Rotting Beauty: The Story of True Love's Bite

Author: Erin Green

The legend starts with a “Once Upon A Time” story of a clichéd damsel-in-distress, locked away in a tower forever, only to be rescued by a prince through the means of a kiss, but not just any kiss, true love’s kiss. What if I told you this glorified elementary version of the story never really happened? What if I told you there was no such thing as true love’s kiss that broke the curse, set the princess free, and let the couple live happily ever after? What if I told you there was no such thing as a happily ever after? Would you believe me? In a way, you’d have to…I’m the storyteller, dictator of what falls on this page, dictator of what you will see written here in front of you, for you are the reader, and know nothing more than what I tell you…therefore you don’t have a choice.

I’ll be honest with you upfront, there is no such thing as true love’s kiss, and I’ll tell you why. You were given the sugar-coated version of what truly happened in that story. Let me take you back to the year 1346…if you know your history, you’ll know what was going on at that time in Europe. Our fairytale stories always take place in Europe. Imagine Europe 1346, a kingdom of sorts, ruled by a king and queen, happily wedded, and respected by their constituency. Around the year 1333, the king and queen conceived a young daughter, who we’ll address in this story as the princess. Because they all end up dying in the end of the story, there’s no need for actual names: it’s irrelevant. 

See, what history books got wrong about the Black Death that was eradicating European society was second strain of the infection that reach this kingdom. For obvious reasons, we’ll call this Type 2 Black Plague. Type 2 managed to infiltrate the kingdom, which had a rough population of about 72,000, killing off 45,000 within months. The people of the kingdom, knights, serfs, and priests all alike, came to the king, pleading for him to find a way to stop the Black Death, which was waving its cross bone magic across the innocent lives of the kingdom. The king, being a sympathetic man, was moved, searching for ways to save his land. More obviously, how can one be a king without people to rule?

A little more information about Type 2 Black Plague…this infection was so radically horrific, that it did not have the same effects of Type 1. People’s skins began to decay, mold, grow yellow and fall. Their movements slowed. Their speech pattern disintegrated. Their life force itself, drained of every drop of hope and energy. More importantly, the taste and hunger for human flesh was obsessively addictive. Only roughly 27,000 kingdom inhabitants were not infected with Type 2.  Residents were feasting on their neighbors, friends, and families. The kingdom was falling apart like a house of cards blown over by the cool autumn breeze. These infected creatures, bit into the skin of other kingdom goers, devouring their flesh, and also infecting them with Type 2. 

There was but only one solution, according to a witch…

See this is where history books got it wrong again. Besides the simple fact that they swept Type 2 Black Plague under the rug like a forgotten child, they completely omitted the unforgivable prophecy that was placed upon the king and his daughter, the princess. “You must sacrifice your daughter to the undead,” was what the witch told the king. “I will put a spell on her, make her sleep eternally for seven years. She will only be awaken by true love’s—not kiss—bite.” The father was skeptical of this witch’s prophecy, but skeptical about the fact of putting his daughter under a sleeping curse and sending her off to some forgotten tower to have her sleep for seven years only to be bitten by an infected monster that would save the kingdom. Ultimately…he was setting up his daughter, the princess, like a pig to be slaughtered for succulent sausages. 

Are you still with me? Stay with me, okay? I know you think you know the story about the princess being locked in the tower, guarded by the dragon, and true love’s kiss break the spell, but you in fact don’t know the story. That’s why I’m telling you the story. See, historians obliterated this story for a reason and substituted it with this “kid friendly” version for a reason. This horrific tale of a father, letting his daughter be objectified is too horrendous and appalling for modern day society. But I’m your storyteller. I’m here to break the walls down.

So what do you think happened next? Did the father choose his kingdom or his daughter? In order for one to stay, the other had to go. Of course like any other ruling king would, he chose his kingdom. The witch put a spell on the princess and the king ordered one of his remaining knights to transport her to the farthest castle tower where she was to sleep for seven years straight. The witch promised that if she slept, uninterrupted, for seven years and was bitten, the curse would be lifted, and the plague would cease to exist anymore. 

So, I’ll spare you the grotesqueness of the next seven years of body parts falling off their bodies, blood being vomited on the floors of the kingdom, and people lying on their death beds and rotting away. I won’t tell you how the kingdom was full of white slimy maggots, dancing in the rotting corpses in the kingdom. I won’t tell you how the undead continued to walk the kingdom, feasting on the dead, ripping its flesh apart with its teeth, violently ingesting intestinal tracks of God knows what. I’ll skip over the piles and piles and piles and piles and piles and piles and piles and piles and piles of dead bodies that stank from the stench of deterioration. I’ll skip over how the queen of the kingdom suffered from the infection, and died in her bath tub, and how her husband found her body, swollen with water, and how within moments her body exploded with decaying flesh. I’ll skip over brown water that residents drowned themselves in to escape the decaying world. I’ll skip over all of that because I know you don’t want to hear it. It’ll make you sick to your stomach, sick like the entire kingdom.

By year seven, the princess had rotted into nothing but a decaying lifeless twig. Her skin was yellowish brown, swollen with death. Her eyes were a deep yellow, thirsty for blood. Her hair, once full of volume, and a bright beautiful blonde, now dark thin strands of cob webs. Her lips were cracked porcelain worms glued to her face. The bones in her body, more brittle than winter tree branches. 

The princess was awakened from her seven years’ sleep and now she hungered for flesh. The princess walked all the way from the forgotten castle tower to the dying kingdom her father was ruling. Upon seeing her, he was shocked, nearly dying from traumatization. He had not expected to see his daughter in such a condition. The witch, watching the scene said, “In order for the kingdom to be saved…there must be true love’s bite.” See, there’s the catch. The king had been fooled. He assumed all he had to do was let his daughter be bitten to get rid of the plague, but in fact, it was he who was supposed to be bitten by his daughter, who loved him very so, and the plague would be no more. “From this plague your kingdom shall survive. When true love's bite, the plague shall cease,” said the witch, “For true love conquers all.”

So the princess bit him.

Her long thin arms embraced her father and she bit into his neck, causing blood to splatter, ripping the flesh away from him, gnawing into him aggressively, but with love. The king hollered, begged for mercy, shouted from the agony, the physical pain, but the emotional horror that came along with it. His vocal cords were silent as she, his daughter, the princess, had eaten his neck from the front to the back. The king was dead, and suddenly, her body began to convulse. Falling to her knees, she began bleeding from several orifices, foaming at the mouth, until she was also dead, on the floor, beside her father. 

Your textbooks say the plague ended roughly in 1353, and I’m here to tell you that’s about the only thing they got correct. They didn’t tell the story of the king who sacrificed his daughter to selfishly save his kingdom, but found out in the end that he was the one to truly be sacrificed. The textbooks didn’t tell the story of “Beauty and the Plague” in which a princess fell in love with the plagued creatures. Your textbooks didn’t tell the story of “The Rotting Mermaid” in which a princess from the sea started the infection on land. Your textbook didn’t tell the story of “Snow White and the Seven Sins” in which a princess was thought to be a witch, and the cause of the plague and horribly executed. And your textbook didn’t tell you the story of “Rotting Beauty.”

Just be warned of these fairytale textbooks rewriting stories and sugar-coating them to spare you the terrible details because not every fairytale ends happily ever after…the true stories end horribly ever after…

Skeletons Are Assholes

Author: Garrett Roth

Marcus lay on his untidy bed, staring at the familiar sight of his bedroom ceiling. The house, much like his life, was enveloped in a disappointing silence. He had been forgotten again, at least by people who mattered to him. He had only just begun to close his eyes when his phone’s lock screen came to and the LED on its top right corner began to glow blue.

He sighed and turned to face it, half-heartedly tapping its screen, to reveal that his aunt had just wished him a happy birthday.  It was 4PM and she was the only one who had. They also hadn’t seen each other in some twelve years.  He looked out to the setting sun through his window as he grimaced and rolled back over, holding back a depressing, melodramatic sob. 

***

    Amaius ducked out of sight of the window, fearing the boy had made them.

    “Fuck, man,” he whispered loudly as he looked down to his fellow sneaky skeleton, Jackus. He looked around briefly and peered back in to the window, the tip of his skull just barely crowning the bottom of the frame.

    “What?” Jackus replied, holding steady on the branch of a rather large tree just outside of Marcus’s window. He held Amaius up on his shoulders, the two forming a sort of dire skeleton. “He spot you?”

    “I don’t think so. Not yet, anyway,” Amaius rolled his jaw slowly, providing a brief relief from his achy jaw while avoiding the usual ear-shattering popping that accompanies a skeleton resetting broken or uncomfortable joints. 

    “Well hurry up, man.  Humans creep me the hell out. All that skin and shit,” Jackus shifted uncomfortably before turning his head and spitting out a loose tooth, pinging it off of the kitchen window.

***

    The pair waited intently, Amaius watching Marcus’s stomach and chest for the fateful moment when Marcus began using his diaphragm to breathe instead of his chest – a sign that the youth was asleep. It wasn’t before too long that the moment came and each of the boney compatriots began moving with purpose. Amaius carefully lifted the window, making the greatest care not to disturb Marcus’s slumber. The two scuttered across the floor, quietly clacking their bones as they tied each of Marcus’s limbs to the posts of his bedframe. Jackus skeleton sneaked through the rest of the empty, depressing home, and within minutes had acquired the family’s stupid fucking loud yappy dog and brought a sharpened femur (not his, he’s insistent on that) in to the dog’s throat over and over, splashing blood along the floors and wall, staining the shag carpet. He lazily dragged its corpse to the room and began writing in their ancient skellyman tongue over all of the walls using its blood, covering it with all of the incantations he learned in skellyman school for skeletons. They would need them for the ritual.

*** 

    Marcus slowly opened his eyes and upon realizing his predicament, contorted his face in horror as his eyes darted across the room. After catching the visage of the boney interlopers he tried to scream, but his fear held his tongue. He began to violently pull on his limbs only to find that they were bound by rope to the bedposts. His jerking caught the attention of his captors almost immediately.

    “Dude, shit, Amaius,” Jackus rattled and pointed to the boy on the bed. Amaius let out a loud sigh and ran his hands over his skull as though it still held hair.

    “Son of a bitch,” he muttered. Marcus swore he could see the skeleton’s face form a sort of frown, but he realized that the face was but mere bone and couldn’t possible emote in such a fashion. Marcus gasped attempting a shriek as the skeleton crept to his bedside and leaned down to meet his gaze, its face sitting only inches from his nose. “Alright, kid,” he began. His eyes, or his un-eyes, looked awkwardly off to the side as he began fumbling his words. “Well, uh, we have to do this thing-“

“A thing?” Marcus yelped, catching the surprise of his captors.

“Yes, a thing,” Jackus interjected, leaning backward in to Marcus’s view for a solitary moment before returning to his preparations. “We’ll be ready to go here in a sec’. Just dottin’ some ‘I’s and crossin’ some ‘t’s and we’ll be good to go.”

    “Hell yeah,” Amaius held out his hand in a balled fist towards Jackus who responded by smacking the top of it with his own fist and having the same done to him by Amaius before the two of them shook their fists while reeling backwards, making obnoxiously loud rattling noises all the while. Amaius snapped back to attention and returned to Marcus, who had begun to weep uncontrollably. “SoI know you’ve got some questions, and that’s okay, I got you. Y’see, my compatriot here an’ I are on our way to a celebratory shindig of a kind,” the skeleton began attempting to console Marcus in a mock-informative tone, the syllables for the longer words seemingly colliding in his mouth before falling off of his un-tongue in a dreadful cacophony of derision. Marcus couldn’t tell if the skeleton was actually intelligent and mocking him, or merely stupid and attempting to appear to be intelligent and mocking him. He didn’t concern himself with the thought for longer than a breath before returning to the horrifying as fuck circumstance he found himself in.

    “It’s gonna’ be pretty rad,” Jackus chimed in again, tossing the open torso of the dog over his shoulder. “We’re lookin’ to get totally fucking wrecked, but we need a DD before we head out. We’re going to pull Jeff’s soul from the immaterium and bind it to the skeleton inside of you. You’re not gonna’ make it but try not to think about it for too long or else this shit gets tragic.”

    Marcus could barely utter a brief ‘Wait, wh-‘ before his bones began to contract in his body. His fingers and wrist began to bulge against his skin. The bones began to violently shake, breaking themselves free of his muscles and tendons. Marcus’s screams pierced the uncomfortable, melodramatic silence of his home shortly before turning to gurgles, which in turn became exhausted gasps and groans. His endoskeleton began using his binds to find purchase against his skin, writhing freely though the living body now that it had shed itself of the muscles that bound it to its fleshy form. Marcus let out a single, solitary gurgle just before erupting in to fleshy gibs, his blood painting the walls and splattering across the window. Standing in the hazy, bloody mist was a new third skeletal fright. This new figure picked over his new body, removing chunks of nervous system and leftover muscle tissue.

    “What’s up motha’ fucka’!” he shouted enthusiastically, raising his arms above his head and waving them excitedly. The other two paid him no attention. At this point Jackus was thumbing through Marcus’s phone, his face lighting up with amusement.

    “Wow, this guy was a fucking nerd. It was his birthday and nobody gave a shit,” he chuckled. He scanned through a few texts, some poorly hidden fetish porn and his abysmally short list of contacts before tossing it back on the nightstand and looking to their new comrade. “You drive.”

    “Aww, man, how come I always have to drive? I never get to have fun with you guys and do all the cool stuff!” its lowered its shoulders and appeared to pout as it stepped down from the bloody bed. Its gaze wandered down to the floor in general dismay.

    “It’s ‘cause you keep getting’ put in dweebs, ya’ dingdong, now scoot or we’re gonna’ be fuckin’ late again, like always,” Amaius slid the window fully open and slipped out of the room. Jackus followed, sitting on the window sill and falling out backwards. Jeff lazily dragged his feet to the window before exiting through it and closing it behind him, letting out a sad, heavy and melodramatic sigh.

Sweatpants

Author: Jessica Brooks

There was so much blood.

She knew there would be, in theory. But since horror films terrified her, she didn’t know just how much of it there would be.

There was blood all over her sweatpants.

Her favorite-- absolute favorite-- pair of sweatpants.

Why had she done it?

That answer had seemed clear to her before the handle of the knife made its home in her palm. Now she couldn't remember it.

There was her wedding night, lying on the kitchen floor. There was the night she became Mrs. Connor. Those cold hands were lying face-up, open and taunting her from the linoleum. In them were all the minutes spent in the marriage bed. There was the passionate, furious lovemaking followed by the calm caresses. There were the years of mediocre, obligatory, scheduled sex. There were the hands, that after two years of marriage, forgot the location of her clit. There were the hands that never dared to journey for it again.

There lying on the floor was the past seven years. She now could not remember why she had decided seven years was more than enough.

There was so much blood.

He had stopped caring. He had stopped treasuring her.

So much blood. All over her favorite sweatpants.

But he had tried. Hadn’t he? He had. He had tried. He hadn’t forgotten her birthday.

She’d never be able to wear these pants again. Then she remembered that he had, in fact, forgotten their anniversary. Were the sobs that overtook her heroin-wracked frame for the spouse she'd murdered? Or were they for the clothing she'd sullied?

The floor rose to meet her, and her face landed in warm red, which provoked her to cry more. Her first instinct was to drop the knife and wipe her face, but there was more blood on her hands. The poison leaked to her lashes, then to her eyes.

Fumbling, still weeping, she rose, feeling her way for the sink, until-- fuck! fuck fuck fuck! the knife! It bit her heel, and she limped the rest of the way to the kitchen sink in frustration and pain.

As the sound of the rushing water mingling with her gasps and wails overtook her ears, she thought how easily she could drown herself in that sink. She second-guessed her decision almost immediately--drowning seemed too harsh a way to go.

But at least there’s no blood.

When she finally rose and recovered the use of her eyes, she saw the snow falling in such a smooth, lilting pattern onto the balcony, a kind of beauty that seemed so out of place in the horrid mess her life had become. Walking heavy on her left foot, tiptoeing on her right to keep pressure off her still-bleeding heel, she opened the glass doors with a reverence she’d never known. 

She stood still for a moment, allowing the cold air to assault her exposed arms. The violence felt like love. As she looked over her shoulder, she cringed to see the patterned trail of crimson that she’d tracked all over the brand-new plush carpet.

Shivers replaced her sobs as the crying subsided. The upper half of her body was so cold, but the lower half of it was so warm she felt she’d burn. The blood should have grown cold by now but she felt it getting hotter...and hotter...and hotter…

She stepped out of the stained cocoon and tossed it over the balcony. She thought she heard herself laugh as she did so.

The more flakes of powdered sugar fell from the sky, the more she realized that love it or hate it, her whole life was lying in a pool of blood in the kitchen they’d shared, dead by her hand.

The front door opened.

“Marni?”

There was her shitty fucking excuse for a lover. He was only two doors down, of course he had heard the screams. He hadn’t seen yet.

There was a pause so long, it could have lasted seven years.

“Marni.”

Now, he’d seen it.

He was calling to her, but the pile of fabric on the sidewalk far below was calling as well.

She chose to follow the sweatpants.

red rum and a shining carcass

Author: Jessica Brooks

There is no room 237 in Ramsay Hall.

I checked.

Several times, in fact. I guess each time, I was scared it would suddenly have appeared out of thin fucking air.

They say these hallways change at night.

They want to believe this place is enchanted, 

and though I would enjoy such a sanitized way of looking at this place,

I know better.

And though I live in one of the few rooms with a bathtub

in this hotel-turned-dormitory,

which puts me at risk for seduction by a creepy half-drowned spectre,

at least I’m someplace where you can’t reach me.

Not that you even want to reach me.

You with the Djarum Blacks you finally stopped smoking--

you were happy enough without me that you stopped smoking.

That knowledge alone was worse than any harsh words at the typewriter.

You with that face, those eyes that always looked half-empty or more,

the endless, endless consumption of alcohol, complete with snide words to the bartender.

With the ex far prettier and more talented that I can ever hope to be,

and the Advocaat and blood staining the hands that held my waist.

I don’t think it’s accurate to say

that you were Jack Torrance 

and that I was Wendy,

but the fact remains

that one of us got out in the end

and the other one didn’t.

The hard part is-- I can’t tell who is who.

One of us looks like a caricature, a Neanderthal

with eyelashes frozen over,

but the foil doesn’t stop long,

gathering the traumatized remnants of those two short months

and getting the fuck out of dodge.

One of us is descending the mountain,

safe from the elevator that threatens to drown its patrons in crimson.

But the other has had their brains bashed in, 

right the fuck in,

and I think it’s me that the Overlook Hotel has claimed for the last hundred years.

The Accidental Slut

Author: Keshia Mcclantoc

Her porcelain face smiled at me, an assurance I neither needed nor wanted. I scoffed at her and wiped the drool from my lips. I'm sorry, I thought, for vomiting on you. She didn't answer, of course, because she was the toilet. Instead I was greeted with a gargled cry and an urging echo as she took my lunch and everything else with her. Anxiety came in many flavors, each with its own unique form of small terrors. This one, of course, had the usual ingredients of shaking hands and sweat parading across the forehead. The vomiting had been a surprise, something to throw a bit of extra spice in there. It was brought on by my heart beating in a furious crescendo and my breath getting caught in every beat. Oh my old friends, you would think by now I would know what to expect from you. Outside, through the paper thin walls of my safe haven there was a ringing crash, followed by a string of expletives. This is the reminder, it said, get back out there. Some hapless soul had taken to branding the mirror in black marker, saying solemnly in wide curving letters "I don't know who I am but maybe this will help." In a singular space, unoccupied by the marked transgression was a sticker, advertising some local band. The person who didn't know themselves must have put the sticker there, as some pretentious gamble, my music makes me who I am man. Maybe I didn't want to hear the angsty cacophony of your garage band, maybe a bitch just wanted to check her reflection. 

If you look up the word slut on Urban Dictionary, it tells you a slut is a girl who will sleep with anyone. Of course, when looking up the definition for anything, I turn to the true lawmaker, the Oxford English Dictionary. Slut, a woman of dirty, slovenly, or untidy habits. Slut, four letters, one syllable--two in the mouths of the right people. In its one syllable form it's delivered in a sharp swift cut, or the twisting of the knife in a previous injury. In its two syllable form it starts off tight to begin with, falls fat and round at the end. It's like that first heavy raindrop that hits your face right before the rain falls. Why not say both versions to yourself, practice them a bit. Do you hear that, the weight of those words as they leave your lips? 

Coming out of the restroom, I was hit with the cold slap of my anxiety all over again. The bathroom was behind the stage and I had to scoot along between the edge and the graffitied wall, while the band, tuning up and dragging equipment around for their set, stared me down. I didn’t see them seeing me, of course, but I felt the pull of their gaze as I rounded the corner and plunged myself back into the crowd. The people had separated themselves into groups of tall hunching figures draped in flannel shirts, girls whose thighs were accentuated by torn tights, and conversations building and rising in chaotic dissonance. Then, alone, a single lingering figure with hands shoved in pockets. 

Type: mediocre white boy, mid-twenties and still dressing like his sixteen year old self. Expression: monotone--and have fun trying to shake that look into anything else besides boredom. If you asked him what he thought of some nameless pop star's new video, then maybe his face would contort in disgust, and he’d tell you with great indignation, eyebrows raised, what real music was. Not too tall, not too skinny, a lot of greasy hair, shoved under a sagging gray beanie. His face was indistinguishable, only made unique by the sharpness of his jaw, the straight edge of his nose. Looking in the crowd I could see twenty or so more versions of him. It was almost like their soft suburban mothers got them all on wholesale at the Gap, and deposited them with lipstick smiles saying, “Make good choices.” The correct answer would be the rolling of the eyes, the pierced lip saying “shut the hell up.” This one, though, unlike his counterparts, belonged to me. Or maybe not belonged, he was attached, like a leech I had placed on myself. It wasn’t the first time I wondered again about why I had invited him. 

    “Hey,” I said, approaching. His response was immediate, a quick smile and a brief glance at me before settling his eyes on my chest. No, by some strange magic, my tits didn’t fall off in the bathroom, thanks for noticing. 

    “So, do you know if this place is kind to smokers?” he asked, flipping his pack out of his pocket, lighter twirling in his other hand. 

    “Well, I mean, people go outside,” I said, nodding vaguely towards the door. I crossed my arms over my chest, and he answered by letting his gaze follow mine outside. 

    “Well then,” he said, taking out a cigarette with surprising deftness and sticking it between his front teeth, “You cool?”

It’s okay Julia, it’s just me, we’re cool.

    “Yeah,” I said with a dry nod, “I’m cool.”

When he opened the door, a cold rush of biting winter air swept in and he caught the glare of a few naysayers. The venue was entirely too small for this massive crowd. What it lacked in width and length, though, it made up in depth. The ceiling rose into some dark shadowy abyss, segmented by an interlocking labyrinth of rusted pipes. Honestly, it had to be shit for acoustics. Even in their individual groups, the people had been tightly packed. This type of crowd, though, liked the bumping shoulders and bouncing music. Once the band started playing they would have their own little pocket of chaos, and, like a pack of wolves, they would devour it. It was the guy, though, and not the crowd, that had stirred my anxiety. With him gone it was easier to breathe. You could to tell, within fifteen minutes of talking to any guy, whether they wanted to take you home or leave you at the curb. Every impression he had given me so far had been that of former. He hadn’t even wanted to come here, instead he suggested we hang out back at his place. For what, I thought, Netflix and chill? I had been insistent, though, “No, really, my friend invited me and I can’t let her down.” 

    It was the truth, Xandra had invited me. I didn’t let him know, though, that Xandra didn’t want me to invite him. She was across the room know, surrounded, per usual by a flock of guys. Her smile circled around all of them as she giggled, made witty comments, and everything else a nice young lady was supposed to do when entertaining a group of young gentlemen. Her eyes caught mine and her smile stretched deeper, sinking into her dimples. I approached them and became Moses, a shambling opening form that allowed me into the circle.

“You okay Julia?” she asked and I nodded vaguely in response. It was hard for them to resist her, I knew. She was just the type of fine packaging they all dreamed of; small and petite but curvy as well, with big blue eyes, and a pouting bottom lip that she would bite lightly, a signal here, to let know she had other plans for those lips. 

“Your date seems kind of…” she let herself trail off here. 

I needed to tell her believe me, Xandra, I know my date isn’t up to your standards, but instead I said, “He’s not my date, he’s just a guy.”

“Well, if you wanna come over after this tonight, you can,” she said, casting me a sly grin. I returned it weakly and let myself fade away from the circle. One of these guys would end up the lucky one, the one Xandra would pull back into her apartment, kissing and giggling as she fumbled with the the keys. Perhaps she would turn on the light, let them see her as she pulled off her shirt. Soft skin, luminescent in the fluorescents, and her breasts two perky mountains, cupped in the lace of her bra. Or maybe she would keep the lights off, guiding them through the mess of her living room and pushing them unto the bed. If I did go there tonight, then of course I would join them, because Xandra always made me join them. 

The first time it had happened, she hadn’t asked me before, but instead took my hand and pulled me into her room. I was too caught up in the logistics of it, of what to pay attention to. There was so much going on and too much effort to be put into everything. And didn’t it bother them too, that the bed was squeaking too loudly, that we were all sweating too much, that I hadn’t even said once, “Yes, this is what I want.”  It had been the first time since the last time, and when I cried afterwards she apologized and told me, she had just wanted to make me feel good. She knew it was wrong, after what happened, but that she wanted me to feel good about sex again. I told her it didn’t matter, and when it happened again I let it take me away, like one of those lazy river rides at one of the ten thousand water parks parents dragged their kids to. i just let it pull me along and I didn’t make much effort to get out. 

“Hey,” someone said, grabbing my wrist. He was one of Xandra’s followers, casting a sudden line out to me. I noticed immediately that he was ideal for her, generic enough to fit in with the faceless others, but distinguished enough to catch her attention. His hand, lightly gripping at my wrist, was made of long, cold fingers. 

Julia, you’re freezing, let me warm you up.

“Xandra told me your name was Julia, I like that name,” he said, quick to the point, casting me a glance from my head to my toes. 

“Yeah, it is,” I said, pulling my wrist from his grip. “And you’ll have to tell Xandra I won’t be coming to her house tonight.”

His disappointment washed over his face in quick succession and he shrugged before joining Xandra and the rest of her zoo. Behind me there was a gust of cold air, and my anxiety joined me back at my side, the fresh smell of cigarettes on his breath and the red chilled cheeks pulling up along his smile. Just as he reached me, sound spread out across the mike, silencing the crowd. Finally, the band was ready. 

Almost immediately I noticed the guitar player, because it was the thing I always noticed. It was hard to detach the music from the person; it must be integral to their persona. But this music, loud and overwrought, sharpened like a knife against the oppressiveness of society was nothing like the person. The crowd ate it up, bobbing their heads in perfect unison, all along to a rhythm I couldn’t catch. He was soft, with limp blond hair that fell over his bending head. His posture, it seemed, was guided purely by how his instrument moved him. The line, from his shoulder and down the light muscles of his arm and into his fingers, it was a balance, a whole. My companion beside me didn’t notice me noticing someone who was not him. But when I looked back again, I didn’t see the guitar player standing there. Instead I saw the other guy I knew, the one who was a guitar player as well. Hadn’t he too, had that line of balance? Hadn’t he too, let his instrument guide him? Hadn’t he said, Hey, I’m not hurting you, am I? Julia, why are you crying? Don’t cry baby, you wanted this. It’s almost over, now, okay. 

Later on, in the car, I went through the motions of making out with the guy who was my date and not my date. I had told him, right after the first song, “You should drive me home.” What he heard was, “Do you want to fuck me in your car?” 

This part was easy, to put myself through each individual step. Step one, get the boy in the car. Step Two, mash your lips against his. Step Three, moan like you’re enjoying yourself when his hands find your way into your pants. Usually I was really good at step three, some might even say my performances were award Oscar worthy. This time I didn’t even get a bid.  

    “What’s up?” he asked, his cheeks flushed, breath catching at the end of every syllable. 

    “I don’t want to,” I said, short and succinct. 

    “Don’t want to?”

    “Come on,” I said, turning away from him. The anxiety found its way back again, in sudden, shuddering waves that slapped me coldly against the face. It was the scariest thing, saying no. “Don’t pretend you didn’t come with me tonight just to get into my pants.”

    “Well,” he said, “That may have been part of my agenda.”

    I scoffed and sank closer to the window, feeling his fingers run themselves with creeping tingles up my thigh. The words I said fell back into my stomach, hitting the ocean floor like heavy rocks, ‘I don’t want to’. The seaweed wrapped around them, locking them in place--useless. 

    “You know,” I told him, “I don’t even remember your name.”

    “Whose room is this?” he asked. His arms, around me, wrapped tighter. Too tight, I noticed, for me to wriggle my way out of. I moved my head around, seeing only the dark shapes and outlines. 

    “I don’t know, someone whose name I probably can’t remember,” I said and then his hot breath was at my neck, balancing suddenly at the edge of him pressing his lips against it. When I dragged myself into this room, I hadn’t expected anyone to follow me. My head had been pounding, and I knew Xandra would have at least another hour of lap hopping before I dragged her drunk ass home. Certified DD services in form of a friend, that’s me. But then Nathan, Nathan from my history lecture, who always sighed loudly, and audibly, every time Professor Richardson went off on tangents about Rasputin. I always noticed, he always looked over at me with an expression that said, ‘not this again.’ Nathan, whose band had played at the party that night, his fingers moving deftly over the strings. Nathan who had come up to me after they were done playing and asked ‘Julia, have you accepted Rasputin as your Lord and Savior yet?” I hadn’t told him to follow me, I had only said I was finding a place to lay down up stairs. I probably should’ve told him I was finding a place alone. 

    Behind me he pushed forward, finally kissed the back of my neck. For a brief second his arms loosened, and I understood, this is the part where I was supposed to turn around him and kiss him, and so I did. Perhaps after a minute, maybe more or maybe less, he started reaching down and I was aware of pressure, those fingers there, strong and insistent.

“No,” I said, and I knew even then, that he wasn’t going to listen. 

“But you’ll like it, relax,” he said and his fingers were there again, pressing. 

“I can’t, please, don’t.”

“Julia, shhh,” his lips were brushing over my ear, “you know you want this.”

“I don’t want to. Please, Nathan, stop.”

“It will be over in a minute, come on,” he told me, gripping me with those arms again, moving his fingers down again. I was trapped, and suddenly, I felt suffocated. I couldn’t stop him, because surely if I tried, he would never let me have air again.

Would it have been better if I had fought back? Would he have known to stop? Would you be able to say, now’s there’s a girl to believe when she tells us, she’s not a slut. I didn’t, though, and it was easier that way. I laid there, I let him wash over me. The lazy river ride, pulling you along. And when I started crying, he didn’t stop then. He told me afterwards I should have told him I had never done it before, he would have been easier. He thought I was crying because it was my first time. And then there was the girl, who belonged to the room, who found us in her bed and denounced me as a slut to the entire party. There was Nathan who said nothing, Nathan who had chuckled proudly with the rest, “Yeah, yeah that’s the stupid slut I just fucked.”

I walked home because I couldn’t stand be in his car another second afterwards. He didn’t matter and I wouldn’t see him again. But it didn’t matter, because he was just one of the many nameless dozen or so that came after Nathan. I never really knew my rapist was a rapist, at least not until he told me so. I hated that you had were supposed to say it that way, my rapist—like he belonged to me. The truth was, I would always belong to him. He would always have my answer, the no, the stop, the please don’t—those words were his now. He took them and locked them away, somewhere, seemingly, where only I could hear them. When Nathan called me, weeks afterwards, and told me, crying that he was sorry for what he had done, I didn’t know what to say. He relayed me the story, he had been with a girl and he couldn’t get it up, for his mind was too caught on what had happened with me. I laughed then, because it was so ridiculous, my rapist, apologizing to be and giving me a sob story about not being able to get laid. I knew immediately the laughter, loud and bitter with tears rolling down my cheeks, was wrong. I had offended him, he had tried to make the situation right and here I was, belittling him with laughter. “Well, maybe you are a slut,” he told me. “Yeah,” I answered, still laughing, “I probably am.”

 You have to believe me when I say I didn’t mean to be that girl, the one walking home at three am with the taste of some guy’s last score in her mouth. I didn’t mean to be the girl who let her friend pull her into sexual encounters that she didn’t really understand. I didn’t mean to become the girl who became the slut because that’s what people told her she was and sex was all people wanted of her. I was an accident, really, not what I meant to be. The accidental slut on her accidental walk of shame. That’s how life works though, what the person who scrawled on the mirror really needs to know, life is so much easier if you just become what people expect of you. It takes someone brave to defy expectations, and I am not a brave person.