Herring

Bloody Nose

Blood. Real blood. From her perfect, punchable face. It dripped down her chin and splattered onto the tile in these fat, theatrical drops that seemed to echo in the silence. Daisy's hands flew to her nose. She pulled them away. Red. Bright f*****g red. The kind of red that says you did that, you absolute f*****g lunatic, and now everyone saw it.

Silence. The kind of silence that happens right before everything goes to s**t.

I looked at my knuckles. My knuckles looked back. They were bleeding too. Some of it hers. Some of it mine. The ring—Varietta's ring, my ring, whatever the f**k it was—had a smear of red across the opal that made the pink kaleidoscope look almost hungry.

Oh s**t.

Oh f**k.

Oh I am so profoundly, irreversibly, cosmically f****d.

Daisy's head snapped back down. Her eyes found mine. And there it was—not pain, not shock, not even anger. Fury. Pure, distilled, I'm going to f*****g end you fury. She came at me like a freight train with a grudge.

Daisy: "You f*****g b***h—"

Her hands were reaching for my throat. Her nails—long, manicured, probably cost more than my rent—were aimed at my eyes. The crowd gasped. Someone screamed. A phone came out. Then another. Then ten more. Of course. Of f*****g course. My humiliation needed documentation.

But something happened.

Not in my brain. My brain was empty. A void. A static white nothing where thoughts used to live. This was deeper. Older. The part of me that had sunk into cold water and decided, with every cell in my broken body, that I would not die. That part woke up.

Strength filled my hand. Not metaphorically. Not poetically. Actually. A hot, electric surge that started in my chest and shot down my arm and exploded into my fist. Adrenaline, maybe. Fight or flight, probably. My battered body finally choosing fight after a lifetime of flight and freeze and please don't hurt me.

Or maybe it was something else.

I punched her again.

Harder. Much f*****g harder. My fist connected with her cheekbone and I felt something give—not in my hand, in her face—and the ring, the beautiful f*****g ring, caught the light as it tore a gash from her cheek to her jaw. Not a scratch. A gash. Blood welled immediately, dark and thick, running down her face like she was crying red.

Daisy screamed. Not the wounded seagull from before. A real scream. The kind that comes from somewhere primal.

I didn't stop.

Again.

My fist hit her mouth. Her lip split. More blood. It sprayed across my shirt, joining the latte and the pink fruity bullshit in a masterpiece of violence and dairy.

Again.

Her nose. Already bleeding. Now crushed. The sound was wet. Crunchy. Wrong. I loved it. I f*****g loved it.

AGAIN.

She was falling. I was still swinging. My brain wasn't driving anymore. Something else was. Something with teeth. Something that had been drowning for nineteen years and had finally, finally decided to breathe.

Deia: "YOU f*****g CUNT! YOU SPAT ON ME! YOU POURED YOUR SHITTY OVERPRICED DRINK ON MY HEAD! YOU TOLD ME I LOOKED BETTER DROWNING! HOW DO I LOOK NOW, HUH?! HOW DO I f*****g LOOK NOW?!"

I don't remember saying it. The words just came. Out of my mouth, out of my chest, out of whatever black and ancient thing had taken up residence behind my ribs.

Then the others came.

Decorative Girl first. Her manicured claws raked across my cheek. Satellite One grabbed my hair and yanked. My head snapped back. My scalp screamed. Satellite Two kicked the back of my knee and I went down—not all the way, just staggered—and then Daisy, bleeding Daisy, furious Daisy, ruined Daisy, drove her fist into my already-fractured ribs.

The pain was white. Total. A flash of nothing but hurt that erased every other thought.

I didn't stop.

I couldn't stop.

I swung at Decorative Girl. Connected. Her nose crunched under my knuckles—different sound, same satisfaction—and she staggered back, blood pouring down her expensive top. Satellite One got my elbow in her throat. She gagged. Choked. Let go of my hair. Satellite Two I kicked—my bad ankle screaming, I didn't care, f**k the ankle—and caught her in the stomach. She doubled over.

Four of them. One of me. And I was winning.

For about six seconds.

Then they overwhelmed me.

A fist in my kidney. A knee in my spine. Someone's foot connecting with my already-f****d ankle. I went down. Hard. The tile rushed up to meet me and I tasted blood—my own this time—as my lip split against the floor.

They didn't stop.

Kicks. Punches. Stomps. I curled into a ball—arms over my head, knees to my chest, the universal posture of please don't kill me—and they just kept coming. My ribs. My back. My legs. My arms. Every part of me that had already been broken was being broken again.

Think. Think. THINK.

Nothing. Just pain. Just the wet sound of shoes hitting flesh. Just Daisy's voice somewhere above me, screaming "You ruined my FACE you f*****g psycho!"

My eyes found a gap. An ankle. Decorative Girl's ankle, right next to my face. She was wearing these stupid little ballet flats. Her skin was bare.

I bit her.

Not a nibble. Not a warning. I bit her like an animal. My teeth sank into the flesh above her heel and I clamped down until I felt something give, until blood—her blood, not mine—filled my mouth.

She screamed. Tried to pull away. I held on. Bit harder.

Then the beating got worse.

"Get her OFF me! GET HER OFF!"

A foot connected with my jaw. My head snapped sideways. My bite released. The world went fuzzy at the edges. Another kick to my ribs. Another to my back. Another and another and another. I stopped counting. I stopped feeling individual impacts. It was just pain. A sea of it. And I was drowning again.

The crowd watched. Of course they watched. Phones out. Mouths open. Some of them were probably live-streaming. Local bridge girl gets beaten to pulp in campus bathroom, more at eleven.

I don't know how long it lasted. Minutes. Hours. Years. Time doesn't move right when you're being kicked to death on a bathroom floor.

Eventually, they stopped.

Not because someone intervened. No one intervened. No one ever f*****g intervenes. They stopped because they were tired. Because hitting someone who's already curled into a fetal position stops being fun after a while. Even for monsters.

Daisy's voice, somewhere above me: "Pathetic. Don't ever f*****g look at me again."

Then the spit. A wet glob landing on my already-bloody cheek. I didn't flinch. I didn't have the energy.

Footsteps. Retreating. The bathroom door swinging shut.

Silence.

I lay there. Curled. Broken. Bleeding from places I couldn't count. The tile was cold. The blood—mine, theirs, I didn't know anymore—was sticky beneath me. The fluorescent lights hummed their indifferent hum.

Get up.

I didn't move.

Get the f**k up.

I couldn't.

You survived the water. You survived Varietta. You survived the alley. You can survive a bathroom floor.

One by one, the crowd dispersed. Some scoffed. Some looked at me with something that might have been pity. No one approached. No one helped. No one called anyone. They just... left. Like I was a piece of furniture they'd walked past a thousand times and never really seen.

I don't know how long I lay there. Long enough for the blood to start drying. Long enough for the pain to settle from screaming to moaning. Long enough to remember that I was still alive, and being alive meant eventually getting up.

I got up.

Slowly. Agonizingly. Every movement a negotiation with a body that wanted to quit. I used the sink to pull myself upright. My reflection in the mirror was a horror show. Blood. Bruises already forming. One eye swelling shut. Lip split in two places. Cheek scratched from Decorative Girl's claws. I should really find out her a name so I can give her a more fitting insult. Hair a matted mess of pink drink and latte and blood.

I look how I feel. Which is f*****g terrible.

I cleaned up. Not well. Just enough. Splashed water on my face. The blood ran pink down the drain. Pressed paper towels to the worst cuts. Avoided my own eyes in the mirror.

Didn't think. Couldn't think. Thinking was a luxury for people who hadn't just been beaten half to death on a bathroom floor.

Home.

I don't remember the walk. I was there, and then I was here. The door was locked. I unlocked it. Aldy was on the windowsill. The floor was cold. I sat on it. My floor. My beautiful, correctly-textured floor.

And I cried.

Not the calculated tears from the alley. Not the exhausted tears from the bunker night. These were ruined tears. Animal tears. The kind of crying that doesn't have words, just sound—raw, ugly, keening sound that came from somewhere deeper than sadness. From the place where hope used to live before it was evicted.

I cried for my body, which had been broken and broken and broken again. For my face, which would never look the same. For the girl in the mirror who I didn't recognize anymore. For the ring on my finger that might have made me punch harder than I should have been able to. For whatever was happening to me—whatever had been happening since the bridge, since the water, since I decided not to die.

What the f**k am I becoming.

Work. I had work. Minimal shift. Four hours. Barely worth the bus fare. I considered skipping. I considered quitting. I considered crawling into bed and never getting up again.

Then I remembered rent.

Five hundred dollars. Thirty days. You'll know where.

I screamed. Into my hands. Into the floor. Into the void that didn't care. The sound was ragged and broken and tasted like blood.

Deia: "f**k! f**k THIS f*****g LIFE! f**k THE RENT! f**k DAISY! f**k DECORATIVE WHATEVER-HER-f*****g-NAME-IS! f**k THIS BODY! f**k THESE BRUISES! f**k EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO WATCHED AND DID NOTHING! f**k!"

I went to work.

The shift passed in a blur of pain and fluorescent lights. My body screamed through every minute. My face drew stares I couldn't avoid. Denise asked what happened. I said I fell. She didn't believe me. She didn't press. Good. f**k her. f**k her concern. f**k everything.

I went home. I lay on my floor. I cried until there was nothing left. Then I slept.

Waking up was a new kind of hell. Every muscle had stiffened overnight. My face was a roadmap of purple and black. My ribs were a symphony of f**k you. My ankle had given up entirely.

I lay there. Staring at the crack in the ceiling.

I'm not going to school.

Not today. Not tomorrow. Not for a while.

I can't. I f*****g can't.

I closed my eyes. The ring was warm on my finger. Pink and gold and green. Beautiful. Terrible. Mine.

Three days. Midnight. You'll know where.

Yeah. I'll know where.