Hell Within -- Chapter Two: The Bastard -- Scenes 4&5

-4-

Fifteen minutes down the road a car that had been parked on the side of the road swerved in behind Mandy. Then came the blue strobe lights.

"Perfect," she screamed, peering into the rearview mirror.

She pulled the Escort station wagon up on the curb, and the cruiser followed suit.

Mandy looked up in the rearview again, this time at herself. Last night’s mascara circled her eyes and her lips were blood red and swollen to twice their normal size.

"Oh god."

She flipped open the glove box and took out a Kleenex licked it and wiped her eyes.

Then the officer tapped at the window.

She rolled down the window and propped her elbow on the side of the door and covered her mouth with her left hand.

"I need a license and proof of insurance, please."

"Oh," she said. And she opened her purse with her free hand, pulled her entire wallet out and handed it to him.

"Can you take them out of the wallet please?"

She unsnapped the clasp on her brown wallet with trembling fingers taking care to hide her swollen lip with the other hand, and fished around inside until she found her license and insurance, and then she handed them to the officer.

The deputy-sheriff looked at her license and then back at her.

"Could you move your hand please?"

She dropped her hand away from her face.

The cop frowned.

"What happened to your lip?"

She looked out the windshield.

"I’m stupid."

"Oh yeah?"

He stared at her a moment longer.

She turned her palms up. The deputy’s eyes found the finger-splints on her right hand.

"What’s going on?"

"I’m just clumsy."

He gave her a suspicious look.

"Are you physically okay?"

She nodded, and attempted to smile but the pain was too much.

The deputy waited a moment longer, and then he nodded and walked back to his cruiser.

Mandy leaned forward and pressed her forehead against the steering wheel.

In a moment, the deputy returned, and she sat up straight.

"Ms. Green, do you know why I pulled you over?"

"I was probably speeding."

"The speed limit is 35 you were doin 68. You know I could lock you up for that?"

She looked straight at him for the first time.

"I’m sorry."

He studied her ruined face with strained eyes.

"I say this because it needs to be said. If you’re upset there’s plenty of better places to be than on the road -- like down at the station swearin out a warrant for whoever is responsible for the lip and the hand."

She looked away from him again.

"I’m lettin you off with a warnin this time. Don’t do it again."

She nodded, and he tore off the warning on his clipboard.
"I wrote the number for a detective who specializes in domestic abuse in case you change your mind."

-5-

Mandy stood at the foot of the wooden porch staring at the dark door of the trailer as though the boogey man lay beyond.

She’d driven around for hours, watching day gradually turn to night searching for a viable alternative to returning home.
Dr. Ambrose was right.

Her part-time job at Dairy Queen would not support her. She’d have to quit school, and to do that would be to ensure that acts two and three of her life would be more miserable than first.

Catch 22.

It was after one in the morning now.

She felt as though she was the only person awake for miles.

That was just as well.

She had no desire to run into Davy.

She took a deep breath, and then slipped the Keds off her feet, and then she slipped her key into the deadbolt slowly, easing back the lock so that it wouldn’t clack.

Then she pushed the door open, slipped inside, and eased it shut.

The lamp by the sofa clicked on.

Her mother, still wearing her Citgo smock sat before the coffee table looking tired, and Davy -- his shirt off and his tattoos screaming glared back at her.

"Where you been?"

Mandy touched her swollen lip and looked down at her bare feet.

"Answer me!"

She shook her head. "Just riding around."

He stared at her for a moment that seemed like an eternity, and then he shook his head with foreboding.

"I thought I told you to keep your goddamn mouth shut!"

She looked away from him at the kitchen table beyond the sofa.

He stepped toward her. She cringed and looked at her mother. And every muscle in her mother’s body tensed.

Davy grabbed a handful of the hair on the back of her head and pulled her toward him.

"Don’t you fuckin’ look at her! This’s between you and me."

"What’s your problem?" Mandy snapped.

He belted her across the face, and she fell straight down into the shag carpet. The nerves in her jaw burned white-hot.

Her mother gasped and stood.

"Davy?"

But he threw up a warning hand without even looking at her, and the tenor of the gesture broke her mother’s sentence as cleanly as if someone had pulled a needle off a record.

He flashed a sardonic grin at Mandy. "I’ve got friends in places you ain’t never heard of. You cain’t take a shit without me knowin."

He kicked her in the ribs, but she scarcely felt anything now.

"Thought you’d be slick and talk to the cops?"

"I didn’t. . . ."

"Shut the fuck up!"

He kicked her in the mouth until she buried her head in the carpet, and then he stomped on her head. She folded her arms over the back of her head, but he kept stomping.

Then her mother yanked him off her. He grunted and shoved her mother backwards into her chair nearly toppling her.

Her mother stared back at Davy with fear, and then Davy glanced at Mandy and back to her mother, shook his head, and stomped back into Mandy’s bedroom.

Mandy gazed at her mother, barely aware that she was doing so. Her mother frowned.

"Why did you have to provoke him?"

But the words her mother spoke might as well have been a foreign language.

In a moment, Davy stomped back in the den and threw a suitcase with articles of clothing hanging out of it at Mandy. It thumped against her back and popped open spreading her clothes all around her.

"Get the fuck out of this house, and don’t come back, and if I so much as have a bad dream about you talkin to the cops again, I’ll kill you."

She gazed at him. She had the feeling that there was something she should do now, but she hadn’t the slightest idea what.

"Get the fuck out!" the man screamed.

She did nothing. She had no strength.

The man started after her. She shrank away.

The woman sitting in the chair jumped up and joined her on the floor and helped her gather her clothes and put them back in the suitcase. This seemed to satisfy the angry man who turned and marched back into a room and slammed the door.

(Continue to "The Bastard" scenes 6-7)