End of the Street (2)

At first I think I have started my period. 

Blood pools at my feet, tapering off in all directions.  Since when did I menstruate so heavily?  I have been light from fourteen to twenty four.  No, this is not my period.  This is not anybody’s period.  This is not the blood from a five inch opening, but from a twelve inch one.  Everything is white beyond the blood.  No, everything is the blood.  Even the white is blood.  Blood, blood, blood. 

And beyond it is… Leanna.  Only, it’s not Leanna.  She’s pale white, drained of the very blood I am standing in.  She’s not dead.  But she’s not living, either.    

I realize my scream has never stopped.  It’s still there, I’m still there, breathing, living, but Leanna is not.  My own breath is suddenly immediate, hot and harsh on my face and I want to vomit.  I don’t know who calls the police and when they get there, but I think it’s Jackie and suddenly she’s there, next to me, and she’s holding me and she’s crying and I don’t know why.  I want to ask her but my own throat seems clogged up, as if someone has stuck a bath stopper halfway down it.  I try to clear it but suddenly I am sick all over Jackie’s typical middle aged blouse and I try to say I’m sorry but then the tears come, hot and wet and close on my cheeks.  

*

I bite my lip, and feel the taste of blood fill my mouth.  I hold my breath for two whole minutes so I don’t have to smell it.  Then I lean my head against Jackie’s shoulder and breathe in the scent of powder and hair dye and other Jackie things.  Then I hold my breath again; this time, for four minutes.

I count every second.

*

I wake up the next day around mid-afternoon to find that Jackie has left, having dealt a blanket around my body, which is now horizontal on the couch. 

I am silent for a long time. The tears come the entire time.  It is as if my ducts have forgotten how to stop.  Then a policeman murmurs something which sounds like “nature of her profession” and “obvious hazards”.  This is when I hit him.  I don’t know how I get from my seat to his face, but I do.  And when  I do, all I want to do is tear his god awful face off his shoulders.  I yell profanities at him while his colleagues clench me around the waist.  This just screws me up even more.  I turn; I bite, I scratch, and I kick.  I don’t know what I’m hitting most of the time, but several times I feel the warm contact of flesh and feel a new warmth of satisfaction break through the layer of coldness. 

In time, I am overcome.  Man beats woman.  Every time. 

They return me to the couch.  The assaulted bastard wants to put me in handcuffs but the chief disagrees.  I don’t really fucking care.  But it is as I lie there in the silence again that I realize the full meaning of his words.  Nature of her profession… obvious hazard… the assaulted bastard isn’t as much of a dumbass as I’d thought.

He is suggesting that Leanna’s customer murdered her.