[Del]'s Diary

ENTRY TWENTY-NINE

Last night I dreamt about the dead girl. The one I, or rather he, killed.

I was sitting on a beaten red vinyl stool in front of a window at a diner that gleams of chrome and polished Formica. My feet are sore from standing too much, so I rub them. Finally, I force myself into the stiff heels that pinch my toes, and look up. The dead girl stares at me with her almond shaped eyes. Her bee-stung mouth opens into a wide gap-toothed yawn as so does mine and I realize that I am looking at my own reflection in the window. I am her. Or rather, I am wearing her coffee cream colored body like my own skin.

A figure of a man slams against the window that I am staring at. The dead girl whose body I am wearing doesn’t flinch, but I do, inside of her, as does the smattering of fatigued and well-worn patrons inside the diner. Outside, the man staggers away but then is slammed back into the pane by some outside force.

A waitress in a pink uniform and a bee hive sucks in her teeth. “He’s got Billy,” she says.

“Who does?” the dead girl asks.

“Some new thug that’s been hanging around. Name is Hunter or so I hear.”

The pounding of the man’s body against the window continues and both the waitress and the dead girl look back at a man behind the counter who wears a hat that looks like a tiny white tent. He shakes a spatula at us and shrugs, “Don’t look at me.”

The dead girl stiffens and rises. I stride out inside her. The tight bodice of her black dress snaps my spine back at a-ten-hut. Looking down, it appears to be armed and loaded with two pointy torpedoed breasts at the chest. The dead girl’s body is stouter, curvier than mine, and she walks with a sway in her hips and a bounce in her heels.

The dead girl that I walk inside of walks out the diner and rears around the dark corner where the thug named Hunter now has Billy against a brick wall. With tanned red and blonde woolly arms, Hunter is slapping Billy in the face, and I feel a chill.

I desperately want to rear up, crawl out of this skin and hide from this man I know to be her ?future? killer but this women’s legs keep marching determinedly toward him.

“Do you mind? You’re bloodying up a perfectly good corner he-year!” she spits. Her voice sounds the way mine would if I pinched my nose closed while I spoke.

Hunter takes one look at her with heavy-lidded eyes and shakes his wavy blond hair. In a baritone voice, he replies, “Well of all the ballsy broads. What’s it to you?” He slaps Billy in the face again.

The dead girl plants her heels on the ground and arches her back, “I’m just a concerned citizen, is all.”

“Oh, you are, are you? What’s your name?” Hunter stops hitting Billy, and leans his arm against the brick wall over Billy’s head.

The dead girl drawls, “Sugar.” I don’t understand why she purrs at him. My instinct is to hiss.

Billy starts to slide away from Hunter, his back still against the brick wall. Hunter grabs hold of Billy’s collar and continues to stare at Sugar. His eyes are piercing ice blue.

He half closes his eyelids and barks, “What kind of name is Sugar?”

Sugar juts out her chin, “My old man always said I was sugar and spice and everything nice.”

Hunter regards Sugar for a moment. He then loosens his grip from Billy and turns toward her. As he does so, he wipes the backs of his bloody hands on the front of his shirt. The way a butcher would.

“Turn around,” he commands. I don’t understand what he means, but Sugar does. She spins slowly, curving her back and pushing out her chest. When she faces Hunter again, I can see Billy has slinked away and is almost round the corner.

Hunter smiles broadly. “Well, Miss Everything Nice. I don’t see your name on it.”

“On what?”

“The corner.”

“Don’t be so smawt,” she coos, and taps his shoulder with her hand. “Besides, time is money...If you get my drift.” She takes a step closer.

Hunter grabs a hold of the hand that taps his shoulder. His hand feels like an iron brand to me. He stares and then asks, “Who you work for?”

She stops tapping, alarmed, “Who you work for?”

“Good ole’ Uncle Sam,” he grins widely.

At this, Sugar seems upset and tries to pull away but Hunter holds on. I wonder why she is suddenly alarmed. Was this Uncle Sam mean to her in the past?

“Listen, I’m just trying to make an honest living here is all...” she says to which Hunter laughs, “I wouldn’t want to deprive a lady of her livelihood.” He smothers her hand in his, then plays with the fingers, lightly. “How ‘bout you work for me. I promise the pay is grand and the perks are...”

Sugar throws her head back and laughs, “Yeah, right. Uncle Sam be my pimp...”

Hunter roars at this as if it is the funniest thing he has ever heard. “Oh, you and me, we’ll get along fine,” he grins with sharp angular teeth, “Just fine.”

It’s bad enough I have to inhabit the killer. Why must I laugh with him, stand so close to him, wrap my hands in his knowing who he is and what he will do to me, well…her, in the future.

Or is it the past?

[Deleted]