BEING ANITA

Scream

𝐒𝐨𝐧𝐠: 𝐈'𝐦 𝐒𝐨 𝐒𝐢𝐜𝐤, 𝐛𝐲 𝐅𝐥𝐲𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐟.

They gave me a pill during the trip. The medicine slipped through my throat like divine water but landed into my stomach like an atomic bomb. My body exploded. My flesh was wider than my soul, and the world compressed into the tight walls of my resistance. Amanda warned me of the counter effects, but I had not hesitated. I longed for the baby to die in me. He or she didn't deserve such a ruthless mother. If I let them live, they were bound to suffer from shame. Their souls would run erratically across this globe and never mind a true meaning, because running from my shadow was all they wished for. And I refused to let them savor from that disaster. In me, nothing would live. Still, I couldn't stop from raising a monster in my head. It was growing defiantly, scratching my insides, telling me I would never amount to much, that my days were over, and that those moments I endeavored were nothing but a temporary palette in a transparent sky.

"How are you feeling?"

I think it was Claire's voice. The jostling of the van swung me side to side, and my nausea had reached the breaking point were all I could do was cry. My throat ached from the acid, the skin wanted to be ripped apart, my knees trembled, but I grasped onto the guitar on my side as if it was dad's arm. He was holding me there, on stand-by, quiet in his plenitude. And I yelled stop, I wanted him to push uncle aside and kill him, and all these thoughts percolated doggedly through my mind like a carriage of...

"A carriage of death," Asher had said.

A hand touched my forehead. I opened my eyes and saw Claire smiling at me, her bulky teeth and thick lips so vivid and freed of pain. The scar on her chin and the bruises on her knees had no explanation to my eyes. "You're doing great," she said. "The pill will soon do its job."

"Who else took this?" I asked, trying to sit. But she held me back. I splayed again, legs stuck under the loads of bags and sacs and other legs. Amanda's cigarette had created fat clouds of smoke above my head. I felt like a tree being cursed by the heavens. Waiting for a bolt to strike me.

Claire patted my knees and slumped next to me. "I did. Got pregnant last year. Life is not the same, but at least I'm alive and doing what I love." Her long red hair was braided into zillions of rascal snakes that danced when she moved. A medusa, but less frightening.

"Life is not the same as it was" was a line frequently uttered by those girls. There were five in that van. Amanda, the main vocalist and driver, Claire, my personal caretaker and guitarist, Lizzy, the drummer and mignon girl, Pamela, the bassist with a samurai air, and myself. As far as I was concerned, I was a girl too. I just wasn't twenty-four years old yet. My sole job was to freak everyone out whenever I did mention to vomit.

"We should name her Pukestard," Lizzy said, disgusted with my growling sounds.

"You didn't hear her singing, that's why you're so condescending," Amanda said. "She's like an angel."

Lizzy sat back and grabbed the bananas I couldn't eat. "Angels suck. And besides, why you're blaming me for not knowing how her voice sounds like? She barely speaks and you didn't record her."

"My phone died."

"Awesome explanation."

I wanted to point out that angels didn't suck and that I was definitely not one of them, regardless of how my voice sounded like. And also, I could easily scream like a bitchy demon if anyone asked me to. Maybe it was a talent, because I don't remember dad teaching me how to act like a monster. The day I screamed in front of Asher he almost fell flat dead. The pitch wasn't absurdly high because there was the demoniac growl at the bottom, and to be really honest, it was a satisfying thing to do. You can really exorcise your demons if you scream. You can also evoke them using the same method. It's all a matter of luck and technique. I didn't have none, so maybe that explained the current state of my life.