Venta Black | Amanda Young

Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have

Writing in blood on your walls
'Cause the ink in my pen don't look good in my pad
They write that I'm happy, they know that I'm not
But, at best, you can see I'm not sad
But hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have
Hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have

    "I forgot my jacket, please please Jill, it's right there!" Cecil begged the fake apology.
    "Please, please, come on!"
    She had gotten his coat, and he had pulled a switchblade on her. He then burst through the door and told Jill to stay put.
    "I don't wanna hurt you, now just open that door, open that fucking door!"
    Jill handed him the keys, to which he fumbled and dropped them.
    "What key? What fucking key?!" He demanded. To which she winced and pointed to the right one laying in his palm. Cursing once more, he unlocked the door and began his search.
    My skin felt like it was crawling, I wanted to scratch it off and burn it all in soaring embers. I wanted to scream, I wanted to yell. I needed the masking agent, I needed the real thing, I needed something, anything to satisfy this aching frustration and pain. I watched as Jill shook, and fumbled with her hands, scared. The knife was just a ruse, Cecil wasn't going to hurt her. Jill didn't know any better, however, under the dim yellowing light of the entrance to her clinic. She didn't know I was watching, waiting for Cecil to come back with our temporary fix. I waited, tucked away behind the corner of a wall, behind the door. I was growing impatient, and seemingly so was Jill.
    She inched toward the glass front of the door and peered in, nervous, then was thrown back by a blow of force to the door by cecil. That's when I heard her sob, and Cecil apologize profusely.
    Blood dripped from her legs, falling onto the tile floor as she slumped down behind the door. My breathing quickened as I let out a gasp and held my own stomach, feeling sick. Cecil had just killed her unborn child. All for some methadone. Terrified, I tucked myself behind the wall again, holding myself in a ball on the floor as my hair stuck to my sweating skin.
    "Don't cry- it's okay-" Cecil said, before blowing past me with the methadone in hand, leaving me alone to hide, hearing Jill's broken sobs of distress from behind the door. I never could have known this was what would happen. Never could have known.

Never could've-

"Miss Young?" I was snapped back into reality with a hand on my shoulder, motioning for me to sit in the chair in front of me. The metropolitan police department, I was here. In front of the glass window looking into another room, however, my eyes were stuck to the small table in front of me, a single plastic cup of water sitting atop it. I felt eyes on me, as if someone else was watching through the glass. I didn't look up. I didn't understand as to why they were bringing me in once again. Probably thought I was more put together now, but the truth is I wasn't. The horrific event plagued my mind, day and night, I barely slept. Dark bags were beginning to render under my eyes, and my skin was sickly and pale. There was a detective sitting down on the chair next to me, and one behind me, standing. I didn't look any of them in the eye, as I was still replaying the two memories in my head thinking about their connection, thinking, wondering if that's why I was put into the machine. If thats why I was invited to play my game. Someone knew what I had done, what me and Cecil had done and now they were coming for me. Yet why did they let me live? Why did they congratulate me? Perhaps that wasn't quite it. My mind was fuzzy and their words seemingly a blur, until I heard Detective Tapp's assertive, yet caring voice call my name. It was as if it came from the heavens, because I wasn't looking at the person speaking to me.
"Amanda..." He spoke.
"Tell us what happened– in your own time."...
I shook my head. Again, Donnie was taunting me, the puppet was taunting me. They thought I was a murderer, they thought I was a drug addict. Who was I to tell them the truth of my capture? Who were they to repeatedly ask me to live through the horrors of last week again? What were we? More importantly, who was it that caused this all in the first place? I shook my head again, the revolting taste of my own blood and rusted steel poisoning the tip of my tongue again, as I relived the memory. Acting gentle, acting so kind, but I knew what they thought of me. I knew they thought I was nothing more than an addict. Because that was what Eric Matthews had told them. Eric. Swallowing tears, I did what they asked, the marks near the corners of my mouth stinging.
"I woke up."
A flash of green tinted nausea.
"All I could taste was blood."
A rushing red river down my chin.
"And Metal."
A welded together bronze nightmare.
Cutting, Cutting further.
Stabbing deeper.
Searching, sweating.
Crying, screaming.
Bleeding, eternally.
The blade of the cutting knife slicing through skin as it would with bread.
The hungry eyes watching, my aching skin.
The eyes were my thoughts.
I was my thoughts.
I was my blood.
My sweat.
My tears.
I was a murderer.
I was an addict.
And yet.
Yet.
I hadn't touched a drug.
I hadn't touched a masking agent.
I hadn't even touched a razor blade.
I was given a second chance at life. Who was I to be so broken?
What liberating judge of life and death had chosen me?
For this shattered visage I called myself
Was now whole again.
Was it?
    Now I can form my thoughts.
Now I can piece myself back together like a jigsaw puzzle.
It's funny, Isn't it? How something so shocking and nauseating at first could be seen as a good thing later?
I had given up on picking up my broken shell,
Given up on piecing it together again.
Cracking and crumbling under my grasp
For maybe it just needed to be broken further to be fixed ultimately.
That's what it was.
That's what he was doing to me.
...
"What happened after you took it off..?" Tapp's voice echoed through my trance. I was speaking and I hadn't even known it. I was replaying the events on auto pilot. Every grotesque detail. The intestines slimy in my hands, the blood sopping wet. The key turning, and my freedom given. My own screams are calling in my head, as if I weren't the one to scream them. Like a distant memory, so fresh, yet so far away.
"You are in fact a known drug addict, Isn't that right?" The words were piercing. I shook my head, No, not anymore I wasn't. I wasn't, I promise you that. Please don't think of me like that, please don't craft your recollection of me to be what I once was. No. I shook again. No, someone saved me from that lifestyle. Someone. The murderer, was it? Was he? Tears pricked at my eyes, I could feel the breakdown, just moments away. This room felt too small, I was going to die. I was going to be crushed by the walls of the room and the detectives would walk over my corpse and out of the room. Claustrophobic. The walls and the overbearing questions made me feel claustrophobic.
"That's why he picked you?" Shut up. Stop talking, please. Stop talking. You don't understand, you never could. You don't know what it's like. You don't know what it's like having nothing else to turn to. So stop speaking like you have a bad taste lingering in your mouth that you need to spit out. I let out a whimper, and a sob. I was crying now, I could feel the tears flow down my cheeks.
"He.. helped– Me.." I sobbed, I was refusing to look at him. At any of them. At their devilish stares of judgment. I wanted to go home and bawl in my pillow until I falled asleep. Why did everyone always find a way to hurt me? Why was I treated as everyones punching bag? Poor Mandy, can never stick up for herself. Poor Amanda, a lowlife druggie with a sob story. Take her out, abuse her. Take her in, lie to her. Send her to jail on a false charge, make her become the thing you said she was then get mad when it was true.
    I looked up at Tapp through teary eyes.
    "He helped me."
    Don't act surprised when I'm susceptible to falling into a cycle.
    Don't act surprised when I fall into rabbit holes again and again.
    It's all your fucking fault anyway.
    Don't you dare blame me for acting the way I do.
    You didn't know the kind of man my father was.
    Eric.
    Tapp.
    Same goddamned thing.
    I was hyperventilating now, my breathing quick and through my mouth. My chest was heaving, again and again like I may never breathe again. The horrifying revelation of the truth. Of what I had said. He did help me. The man who put me through hell and back had helped me. I was a sinking ship in the salty ocean, and he raised me back to shore. All I wanted to do was just go home. Someone, please take me back home. Let me drown my sorrows in sleep. Just sleep