Hazel squeezed his hand. He had been absently looking at the floor, and then shifted to look her in the eyes. She said, “It’s just you and me here. That says something, don’t you think? No one else has been able to do what we did. Of all those people at the Hall of Hell we’re the only ones who made it this far. That’s something, isn’t it?”
“I guess.”
Calvin was confused, but he liked that she was making light of their situation. That’s what he needed. He’d tell her about Celia soon enough. Right now everything was coming down too fast.
“So what’s your story?” Calvin asked.
“My story.” Hazel paused and looked up as if she could see some kind of blackboard in her mind with all the details of her life in some kind of Cliffs Notes version she could rummage through to find the exact point in which she wanted to begin.
“I’ve never killed anyone before Aaron.” She paused, clearly thinking hard on something. “But I’ve been fantasizing about killing since I was maybe thirteen. It was a great way to deal with my frustrations. Growing up with devoutly religious parents and not having a religious bone in your body will cause a lot of resentment. But I couldn’t have killed them if I had the chance. Wouldn’t. As much as they pissed me off, they were my parents, you know. You love ’em even when you want to see their heads hanging from the outstretched hands of their goddamned savior at the goddamned church that brainwashed them.
“I was a shy girl. Liked scary music and scary movies and boys thought I was weird. I was awkwardly tall and lanky, so skinny they called me scarecrow and twiggy. I took their shit and silently killed them in poetry and short stories. Gave me a little satisfaction. A little.
“Later on I got into the goth scene. Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch nails really spoke to me, you know? Dyed my hair black, wore a lot of dark makeup and black clothes. That’s when I met Aaron. He was kind of into the scene, but really he was more of a metalhead. And a dickhead. But I was too stupid to realize this from the beginning. When you’re the one being cherished by the dickhead it all seems okay.
“We were going together for maybe six months before he hit me. Not in the face or anything like that. He jabbed me in the spine. It was so stupid. He was all bent out of shape ’cause I lent someone his Helmet CD of all things. He wasn’t even a big fan of them. After he calmed me down he apologized profusely. We had make up sex and that sick routine happened way more than I want to admit to. Only thing is, over time the hitting got worse and he stopped apologizing. The son of a bitch had somehow turned things against me, caused me to feel guilty like it was my fault he had to hit me. The make up sex was a blowjob. Aaron was such a sick fucking deviant conniver that he made me feel like sucking him off after he beat the fuck out of me was the only way I could make things right. You believe that shit?”
Calvin shook his head in silence. What did you say to something like that?
“People tell women they should leave an abusive relationship,” she continued, “but it isn’t that easy. By the time things got so fucked that I was getting on my knees in a sort of Pavlovian response to being slapped around we were out of high school and living together in an apartment in North Park. I didn’t have a lot of friends. Mostly the people who hung around were his friends, and they were assholes just like him. They probably knew what he did to me and didn’t give a shit.
“Took me a long time to get the courage to leave him. There’s this absurd notion that the abuser shows his love through violence, as crazy as that sounds, and I had it like the flu. Gets to where hurting almost feels normal. But deep down I knew what he was doing to me wasn’t right.
“I had no one to go to. My parents had all but disowned me and were happy to have gotten rid of me. I started drinking more than usual and taking pills to hide from what my life had become.
“One night Aaron came home drunk, I mean really tossed, and he wasn’t happy with how our apartment looked. I should have cleaned it, he said. By this time I was getting mouthy with him. That shy little twiggy girl from high school had died somewhere along the way, drowned in alcohol and sedated with pills. I was just about as angry as Aaron all the time, only I didn’t have someone to knock around to alleviate the frustration, not like he did.
“He comes come and he’s pissed and he punches me in the face, hard. I almost lost consciousness. Aaron stepped back when he saw me, like he realized he had finally gone too far. I was sobbing. Blood ran from my nose onto my shirt. It dripped like a faucet and I kept thinking how I had to stop the leaking or Aaron would be even more upset. Kept thinking that I had to bleed somewhere else. Then I felt something small in my mouth. I fumbled the object from one side of my mouth to the other with my tongue. Couldn’t figure out what it was, so I stuck out my tongue and plucked the item off of it. A bloody tooth.
“I remember looking up at Aaron, holding that tooth between my fingers. My eyes were wide and I suddenly didn’t give a damn about dripping blood on the carpet. I felt the gap in my jaw line where the tooth was missing. It was one of my upper front teeth.
“For the first time in a long time Aaron pleaded with me, showered me with pitiful apologies, but I had had enough. It’s true that a woman who suffers from abuse has a hell of a time leaving her abuser, but we all have our limits. It’s just too many women end up seriously hurt or even killed before they reach that low. Him knocking out one of my teeth was my low.
“Somewhere along the line I had grabbed my cell phone. I often grabbed it when his abuse got bad, threatening to call the police. The few times I actually did call the cops I couldn’t bring myself to press charges. One time they actually arrested him because of a shiner he gave me. He spent a night in jail and I paid for it when he got home the next day. This time I looked him in the eyes and said it was over. He lunged for me but I was quicker and went for the front door. I knew that once I was on the street he wouldn’t fuck with me, or at least I thought so. I took to the street, a complete mess, and dialed 911. Just as I started to tell the operator what had happened, Aaron came from behind and yanked me to the ground.”
Hazel stopped there and refocused her eyes on Calvin. She had been staring toward the wall as she told the story, as if she could see these tragic events playing out on some imaginary projection screen.
“Holy shit,” said Calvin. He shook his head. “I can’t believe you went through all that.”
“Believe it. Lots of women go through it. Too many. I don’t remember what happened after that. He beat the shit out of me, that I know, but someone must have seen him and called the police. I woke up in the hospital. This time I pressed charges. Whoever had seen what happened didn’t testify and though the police found Aaron with blood on his hands, he only got a few years. Was out in half the time for good behavior.”
“Damn. Kind of makes what you did to him seem appropriate.”
“I suppose murder is never appropriate, but he had it coming, that’s for sure. I would have liked better to have had a few days to make him suffer, but what I did was hard enough. See, when he got out he tracked me down and started calling and sending emails. Said he wanted to get back together, that he missed me, that he was a reformed man. I had grown up a lot in those years he was in the pokey. I shed the former Hazel like a snakeskin. I went out and learned self defense, I began working at a veterinarian office and started making some friends. I wouldn’t have touched Aaron with a ten-foot pole, so I ignored him. Really, I was scared of the guy. Doesn’t matter how many defense classes I took and how much of my confidence I got back, I was terrified that if he found me he would finish me off for putting him behind bars.”