No. At least not until you’re in better shape. How are you feeling?”

  “Fine. Thank you.”

  Her footsteps, surprisingly heavy-sounding, moved around me and finally I saw her in the room’s half-light, this woman who would rescue a fiend like me. She was wearing a set of baggy, stained overalls peeled back at the waist and a tight long-sleeved t-shirt with the name of one of the smelting plants stamped across it.

  I didn’t mean to show my shock when I saw her face but it’s a natural thing to see something different and be surprised by it. This is something I know so well.

  She stood defiantly, her arms crossed as if daring me to say something. This was obviously a deliberate revelation, made when she was good and ready. She’d probably learned to take control of other people’s shock from years of the same look I had given her in that instant.

  “I can take you to a hospital if that’s what you’d prefer. But what with all the gang victims and viruses that have been hitting the A&E’s lately there’d be no certainty that you’d be better off.”

  “I don’t want to go to hospital.”

  She clumped towards me, her industrial boots comically large on her, sat on a chair that had been positioned beside the bed. I could feel her hostility bristling now that she was closer to me.

  “Who did that to you?”

  Normally they weren’t that direct. In fact, most of the time, it didn’t even occur to people whom might have scarred my forehead in such a destructive manner, they were so busy hating me for what it said.

  “Concerned citizens,” I said flatly.

  “What did you do?”

  Of course. The details. They despise you for what you’ve done but they always want the details.

  “What do you think I did?”

  She took offence at my tone, her strange face suddenly hardening as it stared back at me. “Then you deserved it.”

  I shrugged a little. “Most people seem to think so. Did you deserve yours?”

  I don’t know why I said it, it was cruel and I didn’t mean it. And immediately we were engaged in something. A game, a fight, some form of deformed intercourse—I don’t know.

  Her hands were trembling in her oil-stained lap. I noticed they were littered with dozens of tiny cuts, probably from whatever machinery she worked with each day, some crusted and old, some fresh and weeping from her rubbing them against each other.

  She looked like she was going to say something, then her features relaxed again. She stood up, walked over to the bedroom door with those massive footsteps of hers, and left me in the silence.

  And so it began.

  I would listen to her in the morning as she prepared for work with the sun still not fully risen, bleeding hot reds into the sky like the molten steel that surrounded her in the smelting plant. Then I would be alone all day with my wounds, listening to the water and heating systems bubble and pop in the crumbling walls of the bedroom as I assembled in my head various scenarios of how she gained her own disfigurement.

  It was an industrial accident, some errant machine part grabbing her as she walked past.

  It was a spray of metal lava.

  It was a gang of rowdy bikers that had jumped her as she walked alone one night.

  And then the evening would settle in and she would return, trampling from room to room for a while before she would come into the bedroom and sit beside me and we would both have all the questions in the world about each other.

  “It doesn’t bother you, having me here? Considering . . . what I’ve done?” I asked her one night.

  “Some people believe things happen because that is the only way they could happen. We think we have control but we don’t. If we just accept that then everything become a lot easier.”

  “Is that what you believe?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  “I have a feeling the parents wouldn’t agree with you.”

  “Was it one of them?”

  I told her, no. I told it was a group of retired policemen whose friends on the force had their hands tied and weren’t able to touch me. I told her they kept me hidden in an old garage for two days before dumping me in on the street in front of an A&E ward.

  She unwrapped the bandage she had placed around my left arm, very probably broken, and began to apply a fresh one.

  “How many?” she asked, then tensed as if I were about to inject her.

  It didn’t matter. All it took was that one time when things got out of control and you became defined by that act. I made a figure up because I think it really didn’t matter to her either.

  “What are you going to do with me?”

  She shrugged, tugging on the bandage unnecessarily. “I haven’t figured it out yet. If you were being actively hunted then they probably would have found you by now, or at least been at the door asking. Are you on some sort of register or something? Do they keep track of where you are?”

  “I’m supposed to report in once a week to my parole officer then call them an hour later to prove I’m still staying at the same address.”

  She considered this for a few moments. “You’ve been here almost a week now. What will happen if you don’t report in?”

  “Not much. It’s happened before when I’ve been in hospital or . . . ”

  “Or what?” When I didn’t answer she shifted forwards on her chair, leaned towards me on her elbow. “What have people done to you?”

  I shook my head, growing tired quickly. My strength didn’t seem to be coming back to me at all and it crossed my mind once more that this woman wasn’t the Samaritan she made herself out to be, that for all I knew she could be slowly poisoning me and filming it on hidden cameras to sell to the families whom my actions destroyed. Was I her plaything?

  “What have people done to you?” I countered.

  Again she seemed to try and hide the flinch that resulted from my words but failed. “Most people have done nothing to me.”

  “Someone has,” I said. “Someone’s made a mess of you too.”

  She didn’t look at me, instead concentrating her attention on unnecessarily tightening my bandage. I knew I was pushing her. I knew she might snap and turn on me like so many had, whatever had been holding her back so far suddenly breaking under the strain of my inferences. It was the very reason I pushed her.

  Then she raised her head and her features were shivering, eyes shining as if filled with lightning. “Fuck you,” the words sliding from her mouth, and she stood and stalked back out the room.

  I was left alone long enough to consider leaving.

  This hadn’t been what I had expected, it was taking too long. I just wanted it over with.

  If she was going to turn on me then what was she waiting for?

  By that point I was well enough to stand, as long as I had the support of a wall nearby. I stared out of the room’s single, tiny window that framed the massive insect-corpses of the smelting plants.

  When she finally came back she charged into the room, her hair out of the pony tail she usually kept it in and flying wildly behind her. She pulled the chair into place and sat on it back to front.

  “This,” she snapped, pointing to the white keloid that doused her right eye and cheek, “is where he got me first. Almost took out my eye. This is where my nose bone came through my eyebrow ridge. This,” she turned, lifting her hair away from her neck, spitting with the fury of her words, “is where he slashed me when I turned and tried to get away, and here and here. And this . . . ”

  She turned once more lifting her T-shirt away from her stomach and revealing the puckered fleshy ridge of another scar that ran across is it. “This . . . ”

  Her words were torn apart by her anger and she pulled the T-shirt back down again, leaning onto the bed and in that moment I felt almost certain she was going to attack me after all. Her hands had clenched into fists and I wasn’t sure if she was even aware of it.

  I felt the familiar calm begin to wash over me, ready to close my eyes and let her begin the assault but she was hesitant. When she spoke it was in strained, but measured, tones.

  “You’re fucking pathetic. You think I’m going to pity you anymore? Well, fuck that.”

  That was better. Her anger poured over me, Jesus, that was better.

  “Christ, I can’t believe I didn’t just start in on you the like the others did. You’re just a piece of shit that deserves all the beatings I’m sure you’ve had.”

  I felt myself grow lighter as whatever bond that had formed between us began to burn away like the fuse on a bomb.

  She jumped onto the bed suddenly, straddling my bruised legs, pressing down on them, her boots crushing my feet.

  “Do you still think about fucking them? Pushing yourself into them as they screamed for you to stop? Do you?!”

  No. Not like that.

  Don’t mention them.

  “You do, don’t you? Is that what you’ve been doing while I’m away?”

  Stop. I’m not even sure if the word came out of me. I hissed as she moved slightly upon me, grinding my legs together at the damaged knees.

  “Oh you don’t like me mentioning it do you? I suppose your scars up there remind you enough already? Well maybe you need reminding a little more.”

  “No,” I murmured, reaching out for her but she slapped my hands away and I didn’t have the strength for another attempt. “Please . . . ”

  She pushed me down then pulled off her t-shirt, exposing her breasts to me.

  “So this does nothing for you, right? You wouldn’t touch me, would you?”

  She grabbed my hands and put them to her breasts, rubbed them against the soft flesh, grimacing down at me. “No, not a damn thing.”

  “Get . . . off . . . ”

  She kneaded herself harder to the point that it must have been painful, forcing my nails into her nipples, squeezing them blue. “You wouldn’t . . . fucking . . . touch me . . . you wouldn’t . . . ” She murmured through gritted teeth, moving against my hips as if to gauge any reaction then suddenly shouted, “well at least he fucking touched me!”

  And everything went still.

  She was struggling for breath, dropped my hands and lifted her weight from my legs. Her hair hung in sweat-clotted strands over her disfigurements, re-describing her face in shadow as drops of perspiration fell from it.

  She reached down and placed a hand on my face, stroked it with a strange tenderness and her expression changed as she looked down at me. Her brow furrowed.

  “Why did it bother you so much for me to mention what you did?”

  I couldn’t answer, just stared back at her. I saw in the spirals of her scars, the puncture marks where the stitches had been, and the canals of dried skin where tears must constantly have trailed down. I hadn’t had a chance to look at her properly thus far and took the opportunity to see her, really see her. And there was beauty there.

  Her big green eyes sparkled. She seemed to be considering something very carefully, traced the words on my forehead with her forefinger.

  Paedo.

  “I don’t believe you’re capable of it,” she said softly.

  “We’re all capable of much more than we like to imagine,” I countered.

  “Not that much.”

  I took her wrist in my hand, stopping her from touching the words any more. “Don’t let yourself think that you know me. You don’t.”

  “I know that you flinch when I even mention raping those children.”

  “I’m not proud of what I am,” I told her. “They found their bodies, hidden amongst the husks of cars from road traffic accidents in the scrap yard. Decomposing. Of course the parents would want revenge, who could blame them? They roamed the neighborhood for days.”

  “You said it was policemen.”

  “Yes. They were there too. They needed to find him. Me.”

  She tilted her head. “Which is it? Him—or you?”

  My head hung, suddenly very heavy. Why did things always get so complicated?

  “They got it wrong, didn’t they? You didn’t do those things.”

  “No. I deserved what they did to me.”

  She turned her head slightly, almost shaking it.

  “I shouldn’t have been in the scrap yard anyway. I just wanted to look. To see—where they found them.”

  “Shit. You didn’t do it.”

  Now I was shaking my head, my entire body feeling like it was filling with lead. “No. They . . . I deserved what they did to me.”

  “Shit. Shit. Oh, shit.”

  She just kept saying it, over and over as she leaned forwards and cradled my head in her arms, her warm breasts pressing against my face. Shit. Shit. Shit. I think she was seeing all the attacks that I had told her about, all the things that had been done to me because of the scarring.

  I faded into a curious mixture of sleep and unconsciousness there, in her arms, as she stroked my hair and kissed my face.

  And her affection instantly became the greatest pain that I had suffered for it threw into disarray everything that I thought I had felt certain of.

  She lay next to me at night after that, naked in the bed beside me. We listened to the sounds of steam being released from pneumatic vents and crunching of metal being chewed in huge compaction units. I studied her face as she slept, ran my fingers along the contours of her markings as she had mine, learned each and every one of them.

  I thought about the man who had done this to her, I fantasized each and every cut being made, inscribing upon her the new identity that she suffered from. I wondered about which point she became a pariah such as I was.

  This scar? Before or after?

  This scar? Before or after?

  When did she become an unacceptable member of society?

  “Maybe we were born that way,” she said softly without opening her eyes. I hadn’t realized I had been talking aloud.

  I moved closer to her, inhaling the scent of engine oil that seemed infused into her pores.

  “Everything happens for a reason,” she said. “What he did to me didn’t change anything. The scars were already there. Don’t hate him.”

  “I don’t,” I told her.

  She paused, as if trying to decide how to take that. “Well I hate the ones who scarred you. They’ve made you into something you’re not.”

  Her eyes were open now but I kept staring straight at the scars, indulging in the way her eye slanted sharply about two-thirds of the way along. I wanted to tell her.

  I knew I should tell her the truth.

  It was time.

  “I should have left him long before he did this to me,” she whispered. “That was my own failing. I shouldn’t have kept pushing him like I did. Some of us aren’t meant to spend our lives with others. But you . . . ”

  I had stopped caressing her, my hand going numb.

  “I did it to myself,” I said, stopping her from saying any more. And then there was silence.

 

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