Elastic Heart

d. “We’ll even help you create a small cancer charity walk to show you care.”

Senator Morris took a slow sip of his drink. “All for my support against the bill?”

The man from the coffee shop smiled. He was attractive, his smile all Colgate and his sharp jaw lined with the hint of a five o’clock shadow. His eyes were a warm golden hazel, inviting almost. I knew better… The house in Hansel and Gretel was inviting, too.

“Well for such a big donation from us,” Coffee Shop Fucker went on. “We would of course expect you to garner support from your friends in the Senate and House.”

Senator Morris lowered his drink, a small smile on his thin lips. “Of course.”

I listened to the rest of their conversation, but after they finished discussing the cancer drug it was nothing but small talk and flattery. I followed him to his car and waited until he went inside his home. He would kiss his wife and two daughters, take off his tie, brush his teeth, then read the news in his study until about one in the morning. That was his nightly routine.

He never watched porn. He never masturbated. He never had sex with his wife (I was beginning to think his daughters had appeared by immaculate conception). He never did anything remotely unseemly at home.

I supposed he got his jollies from strangers. From people like me.

I watched his nightly routine until he crawled into bed at one-thirty, and then I went home.

I’d moved after he had attacked me. My old apartment never felt the same. My bed wasn’t mine any more; it belonged to him. Even my shower didn’t belong to me; it belonged to the memories of how I’d tried to scrub him off. When I moved, I thought it would get better. Even though I bought a new bed, it still felt like his bed. Even though it was a new shower, I still remembered scrubbing him off.

I slept on the couch now.

My appetite was one of the first things to go, one of the first things he took. So, despite having only eaten half a basket of fries hours before, I still wasn’t hungry. I lost a tremendous amount of weight in the months following the attack. I looked sickly for those months, not that anyone noticed.

There was no one to notice. My parents were dead and any “friends” I’d had disappeared when they found out. Even my “best” friend Effie disappeared. We’d been as close as sisters, but she completely abandoned me when the news got ahold of the story.

Her desertion still cut.

I let myself wallow in the shame and misery, contemplating death by starvation for a good two months, before finally giving myself a kick in the ass. I didn’t exactly bounce back, though. I crawled back.

After everything that happened, to get back to a sense of normalcy was like climbing from the bottom of a snake-filled ravine. I clung to slippery rocks, I kicked the venomous snakes trying to bite at my heels, and eventually I pulled myself up and over the edge.

When all was said and done I wasn’t the same Nami. I was changed.

I thought back on the previous months as I opened my refrigerator and pulled out a bag of “meatless” meat for tacos. That was another thing that changed: I became a vegetarian. BH—before him—I was a ravenous carnivore. I ate steak and burgers and hotdogs like they were going out of style. Now I couldn’t stand the sight of them. I wasn’t not really sure why. At a certain point, though, I stopped questioning the changes that happened to me and just accepted them.

The stove sounded just as Raskol’s feet pitter-pattered across the linoleum. I glanced down to see his furry face, ready for any offering that might fall into his mouth. I reached into the skillet and picked out the only cooked piece, dropping it into his hungry maw.

At least all the shit and fuckery had brought me Raskol.

I turned on my computer as I shoved a taco into my mouth. I wasn’t hungry and eating actually made me nauseated, but if I didn’t fuel up, I would be worthless and then he couldn’t pay. The red meatless meat slid down my chin, but mess didn’t bother me much any more. Raskol inched closer, tongue out, as if I wouldn’t notice the fact that he’d gone from sitting on the edge of the couch to licking my chin. I shoved him away and wiped it off hastily, the red smearing against the back of my hand. My slightly sticky finger moved against the track pad, looking for the USB icon.

I recorded everything I did when following him. The police wouldn’t help me so I figured I had to help myself. It had been about six months since the incident and that meant I’d had about six months to stew. To ruminate. To contemplate how I’d been violated not once but multiple times.

By him.

By the police.

By the media.

By everyone: people who were supposed to protect me from the dregs of society. Dregs like him.

I guess you could say I was a little bit mad.

My plan was an ever-evolving thing. It wasn’t as though I had practice in these things, in revenge. When I first crawled out of the dark hole he had placed me in, I was filled with almost too many emotions to process: anger, shame, humiliation, sadness, anger again.

Despair.

How had this happened? How had he gotten away with it? There were so many different things I wanted to do to him. I envisioned hot pokers. I imagined ancient torture techniques (even looked up a few). Scaphism didn’t sound too bad an end for him.