All My Angry Selves
by David Corse
Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating:
Derick wants a divorce. He says things haven’t been good between us for a long time, that I’m not the woman he married, that I stopped taking care of myself. He says he’s met someone new, that they have more in common, that she’s his soulmate. He says she’s younger than me, that I don’t know her, that her youth makes him feel alive again.
I’m stunned into silence as he speaks because I’ve sacrificed so much for him. He was aimless when we met, always talking about what he wanted but never making an effort. I coaxed him into going back to school, wrote his papers, and spent hours helping him study. I supported him when he was fired from his first job and moved across the country for his career. I gave him everything, believing that one day he would give back.
“I’m not coming home tonight,” he says.
The moment lingers, and when I realize he expects me to speak, I trip over my words. I want to ask him if this is a joke. But all I say is, “Okay.”
“Goodbye,” he says and hangs up.
I stand in the hallway, dumbfounded, squeezing my phone so tightly my fingers ache. I feel like an idiot because Derick isn’t the first person to turn me into a sacrificial offering for their desires. Family, friends, and ex-lovers have put me on an altar and stabbed me in the heart.
As the conversation replays in my mind, my disbelief transforms into rage. Why did I give so much of myself to such a pathetic man? I want to wrap my fingers around his neck and squeeze until his lips turn blue. Why did I let so many people hurt me? I want to rack my nails across their faces. Why have I let the world take so much from me? I want to see it burn.
I close my eyes, clench my teeth, and growl. When I finish, a dull pang hammers the inside of my stomach, and I drop my phone. As it thunks on the floor, a second punch twists my belly. It feels like something pressing my flesh from the inside. Gingerly, I probe my stomach over my blouse and inhale sharply when my midsection starts to expand like a balloon. My skin stretches and goes taunt in seconds. A popping sensation follows, and a gush of warm fluid soaks my leggings.
This isn’t possible, I think, as I unbutton my shirt. I’m not pregnant. What I see makes me want to vomit. The outline of a screaming face appears under my skin.
I howl in terror, and when I stop, I feel like I’m melting under a heat lamp. I’m so hot that I’m suffocating. I need to be outside.
Breathing heavily, I stumble out of my apartment to the roof. Cool evening air assaults my face, and the busy sounds of rush hour in New York City greet me.
I make it a few feet before I collapse in agony. My stomach is three times its normal size.
“Ash, are you alright?” a woman asks from the roof’s door. It’s Melanie, my best friend and neighbor. She rushes to my side and recoils.
“You’re pregnant,” she says, confused.
A weight shifts within my stomach, and I feel the thing inside me press forward. Pain rips through my groin, and the world darkens at the edges.
“Something’s inside me, and it’s coming,” I gasp. “Help me.”
“I’ll call 9-1-1.”
“No! There’s no time!”
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Please.”
Melanie’s eyes go wide, and she takes charge. She peels off my leggings and underwear. “Push,” she says.
I grit my teeth and tense my muscles. It’s like trying to force a mountain through the eye of a needle. I’m terrified my pelvis will shatter, and I’ll bleed out on the roof of an apartment I never wanted to rent, in a city I never wanted to live in.
“Get out!” I cry through tears. I push as hard as I can, and something inside me slackens. The baby-thing is coming.
“Oh, God!” Melanie chatters and jumps back.
“What is it?” I whimper. As the words pass my lips, the acrid scent of artificial raspberries blasts my nostrils. I recognize the smell instantly. It’s the cheap body spray I wore in high school.
I look down and scream. A slender arm shoots out of me and gropes the air. A second arm follows the first, and a teenage girl in a blue dress crawls out of my belly onto the rooftop. On all fours, the girl snaps her face toward me, but a mass of thick, brown curls obscures her features. She creeps forward and then on top of me. Palpable waves of anger emanate from her.
“Don’t hurt me,” I murmur.
The girl doesn’t move. She’s waiting for something. With trembling hands, I part her mane and stare into blue eyes—the same color and shape as mine. The girl looks like I did my junior year in high school, thin with a mouth full of metal.
I start to shake when I realize the girl’s wearing the same blue dress I wore to prom that year. The dress I saved up all winter to buy. The dress that I wore when James Kooley pressured me into having sex.
The memory still bites at me all these years later. We were in the back of his dad’s SUV. The sex was short and unpleasant. He told me I was like fucking dirt.
Prom Girl doesn’t speak, but I sense her emotions as if they are my own, and gradually, understanding passes between us. She wants everyone to feel like she did that May night fifteen years ago. Yet she won’t act or can’t act, not without my blessing. Not without my permission.
My tongue betrays me again, like it did with Derick. In my mind, I hear a cacophony of people telling me to calm down, to control my emotions, to let it go. Boys will be boys. Men will be men. Are you sure it happened that way?
More worry fills me. Prom Girl’s rage is infinite. If I let her go, she’ll never stop. The world will bleed out from teeth bites and claw marks.
A beat passes, and I know my answer. I knew it the moment Derick broke my heart. I caress Prom Girl’s cheek. She… we… I was so strong once. What happened to this version of me?
“Go,” I say. “For us.”
Prom Girl rises and peers around the rooftop. She zeroes in on the front of the building and sprints toward it.
“Stay back,” Melanie shouts, but Prom Girl ignores her and leaps off the roof. The sharp sound of shattered glass knots my stomach. Raw-throated screams follow.
“I need to see what’s happening,” I call out, and Melanie hauls me to the roof’s edge.
Below, Prom Girl stands over the twitching body of a businessman with a gaping wound where his throat should be. Blood drips from her face and nails. She’s the most stunning thing I’ve seen.
“I’m going to be sick,” Melanie says and vomits on her shoes.
Transfixed, I watch as Prom Girl lunges at another man and drives her thumbnails into his eyes. His screams fill me with ecstasy. I want more. I need more. I’m tired of holding back.
Melanie grabs my elbow and snaps me back into the moment. “We need to stop her.”
I wipe her hand away. “No, we need to help her.”
“She’s killing people!”
“They deserve it!”
Melanie’s face pales, and she backs away.
“You should hide,” I say as the pressure in my stomach returns. “There are more inside me.”
Melanie fights back tears and dashes away. One day, I hope she’ll understand.
I lie down on the roof, close my eyes, and think back to the abuse I’ve suffered, not only from Derick and James but from everyone in my life.
I remember when Michael, my boss, told me I needed to take better care of myself in front of the office and passed me over for promotion in favor of his nephew.
I remember listening in silence as Ryan, my brother, explained that no, he couldn’t take care of our dying mother, that he had a life, and that I needed to do it.
I remember all of the birthdays, anniversaries, and Valentine’s Days Derick forgot, and how he stopped speaking to me for days after I asked him to help with the housework.
“Come out, all of you,” I shout, and I weep joyous tears. One by one hundreds of younger versions of me climb from my belly, each more angry than the last. I fight through the exhaustion and embrace the discomfort.
Hours pass before I finish. My last angry self to come into the world is from earlier that day when Derick shattered our union. She has eyes like a tigress, and I know the mayhem she’ll deliver will dwarf her sisters.
“It’s over,” I whisper as she jumps from the roof.
Around me, the city is chaos. Police sirens blare in the distance, and the air is thick with smoke from burning buildings. I sense the carnage my past selves are causing, and I’m euphoric.
But it’s a short-lived feeling as I’m hit with emptiness and regret. Why did I keep this anger inside for so long?
I’m deep in thought when I feel another version of me stir within my belly, demanding to be set free. Once more, I push, and a wispy preteen in a frilly white dress wiggles free. She’s the youngest version of me I’ve birthed, and I want to draw her close in a tight embrace. She’s too young to be angry.
Like a newborn doe, the little girl wobbles to her feet. “You can do it,” I say, and my heart jolts with pride when she gains her balance. I wait for her to leap from the building to join her sisters, but instead, she turns to face me, and my muscles twitch with fear.
The girl’s eyes are narrowed, and her lips are pressed tightly together. Through our bond, I sense why she’s come. The girl hates me. She hates me because I diminished myself for others. She hates me because I let Derick and so many others hurt me with their words and actions. She hates me because I hate myself.
Tears fill my eyes, and I scoot away from her, desperate to put distance between us. “You don’t have to do this,” I say in a voice that’s barely above a whisper.
The girl crouches, and before I can say more, she throws herself on top of me. She claws at my face with preternaturally sharp nails, and I barely manage to block her attack with my forearms. I hiss as she gouges my skin, showering us in blood.
Acting on instinct, I smack the girl as hard as possible, and she tumbles away. She springs upright instantly and pauses to wipe gore from her eyes.
With waning strength, I lumber to my feet and rack my brain for something–anything–to say. I want to tell her to stop, but part of me knows the girl is right. I’m not responsible for other people’s actions, but I didn’t fight for myself, either. I stayed with Derick, even when I knew I shouldn’t.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “You… we… deserve better. I was too scared to stand up for myself. I’d take it back if I could.”
The little girl steps back in surprise, and fat tears well in the corners of her eyes.
“I can change,” I continue and straighten my back to my full height. “Tell me what to do. How can I make it right?”
The girl doesn’t react at first. She glares at me, and through our bond, I sense she’s conflicted. Then, ever so slowly, the girl approaches, and I hold my breath. She takes my hand in hers and tugs on it. She wants me to follow her.
“Where are we going?” I ask, but she doesn’t respond.
The little girl guides me to the roof’s edge. I glance over and wonder if I can survive the fall. I wonder if I’m truly transformed.
The girl releases my hand, and before I can stop her, she launches herself off the building. Like her sisters before her, she slams into the ground and then rises uninjured.
“Join us,” she shouts.
| EXHIBIT FOUR: Return to “Remy de Montfort of Dubcon Palace“ | Proceed to the next Gallery Four: Controllers attraction, “A Promising Void: The Memo-morphosis“ |