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I climb into my car and turn it on, and the radio is blaring our song. I listen to it for a moment, and then I have to bash my head against the steering wheel. Hard. Arrhythmically. I don't stop until I feel my skull go, the sharp shattered bones of my nose and forehead puncturing the cerebral sac and filling my nasal cavity. I feel grey matter squish into my eye sockets, pushing against my optical nerves, and then I feel nothing at all. Pure, blissful oblivion.
When I come to, my shattered brainbox is already repairing itself; the bits of bone are regrouping, my brain is sucking back into shape like some spongy undersea creature retracting into its shell home. It takes me both hands and thirty seconds to extract the Pontiac steering wheel from the quickly mending dent in my head. Briefly I consider leaving it there, like an enormous, hardcore frontal lobe piercing, the envy of skinheads everywhere. I laugh at the idea and switch off the radio.
My blood is almost black, necrotic, already half-congealed on the cold, hard wheel. My fingertips lick it up, and I realize it's been over a week since my last meal. No wonder I feel crap; I need food. I think about hunting, try to form a game plan, but my mind isn't cooperating. Maybe it's angry because I just spilled it everywhere, but all I can think of is the first time I stalked you. And the second time. And the third time until you weren't just a victim anymore, and then I'm thinking of later, when you actually knew I was watching you sleep and didn't mind, curled warm and alive next to me in bed. I'm thinking of the eight hours I spent every single night, hearing your heart beat, watching the flow through your delicate veins, the smell of your blood where it comes close to the surface in the hollows of your throat and aghaghaghagh I throw the car into gear and peel out.
I know I should go to skid row and pick up a junkie. A hooker. An easy meal. I'm too underpowered and slow in my hungered state to be taking risks, but junkies taste funny. They have a hunger of their own that uses up their blood as effectually as I could. Besides, they make me drowsy, I rationalize to myself as I take the exit to head downtown.
It's a nice night for it. Sunday evening, late and getting later, the cold autumn drizzle turning the streets dark and relatively empty. Most parking garages are closed now; I drive until I find one with the lights still on, the automated gate unmanned. I take my ticket, tuck it in my pocket, drive on through. The place is nearly empty, only a few cars unspeckled by rain lie about like animal carcasses in a tanner's pit. The sodium yellow lights make the blue outside world look dirty, worn out. I head down. I choose a spot close but not too close to a cluster of cars, and hunker down to wait, letting the Pontiac run.
Waiting is one of the things I do best. I quiet my mind and let the time slide off me, meaningless. So I don't know how long I've been sitting there when I see her. From the look of her, she's a dancer, off work early on this slow night, her grey pleather handbag probably full of tampons, makeup, and crumpled sweaty dollar bills. She looks like Betty Page with acne, her dyed-black hair curled close around her neck, her spike heels echoing clickclickclick in the still garage. Bingo, I think switching off the car. I step out as she approaches, give her a polite nod and smile when her eyes dart to me. She looks away fast, and that's when I slam my hand in the car door.
WHAM, hard, right across the knuckles. This car is older than safety, and I feel at least one of my fingers sever and drop to the floor inside. I imagine it down among the loose change and filth, looking like a cold, discarded french fry. Gross.
Betty Page is passing me, her little heels still clicking, but her head is swiveling of its own accord, watching me, not quite registering my plight in those pretty turquoise eyes of hers. I help her out with a scream of anguish, clutching at where my hand disappears into the steel trap of a door.
'My god are you okay?' the clicking stutters; she's coming closer, nervously, like a gazelle scoping out a waterhole. She has a hand to her mouth in the universal body language of shock and disgust; the hand has a black fishnet glove on it.
I double over so she can't see that there are no tears in my eyes and my gritting teeth are really a grin. 'Please,' I gasp, 'please, can you get the door open?'
She's reaching into her purse for a cell phone, to call for help. I scream again and frantically wave my free hand. 'Nonono, just open the door, please.' My eyes are squinched up tight, the tiny wrinkles around them a roadmap of what I might look like if I ever aged. She approaches me fearfully, her face white, her eyes wide. I twist to one side to allow her to reach the door handle. One of my fractured metacarpals is threatening to push its sharp edge straight through the muscle and skin of my palm, so I stop with a sharp intake of breath, looking at her pleadingly.
She takes the door handle gingerly, trying not to look at my mangled hand, the good little Samaritan. She looks like she's about to faint as she says, 'Okay, i'm gonna do it on three. One, two...'
On three, the door pops open and I yank my hand back fast. Before she can move from the open door or even turn around, I kick her hard right in the fork of her miniskirt. When she doubles up in pain I kick her again. Her shins hit hard against the bottom of the door and I hear one of them splinter. With my good hand I push her inside and slam the door behind us.
...
I'm trying to find my finger. My crushed knuckles are knitting and I pull my remaining fingers gently so they'll heal straight. I sweep my hand over the floor behind me, straining to reach under the seat. I find two nickels, a dead moth, and my severed ring finger, buried in some old newspapers. It's too late to reattach, so I eat it instead, swallowing it whole. There's a moment of unpleasantness, and then my finger regenerates almost instantly, growing from the bloody mangled stump like a fleshy sapling. I inspect it; it's incongruously clean, the only finger on my hand without blood streaking it, caked under the fingernail.
It's right about now that I notice your ring is gone. Even regenerated, my finger still bears the faint lines, showing where the ring's been for nearly two years. Frantically I double over, searching the floor for it. I dive into the backseat and stick my face down in the trash and refuse under the seats, trying not to think about what I'm breathing in as I scan desperately for that ring.
You bought it at a dimestore, out of a vending machine. It had a clunky plastic heart instead of a gemstone and you presented it to me later, asking me to never, ever marry you. I laughed and put it on, promising to never, ever take it off.
It's not here. Even in the dim light I can see the ring's not in the car. I open the door and jump out, going down on all fours on the oil-stained concrete, scanning under the car. Nada.
I remember I tried to give it back to you, after I'd given everything else back; all the cds, your sweater and your favorite coffee mug, all the pieces of our erstwhile life. You stopped me as I was working it off my finger, gave me a sad little smile. 'You've broken all your other promises,' you said, 'please keep just this one.'
I get back in the car and stare numbly at my blank finger. Betty is still in passenger seat next to me, her pretty turquoise eyes shriveled to grey raisins, her mouth gaping open and her lips dried into the perfect 'o' of a blow-up doll. After a minute I turn the key and the car roars into life. I switch the radio on, and it's playing our song.
FUUUUUUCK!!! How many times a day can they play that ******** worthless shitheap of a song??
I scream and punch my once pretty passenger in the chest. Her sternum cracks under my fist like kindling, and I have to rock my hand to pull it out of the grapefruit-sized hole I just made. I must've really been hungry; her flesh is dry and fragile as rice paper. I stare at the corpse, trying to return my fast breathing to normal. Finally I stab the radio button off and pitch Betty Page into the back seat. Her arm falls off. I won't even have to dry and cure her to crumble her to dust and bone meal. My neighbors have the biggest, most beautiful rose bushes on the block. I wonder if they'd be so proud if they knew about my two-in-the-morning fertilizing efforts. Betty's gonna make some fantastic mulch.
I look at the space on my finger again before putting the car into gear and driving slowly up toward open sky. You were the one. Y'know, the one I WASN'T going to brutally murder and desecrate and feed to the roses. The one that got away. I sigh and turn the radio back on, rolling out into the dark and the sound of rain.
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