My last clear, technicolor memory is of Benny leaving The Bull. I remember he was pestering me about driving me home and that I resisted. My tongue had recently atrophied. I was attempting recovery. I was just too desperately lonely and craving conversation to get in the fucking car.
Jack had just died on the first of the month, it was two weeks and three days after. I was speaking to a girl about her elderly hound mix. It was about the first time I had managed to discuss him in a way that didn’t trigger uncontrolled sobbing or gasping panic attacks. I remember it felt like I was leaning my head back into a set of hands that were there to catch me. I remember feeling safe and wistful and that my heart was awash in a pearl grey ache as I told her about him and about my loss of him. That is my last cohesive memory. It was likely sometime around eleven pm.
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I can hear voices inside a house, my head is immobile, my neck feels broken. I roll my eyes up and there is movement, periodically, against the blue green light that is rectangular and must be some sort of window. I move my foot, and become instantly aware that the grass is soaked. It has seeped through the thin blue viscose of my halter maxi dress. The underwire of my strapless bra is inexplicably digging into my hipbone. I am barefoot, one side of my face is wet in the grass.
I close my eyes. Time moves forward. It cannot be measured. I am aware, just briefly before the black sweeps over, that this time I’m going to die. There is no sadness or self-pity. Just a sort of aching regret that I’ve gone and left so much unfinished.
My eyes crack open a second time and the feeling is a 180 degree turn. The rectangle that was blue and green and flickered with movement has blown out like a candle and I am suddenly, instantly, unbelievably frightened. I pull my knees under me and there, hunched in the shadows somewhere north of campus, I am brutally aware that my shoes, my bag and my panties are gone.
I stifle a cry, knocked flat by a swell of panic, my back and arms and inner thighs feel like they have been beaten with mallets. I am stamping down this bursting desire to run with every ounce of control I have. My hands shake as I search, blind and frantic through wet grass until my hands seize upon my glasses.
I stand and the smell of my own vomit is enough to clang the gate bell in my head but the starter’s shot really happens when I feel all my nerves catch fire and scream as the blood starts to pool in my ass.
I am half limping, half running, dead silent as I blindly move past houses and lawns. I am too deep in a foreign neighborhood to catch my bearings. My messenger bag, my phone, my fucking shoes, gone. I’m clenching my teeth against the pain. It hurts to turn my head. My knees are raw and bruised. The adrenaline is a fast stream in my body.
I can occasionally hear the soft swish of a car in the distance, passing by what my brain is telling me must be an intersection. I keep moving, faster. I can feel a hot runner of blood down my leg, curling around towards my inner thigh and knee. I am battered by the rotten smell on my dress, hobbled by my feet as they shred apart, bit by bit on the asphalt.
The intersection is welcomed and horrible at the same time. I am as prone to flight as any wounded animal. I stay in the shadows, thankful the pattern on my dress has camouflaged any blood that has seeped through.
I hit campus and my foot leaves a smudge of blood near a bench I briefly consider crawling under as I start to feel myself pass out. I am pumping blood steadily now, it is a river from my ass to my heels.
I am too driven to get home before the sun rises to be caught by the specter of shame that is hot on my heels. My terror has crowded everything out of my head but the remembered sound of my deadbolt as it slides into the catch.
On 2nd the sun is really starting to come up. The gush from my rectum has clotted somewhat and I am grateful for that as my feet have decided to take their turn in the bloodletting of mid-May. College kids, couples, a woman with a baby… people are spilling out of their apartments. I can hear the clack of a bike lock, the sound of Velcro as mother straps in baby.
I tuck my chin as far into my chest as I can, I ignore the red hot embers in my feet and my ass. I disappear into the yellow bruises coming up on my biceps and forearms. I will myself to walk somewhat normally, maintain my pace, think about the distance I’ve managed.
My heels are thunder on the pavement as I turn onto 8th, the sun is leering down. The blood on my dress has stiffened the fabric and I can smell it coupled with the round, ripe smell of puke that has warmed in the Florida sun.
I drag over the pot that holds my lipstick red Salvia, drop the spare twice, the silver metal key flashing in the sun. One turn and I am in.
The tile is a balm on my feet. I’ve torn off two toenails and it feels like my left heel is showing bone.
I feel my heart and pulse still slamming in my body as I blindly negotiate my hallway, my feet leave blood on the tile.
I just peel off my dress and stuff gauze and ointment against the wounds that slow and steady send streams onto the white duvet. I desperately want to curl into a fetal position but my spine is badly bruised.
I roll against the drywall. I press my face into it. I wrap myself in my blankets, my body still smeared with my vomit and and blood.
I press my forehead against the cold, white wall and I am unconscious, again, before the tears can start.