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The lights of the vehicle shone in the night, the eyes of a beast in darkness – the eyes of a starved dog, blank and sightless, milky-filmed, casting pale, fireless beams into the swallowing night, death-lamps dying – the emaciated cur with its metallic hide crawling from town to town, racing around itself, moving in circles blindly, aimlessly as though rabid, foam-mouthed, waiting for death – running from itself until the inevitable end.
The driver within – as emaciated – her dark hair hanging lankly – exhausted from driving nights, running from herself – with nothing, no one for company, save –
“You know, you really should hate me, B.”
Ginger sneered, spectral, in the sun visor mirror.
“Who says I don’t?”
Brigitte’s eyes moved from the mirror to the image of Ginger impaled on the white picket fence, tacked to the visor.
“Who says I don’t keep this picture up here to remind me of skewering you?”
“You do. I’m you, remember?”
You wrecked everything for me that wasn’t about you. Now I am you.
Ginger read her thoughts and smiled. “Now, you have the edge on me.”
Brigitte stared out into the black void devouring them, thinking. “You… ruined me,” she finally whispered.
A playful glint in those dead eyes.
“I should have ruined you.”
Ginger leaned over, in the front seat now, and mockingly kissed her cheek.
“Stop it.”
Brigitte was alone.
The highway stretched on into darkness.
She knew she should hate her.
“I don’t hate you, Ginger.”
She said it aloud, knowing Ginger was under her skin, in her skin, in every pore of her.
“Then you’re a fool.”
Ginger’s voice, disembodied, drifted through the dingy motel room, mingled with the smoke and night air wafting in at the window, sickly under yellowed lamplight. The room was dark, with a musty carpet and squalid gloom – so, more of the same. Brigitte had known reeking rooms just like this one since beginning her journey into nowhere.
Ginger congealed.
“You keep those pictures taped to the walls – newspaper clippings, Polaroids – of us. You know that’s not us, know that’s not me. I was never anything but bad for you.”
“That’s… not true…”
“You’re so fucking pathetic. Us is me sinking my claws into your stomach so you bleed so much you can’t move without me to drag you, making you moan in pain, wishing I could make you moan in other ways…”
Stop it. “You’re pathetic!”
“Were pathetic, B. You saw to that.”
“No, you saw to it. You were the fucking fool. Why didn’t you listen to me? Why didn’t you trust me? I wanted to get us out, I was trying to get us out. I was begging you…”
“And if you got us out, what then? What happened when, in the dead of night, my fingers started fumbling at your waistband?”
Stop it.
“Or have you convinced yourself that was the wolf? Convinced yourself that one little stab with a needle and you wouldn’t have to worry about me breathing down your neck again? How’s that stuff working for you? Is that why you keep the photos? Not because you want me, but because you want an image of me, a lie, fucking nostalgia bullshit in pretty little pictures?”
“I miss you!”
“You were smarter when you were angrier, you feeb. When you were screaming at me, tearing me to pieces for destroying your life. Now, you’re going all mushy on me. ‘I miss you’? Oh, boo-hoo!”
“Why are you like this?! Why do you want me to hate you?!”
“Why do you not?! Why are you so scared of showing me your teeth?! Scared if you bare them, that’s the wolf? Well, I have news for you, B. When you cut me down to size the last time, it saved your skin, and it wasn’t the wolf, it was you. I liked you with your fangs bared.”
I killed you…
“Just like when I watched you outside the bathroom door, greedily, hungrily, aching for a taste of you, that wasn’t the wolf, it was me.”
Stopitstopitstopitstopit.
“And when I buried my fingers inside of myself, drawing them forth to taste myself while thinking of you, that wasn’t the wolf. It was me.”
STOP IT!
“You’ve always been what you are, just like I’ve always been what I am – and you’ve been beaten, starved, kicked to the ground, and who’s to blame for that? Me. Me. So, I ask you again, you fucking feeb, why. do you still. miss me?”
It was as if she expected Brigitte to lunge and throw her to the ground, broken down finally after tirade upon tirade, screaming as she smashed her sister’s face with her fists over and over, “Because you made me miss you.” – the white flesh splintering, the white bone protruding – “Made yourself my world, cut out any other world that wasn’t you.” – the red blood pluming, tearing chunks of Ginger’s cheeks with gore-stained nails, Ginger laughing, nose a crater, face a death’s head – “And now you’re mad I miss you? Fuck off. Fuck off!”
Brigitte saw Ginger sprawled beneath her in premonition of the explosion, hair flowing around her like the hauntingly preserved hair of a mummy in a peat bog she had seen in a book once upon a time… but she did not lunge… she did not strike. All she said was, “Because… I love you…”
Not, Because I loved you.
Because I love you.
Ginger laughed, her face latticed with blood, blood shining on her teeth, and Brigitte got the sense that she was laughing bitterly at herself and not at her – for Ginger, after all, had been (how to say it? it was still hard for Brigitte to stomach giving it words) unlucky in love. “Strange, what love does, isn’t it?”
Brigitte felt a sickened pity for the apparition on the floor, a pity she knew that apparition would revile. But she could not help herself from feeling it, even as she knew Ginger would eviscerate her for it – Ginger, an apparition of the mind – her mind – telling her common sense because she knew what Ginger had done to her, what Ginger had brought her to – an apparition unlacquered by any vestige to which Brigitte might want to cling, but one that she could still not bring herself to hate. She didn’t know if the self-hatred she sensed in Ginger’s words was of Ginger or of herself – if she was projecting that self-hatred because she needed some sense of guilt in Ginger, some sense of regret – or if it was because of her own guilt, her own regret, her own disgust that she could still love… Ginger…
The word love had so many shadows now, like the corners and crevices of this desolate room, of her mind, and for the first time, Brigitte worked up the courage to ask:
“Ginge?”
The softness of her voice was almost drowned by the echo of Ginger’s laughter – hollow, gurgling, rasping on blood.
“How… how long did you…” …want me? (…love me?)
“How long do you think?”
That wasn’t an answer. Was it a taunt? Or was it a void? Ginger wasn’t Ginger, Ginger was her, and there was so much that she did not know, so much she would never know, and she hated Ginger – you abandoned me – I killed you – you left me here alone – you fucking idiot – why didn’t you see what I was doing, doing for us? – did you ever love me at all? (always) – or did you just see me as a thing that was yours? – no, I remember us, us was never a lie (was never a lie) – how long were you hurting, how long were you crying out for help? – did you even want help or did you just want… me? – you ABANDONED me – I killed you – I’m so fucking sorry – I’m sorry – and now you’re saying I’m better off without you and maybe I am but I’m not, you’re not – why didn’t you listen to me? I was trying to get us out – I was trying to get us out – where’s your apology to me? – you can’t give it because I killed you – would you ever give it? – were you suffering even before the end? – you were suffering even before the end – you fucking fool, I loved you – did I love you the way you loved me? – do I love you the way you loved me? – hated Ginger for leaving her and hated her for never letting her go.
Ginger was gone. The sallow light outside the window hung about the place where she had lain, but no blood pooled upon the spot – only shadows, black as blood…
“Still miss me, B? Still love me?”
Ginger’s voice lingered in Brigitte’s bones.
Brigitte sat alone in darkness and wished the answer on her lips wasn’t, “Yes.”