Dysmenorrhea

by J.S. Douglas

Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating:

It’s a busy day, and I’m running late on everything. I mean everything. My line is backed up to God-knows-where down the aisle, my lunchtime replacement is an hour late, and my period has been MIA for over three weeks. I’ve had vague cramps since the date my period was due, but no blood. 

It’s a bad day. A bad week. Hell, a bad month.

The lady in front of me is glaring as she watches me scanning her items. Kale. Cucumber. Fennel. Some other vegetable I have to look up because there’s no barcode, and I don’t know what it is. Kohlrabi.

“Are you almost done?” she asks in a bitchy tone.

“Yes, ma’am,” I smile. My head is pounding. And not in a tension headache way. In a full-blown, you’re getting a migraine way. The LEDs beat down on me as I squint through the lady’s transaction. The scent of green vegetables fills my nose. Cut grass, minerals, and grit. Normally, I find it refreshing. Right now, it’s making my gorge rise.

I put a hand to my forehead, feeling the sweat coating my skin. My head feels too heavy for my body. Aches soak into my muscles. I feel like someone’s opened my bones and scraped out the marrow. 

I know what’s happening. 

Dysmenorrhea, a.k.a. period pain. 

I can’t stop it. It’s too late for a painkiller. 

Go to the bathroom NOW, my instincts tell me. I don’t listen to my instincts very often, and I always regret it later. After twenty-five years on this earth, you’d think I’d be better at listening to myself, but I’m not. I stand in my little cube-shaped prison, a smile wobbling on my lips. I look up at the next customer.

Hot saliva coats the inside of my mouth. More and more liquid pushes against my gritted teeth.

I put up the “Sorry, this register is closed” sign and stumble out of my cube. The next person in line yells, “Are you kidding me?” 

I ignore them, clutching the countertop as I swing myself around. If I jog, I might make it to the bathroom before I throw up. 

Shivers run up my spine as I half-stumble, half-jog through the store to the breakroom and the employee bathrooms. The first one is unoccupied. I push in, my stomach in my throat, my eyes closed to slits to block the unforgiving light. I click the lock shut and kneel before the porcelain throne. 

Convulsions wrack my body as food exits my throat and splashes into the bowl. Again and again, my stomach spasms, and I feel like everything I’ve ever consumed is forced out until bitter yellow bile coats my tongue. I’m dripping from my eyes, from my pores, from everywhere. And, of course, I didn’t grab my purse from my locker, so the sluggish red that is flowing between my legs is soaking through my underwear. 

In short, I’m a disaster. 

It’s not the first time this has happened, and it won’t be the last. The first time was in seventh grade. It hit me at lunch, in the cafeteria. I made it to a trash can, the stench hitting my nose and the layers of garbage making me heave even harder.

Now, at least, I can flush it all away. The chlorine scent of toilet water is not my favorite, but it’s better than a slurry of cafeteria food and trash. 

My stomach feels better now that it’s empty. Goosebumps coat my skin, the sweat cooling rapidly, making me shiver. The entire room feels like it’s shivering with me, vibrating in sympathy.

“Fuck,” I groan. I stand, shaking. I rinse my mouth out. Then, I feel my body pushing things out in another direction. 

I plop my shivering butt on the toilet seat and stare at the tampon dispenser on the wall. If I use one of those, they’ll make the cramps worse. They don’t feel like they can get worse. But they can. I know they can. 

I put my head in my hands and wait to stop shaking. 

Finally, my body stops convulsing. I think the mass exodus is complete. I hope it is, anyway, because this is awful. I don’t know how I’m going to drive home. Haze fills the room, as if something has switched in my brain, and I’m seeing the light through a lens. My consciousness has detached from my body, and I’m viewing the world through a darkened window. It’s my way of dealing with the pain, and if I don’t lie down soon, I will pass out. 

I get up. I flush. I splash warm water over my clammy skin. Wadding up toilet paper, I pad my panties. I wipe up the blood that’s coating my inner thighs. Thank God I’m wearing dark pants. 

Dust motes float through the air. I take a deep breath, and grit coats my tongue. I rinse my mouth, gulping some of the metal-tasting water. 

Time to get out. 

I take a shaky step to the door, crunching through grime. It makes a tooth-achy squeak. Normally, the fact that I had kneeled in whatever that is would gross me out, but my bones are hot lead slicing through my muscles.

It’s weird that no one has knocked on the door or told me to get back to work or complained that I completely abandoned my station. I thank a God I don’t believe in for small favors, then open the door. 

The breakroom light is dim, like the lights in the bathroom. I check in on myself. Am I closer to passing out than I realize? I sit down at the breakroom table. Someone has abandoned a turkey and Swiss sandwich with a single bite taken out of it. 

I still feel lightheaded, like my consciousness will snap at any moment. The world around me wobbles, dreamy and unreal. I’m balancing between the light and shapes of the physical world and a black sinkhole. 

Something taps against the breakroom door. 

Tap, tap, tap. 

I open my mouth to say something.

My head fills with fuzz. What was I going to say? I stare at the door. 

Tap, tap, tap.

Is that a shopping cart? I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. My instincts are screaming, telling me to find somewhere to lie down. They yell, you don’t have long.

This time, I’m listening. The breakroom is long and thin, like a hallway. One wall is lined with lockers, a long table, and a vending machine jammed against the opposite wall. Between the lockers and the far corner is an almost walk-in size closet where most of us hang our coats and cram in other crap that doesn’t fit in the tiny lockers. 

It’s the only space where I could feasibly lie down. 

I stand and take a step. The room wobbles. I thump to my knees before I can catch myself, cracking my right knee painfully against the thin carpet. I’ve given up on making sounds. They’re not worth the effort, and frankly, I’m too tired. My eyes feel like someone punched me in the face. My back feels as if someone has strapped a plow to it, and I have to drag it as I crawl, digging furrows into the unforgiving flooring. 

I pull myself to the closet on my hands and knees. I’m shivering, so cold and clammy. I can smell myself. I smell like a gym rat’s armpit. 

The closet stinks of old socks, stale dust, and sweat. It smells better than I do. I crawl inside and pull some coats down. Hangers clatter. One pops up and jams itself into a fiberglass ceiling tile. Dust sprinkles my arms. Shoes cover the ground. I pile them to one side. I plump a couple of jackets beneath me. I pull more on top. Someone is going to find me and fire me or arrest me or institutionalize me. At this point, I’d be happy to accept all of the above as long as no one touches me. I take one last look at the blurred shapes filling the real world before unconsciousness drags me into a black hole.

I’m still in the closet when I wake up. The dim light in the windowless breakroom hasn’t changed. It can’t have been long because no one found me, and the sandwich is still there. 

I’m thirsty. Plus, I know that my makeshift pad has probably bled through. I don’t even want to look at my jacket nest. I can imagine the stains. I don’t need to see them.

I head to my locker, open it, and grab my period products and my card. I go to the bathroom and swap out the toilet paper pad for a real one (with wings!) and then get a water bottle from the vending machine. I drink the whole thing in one go. I refill it from the bathroom tap and sip some more. God, I’m thirsty. But, more than anything, I need to make it out of the store somehow without anyone seeing me. 

I chew my lip and look in the bathroom mirror. 

I look terrible. Bone white. Clammy. Mascara down my cheeks. Hair in knots. 

I scrub my face with water and paper towels and tie my hair back. I look, well, sick. Which is good. If I look sick, I can say I’m sick and leave without anyone stopping me.

I grab my purse, clutch my stomach, which honestly does hurt after all the vomiting, and now with cramps. Then, I step into the store. 

The empty store. 

The empty, torn-apart store.

“What the hell?” I whisper. 

The registers are covered in ripped-up items. Torn cans leak beans and coconut milk. Shredded veggies pile in a makeshift salad at the end of a register. A scatter of paper bags are confettied across the floor. But no people and no sound. The muzak has stopped playing. The AC isn’t blowing. The place feels stuffy and damp, like an indoor pool.

The lights are dimmer here, too. Plastic LED casings are splintered across registers and on the floors. I turn in a circle, pain forgotten as I try to absorb the destruction surrounding me. Shattered pharmacy glass. Metal waiting room chairs twisted into complicated patterns. The breakroom door scratched to hell, paint ripped off, and particleboard exposed. 

“Did I miss the end of the world or something?” I ask aloud.

My voice is too loud in the silent store. My stomach twists as my ears prick, searching for a response in the silence.

You need to get out of here, something whispers in the back of my brain. Get out of here and never look back.

I’m listening this time. You bet I’m listening. Hiking my purse up on my shoulder, I step through the chaos, trying to place my feet so they make as little noise as possible. I glance at the closest register. The screen is lit up in an oil slick of color. Black text scrolls in a constant loop. 

Don’t pay attention to that. Run, says my instinct. 

I blink, the swirling colors imprinting on my eyelids. I turn away and focus on my steps. 

One step. Two steps. 

Water drips onto my skin. I flick out my tongue and lick the salty drops. Tears.

I’ve always wanted to burn this place to the ground. Filled with entitled customers and shift managers who don’t care about bathroom breaks, it’s always been my version of hell. And yet, now that it’s destroyed, I don’t know how to think about it. My entire equilibrium, my routine, is gone. 

Heaviness settles in my gut, a sense of wrongness filling me up from the middle out. I could go to the sporting goods section, take a baseball bat, and finish off the building. Maybe find water pipes to try to rip out of the wall and flood the place. Rage could consume my feelings.

I sag and take a shuffling step forward. The sliding glass doors are to my right. Self-checkout to my left. The twilight parking lot is calling me. I glance at the scrolling self-checkout screens. I want to leave. But I have to see.

Just a quick glance.

I tiptoe over, accidentally kicking an action figure still in its packaging. It skitters away, the plastic rattling against the floor tiles. I freeze, listening. No other sound.

I creep over to the screen, each step carefully placed.

Gibberish symbols roll in an endless scroll. I don’t recognize the characters. It looks more like a design than actual letters.

As I stare, four symbols stand still. They change color, cycling through red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet as the greasy scroll rolls on below. They are hieroglyphics of some kind. The first is a drop, the second a squatting woman, the third a mountain, and the fourth a winged person. 

“What do they mean?” I ask aloud. 

Doesn’t matter, the lizard part of my brain tells me. I have no more gorge to rise, but my breath hitches and blood hammers in my ears. Runrunrunrunrun. My feet are glued to the floor. My eyes can’t blink, can’t flick away. I’m stuck. 

The symbols burn into my retinas. A potential meaning seeps through my fogged, pounding skull. Blood flows between my legs. A woman fights against the Sisyphean task of dealing with a period every month of her life until the relief of menopause. Perhaps the winged person is also me, freed from the cycle? That last theory seems a little thin. 

Coolness rushes down my spine, through my limbs. My pain disappears as the coolness spreads until my entire body feels weightless, like floating in a lake. A strange sound growls out of me, something thrumming my vocal cords without consulting my brain. My mouth moves, and the growl turns into words. 

“The winged one from beyond the mountains was here. She’s coming back.”

Cold clenches me for a moment longer, blanking my mind and softening the edges of my vision. Then, it releases. 

Muggy heat enfolds me, and pain comes roaring back, filling my bones with lead and wrenching at my muscles once again. My joints clench, then loosen, but I remain standing. My staring eyes leak tears as the pulsing screen holds me up.

My lizard brain is still shouting at me. Still telling me to run. Salty water flows down my cheeks and pools on my upper lip. There’s no way to send an impulse from my brain to my feet. I can’t even wiggle my big toe. 

I pant, tongue lolling, dog-like. My legs are steel rods glued to the ground. I clench my over-activated pelvic muscles, trying to squeeze out a Kegel, trying to activate my core. Trying to move something.

Pain slices into my right hip, zipping up my spine and into my brain. My eyes snap shut in a wince. All at once, I can move. I press my hand to my side and breathe.

“You can do this,” I tell myself.

My feet come loose from the floor, and I take a step away from the screen. I’m careful not to look up, not to get sucked back into that scrollwork or those strange hieroglyphics. I inch toward the automatic doors.

The doors whoosh open, bathing me in cool night air. Shivers roll over me. My back pain intensifies as cold clutches at me. I need to get to my car. Employee parking is in the eastern-facing lot, behind the store. So, I circle around the building. My knees wobble with each step into the gloaming. The white sidewalk gleams, something sparkly embedded in the cement, helping me make my way even with very little light. Then, the sidewalk cuts off, ending in a ragged curb. 

I look up, and my breath hitches in my throat. Something has sliced through the sidewalk and continued down, digging a hole into the earth. It could be a foot deep, or it could be a cliff for all I know. My heart hammers in my ears, in my throat. I feel my body sway, and I put a hand on the building to steady myself. I hear a clatter as something detaches from the grocery store. I catch the movement as it falls. I strain my ears. There’s no sound of it hitting the ground. Either I missed its landing, or the drop-off truly is cliff-deep. I squint, trying to see how far this chasm stretches. There’s no sign of the parking lot, the gas station behind it, or the street beyond that. The whole world is black.

Orange licks the farthest edge of my vision, brightening the horizon. I stare into that faraway glow, squinting, trying to discern where it’s coming from. The quality of the light doesn’t change. It’s as if someone has painted a starless night sky with an inexplicable brush of orange at the bottom edge of the painting. 

My feet hurt. My legs hurt. My stomach is sore from throwing up and from cramps, but that doesn’t stop it from twisting up into knots. 

Turn around, my instinct tells me. Run. Escape into the sane world.

A speck rises, standing out against the orange horizon. A small dot. Then it gets bigger, blotting out more and more of the light. Wings unfurl. It’s heading this way. 

Run. Runrunrunrun, my instincts scream. 

Cool begins to spread from my core. The soothing cool from the store, the floating-in-a-lake pain-free feeling that struck before a different voice strummed my vocal cords.

I can still move. For now.

I turn. 

I run.