I'm So Dirty Babe

Sad Little Truths

Frank holds his hands over his head, which was all I needed to see to understand that I was the one who'd caused this pain. He began to sob, long and hard and heavy.

"Frank," I spoke as calmly and softly as I could and he lifted his head in surprise.

"It's you," he sighed, dropping his defensive stance but remaining on the ground like a hurt puppy.

Confused, and incredibly ashamed, I sit beside him on the ground in absolute, terrifying silence. I pick at the strings on the carpet, and that is when I notice my hands. My knuckles, every single last one of them, so purple it is almost black, as well as completely busted open but beginning to scab over. I run my fingers through my unruly hair, recalling what I last remember before waking up. I turn my left palm over to the faded scars of bite marks and I squeeze my eyes shut.

I had blacked out. All I can recall is being bitten and waking up in my bed at home. How long was I out? I determined at least a week had to have gone by, judging by the fading of the bite mark and the fact that Frank was home now.

"You should leave," I say meekly to Frank, feeling absolutely worthless.

He looks up at me with tears in his eyes, "You just got here," he said, "It's you now. It's okay."

God, he was infuriating. There he was, bleeding, beaten to a pulp on the bedroom floor, begging for my attention. I huffed, still confused and growing agitated. My hands hurt, my stomach hurt, my brain hurt.

"Your home early," I observe and he nods his head.

"I didn't leave, Gerard. I-I lied," he confesses, clearly regretting his decision. Then he drops his head, his black hair wiggling from the movement. "I followed you."

I pinch my eyes closed, pulling gently at my own hair, "Ok."

I look at him again, his entire body must hurt as badly as my head did.

"I watched you, Gerard. I saw what you did t-to that girl."

"The girl?" I snapped, and he jumped back slightly, bumping the back of his head.

"She was, no, she was being raped," I explained, blinking to keep the truth behind my eyes as it crashed in my brain like a tidal wave. Frank shook his head, beginning to almost quake with shock on the floor. I had to sit down as the memory washed over me and the truth of the monster living in my soul became overwhelmingly, disgustingly apparent.

And yet, there was my Frank, sobbing on the floor. There he was, still by my side.

-----

She didn't make any noise after I punched her. She flopped down on the bed, seemingly unconscious. The memory came in incomplete waves as I struggled to recall the truth. The thing about forgetting something, was that the brain did it on purpose. Your own brain betrayed you everytime you wanted to remember something terrible that had happened. Psychologists from my past had explained this as a defense mechanism against true evil and trauma, but it seemed to cause more harm than good.

"Bro," the rapist Anthony said, startling me as he came up behind me. Without thinking, I spun on my feet, knocking him to the ground with a slice of my sharpest knife across his lower thigh. He shouted out, immediately doubling over to grasp at his wound. As he did, I plunged my knife into the back of his neck, after which he fell to the ground as a lifeless form. This was all that I was able to recall on my own, and then the packing of all my knives and wiping the hotel room clean.

"No," Frank murmured as I recounted the events as I remembered them, "You stabbed her, Gerard. Over and over and-" He covered his mouth with his hand as he began to shake and break down right in front of me, "I was in there, under the bed. Y-you, you just went mental on that poor girl," he sobbed into my chest as I stared blankly at the bed in front of us. This couldn't be true, I thought to myself.

"N-no, Frank. I- we have to get out of here!" I raised my voice, which caused him to cower backwards but at this point I didn't care much.

"They arrested someone for it," he blurted out.

"What?"

The feeling of immense guilt which I hadn't known I was even capable of feeling was crushing me, causing my lungs to squish and expand sideways, trapping all of the air inside of them and not allowing any CO2 to escape.

"I don't know why you keep getting away with murder," he sighed, "but apparently you're pretty damn good at it." He was trying to crack a joke, he was delaying the inevitable questions about what had happened to him.

I couldn't bring myself to begin the conversation. My Frankie, my beautiful boy with a pale face and long dark hair was nearly purple across his entire face. His lip was busted, his eyes were bloodshot and swollen. He looked like someone had- he looked like I tried to kill him with my bare hands.

"I'm okay, Gerard. I will be," He said solemnly but his eyes didn't leave his lap and his whole body seemed too limp to move.

"But, what..why?" I questioned him, as if he'd have the answers for what had snapped in my sickly brain and caused this to happen.

"Three days," he muttered, "you beat the ever living shit out of me. For three days."

My first thoughts of shock of how I had possibly been so out-of-my-own-body for that long was soon replaced with tears running down my own cheeks. The damn salty things felt awful, but no matter how many deep breaths I took or how many times Frank told me it was okay, that he'd forgiven me, that the me who beat him was not the same as the person he was speaking with now.

I might be a murderous criminal, who now had claimed an entirely innocent life, but I had never wanted to hurt Frank. He was my safe haven, he was the one who made all the thoughts of what all the bad people in the world could be doing dissipate, if even for small amounts of time. It occurred to me that Frank would not have followed me if he hadn't known what I had been leaving to do. And that it occurred to me that had I not been so angry with myself, I might have been angry with him for lying to me, for stalking me, for getting himself involved with me and the shit I do at night in the first place.

But I had no right. This was my mess. People were dead, horribly and bloodily dead. And Frank had watched, he'd brought me home and cleaned me up while I had berated and beaten him to pulp. And he was still sitting there with me, depending on me. It occurred to me then that I had lost my control long ago. I gently inched his sore body closer to mine so I could rest my chin atop his head and whisper,

"I love you, Frank."