Worship You

Chapter Eleven - The Day After

Chapter Eleven - The Day After 

The next morning I woke up in my own bed in the Mailman's house. For a long time I lay there staring at the ceiling, remembering. It seemed like a dream. Then I turned over and felt a burning pain in my side along my ribs. I put my hand under the blanket and felt the scabby ridges of a deep painful gouge in my skin. 

*** 

Later, I called Cassie. She seemed happy and lazy. She wanted to spend the day laying in bed, resting up for the big trip to New York. She didn't want to talk about the night. Wouldn't. 

"It's not good to talk about this stuff," she said.

*** 

I wandered around the neighborhood all day, driving my car in and out of the dead soul-killing streets that led past one identical cheap-ass house after another. I knew I couldn't go to her, even though she was all I wanted, thought of, longed for. And I didn't want to be free.  

Without her there was nothing. 

You go to the mall when you're bored and so that's what I did. There was a steady rain falling. The sky was very dark with clouds. I parked the car and walked inside. 

Everywhere I looked, lights and colors and sounds were working on me, telling me to be Happy! Happy! HAPPY! Buy this! Taste this! Be this! 

I went into a food store and ate samples of things. They were really good, foods that I would never have at home, foods that my mother had never heard of. But that's okay! You can have it now! Go on eat things and develop a taste for a life you can't have! Charge it! Mortgage your life to pretend you can be a movie star! Be Brad Pitt for a day! 

I walked through the gold plated daydream like a zombie. Nothing I saw meant anything to me.  

I sat down on a huge circular planter/bench thing. All the plants in it were fake. Fifteen minutes later, I came to and realized I hadn't had a thought in my head, that I was blank like that all day, really. Just going through the motions. 

I drove out on Route Twenty-nine but I couldn't find the woods that Cassie had taken me into the night before. No matter how hard I tried. 

Finally, as darkness began to fall, I found myself on Cassie's street, sitting in the car in the dark, the engine turning with a low rumble like a big cat. I watched the little house looking for signs of her father. I didn't know his car so I watched the front window looking for his shadow to pass over the curtains. 

I switched off the engine and the dash lights went out and I was in the dark. Moving like I was in a trance, I got out of the car and crept around to the back of the house looking for Cassie's room. I knew these houses, there were enough of them in town. I lived in one not too different. The master bedroom (what a big fat word for a room that was only a little bit bigger than the other one) was on the back corner and had two windows. The other bedroom was next to it, separated in this case by a bathroom. 

I had no plan. I just wanted to see her. I thought I'd tap on the window and she'd be glad to see me and maybe she'd even sneak out and we could go. 

Then. I heard her scream, "No!" It wasn't a loud full-out screaming. It was choked off and stifled, like she didn't want anyone to hear. Then I heard running and the whole little house shook with it, the sound getting farther away. Then the running came back toward me and I knew she was in her room, right there in front of me. I heard Cassie scream again this time like an exasperated groan, like "Uuuughhhh!"  

I heard a man's voice and I knew it must be her father. He said, "Cassie," soft and pleading like he was trying to get her calmed down. He was drunk. They were right there in her room and seemed close. I moved and found a crack in the curtains and peeped in.