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Description
I am making snow angels with Consta, our matching scarves becoming damper with each passing second. We are little kids. She grows, stretches to a teenage body, and commences with making out with a teenage Gunther. I grow and stretch too, and then I sink.

“Nadya?” she asks, voice distant and muffled.

I rise in the snow of an isolated mountain, alone and naked, but strangely not cold. I am diminutive compared to the size of the mountain, like a field mouse in a vast forest.

Raphael rises from the snow, fully clothed.

“I want you,” he says, and kisses me fiercely, then starts sinking.

“No,” I cry. “Come back. Where are you going?”

“Back,” he answers, his voice echoing.

“Are you leaving me?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know.”

He rises again, but his face morphs into Alex’s

“LEAVE!” I shriek, trying to get up from my position, but the snow is as sticky as honey on my back, it won’t let me go.

“Never,” he says, advancing.

My father rises, then punches him square in the mouth. Alex sinks, and calls me an exceedingly impolite word. My father scowls at it.

“Daddy!” I exclaim. Suddenly, my stomach swells to twice its natural size. Ashamed, he shakes his head at me.

“Would you so easily disgrace your family and your people?”

As soon as the terrible words are said, he is effaced from the setting just like he was effaced from my life.

Sharp, agonizing pain strikes me. I writhe uncontrollably, shaking my hair free of the snowflakes, but I still can’t pull myself up to stand.

Harper materializes and takes my hand.

“Breathe in. Breathe out. We can do this,” she says determinedly. I laugh out of the sheer joy of having someone to help me; it overrides my excruciating pain.

“Where’s my aunt?”

“Somewhere.”

Will strides toward us, singing “I’m walking on sunshine, woooah, oh oh, I’m walking on sunshine…” He sighs when he sees me lying there.

“Really, Harper. What ARE you doing?”

“Oh! Will!” exults Harper. She races to him, fervently leaps into his open arms. They glide down, steeper and steeper, until the tops of their heads disappear and submerge into the snow.

***

The first thing I notice when I wake up is that I taste salt in my mouth. The second thing is that my face and pillow are damp. That twice this week! And I was doing so well.

Reaching under my bed, I wait for my hand to meet with the accumulated Super Secret Chocolate Stash(which I have had to underhandedly establish because Harper and Bibio*, damn them, have ordered me to stay healthy). I pull a Hershey’s Dark bar and tear off the wrapper with the glee of a kid on Christmas morning. Said glee quadruples when the splendid stuff actually enters my mouth.

A sweet, fresh breeze dances into my room through the open window, nearly making me weep again. I haven’t had a nightly run in a month, no matter how much the moon beckons me with its illuminated, silvery face.

***

Dear Consta, October 30, 1991

Oh God. The trial was- there’s no adequate way to describe it. Alex got a fine and three months in the pin. Three months. Three months and not a sweat from his rich father for all my nightmares, dissatisfaction, and disillusionment.

At least they believed me. If they hadn’t…well, I think I best not go there. It’s in the realm of the Scary Places.

Not like I haven’t told you the above already…but there is an aspect of it I just couldn’t tell you on the phone…

Guess who was waiting outside? Here, I’ll give you some space to guess:

That enough?

Starts with an R, ends with an L. …

Bibio was having coffee with the nurse who she became friends with after I had to be inspected at the hospital…she was the nicest person when I went through it. I almost did run away when questions about that night became intensely personal…then I remembered that I couldn’t let Alex skip through life like he was entitled to everything in his path. I remembered all the other women who did run away, too afraid to ask for help. I remembered not my vengeance, but my justice.

I had my pantyhose wadded up into a ball in one hand, and I was getting ready to toss them in the car when a cold, familiar-feeling finger tapped me on the shoulder.

I turned around, slowly. He stood there, hand suspended in the air, breath rapid. Eyes splintered with…regret? Probably not. Probably just wishful thinking on my part, which I need to stop doing if I am to survive.

“I’m sorry.”

“Why?” I said coldly, turning the key in the driver’s seat door (ever since IT happened, I haven’t been able to hear the beep of an automatic lock/unlock without flinching), rolling down the pantyhose and throwing them onto the leather seat. “It’s not like YOU tried to rape me.”

With a bit of unease and satisfaction, I let the unspoken hang thick, laden in the air…what he did instead.

He hadn’t dressed up for the occasion of telling me his stupid apology. Just a t-shirt, jeans, hair messed up. Nothing neat and crisp like it usually is about him. I almost felt sad that he was obviously a wreck at admitting this.

Almost.

“I…I…what was…it like? Did he hurt you?”

“How did you find out about this, anyway?”

“Um…Will…from Harper…”

“I see.”

Choir is always awkward. Raphael has this permanently guilty, stricken indentation about him, Will asks me to forgive him, that he’s dying inside, torn, blah blah blah, that he’d apologize if I gave him the chance…but I say no. Harper is there for me, but also has her fair share of whispers with him, and by the way their eyes constantly dart to me, I know who they’re talking about.

At least only five people (not including me) know. But that’ll change when it shows more.

“Well. Yeah, he did hurt me. But he didn’t actually…you know.”

He nodded, “What was…it like?”

How desperate and pleading his request was. I was annoyed with this mealy-mouthed, inadequate small talk about something that just can’t be explained in words.

“No. I won’t tell you.”

“Why-“

“Because it’d make you sick, Raphael, okay?!”

He stared at the slick, wet pavement. Rain had started to fall, a fine, murmuring rain that made bounced off in little effects, leaving miniscule ripples.

“Sick,” I said again, trying to have him understand.

“Sick,” he whispered back.

“Yes. Please don’t try.”

Defeated, he turned around.

“Look,” I yelled, crossing my arms, shaking my hair a little from the slight dampness. “It’s not your fault. It’s not anybody’s. It’s just the way it is. You know?”

Instantaneously, he transformed from sympathetic and confused to fiery. Spun around on his heels and yelled back, “Oh, shut up. It’s not ‘just the way it is’, and you know it. You won’t accept that, so fine. I can’t forget you. I couldn’t if I tried.”

“What do you MEAN, I won’t accept that? You’re the one that rejected ME! ‘Oh, I got you pregnant! Oops, bad move. Let’s be all ‘Yes. No. I don’t know’”

“Ha! You were the one that asked me! You got yourself preg-“

“Oh please. It’s scientifically impossible for me to impregnate myself, and you-“

“Okay, yes, it’s half and half, because I didn’t exactly say no, but-“

“HALF and HALF?!!! Are you for REAL?!”

“Did you seriously just say ‘are you for-“

“Yes I did! But you left, it wasn’t ME that left, so-“

“Nadya, please! I-I-I-love you. I was scared, confused, and I couldn’t deal with it, but please, talk to me-“

“What, talk to you till I start to show, till you have to be viewed as what you DID instead of who you ARE? Because you know what? I doubt that. The only one who will be viewed that way is me. Yes, me, because that’s the way society freaking is, and there’s nothing I can do to change that, there’s nothing you can do to change that, there’s nothing the freaking MESSIAH can do to change that.”

“Did you not just hear what I-“

“Yes I HEARD IT, Raphael, but did you hear me? Don’t you get it? Because what matters most to me, is are you still?”

“Am I still…?”

“Still scared, confused, ‘not able to deal with it?’”

Silence emanated from his smoldering eyes. Silence rang in my ears, all the way down to my toes, like a hush had fallen over the world.

“Yeah. That’s what I thought. You can’t be a parent, Raphael. And you know what? Neither can I. But it’s different for me, so different, because I have to have this baby. And you don’t. So my other ‘parents’ will be the ones that can help me with my pregnancy, support me- Harper, Bibio. Maybe its adoptive parents, if I can find them…you’ve shown me that you can’t.”

“What?! How can you say I haven’t supported you-“

“Because you LEFT! God, how many times do I have to say that?! You LEFT when I told you. And do you know what happened when you LEFT?!”

He shakes his head robotically, stiffly: left, right, left, right.

“Well, you SHOULD. It’s why you came to see me. I biked away afterwards, wanting to feel…. wanted. I went into a restaurant. I had dinner with the owner’s son. He took me in his car. He locked his car.”

The blood drains from his face.

“Beginning to sound familiar?”

Acquiescing, he faced me with the palms of his hands.

“Actions speak louder than words, Raphael.”

“But your words, Nadya,” he said in barely a whisper, “are also pretty damn loud.”

I can’t believe him. What a- fill in the blank. Can’t find an adequate word for his- fill in the blank behavior.

I miss you. When will we get to see each other, damn it??!!!

Sorry. Not your fault, not my fault-

AGH! I’m doing it again!

Your Best Friend,
Nadya the Mind-Fuck

Description
I am making snow angels with Consta, our matching scarves becoming damper with each passing second. We are little kids. She grows, stretches to a teenage body, and commences with making out with a teenage Gunther. I grow and stretch too, and then I sink.

“Nadya?” she asks, voice distant and muffled.

I rise in the snow of an isolated mountain, alone and naked, but strangely not cold. I am diminutive compared to the size of the mountain, like a field mouse in a vast forest.

Raphael rises from the snow, fully clothed.

“I want you,” he says, and kisses me fiercely, then starts sinking.

“No,” I cry. “Come back. Where are you going?”

“Back,” he answers, his voice echoing.

“Are you leaving me?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know.”

He rises again, but his face morphs into Alex’s

“LEAVE!” I shriek, trying to get up from my position, but the snow is as sticky as honey on my back, it won’t let me go.

“Never,” he says, advancing.

My father rises, then punches him square in the mouth. Alex sinks, and calls me an exceedingly impolite word. My father scowls at it.

“Daddy!” I exclaim. Suddenly, my stomach swells to twice its natural size. Ashamed, he shakes his head at me.

“Would you so easily disgrace your family and your people?”

As soon as the terrible words are said, he is effaced from the setting just like he was effaced from my life.

Sharp, agonizing pain strikes me. I writhe uncontrollably, shaking my hair free of the snowflakes, but I still can’t pull myself up to stand.

Harper materializes and takes my hand.

“Breathe in. Breathe out. We can do this,” she says determinedly. I laugh out of the sheer joy of having someone to help me; it overrides my excruciating pain.

“Where’s my aunt?”

“Somewhere.”

Will strides toward us, singing “I’m walking on sunshine, woooah, oh oh, I’m walking on sunshine…” He sighs when he sees me lying there.

“Really, Harper. What ARE you doing?”

“Oh! Will!” exults Harper. She races to him, fervently leaps into his open arms. They glide down, steeper and steeper, until the tops of their heads disappear and submerge into the snow.

***

The first thing I notice when I wake up is that I taste salt in my mouth. The second thing is that my face and pillow are damp. That twice this week! And I was doing so well.

Reaching under my bed, I wait for my hand to meet with the accumulated Super Secret Chocolate Stash(which I have had to underhandedly establish because Harper and Bibio*, damn them, have ordered me to stay healthy). I pull a Hershey’s Dark bar and tear off the wrapper with the glee of a kid on Christmas morning. Said glee quadruples when the splendid stuff actually enters my mouth.

A sweet, fresh breeze dances into my room through the open window, nearly making me weep again. I haven’t had a nightly run in a month, no matter how much the moon beckons me with its illuminated, silvery face.

***

Dear Consta, October 30, 1991

Oh God. The trial was- there’s no adequate way to describe it. Alex got a fine and three months in the pin. Three months. Three months and not a sweat from his rich father for all my nightmares, dissatisfaction, and disillusionment.

At least they believed me. If they hadn’t…well, I think I best not go there. It’s in the realm of the Scary Places.

Not like I haven’t told you the above already…but there is an aspect of it I just couldn’t tell you on the phone…

Guess who was waiting outside? Here, I’ll give you some space to guess:

That enough?

Starts with an R, ends with an L. …

Bibio was having coffee with the nurse who she became friends with after I had to be inspected at the hospital…she was the nicest person when I went through it. I almost did run away when questions about that night became intensely personal…then I remembered that I couldn’t let Alex skip through life like he was entitled to everything in his path. I remembered all the other women who did run away, too afraid to ask for help. I remembered not my vengeance, but my justice.

I had my pantyhose wadded up into a ball in one hand, and I was getting ready to toss them in the car when a cold, familiar-feeling finger tapped me on the shoulder.

I turned around, slowly. He stood there, hand suspended in the air, breath rapid. Eyes splintered with…regret? Probably not. Probably just wishful thinking on my part, which I need to stop doing if I am to survive.

“I’m sorry.”

“Why?” I said coldly, turning the key in the driver’s seat door (ever since IT happened, I haven’t been able to hear the beep of an automatic lock/unlock without flinching), rolling down the pantyhose and throwing them onto the leather seat. “It’s not like YOU tried to rape me.”

With a bit of unease and satisfaction, I let the unspoken hang thick, laden in the air…what he did instead.

He hadn’t dressed up for the occasion of telling me his stupid apology. Just a t-shirt, jeans, hair messed up. Nothing neat and crisp like it usually is about him. I almost felt sad that he was obviously a wreck at admitting this.

Almost.

“I…I…what was…it like? Did he hurt you?”

“How did you find out about this, anyway?”

“Um…Will…from Harper…”

“I see.”

Choir is always awkward. Raphael has this permanently guilty, stricken indentation about him, Will asks me to forgive him, that he’s dying inside, torn, blah blah blah, that he’d apologize if I gave him the chance…but I say no. Harper is there for me, but also has her fair share of whispers with him, and by the way their eyes constantly dart to me, I know who they’re talking about.

At least only five people (not including me) know. But that’ll change when it shows more.

“Well. Yeah, he did hurt me. But he didn’t actually…you know.”

He nodded, “What was…it like?”

How desperate and pleading his request was. I was annoyed with this mealy-mouthed, inadequate small talk about something that just can’t be explained in words.

“No. I won’t tell you.”

“Why-“

“Because it’d make you sick, Raphael, okay?!”

He stared at the slick, wet pavement. Rain had started to fall, a fine, murmuring rain that made bounced off in little effects, leaving miniscule ripples.

“Sick,” I said again, trying to have him understand.

“Sick,” he whispered back.

“Yes. Please don’t try.”

Defeated, he turned around.

“Look,” I yelled, crossing my arms, shaking my hair a little from the slight dampness. “It’s not your fault. It’s not anybody’s. It’s just the way it is. You know?”

Instantaneously, he transformed from sympathetic and confused to fiery. Spun around on his heels and yelled back, “Oh, shut up. It’s not ‘just the way it is’, and you know it. You won’t accept that, so fine. I can’t forget you. I couldn’t if I tried.”

“What do you MEAN, I won’t accept that? You’re the one that rejected ME! ‘Oh, I got you pregnant! Oops, bad move. Let’s be all ‘Yes. No. I don’t know’”

“Ha! You were the one that asked me! You got yourself preg-“

“Oh please. It’s scientifically impossible for me to impregnate myself, and you-“

“Okay, yes, it’s half and half, because I didn’t exactly say no, but-“

“HALF and HALF?!!! Are you for REAL?!”

“Did you seriously just say ‘are you for-“

“Yes I did! But you left, it wasn’t ME that left, so-“

“Nadya, please! I-I-I-love you. I was scared, confused, and I couldn’t deal with it, but please, talk to me-“

“What, talk to you till I start to show, till you have to be viewed as what you DID instead of who you ARE? Because you know what? I doubt that. The only one who will be viewed that way is me. Yes, me, because that’s the way society freaking is, and there’s nothing I can do to change that, there’s nothing you can do to change that, there’s nothing the freaking MESSIAH can do to change that.”

“Did you not just hear what I-“

“Yes I HEARD IT, Raphael, but did you hear me? Don’t you get it? Because what matters most to me, is are you still?”

“Am I still…?”

“Still scared, confused, ‘not able to deal with it?’”

Silence emanated from his smoldering eyes. Silence rang in my ears, all the way down to my toes, like a hush had fallen over the world.

“Yeah. That’s what I thought. You can’t be a parent, Raphael. And you know what? Neither can I. But it’s different for me, so different, because I have to have this baby. And you don’t. So my other ‘parents’ will be the ones that can help me with my pregnancy, support me- Harper, Bibio. Maybe its adoptive parents, if I can find them…you’ve shown me that you can’t.”

“What?! How can you say I haven’t supported you-“

“Because you LEFT! God, how many times do I have to say that?! You LEFT when I told you. And do you know what happened when you LEFT?!”

He shakes his head robotically, stiffly: left, right, left, right.

“Well, you SHOULD. It’s why you came to see me. I biked away afterwards, wanting to feel…. wanted. I went into a restaurant. I had dinner with the owner’s son. He took me in his car. He locked his car.”

The blood drains from his face.

“Beginning to sound familiar?”

Acquiescing, he faced me with the palms of his hands.

“Actions speak louder than words, Raphael.”

“But your words, Nadya,” he said in barely a whisper, “are also pretty damn loud.”

I can’t believe him. What a- fill in the blank. Can’t find an adequate word for his- fill in the blank behavior.

I miss you. When will we get to see each other, damn it??!!!

Sorry. Not your fault, not my fault-

AGH! I’m doing it again!

Your Best Friend,
Nadya the Mind-Fuck