The thing I simultaneously need and hate most.
I am hypersensitive by nature and my nights are loud and chaotic. Overwhelming. The lights and the noise are acid to my psyche, but I endure. My punishment for playing the game.
When my mug is empty, I throw on an old tee shirt and a pair of leggings and lace up my running shoes- bunny ear style. Then it’s another cup of the usual. Neurosis.
The appliances come first. I unplug them and check them again, and then fifty times more, just to be sure. Because there could be a fire and then the animals in the building could be trapped because not everyone’s home during the day. And so I count the knobs on the stove too, because I never use it, but you just don’t know. Maybe one got bumped. Or maybe I turned it on when I meant to check that it was off. This whole parade of insanity usually takes me about fifteen minutes or so.
When I leave, I lock all six locks on my door. And then count them. And then re-lock them again because maybe I missed one.
The third and final step of my compulsion is to linger in the hallway like the lunatic that I am, resisting the urge to go back inside and re-check everything. I tell myself that it’s fine. I tell myself I did everything just right.
And then I take a step. And another. And eventually it gets easier to walk away, with a few deep breaths too.
Mrs. Roger’s cat Whiskey is sitting at the end of the hallway when I get to the stairwell. I only know my neighbor’s name because sometimes she comes to knock on my door to accuse me of stealing Whiskey.
I do let Whiskey inside sometimes. He’s nice. And he’s a cat, not people, so technically I’m allowed to like him. But he can only ever visit for a little while. Because in this life I don’t get attached to anything.
This ginger cat is the closest thing to an exception that I’ll ever make. I reach down and grace his regal ass with a pat and he bonks my leg with his head a few times before he starts purring.
I thought cats were supposed to have good instincts about people. But Whiskey apparently doesn’t. He doesn’t know that I’m dead inside. That I’m no good. Typical narcissist, he demands attention anyway.
So maybe cats are like me. They don’t really care about your issues. They just want what they want and that’s it.
I give him one last pat and then I dart down the darkened stairwell of the building I’ve called home since I came to this city. It’s nothing special to look at, and my mother would clutch her pearls if she saw it. But it’s home to me. Familiar ground.
A far cry from everything I once knew.
I hit the pavement and breathe in the exhaust with a happy sigh. This is Boston. Nama-fucking-ste. Stretches commence in my usual spot, against the building.
Then I run.
It’s hard. It’s fast. And it’s brutal. The punishment does not stop until I can physically go on no longer. It’ll be hell walking in heels tonight. But I’ll manage. I always do.
I’m limping when I get back to my apartment, and Whiskey is waiting for me at my door. I can’t be bothered to shoo him off today. So, I let him wander in while I make my usual safety checks.
In this life, you never know who might be following you home. I almost always expect it to be one of my clients. But I never saw the butcher coming.
History repeated itself that day.
And even though I had my knife- the one I never, ever take off- he managed to surprise me. And overpower me.
And drag me back to hell.
It was a wake-up call if I ever had one. All my years on the streets had really taught me very little. Because somehow, I would always end up falling prey to men like that.
Whatever notion I’d ever entertained about leaving this life behind withered in the aftermath of that day. The deadness returned. And so did the rage.
The universe had a funny way of reminding me why I do what I do.
For two long months, I was fucking up some random man every night. Making him pay for the sins of everyone else before him.
It didn’t matter to me.
The only thing that mattered was the game. The retribution.
And everything has come full circle again as I sit here in my darkened apartment, with only Whiskey to keep me company while I nuke a TV dinner. My fingers move over the faces in my scrapbook, and sometimes, that notion reappears. That I could let it go.
It sickens me, how weak those thoughts are.
