Sublime Messages

Eight, A

Number seven. It was seven. Ruby stood looking at the chipping painted number on the maroon door in front of her, and the tears and nose-run threatened again. She gracelessly wiped at her face, paying no heed to which parts of it actually needed wiping, and kicked at the door. She'd seen people in movies kick doors open. Unfortunately, this was no movie, and all she ended up with was a dull ache radiating up her leg. When the knob turned and the door was pulled inward, though, Ruby forgot the pain and shoved past the unhealthy-looking middle-aged woman who'd opened it.

She didn't know what she was doing, only that she needed to do something, and the place to do it seemed to be here, this motel room.

Her eyes fell on the table, which was littered in ash trays and bottles and bits of paper. A man sat on the chair, but he didn't appear to be quite with it, so Ruby bent and swept the surface clean. The woman who'd let her in moved from questioning to cussing, pockmarking her foul tirade every so often with chastisement. Ruby felt a hand on her shoulder but shrugged it off before moving to the unmade bed, which she couldn't look at too long before her whole body began to burn. Past that, to the bathroom, which had been so trashed with clothing and more bottles and half-eaten food that she could hardly step to the tub. She paused at the shower curtain, recalling dully the moments she'd spent soaking herself after . . . well, after what'd happened. Then she yanked the cheap plastic aside only to find another woman, naked and half-awake, in the empty tub.

"Hey," groaned the woman, turning her body awkwardly, her skin squeaking unnervingly against the dry porcelain. Ruby looked down at her nudity, disgusted at the fleshiness, the brillo-pad of hair down there, the giant lolling breasts. Eyes barely able to stay open, the woman seemed to attempt a smile in Ruby's direction, but the girl swiped the curtain back and spun about only to trip on an empty box of wine, falling over it onto the floor.

"Baby, come on, now."

The rough voice above sounded like it should belong to a mother, and as hands slipped beneath Ruby's armpits and pulled her up, the girl began to sob.

The woman who'd opened the door, who'd snapped at her and then begun swearing at her, began to soothe, to encourage, as with an arm around Ruby's waist she helped the teen hobble out of the bathroom and toward the bed. Ruby was crying too hard to notice where exactly she'd been seated.

"All right then, baby, all right. Let it out. Let it all out." The woman rubbed Ruby's back, rocked her side to side a little. "You just get rid of whatever's in you, and then we can talk about it."

Ruby indulged herself, not least of all because she literally couldn't stop, now that she'd started. She cried and cried, no concern about her abject appearance, no feelings of shame, just release. Who the woman next to her was, she didn't know. And what exactly she'd walked into didn't matter either. The last twelve hours were a blur of anger and disbelief. Damien had tried to kill her. Fucking kill her! He'd put his hands around her throat, and oh, how beautiful his fingers against her skin had been. Even as the pressure had mounted, as she'd lost her breath, as her throat had constricted, Ruby had noticed a terrible and confusing sensation, aching up from between her legs into her core, and all of everything had built up, mounted within, promised some rapturous release, but then he'd let her go. She'd fallen, the trembling stirring dissipating. It'd almost been more satisfying than what he'd done to her in the motel, and yet she sensed the abnormality of her feelings, how wrong it was to think anything positive about his actions.

He'd left her, and even now she had no idea what to do. How could he have gone? How could he have just abandoned her, after everything? She'd waited for him, and she'd told him as much, but he hadn't cared. Nothing she'd said had mattered to him. Instead, he'd seen her as disposable.