Sweet Hell on Fire (9 page)

I started my period.

While that was not especially spectacular, the part where I sneezed and parted the Red Sea down my pants like Moses kind of was.

I had menorrhagia, which means I bled a lot (no more, thanks to medical procedures); I almost died from it once. Sometimes being a pork chop comes in handy. At the time, the emergency room nurse said if I’d been a smaller woman, I would have bled to death.

I usually kept a clean uniform in the trunk of my car, but today was not a particularly lucky day, and when the Red Storm began, it was ten minutes until I had to be at my post.

I approached the Captain. A different one today than the one who said women didn’t belong in Seg. But surprisingly, he would have been the easier sell. He had a wife.

“Captain?”

“Yeah?”

“I need to run home.”

“For what?”

“A feminine issue.” That should be good enough, right? Everyone knows what that is.

Wrong. “Being?”

“It’s that time of the month.”

“What time of the month?” Really? I think my mouth fell open.

“Aunt Flo is in town.” I tried to be discreet; there were other officers still in the hallway.

“Why the fuck do I care about your Aunt Flo?” He looked at me, a curious look on his face.

Oh. My. God. Are you serious? Really? And I say again, really? At first I thought he was just fucking with me, trying to embarrass me. Until that questioning look on his face didn’t merge into a smirk or a laugh. He was serious.

Well, fuck Aunt Flo and fuck him. “I’m on the rag, asshole.
Riding
the
cotton
pony. Plugging it up. Menstruating. Any of this ringing a bell?
”

His whole face turned a rather interesting shade of red, but I refused to be embarrassed. Better him, now, than having that happen on the tier in front of the inmates. That was my biggest fear while I worked there. Not getting shanked, or catching any fucked-up diseases, but bleeding all over myself like a stuck pig in a slaughterhouse.

“You live across town, right? We’re short on shift. Just go to the warehouse and get a new uniform.”

While that was all fine and dandy, I needed new underwear too. And socks. It had burst down my leg and soaked into my socks.

“Uh, I need things that are not part of my uniform that I have to go home to get.”

This time, he caught on and slipped me a twenty to go up the street to K-Mart and buy some underwear and socks.

I made it through K-Mart with my jacket tied around my waist, but I know someone must have seen the big flowering stain of red creeping forward on my thighs. Then I went to the warehouse to get new uniform pants. The warehouse was staffed by inmates, so I wasn’t looking forward to this either.

“New pants. Captain should have called.”

“I need the old pair,” the inmate said.

Oh
no, you don’t
, a little voice in my head whined.
You
really
don’t
. I could feel myself starting to blush, but I shoved that down. I refused to be embarrassed. “I’m wearing them. I’ll bring them back after I wash them.”

He eyed me for a moment before saying, “No problem, just sign for the new ones.” He pushed the paper toward me with a clean, shiny, and kind of starchy brand-new pair of pants.

“Thank you.”

“And you don’t have to bring them back. We’ll just throw them away anyway. No worries.”

“Really, thank you.”

I shrugged into my new pants and it was quite the feat trying to clean up in the dressing room with nothing but a box of Handi Wipes, but I made it to my post only five minutes late.

Shift was short-staffed, so I got to go down to Seg and be acting Sergeant because I was the only officer in Seg who was regularly assigned to the post. What was especially cool for me was that I knew what I was doing. I was confident in all of my decisions and it was mostly a smooth night.

Except we had an officer down there who didn’t think he should have to do what I said because he’d been doing The Job longer and I didn’t have a dick. I finally told him in no uncertain terms if he didn’t want to do what I asked in my cell house, he was cordially invited to get the fuck out of it. The First Sergeant backed my offer too.

He asked if I was normally such a cunt or if it was because I was on the rag.

I know he meant it to be rhetorical, but I’d already had a fun afternoon of confession, so I figured why the hell not? He asked. He had it coming.

“As a matter of fact, I am.” Everyone laughed.

He grabbed the microphone for the PA system. “Attention in the cell house, Lunsford is on the rag. I repeat,
Lunsford
is
on
the
rag
.”

You
motherfucker
. I nodded silently for a moment and smiled before I took the microphone. “And this asshole took my last tampon for his mangina. Apparently, it’s sandy. So watch yourselves tonight, gentlemen.”

The entire house roared with laughter, but later when I was out on the tier, no one gave me any shit whatsoever.

It turned into a good night.

I’d been counting down to my Friday all week. It hadn’t been a bad week, but I’d worked hard. It was time to unwind.

At this point, I should have seen the pattern in my behavior, and maybe I did. But all I wanted was to be numb. Numb to the job I had, numb to the marriage I didn’t, numb to the distance growing between me and my children, numb to the fact my dreams were dying and it looked like this was going to be my life. I had thirty years of this to look forward to.

I’d stopped writing, but I didn’t think there was a chance in hell I’d ever make it as a writer anyway. I’d sold several short stories to horror mags, anthologies, and other small venues. Nothing I could make a living from. I’d even finished a romance novel, but it had taken me ten years to do it and I had a bunch of really nice rejection letters. I’d almost wished someone would just tell me I sucked and that it was offensive I ever put fingers to keyboard because then I’d stop trying, stop wishing, stop that awful hope that sometimes felt more like a devouring black hole than encouragement.

But The Job did that for me.

I didn’t want to write about knights on white horses, maidens fair, or happily-ever-afters anymore. I didn’t want to write about any human relationships because I thought it was all bullshit. There were predators and there were prey. Someone does the fucking, someone gets fucked. Literally and figuratively. End of story.

No, the only thing left to me was the escape I felt when I had a bottle in my hand.

There had come a point in my marriage when I realized I was just hashing off days, waiting to die. I wanted it to be over. And I realized here, in this future I’d made with my newfound freedom, it wasn’t any better. I was still miserable and still doing the same thing. Every day was one more that I never had to live again.

That night, I didn’t go out with my usual group from work; I went out with a friend of a friend and her crew. She worked law enforcement too and was also going through a divorce. Our situations were very similar.

We went to a cop bar where we talked shop for a good portion of the evening. Everyone laughed while we related stories of some of the dumbest things we’d seen or done. I felt at home with these people, comfortable. I laughed too.

Until someone’s ex-wife showed up.

I happened to be sitting by her ex-husband. He and I had gone in together on a “bottomless” pitcher of beer, nothing more nefarious than that, but she lost her goddamn mind.

That’s not to say I wasn’t considering fucking him. I was. I’d heard my husband was fucking other people. If I was honest with myself, it tore me up like razor wire, just like I knew all the rumors about me hurt him. But for as numb as I wanted to be, there were times I wanted to feel something too. And this guy, he was like me. Neither of us wanted anything but a quick fuck. That’s what it would be too. No “making love” or any other bullshit. No strings. Just two people in the dark who never had to look at each other again.

This woman came into the bar screaming. She was short, blond, and skinny with a fake-bake tan and acrylic claws. The friend I’d come with tried to drag me out as soon as she saw her. Told me that she was crazy. I refused to leave. Fuck if I was going to let some bitch I didn’t know come in and ruin my night.

Or at least, that’s what I said. What I meant was I wasn’t going to let some crazy cunt run me out of a bar or off a man. Even if he
used
to be hers. I didn’t back down at work, and she could bet her dumpy ass I wasn’t going to back down here either.

I had to give this woman points for balls. She had them by the dump truck. I’ve mentioned it before that I’m not a small woman. I’m six feet without my shoes; I have seven tattoos, shoulders like a linebacker, and a right hook that can knock a man bigger than me on his ass.

But crazy is also said to give people unusual strength.

So when she hit me in the face, it smarted like a motherfucker.

The thing about getting cracked in the chops, though, is after that first contact, your face goes numb. Or maybe that was the adrenaline? I didn’t know and I didn’t care. I grabbed that pitcher of beer and smashed it into the side of her head. The pitcher was plastic, but I hit her hard enough the pitcher cracked.

The blow sent her flying. It was like watching one of those slobber-knocker punches from
Rocky
in slow motion. Her whole face mashed up like a demented bulldog, there was spittle and blood flying out of her mouth as her head spun to the side, and all the while she seemed to be arching through the air in a Crazy Bitch Cirque de Soleil.

I launched myself up and out of my chair, but the guy caught me. Plucked me from the air like a baseball and jerked me back down into my seat.

“I can’t let you do that,” he said.

I looked at her and realized how pathetic she was, stalking her ex-husband in a bar and losing her shit all over some woman just sitting by him. A couple people from the group were alternately trying to restrain her from trying to attack me again and cleaning up the blood on her face where her lip had split open.

“You better put your bitch on a leash.” I got up from the table and walked to the door.

He followed me. “Hey, uh, give me your number and maybe I can make it up to you?”

Really, asshole?
REALLY?
Still trying to get laid even though his ex had attacked me and he’d stopped me from giving her the ass-kicking she so desperately needed? More proof that men were all the same. Maybe he didn’t want to see her get hurt, I rationalized. I could understand that. Even though my husband and I were looking at divorce, I’d never want to see anyone hurt him. But she’d hit me. Pretty fucking hard too.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Come on, I thought we were having a good time.”

“I’ve got enough complications. I wasn’t looking to exchange numbers. Just fluids. Thanks, but no thanks.”

“I, uh, could come over later.” His hard mouth turned up in a smile.

Suddenly, everything about him disgusted me. I just wanted to leave. I wanted to go somewhere and just…not be this person. Not have this life. I wanted my husband. I wanted him the way he was when we met. When he loved me. When his embrace had been the shield against the world instead of a cage.

I pulled out my phone and thought about calling him, but I didn’t really have anything to say. Because I didn’t think he loved me anymore. He didn’t even like me. And I didn’t even like who he was.

So I just left and walked down the street. My friend picked me up.

“Where are you going,
chica
?” she asked when she pulled up next to me.

We were in the city. I had no fucking clue where I was, where I was going, or how I’d get home. I couldn’t say at that point that I gave a fuck.

“I don’t know; I just had to get the fuck out of there.”

She stopped and opened the door to the truck. “I know another place.”

“Yeah, with sturdier pitchers I hope.” I climbed in.

“You only hit her once, but you fucked her up.” She nodded with approval.

“Not as much as I would’ve liked,” I sighed. I found myself disappointed that I hadn’t beaten her until her teeth were spread on the floor like so many Chiclets. Not because she’d hit me, it wasn’t her in particular. It was because I wanted to make someone hurt like I hurt. I wanted to unleash my rage on someone and send it home with them. I didn’t want it anymore.

“I need another beer.”

That was the only thing that made me happy. At the bottom of a pitcher, there was a hazy warmth that wasn’t a hot rage or a cold chill. It didn’t
hurt
. Being drunk was like cuddling up with a plush blanket.

“Don’t we all?” she sighed and put the truck in gear.

I knew she was going through a tough time too, but she didn’t seem inclined to talk about it and I wasn’t inclined to push. I figured if she wanted to talk, she was a big girl wearing her big-girl knickers and could tell me what she wanted me to know, and otherwise, it wasn’t my business. And she hadn’t really tried to get in mine. I hadn’t really spilled all my guts to her. I’d just told her I was separated and she’d understood.

We drove back to town and went to a local dive where the darts and pool were cheap, and where we knew most of the patrons already. She got some guy she ended up going home with to buy us drinks all night.

When she left with him, I walked home.

I hated every second of that walk. I didn’t have any music to listen to, nothing pressing to occupy my brain, and my buzz had faded a half an hour before I left. It was just me, alone in my head. It sucked and I wanted to be drunk.

My apartment building loomed before me and it seemed an impossible task to trudge up those stairs alone, go to my empty apartment, and just…sit.

I called my tower rat friend who came over and brought a really big bottle of bourbon, and we did shots until we passed out on my couch.