Liana

 

 

 

This has been the worst week of my life. You may think I am exaggerating, but I am not.

Everything went to shit this week. That is the plain and simple truth.

It’s 10 p.m. on a Friday night, and I’m sitting at the bar of a rundown neighborhood joint, sipping on a cheap bourbon and feeling sorry for myself. I hate bourbon, I’ve never been to this place before and I’m comically overdressed. I bet half of the slobs here think I am a hooker, because I look so out of place.

I don’t even know where I am. I have never been in this area of the city before. I just ended up in this place after wandering the streets for hours, lost in thought and unwilling to go back to my empty house. Walking keeps me in balance, it always has. It’s as if the dark thoughts can’t catch me as long as I just keep moving, walking. I don’t want to go home and face the horrors of this past week.

Faced with the prospect of spending the weekend in my empty place, I had started walking as soon as I left the office, but quickly realized that my heels are not meant for this. I couldn’t take them off because it’s too cold, so I just stumbled into the first bar I came to, which was this little shit hole. I’ve been dwelling in my pain for the past hour, staring at nothing and drinking this God-awful bourbon, afraid to go home.

It’s pathetic, I know, but so appropriate, considering the turn my life has taken.

I’m not saying my life was glorious before. No, it definitely wasn’t. But I had been content and felt no need to change anything. First of all, I had a job. Nothing special. I wasn’t changing the world or anything, but it paid the bills and I enjoyed it. I worked at the university as the secretary to a muddle-headed professor. He may have been brilliant in his field, but he was unable to master simpler things, such as responding to emails, creating PowerPoint presentations, and searching the university’s intranet.

Professor Miller appreciated my work. He was the nicest man I’ve ever met, always greeting me with a smile, and he was so easy to impress with simple things that come easy to any millennial. He was an older gentleman with very polite manners, who thanked me profusely for every little thing I did. Working for him was easy, it was predictable. My job with him was the safe constant I needed in my life.

And now it’s gone.

He’s gone.

Professor Miller died in an accident, hit by a passing car as he was crossing the street, lost in his own world and not paying attention. When he died, my job died, as well. Losing him was more than just a pay-the-bills job-related tragedy: I lost my safe and secure haven, the calm and reliable constant in my life that kept me sane after kicking Luke out of my life.

Luke. My ex-boyfriend. The son of a bitch who had the audacity to fuck another girl in our bed, and on our sheets, when he thought I was out of town. Yes, he really was that stupid. Or maybe I’m the stupid one for trusting him, considering he was always so insecure. Maybe that should have clued me in that maybe he was the problem?

I will never forget the expression on his face when I walked through the door. I had arrived back home a day early, because I couldn’t stand another minute with my relatives who I had been visiting. I wanted to surprise him, bearing those dumb chocolates he likes, ready to make up from another awful fight we had had the day before I left.

I did surprise him, but not in the way I imagined.

I caught him in the act, yet he was the one who’d accused me time and again of cheating, because of my “sick” needs, as he put it. He never understood me. He lacked the decency to even listen to me when I tried to talk with him about it. Every time I summoned the courage to talk about my deepest desires, he looked at me with that appalled and disgusted look on his face and told me that I needed therapy. As if I wasn’t feeling weird enough about it already.

I should have known that we weren’t meant to be together, but still I clung on, hoping that eventually things would work out. I couldn’t let go of him, or rather, I couldn’t let go of the idea of us together. In a way, I should be grateful that this happened. Finding him screwing another girl was just the kick I needed to finally free myself of him.

My week started by throwing Luke out of the apartment that we’ve been living in together for more than nine months - and my week ended with me losing my job when my boss was killed. Everything happened so fast, one atrocious thing after another. I caught Luke on Sunday, threw him out on Monday, Professor Miller was hit by a car on Wednesday and died on Thursday, and today I was told that I will no longer be needed once the professor’s office is cleaned out.

Everybody was visibly upset about Professor Miller’s death—his colleagues, the assistants, the students—but they all treated me like I was a machine, as if I wouldn’t mourn his death just as much as they did. After all, I’m just a secretary, not his academic equal, and I wouldn’t be someone who had any close ties to him - or so they think. While others cried, walked around in shock, and consoled one another, I was bombarded with things that had to be organized and done. The cherry on top was when I was called into the Dean’s office and advised that because the funding for my position was tied directly to his teaching position – and since the position wouldn’t be filled until a national search was conducted and it could take up to a year – my secretarial position was no longer needed. Seriously?

So here I am. Drinking shitty bourbon in a shitty bar. All by myself. Drowning in self-pity at the mess that is my life.

It doesn’t help that this woman is sitting across from me. That damn Barbie doll with her ridiculous bright red fur coat. It’s so hideous-looking, but it’s a perfect match for its owner. She looks just like the girl I caught Luke with. A dumb blonde, with fake lashes, fake nails, fake tits, fake everything. Her fat lips are painted in a ridiculously bright hooker red that matches her ugly fur coat. I bet she really is a hooker. She’s by herself, sipping on a bourbon just like I am, and constantly checking the time and watching the door of the bar. She’s probably waiting for a john.

I was already here when she walked in, and she caught my attention from the start, not only because of that hideous coat and her resemblance to that other bitch, but because she was wearing a black mask when she came in. It was covering up most of her face. As soon as she sat down, she took it off and placed it on the counter right next to her drink.

She makes me furious. Women like her make me furious. I watch her as she sips on her drink, leaving red lipstick marks on the glass, and constantly shifting her attention between checking her phone and staring at her manicured nails coated in blood red. She has what many men would consider to be the perfect body and a beautiful face—as far as I can tell with all that glob she has plastered on it—but her entire get-up and attitude screams total lack of respect—for herself and anyone else.

She’s the kind of woman who destroys—destroys families, destroys reputations, destroys hopes and dreams—and betrays everything that’s honorable.

I don’t know if it’s the effects of the cheap bourbon, the general misery streaming through my veins from my fucked-up life, or the hatred this woman provokes in me by triggering the memory about Luke, but when Barbie doll gets down from her high chair to head for the restroom, I find myself getting up from my seat, as well.

I want to hurt her. I want to share my fucking misery with her, even if it’s only through a small and simple act. My body is moving all on its own, driven by blind and rabid fury, as I walk over to take that hideous red fur coat from the back of her empty chair and walk away with it, out the door, and into the dark night.