No one wants to be a monster.
His mama wasn’t bad. His father, well, yeah, he was a real asshole. But he was never around. Nah, fake Everett was raised by his mama, who worked two jobs, chain-smoking in between. When he was real little, he’d shuttled between her and his grandma’s house. When he was older, six or seven, he stayed home alone. He’d watch TV shows where the women were super skinny with massive chests and clingy tops. Then he found his father’s stash of skin mags. After that, he couldn’t wait for his mother’s work shifts. He spent hour after hour flipping through pages, staring at the pictures.
When he was thirteen, he explained as we drove across the state of Alabama, he wanted to be a porn star. Thought it would be the best job in the whole world. ’Course, when he turned sixteen and his chest was still a scrawny, hairless wasteland, and his face was covered in acne, and his hair was an oil slick . . .
Even a total fuckup like him could realize porn stars looked one way . . . and he didn’t.
He still loved porn. And now, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, he could take it with him everywhere.
None of this surprised me. I already knew the second fake Everett was done driving for the day, he’d load up his favorite sex videos into the DVD player, pop open my prison, and we’d be off and running. It didn’t matter if I was tired or hungry or sore. It didn’t even matter if he was tired or hungry or sore. A man had needs. This was his biggest need.
No one wants to be a monster.
*
YOU CAN TEACH YOURSELF not to feel anything. To fly away. Sometimes, I pictured myself in the meadow, playing with the foxes. But I didn’t like that. It felt too tainted. So I pictured bright blue sky. A bluebird sky, we called it in New England, when the winter sky turned a rich, true blue, versus the overbright, summer-bleached alternative.
During the day, I was the perfect listener. An audience of one for a man who could really talk and talk and talk. Then, by night, I became an inanimate object, to be moved and positioned and posed this way and that by the same narcissistic asshole. What did it matter to me?
Eventually, when he was done, he’d offer me food. Or a drag of his cigarette. Or a swig from his beer.
We would sit in silence, the big rig filled with the scents of sweat and sex. And for a minute, or two or three, he’d almost seem happy.
“You’re pretty,” he told me once. “That’s why I had to take you. I saw you. Dancing. All that hair jiggling right above your ass. Made a man look, all right. Except, of course, a girl like you . . . you’d never even give someone like me the time of day.” He stated it matter-of-factly. I didn’t argue. “So I did it my way. And here we are. Touring the country like two crazy fools. Now what d’you think? Burgers or pizza for dinner tonight?”
He fed me. Then there would be more sex. Then, back to the box for me. Except as days became weeks . . . Sometimes, he fell asleep. Sometimes, I got to stay there, lying on the softness of the sleeping bag, my wrists still bound, one ankle shackled to a large metal ring on the floor, but still . . .
I didn’t sleep those nights. I forced my eyes to stay open. I drank in the slippery feel of the nylon sleeping bag versus my usual bed of hard pine. I took in the softness of night, just beyond the sleeper cab’s narrow windows. I listened to him snore, and I thought, if I could just get my bound wrists around his neck. Or find the strength to press a pillow against his face or shove a pencil into his eye.
But I never made any such moves, never acted on my own fantasies. Sometimes, when he was sleeping, he almost looked human. Just another guy grateful to have survived another day.
I wondered if his mother or grandmother were still alive. I wondered if they missed him, or if they knew by now who he truly was and regretted their mistakes.
I didn’t think of my mom anymore. Or my brother or the beauty of foxes. I lived flying against a bluebird sky. And there were good days, where I got to sit on the passenger’s seat of the cab, my bound hands out of sight, and watch the countryside rush by. And there were bad days, where something pissed him off and he drank more and hit more and punished me more.
But there were lots of days that were merely days. When fake Everett would talk. I would listen. The road would roll by. And maybe a song would come on the radio, and I would surprise myself by humming along, and he would surprise me by joining in. And we’d sing along to Taylor Swift.
I learned he liked The Carol Burnett Show and I Love Lucy episodes and Bonanza, which he used to watch with his grandma. While I talked about SNL and my addiction to Grey’s Anatomy.
“McDreamy,” he said, surprising me. Later he showed up with a box set of Grey’s Anatomy’s first few seasons and loaded a disc into the DVD player for me.
That night, as he pounded away like a jackhammer, I thought of Seattle hospitals and ridiculously good-looking doctors and maybe one day, someday, a hunky intern holding my hand as they rushed in my bruised-and-battered form. I’d been rescued. I’d escaped. I’d finally killed fake Everett, and now for my reward.
A McDreamy of my own to heal my wounds and keep me safe forever.
But I didn’t dream that much. I didn’t think ahead or wonder about that future or what would one day become of me. Mostly, I flew against a bluebird sky, my body bound but my mind long gone.
“Lindy,” he woke me up, crying out in his sleep one night. “Lindy, Lindy, Lindy.”
He sounded like he was sobbing piteously, fingers scrabbling against the sleeping bag beside me.
“No, no, no,” he cried. “Oh, Lindy!”
Do monsters have nightmares? Do they even dream?
He sounded like he was dying. As if his world had ended. As if fake Everett must’ve once had a heart because now it was being ripped out of his chest.
I found myself running fingers down his back. I could feel the tension in his muscles, the raggedness of his breath. A man in pain. I stroked his back again, gently, until eventually, he sighed heavily. His shoulders came down. He slept.
Later, when he woke up, and declared once again that a man had needs, I didn’t shy away. I kept my eyes open, staring at him, wondering who Lindy was and what she’d done that gave her such power over him.
And what I could learn from her.
More days. More nights.
Till one afternoon, he pulled into a truck stop. Went inside to grab coffee and, without thinking about it, left me sitting there. Hands bound, left ankle shackled to yet another metal ring on the floor, but still, sitting in plain sight.
A state police cruiser pulled in, parked beside me. Door swung open. A tall man in uniform stepped out. He spotted me, nodded once, fingers on the brim of his cap, and I . . .
I sat with my hands fisted on my lap. I said nothing. I did nothing.
While my heart accelerated madly in my chest and for a moment . . .
I had a memory. Like a tickle in the back of my throat. My mom. I could picture her perfectly. Her arms outstretched, waiting for me. She was saying a name. Molly. Except that wasn’t quite right. Was it?
I wanted to raise my bound hands. I wanted to bang on the window, show my tied wrists. I wanted to yell, my name is . . . My name is . . .
I wanted to beg, please just take me home.
The state trooper staring right at me. Myself, hands on my lap, staring right back.
And then, in the next instant, I could see what he saw. A skinny, white trash girl with cheap clothes, lifeless eyes, and hacked-off blond hair. I saw Molly. Sitting in a big rig. Waiting for her wife-beating man to return to her.
And I didn’t feel like a bird about to burst out of its cage. I didn’t feel like a girl about to go home.
I felt ashamed. Like the shit-brown carpet, so many shades of nasty.
I wiped my mother’s image from my mind. I replaced her face with a bluebird sky. And I focused my gaze dead ahead.