Lust Demented

{XLVIII}

HEELS CLANGING ON THE FIRE escape. An outline of a woman. Two hands popped in the open window. Chiara’s grip slid from my pinkie as she was snatched out of the bed. She wasn’t scared in the least bit. No wails. No tears. Her mother came to retrieve her. The little girl was waiting for the very moment. Without a doubt in her mind, she knew it would happen, and it did.

The brick towers across the street lit up the block. The Manhattan Bridge sat a little south. The Williamsburg Bridge stretched slightly north. Missy was already on the second floor, holding her heels like a pair of daggers in her hand. Chiara babbled musically, wrapped snug in a baby sling on her back. Heels dropped to the sidewalk below.

“Missy...” I called down to her, but she played diva, lowering herself to the pavement with a gymnast’s grace.

It was strange seeing a species thought extinct. Even more baffling how she took her time to bend over. Slithering to pick up her heels. Missy knew the pregnancy only put more sand in her hourglass. Chiara smiled up at me, waving like a canvassing presidential candidate.

Slide down the ladder and drop. Soles hit the cement. The body follows. A seagull without wings. Knees bent. Force transfers accordingly. Missy could only be steps away. I cut across the street through the gauntlet of towering housing projects.

A sliver of the Manhattan Bridge was visible between the towers. Women’s footsteps trailed behind.

“Farrow wait…” Adelora’s voice hung in the gallows of the night.

“Adelora in my pocket… the keys.”

“Stay still Farrow.” She fumbled a little before slipping the keys in and releasing the lock. The handcuffs clanged hitting a pile of trash bags and old furniture. Even with them gone, I could still feel the reinforced steel on my wrists.

“Which way?” Adelora lost her bearings. She spoke a little loud. Missy turned her head out of the shadows, staring me down in the grainy light of the Manhattan Bridge.

“Don’t say anything. All I ever hear are words.” Missy spit out orders as such on occasion, but for the first time - it felt like it may be the last. There was very little that could soothe us from the moment’s bleakness. She just kept running her mouth as people do when they finally lose all hope. “Well Farrow. You were warned. You said don’t worry something good will happen. Don’t be so serious. If we’re patient we’ll get some luck. You’re too fucking patient. I can’t believe this. How am I going to get my things out of there? Of course you don’t care because you own nothing. You can go anywhere at any time and that is why I was a complete idiot to think there was ever any future in you.” The officially stamped City of New York Marshall’s eviction notice helped distinguish what was dead from what was alive.

“At least we don’t have a kid. Nothing too serious.” Frustration. Anger. I shouldn’t have let it slip.

“I hate writers. I wish you all horrible deaths. Painful. Gruesome. Humbling. Deaths.” Missy turned her back on me and walked off. It was the last time I would see her until this very night. No way I was going to go after her. I learned restraint a second late. Enough harm was inflicted. I waited until I heard her heels hit the lobby steps before ripping the eviction notice off the door and taking a seat in the hallway. I flipped the page, pulled a pen from my pocket, and got started on filling the empty space.

Missy stopped underneath the Cherry Street tunnel that sliced a path below the Manhattan Bridge. She was waiting for me. I had to know what she would say after all this time. I needed to hold Chiara and help her understand that she would always be safe. I couldn’t wait any longer for the words she withheld. The closer I got to Missy, the more she looked and felt the same, as time had never changed. I didn’t even realize what I was doing… when I went into lock lips.

Missy’s wetness made perfect sense, but the blade of the scissors opening my neck was a bizarre sensation - A flash of desolation. The blade entered my skin. Smooth red velvet. I could taste my tongue frosting over. Pupils filled with snow. I couldn’t believe she did it. So this is how it felt. Shock shook me inside out. Cold cold world.

The world went blurry. I was on the ground looking up.

“Writer… Lava will turn us all into stone.” The words left her mouth like a phantom baby’s first words. It was the only thing Missy said to me in over a year.

Detective Anderson took aim. He was oblivious to the fact that Chiara was strapped to Missy’s back. I wasn’t convinced that I was still alive, but somehow I stood up again. Flap of skin dangling from my sliced neck. Blood emptying on the street like an open hydrant. Detective Anderson fired and I lurched into the bullet with my hand up like I was hailing a cab.

Empty streets. Two feet of snow under the streetlamps. Missy finally kissed me on the steps of her building. Covered head to toe in warmth. The front door slipped from her hands. I wasn’t sure where she was leading me. Either way I had no choice, but to go.

The blizzard hijacked the city. Buses stuck, wheels spinning in the middle of the street. Subways frozen underground indefinitely delayed.

“What do you say when you meet someone that changes the entire course of your life?”