Getting Thin: A Ghost Story

Chapter Three

Final free chapter!

Chapter 3

I wonder how long it will take him to find me. I'm slightly surprised he isn't here already; over the past year he has haunted my every step it seems, yet now that I want him here, he is oddly absent. I could laugh at the irony, but I don't; I've always thought people who laugh out loud when they are alone are a bit insane. That makes me laugh, though the sound of it is so disconcerting and distorted that I stop very quickly. My wondering where he is isn't more than just a vague curiosity because I don't really care. It isn't like I have anywhere else to be anymore. Someone will happen along eventually; if nothing else my sisters will grow concerned over my disappearance and come looking. I don't really want it to be them; though I feel no real shame over what I've done, I know it will hurt them. I do hope it is him that finds me because I think he might come closest to understanding. I know he already guessed at my guilt, but he just didn't have enough proof. It will not be a large shock for him, then, to discover how right he is. I left him a message down at the local motel, the Dragon's Den. My fingers tighten over the bat again as I think about the name and the huge black and silver dragon snaking over the white washed brick front of the building. For a second, I want to kill them all, each and every ignorant, backwoods piece of shit in this stupid, ugly little town, just start bashing on their empty fucking heads until there is nothing left but puddles of blood and bone. I look up, swaying with the violence of my emotion. My eyes follow the motion of the softly creaking rope and I feel instantly calmer. I've done more than kill them, I think. No matter what they do to me now, I've done damage that will never, ever be repaired. I pull my lips back into a smile that has become my usual expression when I am alone, one that looks more like I'm baring my teeth like a feral animal at an intruder than one that is actually happy or pleased. The people of Grendel get so wrapped up in football. Like it's special. Like it's important. I hate them desperately for it and this past year it has been utter torture to live among them. One way or another, that is over, but what wouldn't I pay to hear them all screaming when they discover this last gift of mine. I look down, my balance becoming precarious as I blink against the morning light streaming down around us.

The leaves at my feet, leftover piles of soft, moldering summers already gone, are not the same brown as the rest of the forest floor. They gleam a sticky, shiny red that reminds me of a fall Roxy never got to see. My mood changes yet again, this time to sorrow. I blink back tears and look at my hands instead. There are spots of red on them, still bright against my skin, but they are drying, darkening to brown. I remember when those hands were fat, plump like marshmallows and just as white. Now they are slender, almost elegant. Like smaller versions of Uncle Sonny's hands. I remember him playing piano in our living room, long fingers flying, dancing over ivory white. He never played anything serious, but chose instead things like 'When I'm 64,' and 'Puff the Magic Dragon'. Mom said he used to play symphonies when she was a girl, humming the music as his hands played it, his eyes distant and dreaming. Not anymore. Not after he came back and that was before I was born. I look at my hands and wonder how much like him I really am. And I remember running.

Running until my lungs burned like gasoline and a lit match after a long, dry July. Running until I thought my chest would collapse and my heart would explode. Running because I just wanted to know how she felt, wanted something so special it took me somewhere else. Then, a week and a half after I met her, it happened for the first time. It was only an instant, a perfect, bright, brilliant diamond among the dirty gray rocks of my life. For that one second, there was nothing, just the gravel path beneath those too big running shoes, my shadow trailing me on the dewy grass, the smell of the rich, black earth being turned in the cornfields, and the sweat trickling down between my breasts. I was no longer trying to do anything. It was happening to me in a distance, as though the earth was simply rolling itself past instead of me pushing along its surface.