Beauty is Only Skin Deep, Part 2

[Rick Gentle]

More adult language, bad stuff, etc, etc. You have been warned again.

Sorry this took so long to get written; I had planned to do a second part based on the answers from the previous poll, but I just didn't get around to it 'til now.

--------

You wait until she comes home.
It took you ten minutes to step out of the bathroom. The sour snot left in your nose still smelled better than the damp, rotting strips of human flesh you discovered in your girlfriend's shower drain. You shiver and swallow past the lump in your throat again, trying not to think about it. But what other option do you have? You can't think about... her. About touching her. About her skin.
A tiny bit of spittle flecks your lips as you pant, sickened all over again. You've been caught between mental and physical nausea all day, repulsed on the one hand by what you did - dragging up strips of goddamn human flesh out of somebody else's drain - and repulsed by what she has done.
You sit in a chair in her living room, a plushy yet firm green-cushioned number that really doesn't go with anything else in the room. That hadn't stopped you, though, before... this. Your hands hang limply off the armrests, because you can't stand to feel anything touching them. You're shrunk down into the chair, slouching in a way that would be bad for your back if you gave a goddamn. Your head is down, your chin planted on your chest as if to pin down the shudders that periodically afflict you.
But you're not a blind dumbass who just sits and waits. Hell, no. You didn't want her to know, but you keep a thirty-eight in your car. Now it's sitting on the arm table, looking innocent. Cold, deadly, and innocent. You didn't want her to know you had a gun. Fuck. She probably didn't want you to know, either, and now there's going to be some un-fucking-pleasant surprises all around. Why do you have a gun, big strapping macho man you are? For psycho bitches who keep human skin in their shower drains, that's fucking why! That's goddamn fucking WHY!

It's hours before the key jangles in the lock. The only noises before this were your empty stomach growling and some stupid bird outside the window who sang cheerily for longer than you could stand, but you felt too shriveled to get up or even raise your head. You kept the lights off. But it didn't do any good. You suck in a breath, remembering how it - them, him her, fuck, it - touched your thigh. The skin. Then you stop breathing, struggling to hold out the hallucination of the stench but it climbs up into your nose and saws through your sinus cavity and gets down your throat and thank God your stomach is growling and empty.
The apartment door opens, and she pauses. There's just enough light from the screened window for you to make out her features – eyes, lips – before she flicks on the light. You think she was smiling.
"Oh!" That's what she says.
She puts her purse down on a side table, glass-topped, the keys clinking just like the coat-hanger clinked down the shower drain. You close your eyes, but you can just picture her saunter, her lips opening in a smile, her blouse slipping off her shoulder as she divests herself of her purse. Revealing her skin.
"Well, hello! I didn't think you'd be back so soon, big boy." She pauses a moment. You hear her step around the love-seat and you suddenly remember that you hate the love-seat. That's where you touched her skin. So many times.
"Um. Did you... lock the door? How'd you get back in?"
So she ain’t so lovey-dovey now, is she.
"Baby?"
You wish the bird would come back, just for a second. The silence is tense as a garrote-wire. Then it snaps.
"What. The. Fuck. Is. Going. On. Here."
"Baby...?"
"WhatthefuckisgoingonHERE?!"
"Baby, calm-"
Your legs are just strong enough to lift you off the chair and across the floor. Your left shin bounces off the hate-seat, the fear-seat, the sex-seat, the skin-seat, but by then it's already too late for her. She's gone down, ass solidly stumped on the floor tiles that mark the kitchen from the living room. The rest of her follows. Her head makes a similar sound as it hits the tile. She's dazed.
You're disgusted. God, you were just on top of her again. Fucking animal. Animal fucking.
The room is quiet again, for a minute. Pretty quiet, anyway, because she's laying there, flat on her back, legs akimbo on the churned-up carpet, breathing as heavily as you are. It isn't sexy.
"... baby...?" she breathes out, not daring to move. She sounds like a little girl. You get fed up with it.
"I found human skin – fucking human fucking skin. In your drain. In the shower."
She blinks once or twice, you can just imagine it. She still doesn’t move, not that you can hear. You're not looking at her, at her face, or at her legs, or at all her skin.
"Oh, my God." Her.
"Fuck." You.
There is another moment of hyper silence. Then she speaks.
"Baby... Baby... They didn't mean anything to me, nothing!"
"The FUCK?!" You spin around on her, eyes open and wide.
"Baby, they didn’t, I promise!"
"What the hell is that? 'They didn't mean anything'?!?"
Her lips part, then shut in a nervous frown. Her hair is wild, bangs scattered across her forehead. She inches away from you, getting an elbow underneath herself and drawing herself up into a half-recline, eyes never leaving your face. Is that really what psychos look like when they get caught? Is that really what psychos look like? Then her words hit you dead in the chest, and force you a step back.
"You -. No. You do not fucking mean you... Those... You DO NOT fucking MEAN you SLEPT WITH THEM!!"
She doesn't answer, but only turns her head away sharply and cravenly, as if expecting a blow. Her free arm flinches upwards, as if to throw itself over her face, but it's not strong enough and settles on her heaving chest. It makes her voice seem breathy, raspy – or that might just be how psychos sound when they get caught. Intimate. Impassioned. It's the same kind of voice she had last night, only horribly, horribly not the same.
"Baby, you've got to believe me. You've got to believe me. They were just guys. I didn't love them." It's horrible, the way she says 'love'. "They weren't my baby. They were just guys. They didn't love me either. They didn't care, baby. Not like you do, I know you do, 'cause you're here. You're here, baby, so you have to care. They were just meat, men, meat-men. They never had what we have, baby, I never gave them anything. You're the one I love, baby, I love you."
It's still horrible, the way she says 'love'. She puts so much stress on it, like it's something she has to push and shove and bend and break to wedge it in, and trap it. It's a word that struggles.
It's sick. This whole thing, it's sick. But... do you love her?

[Malavis]

Really enjoying the way your "Choose your own adventure" bits are written :D

Love your writing style, man!

[Rick Gentle]

Someday I hope to advance my style behind heavy reliance on swear words for shock value and put in some actual content!   

[Malavis]

Someday I hope to advance my style behind heavy reliance on swear words for shock value and put in some actual content!   

No way man- you have a strong voice in your writing and evoke tension with ease. You could be a thriller writer, no question.

"You wish the bird would come back, just for a second. The silence is tense as a garrote-wire. Then it snaps." Freaking brilliant.


 I may have to plagiarize that. With your permission, of course.

[Rick Gentle]

Of the "silence" bits in that piece, I think I like the phrase "hyper silence" best. That's the thing you see and don't hear in horror movies, right before shit goes down.

[Friktion]

I don't know if you listen to rap/hip-hop, but your style of writing reminds me a lot of Eminem lyrics.  Personally I'm a fan because you (and he) relies on imagery, metaphors, but uses everyday language.  Sure you could sayings something like, "the shuddersome, chimeric ambiance created a fool's paradise of serenity" but honestly, who thinks like that?  What would really go through our mind mind is, "shit's fucking creepy, yo!"

And for that, I enjoy it.

[Malavis]

^ Brutal, Visceral, Primal. :) Agreed.
I suck at writing like that.

[Friktion]

And obviously I don't proof-read for shit. 

[Rick Gentle]

The reason why I used so much bad language in this is for the one it's the World of Darkness, so it's much more common and a lot more people are jaded to it (vampires especially, in the "Angel of Mercy, Angel of Death" thread). Also, I was picturing the protagonist as a youngish, hippish guy from the mid-to-lower half of the social strata. I don't listen to rap/Eminem, so I wasn't consciously building up that specific image, but it works.
The real intent of the piece was to show two things: how little people really know one another, but get so invested in one another's company, and how things that seem fun and normal (if not "innocent") on the surface can go so badly so quickly. That, I think, is one of the best themes and characteristics of the World of Darkness.