Borderlands 5 (32 page)

Well into the night I asked, begged and cried, but received only looks of sorrow and mistrust. Some would ask questions or wish me good luck, but most just wordlessly shook their head.

Nothing could have prepared me for the death of my soul, for the murder of what remained of my heart. I had never experienced such emptiness; an undiluted sense of helplessness, like an astronaut who breaks the umbilical from the ship then drifts too far. I knew at one point in my insignificant life that the possibility of not finding Suzi was the worst thing that could happen. I had never been so wrong.

Suzi, or Carla the Human Wound, recognized me immediately. The revulsion I felt when I first saw her was indescribable, though I did not recognize her. I had just viewed Belle, the world’s fattest woman, and the almost laughable sight of Micky, the world’s smallest man, perched comfortably on the meaty pillow of her belly.

I pushed the curtain aside to view the next curiosity. What I saw was a nightmare in flesh. The woman, only distinguishable by the swell of breasts in her dark blue bikini top, rose from her chair as I entered the viewing room. A knowing smile seemed to appear on her ravaged face as she neared the glass.

Gaping scars crossed every viewable surface of her body, parallel furrows bisecting every half-inch. She posed, distending her chest, presenting her legs, arms, and back, as if she were a prize body builder. She ran her fingers down the length of her leg, following the course of the channels in her skin.

Smaller ravines ran from her chin, mouth, nose, and eyes to her ears, which were tattered ribbons of flesh and cartilage. That is when I recognized her … Suzi. Those almond-shaped eyes, just like Tippi’s, were they only recognizable part of the once beautiful girl.

Her upper lip was split under the nose, giving her mouth a cleft feline appearance, and whatever remained of her lovely oil-black hair, was now a patchwork of stubble and scar tissue.

I watched benumbed as Suzi performed. She modeled with a fervor she probably showed to no other customer. Today’s audience was special. Suzi advanced to the Plexiglas wall, her eyes locked with mine, and that smile, that ghastly smile, fixed on her face. Merely inches apart, our faces divided by only half-an-inch of plastic, Suzi licked the glass. Her tongue was divided into three even strips.

I ran from the sideshow, horrified and appalled, trying to escape the incredible blackness that threatened to fold over me. It fluttered at the edge of my consciousness, some horrendous truth, like enormous bat wings that wanted to trap and smother me. I collapsed beside a booth outside, fighting the nausea that coiled like snakes in my stomach.

How could she do that to herself? Why?

What would make someone do that?

I knelt in the dirt, shaking and sobbing as people walked warily past.

“C
ome with me,” someone said. Belle, the world’s fattest woman, helped me onto my shaking legs then lead me to a Winnebago. I didn’t resist; I was too weak.

We entered the trailer and she motioned me to sit at a small table. The inside of the camper was surprisingly clean and smelled of coffee and fried onions. On the counter near the sink, was an open bag of Canada Mints; so commonplace in a world that had just become so alien and foreboding.

“Hello father,” she said, her words ill-formed on the tattered strips of her tongue. She came through a doorway at the far end of the camper, wearing an emerald green housecoat and looking so normal through the dimness of the tight hallway. She carried a bag of cotton balls and a bottle of isopropyl alcohol. She set them on the table and sat across from me.

“Suzi?” I said, feeling sick, saddened and very uneasy.

“Carla, please. Suzi died four years ago.” She raised her leg on the bench beside her, freeing it from the housecoat and exposing the web of scars. “Why’d you come here?” she asked, her question whistling, but logical from her tortured mouth.

“Tippi … your mother died two years ago,” I told her. I was rattled and had a tremendous desire to run, to escape this nightmare and run until I could run no longer.

“Yes, I know. Killed herself.” She uncapped the alcohol and poured some into a shallow saucer, then looked at me. “I knew that was coming. We had different ways of escaping you, she was just better at it.” Her words confirmed what I had already known, though a small part of me had vainly hoped differently.

She took a single edge razor blade from her robe pocket and unwrapped it. She dipped it in the alcohol, then ran the blade deftly along a rut on her calf, opening a narrow line of blood inside the existing wound. My body contracted in an icy convulsion, and the blackness threatened again. I felt as if I’d just grabbed a live wire.

“Why?” I asked.

“It’s a living,” she said, then accusingly, “it’s a
life
.” She dabbed a cotton ball in the alcohol, then ran it along the fresh wound. Her jaw tightened slightly.

“Isn’t it odd,” she said, displaying the blood-tinged swab, “that the same spirit that cleanses my wounds rotted your soul.”

“You’re on the wagon now, right?” she asked. “Reformed?”

“I’m trying. It’s been a few months.”

“A little fucking late, wouldn’t you say?”

I was defenseless. I could say nothing. She ran the blade along another wound.

“Why do you do this, Suzi? Carla?”

“They’re Novocain. These wounds hurt less than others, but they help take my mind off the bigger and deeper ones.” She swabbed at the slice in her leg.

I could sense something bigger than life creeping up on me. Like a stalking cat, it stopped every time I tried to focus on it.

“They’re my protection and my savior,” she was saying, her distorted voice barely audible above the pulse pounding in my head and in my ears. “My guarantee that no man—no bastard—can ever hurt me again.”

Sweat ran down my back, from my brow into my eyes, stinging as it mixed with my tears.

She opened her housecoat, exposing her mutilated breasts. Revulsion and remorse attacked me, a feral beast tearing at my heart. I screamed at the pain.

“What’s wrong,
Daddy
?” She spit. “You don’t find it attractive anymore,
Daddy
?”

There it was. Like the boy who discovers the forgotten bag of marbles he hid on the top shelf, it all came tumbling down over my head. Sneaking into her room, pushing the chair under the doorknob. Ignoring her terrified eyes and her tears. Hiding from Tippi. Hiding from myself.

Suzi closed her robe, her eyes burning into me. For once she had the upper hand. For once she was the tormentor. I lowered my head to the table and covered my ears, trying to block the truth, hoping it was all an illusion.

“Please leave,” she said. “I don’t want you here. I don’t need you opening old wounds. I do that fine on my own.”

What could I say or do?
I’m sorry
would be a colossal insult. It wouldn’t amount to a speck of dust in the universe of irreparable harm I caused her. Devastated by self-disgust, I rose without a word and left. Shortly after, I returned to the camper with two suitcases. One contained several of Tippi’s personal items that I hoped Suzi might want; the other contained the cash from the sale of the house.

“These aren’t mine,” I told her, and slid the two suitcases in. I know that I could never correct what had happened in our lives, and I wasn’t going to pretend that the money and Tippi’s belongings were a token of such. I stated it as it was. They were not mine. I had done nothing to earn any of it.

Suzi dismissed me with a nod of her head and returned to her handiwork.

I left with nothing, which was truly my own.

Dysfunction

DARREN O. GODFREY

Darren Godfrey’s previous appearance in Borderlands 2 featured one of the scariest little boys in memory. We never imagined he could follow up with a tale which is actually a sequel to that original story. “Dysfunction” is a hallucinated search for the true source of our fears.

P
ain; dull, but sharpening.

You don’t know what hit you. Careful consideration, however, suggests it may have been your boyfriend.
Logical, sure, John, John, the Piper’s son, slap me around and away he run
…
again
. No, on second thought, that isn’t right. Not this time, at least. This time he was a pussycat. God, he even purred.

The vodka, then.
That
was it. Smirnoff knocked you upside the head.

You open your eyes, temporarily forgetting what a terrible mistake doing such a thing can be. White light spears your pupils, rebounds off your frontal brain matter and explodes from the top of your head, leaving behind a massive smoking pain-crater. To the rear, near the base of your brain, cleverly hidden satchel charges detonate.

And you thought you knew what pain was. You close your eyes.

Retreat.

Y
ou feel the wrath of Mom like a heat wave as you push up toward the land of the living once again.

“Get up, slut.”

Ah, she’s in a good mood. Open your eyes, show no pain. “Morning, Mother. Did you sleep well? I sure didn’t.”

“Just get up and get out. I’ve got to clean house and you’re in my way.”

You smile (or grimace, you’re not really sure) at the blurred image of the woman who gave birth to you—a white blob of face with a pile of wild red on top of it. You inherited your hair from her and on more than one occasion she has tried to take it back, by the fistful. You wonder, vaguely, if a mother-daughter scuffle is on the agenda for the day. “Well, excuse the hell out of me.” You stand, tottering a bit.

“I’ve run out of excuses for you, young lady.”

The smile/grimace has fallen off your face so you tug it back on. “Funny. Funny Mommy. Funny lady.”

Another blob of white, this one small but growing fast, enters your peripheral vision. Sudden pain. Close-up view of the fibers in your carpet. Hey, it
does
need vacuuming.

Barbie’s House: a pizza & ice cream joint and refuge for the wicked and witless alike.

“My God, what happened to
you
?”

You pull on your second smile of the morning, this one a bit more real, though no less painful. “What you are looking at,” you explain to Nancy (your best friend this week), taking a seat opposite her, “is what the proverbial cat dragged in. But before he did that, he dragged me through hell, high water, higher vodka, and Mom-town.”

“She hit you?”

“She hit me.”

“
My God.
”

Nancy slurps Pepsi while studying the glitter on her fingernails. Her face is almost as blonde as her hair. You can tell she wants to say something—
I’m sorry? Congratulations? Happy birthday?
—but is afraid to.

“What is it?” you ask. “Huh?”

“What’s the bug up your ass?”

“Um. Nothing.” Head shaking, eyes now squinting. “I was just …”

“You was just what?”

“I was wondering if you were going to John’s party tonight?” Eyes darting everywhere, landing on everything in Barbie’s but you. A star-spangled nail parts her lips, nestles into a crack between her front teeth. “I don’t know,” you say, “Probably not, I’m feeling exquisitely shitty right now. Why? You want him all to yourself? That it? You want to fuck him?”

Eyes wide now, so blue and blameworthy.
“What?”
Fingernail, exit stage left. “
No—
what … what makes you say
that
?”

“It’s what you’ve wanted, isn’t it? To fuck my sorry excuse for a boyfriend? Go right ahead, but suck his dick first. He expects it.”

And she’s off in a sparkly peroxided huff.

Okay, so she wasn’t the
best
best friend you’ve ever had.

B
arbie’s House faces the street. So do you. You watch the bright, colorful cars drift by out there, idiotically wondering who’s in them, where they’re going, if any of them would mind an extra passenger.

Bye, Mom, nice right cross, need to work on the timing, though. Bye John, take it easy on the new girl, she bruises easily, I’ll bet. Let’s go, driver, it’s the skinny pedal.

The big, yellow face of a school bus looms into view, swells, quickly fills the window with its big, fat grille. It hisses. Its side door squeals hideously and regurgitates a mass of screaming children out into the parking lot.

“Hey, you gonna order somethin?”

A waitress. Her pink plastic visor says, YOU’RE IN BARBIE’S HOUSE, pink plastic name tag says, HI I’M TAMMY, pink plastic expression says, I’M AN IDIOT, TELL ME WHAT TO DO.