Chapter twenty-four:

 

 

She’s out cold, again, and I feel like total shit.

I obviously didn’t mean to hurt her.

But I can’t deny she didn’t deserve it.

I find a pair of socks in a forgotten laundry pile by the window, and I screw one of them up and shove it in her slack mouth in case she wakes up and freaks out. I don’t want her screaming for help, only to realize it’s me, and then feel stupid.

See? I’m a thoughtful man, Carrie. Even now, after everything you’ve done, I’m thinking about your feelings, not my own.

I go to the kitchen and turn the faucet on, and then I let the water run over my bloody arm. It hurts and I grit my teeth against the pain. At least it’s not your stomach, Ethan, I think. Now that would have been a lot worse. And I’m grateful for that small thing, at least.

I grab the bloody dishtowel and wrap it back around my hand. I search all of her cupboards three times over but can’t find any Band-Aids or bandages or painkillers. And I think, come on, Carrie, what the hell is wrong with you? Everyone has fucking Band-Aids!

But apparently not Carrie, because she’s a useless whore.

I take a steady breath and apologize to her, even though she can’t hear me, because that wasn’t a nice thing to think. Even if it is true.

And I am starting to believe that it’s true. She is useless. She is dirty and untidy, she has terrible taste in men, terrible taste in décor. She doesn’t even own a first-aid kit. Her cupboards have hardly any food in them, and her coffee is shit.

I swallow down my anger, because I really do feel very angry now. Thoughts of all the things Carrie is doing wrong, and has done wrong, are surfacing, and those thoughts make me mad because she shouldn’t be like that. She should be like the version of her that I’ve had in my head for the past twenty years.

She is almost perfect in my head.

But, I sigh, in real life she is far from it.

I go back to the living room and check on her. I’ve tied her back up. And I didn’t like doing it, but I can’t risk her doing that again. She’s a danger to me and herself. It’s just how she’s always been. She was always a ticking time-bomb. That’s how Mom described it.

‘It’s only a matter of time,’ she said so many times to me.

I didn’t understand at the time, but I do now.

I get it now.

You’re a ticking time-bomb, Carrie, I think. You’re dangerous.

I look at my hand, the blood starting to seep through the dishtowel already, and I shake my head. Now I have no choice but to go out. To leave her here all alone.

I swipe my arm across the filthy kitchen surface, swiping her mail and old newspapers onto the floor.

And then I feel bad again. Not that I should feel bad, because she stabbed me, not the other way around.

She fucking stabbed me!

Anger spreads through my insides and my vision turns red. I’m shaking with the anger, with the need to lose control. I don’t like the feeling. And I hate the fact that Carrie has made me feel this way.

I close my eyes and begin to slowly count to ten like I was taught.

One African Elephant Walking Very Nicely. Two Australian Coyotes Prowling Through The Night. Three Jungle Cats Slinking Through The Dark. Four Busy Beavers Building Their…

The anger subsides and I feel more in control. The red rage slinks away like the jungle cats and I can breathe again.

“Okay, think, Ethan. Think,” I say to myself.

Carrie is knocked out. She’s tied up. What trouble can she get in? I decide. I check the time on my watch. It’s early, eight thirty. Stores will be opening now. A pharmacy will be around here somewhere.

I find her purse by the front door and look inside. There’s a set of keys with a troll keyring attached to it. It has green hair. It’s an ugly keyring and I wonder why the hell she has it on her keys, but whatever.

I try the keys in the front door, and they work. I check her purse and see she has a lot of cash inside it. I’m going to borrow some of it, because I used all my cash on the fucking cab ride here, and well, this is all her fault anyway so she should pay to fix it.

I check on her one more time and then I close the living room door behind me, and I go to the front door and then I realize that I’m still only wearing a damn towel, and that’s covered in my own blood! Gross.

What are you doing, Ethan? I think with a maniacal laugh. Put some fucking clothes on!

I go back through to the kitchen and I check the dryer, and our clothes are mostly dry. They could do with another twenty minutes if I’m being totally truthful, but I don’t have time. So I take my clothes out and I pull on my slightly damp jeans and my T-shirt and my hoodie and I shudder at the feel of them. Then I go back to the front door and I get Carries house keys and shove them in my pocket. When I do, I feel my apartment keys and Charlie’s keys are in there. I’d forgotten about them. There really isn’t enough room for three sets of keys in my pocket, so I take Charlie’s out and put them on the small shelf with the wooden elephant statue on it by the door. Then I leave Carrie’s house, locking the door behind me.

The day is sunnier than yesterday. The clouds are gone, hiding somewhere new. The air is chilly, but that could be because my clothes are still damp, of course.

I stand on the leaves that have fallen from the trees. They don’t crunch because they’re still damp from yesterday’s rain. And that sucks, because there’s nothing more satisfying than standing on crunchy leaves. Watching their beauty obliterate underfoot.

I’m walking down the street, passing the other houses, listening to the happy voices coming from within. And I’m smelling Carrie all over my body and trying not to bleed to death. But it all feels okay, even bleeding to death, because I’m surrounded by Carrie. She’s on me, she’s in me, and I forgive her for stabbing me.

She’s in a lot of pain, and I get that because I’m understanding. That’s the kind of man I am. That’s the kind of husband I’ll be. And when we’re in pain, we lash out. I get that too. I’ve done that too. Not just today. That’s how a marriage works. That’s how loving someone works. You understand and you forgive.

I bet she’ll wake up and feel awful about what she did, because she’s a good girl.

No matter what other people said. And they said a lot.

Especially my lawyer.

I actually liked the guy, even though he thought I was guilty, and he kept talking shit about Carrie so I shouldn’t have liked him at all, really. But he was a good guy and he was just trying to do a good job. Protect society from me and all that bullshit. He had short brown hair and pale gray eyes. He had a wife and a kid and he wasn’t some over-privileged, middle-class white guy like most lawyers are. He put himself through law school. He worked two jobs and helped his sister when she got into trouble.

He said he understood girls like Carrie. And that he also understood the allure of them. They’re vulnerable. They need loving. Too many people are too damn quick to turn their backs on them. Too many people are ready to take advantage of their fast love and their desperate situation.

I know he thought I had done that—taken advantage of Carrie’s desperation—and I wanted to be mad at him for thinking so poorly of me. But I couldn’t. Because the sad part of me turned happy that someone was finally looking out for her. Someone wanted to protect her. I mean, it was stupid that he was trying to protect her from me, but at least he was fucking trying, right?

It was more than anyone else ever did for her.

So I’d nodded and agreed with what he was saying, all the while protecting her. Besides, he wasn’t saying anything that I didn’t know or didn’t believe, if I was being totally honest. Of course my nodding gave him license to keep talking, to keep telling me all the things I already knew. About Carrie. My Carrie, who I knew better than anyone else in the world.

‘People take advantage of girls like Carrie,’ he said. And I nodded at that too, thinking about her dad, and the bruises he left on her skin and in her mind.

Thinking about the blood that stained my fingers that time.

Thinking about her promiscuous ways, and the way men leered when she rode my bike, her skirt bunched up around her velvet thighs.

And the way her dad called her back into the house, and then the crying I could hear as I huddled below her bedroom window, wishing and praying for God to make it so that I wasn’t such a coward.