Dementiae Fuit

"God, I turned out to be such a damsel in distress."

Curling up and dying inside was what she felt like doing. The whispers still echoed in her ears, the muffled laughter that seemed to follow in her wake. She held it all in, feeling the prick down to her bones.

A hunched figure sat in the middle of an empty room that was the very portrait of decay. Paint peeled on the walls, crumbling to the floor like filthy snow. The ceiling was water stained and bowed in. Black mold and mildew spilled down the shower walls, like bleeding mascara tears. The tiles on the floor were buckled and broken.

This was home. The Aruba Hotel and Spa. She'd refused his charity. He wanted to put her in a halfway house, surrounded with other victims. He'd told her that she needed to talk to someone- to purge the pain that was going to consume her. She wasn't even sure how he'd found her, but he'd been there at the airport in Paris, wearing that guilty expression.

Cross-legged, she sat with her head bowed, eyes fastened on the dying fly as it moved slowly across the edge of the chipped bathtub beside her. She'd smiled and nodded when he'd made her appointments to get her cheeks fixed. Plastic surgery seemed like such a copout. Erase it and move on, like it had never happened. She'd be good as new, perfect little princess all over again. Fuck that. It had happened, and she was going to wear it until the world was sick of looking.

She hadn't heard a word he'd said. Eventually he'd given up trying to communicate with her, and had retired to the other room, staking a claim to her couch. So she sat in here, on the gross tile floor, breathing in the silence. The hollow void did nothing to silence the voice whispering in her head. Things need to be fixed. He needs to pay.

The chipped Scooby Doo glass found its way to her lips, and she swallowed the cheap wine she'd bought at the gas station. It tasted like cheap grape juice, like a fruit drink she might have enjoyed when she was five. Now the sickly sweetness cloyed to her tongue, making her cheeks pucker. It made her head ache and she knew she'd have a migraine later. Right now, it didn't matter. 

She was drunk, not as drunk as she'd ever been and maybe she just believed that out of some fucked up little glimmer of hope; but the fact remained that she was drunk. One hand with ragged, bitten to the quick fingernails reached up, delving into her hair. It was still long, down to the middle of her back. Good camouflage for the ruination of her face when she wore it down.

She shifted herself, bracing her palms against the wall as she staggered up, swaying between this and that, rebounding from wall to basin, propelling herself as a function of momentum. The dirty mirror drew her focus. Unrepentant and irredeemable, she stared at her face, honeyed eyes filling with tears. She could still shed those well enough. She'd had it all. The world had been her oyster, and now she was nothing.

The pain flickered in her eyes as she built a wall, brick by brick, cordoning off the woman she used to be. That shallow little cunt who wanted nothing more than all the men of the world to fall at her feet in worship. She heard him stirring in the other room, the couch creaking under his weight.

Instead of rest and relaxation, her paradise had offered mutation and mutilation. Tourist trap, come visit lovely Paris. It'll change your world. Cracked and chapped lips curved into a sick smile, one that mimicked the fearful rictus of the sadist who'd done this to her. Spiral.

His name was like poison, making her ill to think it.

Her hair flowed loose over her shoulders, tickling against her bare back. She raised her arms, turning in a slow circle as she moved to her toes. Graceful pirouette. When she was five, she'd wanted nothing more than to be a ballet dancer. She hadn't been very good at it, but she'd persisted with four years of lessons. Now, she danced only for him and he didn't seem to care that she was doing it wrong, that her arms didn't bend enough.

At twelve, she'd moved on to horses, to competitive riding. She'd left that behind when Robby had dragged her into wrestling. She missed them now, missed that control and the feeling of having a powerful beast between her legs. Sex with these disposable bad boys was a poor substitute.

She downed the rest of the wine, in a messy gulp that spilled over her chin, trickling down her chest to the top of the shapeless t-shirt she wore. She dropped the glass, letting it fall from her numb fingers to smash against the floor. Who cares?

Lies rattled around in her skull, making it ache. She needed something pure, something not tainted with this unreality. She'd been listening to Jackson's incessant assurances that she'd be fine. She'd survive this. Everything would be okay and it could be fixed. Skin was just skin, he'd said.

"Never be okay again," she murmured, shaking her head. She'd never been born a doubter, but the years spent in this broken down sickness in the world around her had shown her nothing of the value of hope. Hope was a joke. Survival was just another thing to fling herself into, to lower her crown towards and to charge. Her insides were made of scar tissue. Spiral had done that to her as well and she'd been foolish to think that he'd changed, that he could be trusted.

She gripped the basin, feeling for the cold knob in the darkness. The water spilled from the faucet, a steady stream of bitter cold water over her hands as she cupped them, filling her palms, then splashing her face. The water tasted like rust. Tainted just like her.

The softness of her gaze behind sweaty tangled hair still held a small measure of innocence. She could recall in her mind a time of dolls, frolicking with her twin brother Robby, a time of sitting in the depths of her imagination and dreaming of the day she'd become a secret agent, like one of Charlie's Angels. Those days had ended so quickly.

Jackson snored in the other room. Idly she thought about killing him.

She made herself a cage and he painted himself a victim. Head hung low; she had an infinity of words that she kept on the inside for fear of vomiting her soul in chunks against the cracked tiles. He thought he was the hero of the story. She'd always been a side character, flitting through in passing. Ryann was the star now, she was his universe and yet Jackson was here, dozing in her bed with the sour sweat of their animalistic rutting drying all around him. At least with the lights out, they could both pretend she wasn't damaged goods and that hadn't been the worst sort of pity fuck imaginable.

She brushed it off, resolving herself into paper steel, reformed with a rigid spine and the idea of balance, if not the mastery, in her posture. She knew who she was, she knew goddamned well who she is, and she was starting to find herself falling in love with the mangled face looking back at her in the mirror. At least it was honest.

The silver metal gleamed in the low light, a pair of scissors brandished in her hand. She lifted a handful of her hair, hacking at it. Piece by piece, clump by clump fell around her, covering the floor beneath her with the dark brown strands. She cut away inches until the hair barely framed her shoulders. Defiantly, she glared at that woman in the mirror. Nothing to hide behind now.

"Beauty is only skin deep," the words were nothing more than a singsong whisper, a counterpoint to the tears that shone in her eyes.


The man stepped outside the warehouse, tilting his head up to the heavens, letting the rain fall on his face as he sparked his lighter. Tonight, he'd drawn the short end of the stick, watching the door. Sometimes, people showed up, wanting to get in, wanting a part of the rough trade, wanting to buy black market goods. People came and went at odd hours of the night. He was the brawn, the enforcer. Tonight he stood in the shadowy alcove, smoking his joint with a smile on his face. The skull on the back of his leather vest grinned, adorned with an Aztec-looking headdress. Familiar sight.

He heard a sound behind him, and whirled around, his hand going for the Taser he had clipped to his belt. The alley was silent, and then a mangy tabby jumped out of the shadows, hissing disconsolately in his direction before streaking off down the cobblestones. He relaxed visibly. Just an angry pussy, he thought. He didn't get to ponder just how right he was on that observation as he suddenly felt the cold barrel of a gun pressed against his back. Her breath tickled the back of his neck, as she hissed beside his ear.

"Don't make a fucking sound," she whispered sweetly, shoving the gun harder into his back. "or I'll blow your fat ass to bits."

He couldn't tell it was a girl; her voice was gravelly, almost masculine. Bravado, and the belly full of beers he'd consumed with dinner kept him from complying with her wishes. He reached for the Taser as he ducked and whirled to face his assailant, only to find that it wasn't there. He saw the blur of movement, a split second before the butt of the pistol slammed into his temple, spilling him to the concrete. He lay there in a puddle, amid the stinking trash littering the ground, semi-conscious. She cursed under her breath, and kicked him hard in the ribs, making him instinctively curl up.

"Goddamn it," she'd hit him too hard; he was going to pass out. She stomped on his hand, bringing a bleat of pain, and then she was crouched on his chest, holding the Taser in front of his nose. His eyes were open, although blurred with tears of pain, but he could see the immediate threat up close and personal as the blue lightning crackled between the two contacts. He couldn't see her face; a dark hood obscured this, and the only thing he could see was one tangled strand of ebony hair as she leaned over him. "Tell me what I want to know, and you'll live to see breakfast."

He shook his head, and bucked at the same time, trying to shake her off. She held on, and as he thrashed, she pressed the Taser against his mouth, grinding it against his teeth, mashing his lips. Electric pain sizzled through his head, rattling his teeth, reminiscent of the pain of biting on tinfoil when he was a kid. He jerked, making nonsensical sounds in his throat before going still. He was still conscious, albeit barely. She cast the Taser aside, and backhanded him sharply, bloodying his mouth further.

"Answer me, you fat fuck! Is Villalobos here?"

He shook his head in the negative, but she could see the answer in his pleading brown eyes. She stood, nodding to herself, and looked to ensure the door was still ajar. It was. With a satisfied smirk that he couldn't see, she held out the gun, and shot him twice, once in the forehead, and once in the chest. Only a whisper of sound came from the silencer, lost amid the soothing hiss of the rain as the heavens opened up. Carefully, she stepped over his body, avoiding the spreading pool of blood. She paused in the doorway, letting the hood fall away, revealing her face in a wash of light from a passing car. For a moment, she was frozen there, almost rendered beautiful in a ghastly way and then Kitty was gone, fading into the shadows like a ghost.