FICTIONS — HORROR

The Jack of Hearts and the Dark Shadows that Haunt Her

Old world justice — an eye for an eye

For the third time, she wiped the crooked lip liner off and started again.

Her fingers trembled, though her brain willed them to stop. Ellen begged stillness from her hands and refused to blink her eyes.

Please just follow the edge. Please.

The rich burgundy color slowly etched its place across the top. As she felt the finish line nearing, the thin pencil slipped. It slid down the side of her mouth, far from the outer path of her bottom lip.

Her tears came fast and furious.

Ellen dropped to her knees and sobbed. Deep moans from heart-wrenching pain spilled out uncontrollably. She had kept ugly secrets crammed inside for so long. Too long.

And now, this.

All of her hard work, thrown away in a matter of minutes.

Curling into a ball on the bathroom floor, she hugged her knees and rocked.

The lip liner had landed within inches of her face. Swirling, falling, floating. The world was spinning, and the stars were flashing.

Stop the lights.

Make them stop.

The coolness of the tile offered comfort to her cheek. A wrinkled hand with spindly fingers stretched past her face and grabbed the lip pencil. Was that her hand? She watched from afar as a scrawled and bloody dark red H E L P appeared on the white tiles.

“I see here that today is a difficult week for you. It has been a year, now, since your husband was ki… died.”

Tell me how that makes you feel.

His yellowed teeth were busy gnawing on the eraser end of his yellow #2 pencil. Ellen questioned why this struck her as information that she needed to store. Seeing his drawer filled with them the first time she stepped into his office confirmed for her that he had issues himself. They were all perfectly aligned, about 50 of them, with the lettering on the pencils all faced up the same way.

Perfectly aligned.

She resisted the urge to reach in and tumble the stacks.

It’s the umpteenth time she has attended these weekly sessions. The office is sparse. Ellen looked around at the sterile environment and always felt an immediate discomfort. Vinyl pretending to be leather, pleather, works well for people that drool, vomit, or maybe defecate. Who knows what goes on here? The lie she tells herself is that someone actually sterilizes this room each night.

Regardless, she perched on the edge of the 20-year-old couch.

I only need to go through the motions and fulfill the court requirements for another month. No one said I had to talk. The D.A. ordered that I attend this counseling and nothing about me actually participating. I don’t plan on exploring my psyche with Dr. Heart.

She kept her eyes down, hidden by her long and curly auburn bangs, and counted the tiles. Ellen was well-aware of exactly how many there were, but the limited décor left her little choice. Where are the friendly pictures, the softening wall art?

She wonders why good ol’ Jack, with his neatly arranged pencil drawer, hasn’t replaced the two laminated 12x12 squares that have broken corners.

Why don’t they bother you, Dr. Heart? Why? Let’s delve into the dark corners of your brain and see why the damn drawer has priority over the disrepair your patients have to endure?

Let’s explore your childhood, Jackie boy. Let’s go deep, where no one had gone before. How does it make you feel?

The silence dragged on. He lamely attempted to readdress the question, THE question, by rearranging the approach.

As if she is an idiot which, she is not.

“Okay, then, maybe next week you’ll want to share something. That’s it for today.”

Dr. Heart took his palm and smeared back the hair that had loosened from the gel holding it all together. He didn’t crack a smile, the pompous ass that he is.

And, like every week before, he trudged back to his desk, pulled out his chair, and rifled through his papers. Ellen had been dismissed without further ado. No goodbye, no screw you, no nothing. That alone added to her intense hatred of him. She cannot fathom how a counselor can be entirely devoid of compassion or warmth.

This cold exterior probably left him with a government job as his only option. Who else would pay him?

If he thinks I will supply him with a confession to offer a Judge, he is certifiable. I can play the amnesia game longer than anybody I know. I will completely break before I talk.

It had been just a year since the day the body of her husband, John, had been laid to rest.

Ellen stirred her coffee, round and round, though the sugar had long since dissolved. The bright sun warmed the streets. The neighborhood overflowed with laughter from all ages as smells of classic 4th of July foods emanated from the backyard grills. This time to celebrate freedom, Independence Day, meant more to her now than it ever had in the past.

Ellen counted down to the last of the counseling sessions.

She wisely decided to wait this year out. Next year, she told herself, next year may be more acceptable to join such gleeful events.

It seemed a lifetime ago, more than the 12 months it had been, that Ellen had sat in her home, drapes drawn, crumpled in a heap with an icepack on her temple. John raged. He didn’t believe there was a baby. If there was, it certainly was not his. His unfounded paranoia worked overtime. With crazed eyes, he tossed Ellen like a rag doll. His fists and knees targeted the evil in her womb.

When the blood streamed down her thighs, mingled with her river of tears, he stopped.

Satisfied that he had done right by the world, he cracked open a beer and sat in his recliner.

Once assured that her ribs weren’t broken, she gingerly tiptoed around him to straighten up the pictures on the side table. She angled them at 45 degrees just as he liked.

Perfectly aligned.

Avoiding his wrath was second nature, and she was oblivious to the absurdity of turning the oven dial to preheat it. He expected his dinner served every night at 7 sharp.

This night would be no different.

They ate in silence.

Sounds drifted in from the post parade revelers which had an eerie effect.

He took her roughly that night, unaware and uncaring that her broken body already had enough abuse. She was a vessel for him, no more, no less. He rolled his sweaty body off of her and made the first eye contact in hours. One tear had escaped from her, and as it rolled down her cheek, he laughed.

He laughed.

The fireworks came in a flurry and lit up the sky in all their splendor.

Ellen sat in the darkness of the corner and watched John snore in contentment.

The Grand Finale of the Fireworks Display that year had an extra blast that only Ellen knew.

And John.

John knew as he took his last breath.

The coroner said suicide was indeed likely, but he could not attest with 100% accuracy. It was the trajectory that was questionable. Fingerprints were confirmed, as well as the proximity of the weapon.

It was the angle that left questions.

The arresting officer, Calvin Mahaffey, was focused on breaking the wall of silence Ellen maintained. He wanted to be in the good graces of the District Attorney. Actually, he desired the D.A.’s bed and needed to shine to curry her favor. This 1st degree, or even 2nd degree, murder case would put a feather in his cap and his watch on her nightstand.

Without a confession, he had no shot, and they would not proceed with charges.

As the D.A., however, Margaret recognized Ellen from a mile away. All the classic signs of living under the thumb of a monster were silently screaming from every pore. Ellen had years of honing her well-rehearsed exterior, but Margaret saw the cracks. She knew that Ellen may or may not have pulled the trigger.

Her gut instinct was to favor old world justice. An eye for an eye.

Margaret had been protecting the broken, all of the underdogs, for years. She fought her way up the ladder to earn the position within the legal system to better help the women who suffered. Women just like her sister, but different, because they would live to tell about it.

Margaret would ensure that.

Ellen and her situation would be added to her personal achievement list.

As the authority, the D.A. requested a complete analysis. If Ellen was psychologically and medically cleared, the investigation would be closed with satisfaction.

It was at the final appointment, that Dr. Heart strutted into his office with purpose. He had a clear agenda. Making no bones about it, he told Ellen her fate was in his hands. He didn’t care if Ellen killed John or not.

He wanted one thing. It was rumored that he had a history of blackmailing other court-appointed patients. She was not his first.

His verbal assault fired from all directions. He hissed, You will never survive in prison. You will make the best use of our final hour if you want me to write off favorably on your mental capacity.

And, he laughed.

He groped at her breasts with ineptness, clumsily pawed at her clothes with a self-serving mission, as he uttered Whore. John’s face flashed in front of her, jeering and smugly laughing at her. The rage swelled. Jackie boy bent her over the desk with her face smashed into the metal top.

I. Had. No. Choice.

Her mind took her to places far from there. She had mapped out her future to visit all the countries she had always wanted to taste. Foreign cultures, flavors, and colors of lives she had yet to discover were teasing her. She was so close, so very close, to closing this chapter of ugliness.

Freedom.

Right around the corner.

When she felt his body start to quiver and spasm, she held on. Spinning with animalistic force, she saw her hand holding the #2 pencil.

And then, she ran.

All of her hard work, thrown away in a matter of minutes.

Swirling, falling, floating. The world was spinning, and the stars were flashing.

Stop the lights.

Make them stop.

The coolness of her tile offered comfort to her cheek. A wrinkled hand with spindly fingers stretched past her face and grabbed the lip pencil. Was that her hand? She watched from afar as a scrawled and bloody dark red H E L P appeared on the tile floor.

In the distance, she heard her phone ringing. Ringing and ringing until it stopped.

She peeled herself off of the floor and crawled to the phone. The blinking haunted her.

She knew she had thrown her life of freedom away.

The message echoed.

“Hi, Ellen, this is the District Attorney, Margaret, calling with an update.”

Your case has been closed effective immediately, no charges will be forthcoming, and I wanted to congratulate you. Unfortunately, Dr. Heart had a tragic incident in which he fell. A freak accident occurred, and a pencil went through his eye and pierced his brain.

We could not find any assessment to indicate continued care was warranted for you and assume he had no recommendation for further analysis.

Be well, Ellen, be well.

Like a zombie, Ellen saw herself getting in the scalding shower. She scrubbed every inch of her skin until it was raw. This time, her pain had a soothing and therapeutic effect.

As she gently dried her tender shell, she realized she was breathing. Her steely resolve was building.

Hope.

The long-lost friend, hope, was creeping back into her life.

She sat at her vanity table and methodically started cutting. Satisfied with seeing the heaping pile of her long tresses, she ran her fingers across her scalp.

Free.

So very free.

Hope.

She opened her map full of her dreams, her future, and spread it across the counter. It was time, her time.

She picked up the phone and dialed.

“Liberty International Travel Agency. How may we help you?”

An unmarked police car pulled into her driveway. Officer Calvin Mahaffey looked up at her home, caught her eye peering from the window, and laughed.

He laughed.