Chapter fifty-three:

 

 

Carrie is heavy.

Really heavy after how many blocks I have to carry her. I had to take her down alleyways and side streets, and it’s raining and I would have liked to have gotten the bus, but carrying an unconscious and battered woman over your shoulder possibly isn’t the best time to get the bus.

It’s raining, and I hate being wet. I hate it when my clothes stick to my skin and the way my feet splash in the puddles on the ground. The way the cold rain soaks into my skin and makes me shiver. I hate that I have to dart in between buildings like a rat. Like I am a bad person, when I’m not.

I know it all seems fucked up right now, but I also know that I’m good at heart, and that I’m doing what’s best for her. And yes, selfishly, I guess for me too.

Mr. fucking Jeffrey would have said that I needed to take a minute to really think this through. That’s what he always said to do before I made any plans, or before anything big happened.

‘Take stock of the situation you’re in and let the thoughts settle before you do something drastic.’

But I can’t take a moment. Or take stock. Or grab a minute. Or think it through. Assess my plans. I just have to do. I just have to act and let the roll of rope unwind now. Let it all unwind and the story unfold, and the cards will fall where they fall.

It’s about time, I tell myself.

I look up at my old workplace. I say old, because I know that I’ve lost my job now. It’s no longer my job anymore. Once I saw Mr. Jeffrey at my apartment, I knew it was all over and there was no coming back. Or going back. Of course, poor Carrie thought they were there because of her, because she killed Mr. Fancy Asshole. But they weren’t; they were there for me, because I didn’t turn up for work. Because my cell has been switched off for several days and no one has been able to get hold of me.

My parole officer would call it “going AWOL.” Absent without leave.

I sigh and try to be grateful for it coming to this, though. Otherwise I would never have known how deep her love ran. And it’s not very fucking deep, Carrie, I think with frustration.

But it’s all good; I’m not even mad. We’ve waited years for this, but I’m finally coming through for her. And she’ll finally get her release. The freedom that she always craved so much. Freedom that she killed for. That I killed for.

We killed for her freedom, and she wasted what little she had.

I unlock the door and slide it open, then I go inside and I lock the door behind me. It’s a good job that Charlie is a gambler and liked me to lock up all the time for him. It’s a good job that I kept the keys. At least that’s a stroke of luck.

Carrie murmurs but doesn’t wake up. I carry her across the room and I hear a dripping. When I look up I see the hole is still in the roof, and I think, Jesus, Charlie, why haven’t you taken care of the roof yet!

No one ever listens to me. To my warnings or to anything I have to say. I think I’m talking to myself ninety-nine percent of the time. It’s always been that way. Even in prison, people didn’t listen. Not even Benny when I told him to keep his mouth shut and not get involved in things. Poor guy got stabbed in the gut and bled to death in the showers the day before my transfer to the hospital.

I told him though.

I told him not to keep running his mouth because not everyone was nice like me.

But he never listened.

Poor guy never saw me coming.

But that’s what he gets for keep running his mouth off. For telling me those horror stories every night. For making me see the things he liked to do. I made him pay and then I blamed someone else. Just like I learned from Carrie.

I take Carrie over to one of the cutting tables and I lay her on it, and then I get one of Charlie’s blankets from his office and I throw it over her to keep her warm. She’s shivering in her sleep, because this place is freezing and she’s soaked through. I’m cold too, but it’s more important that she’s warm. Even now I put her ahead of me. Even now I’m still caring for her, loving her, wanting to protect her and keep her safe.

I sit down and drum the nails of my left hand against the ones on my right hand. The soft tapping soothes my nerves.

We’ll talk about this like grownups when she wakes.

No more bullshit.

No more lies or treachery.

Because that’s what it is. That’s what it’s always been with her: treachery and half-truths.

And again, I’m not even angry. I feel sorry for her. This is the only way she knows how to live. The only way she could get by in such a fucked-up world. I see that now.

She’s a victim of circumstance.

And it made her what she is. Who she is. She can’t control that now any more than she could control it back then. But doesn’t she see that she traded one abuser for another? One monster for another? Only this time she let it happen willingly. This time she walked into that fucked-up world with her eyes wide open, and she accepted it rather than fought it. That’s not the Carrie I once knew. The Carrie I knew would fight until her fingers were raw and bloody and she was clawing to get the earth from off of her face.

She wouldn’t let herself be buried alive in a world of rot and sin.

But her circumstances made her who she was. They changed her forever. And instead of being the beautiful, carefree young woman she could have been, she ended up being a broken girl digging her way through the shit of life.

We all have our very own perhapses.

We can list them endlessly, until we run out of paper and ink and we have to carve them into wood and stone and metal, until everything turns to dust and blows away.

They never end, unless we let them. Because there is always more. But better than that, there can always be more. As long as we want it.

Carrie let hers end.

She stopped seeing them and believing in them.

She stopped believing in herself without me around.

I rotted in my prison cell, and then in the hospital, quickly turning from a boy into a man, watching my life slowly slip away. And she let go of the good things and clung onto the bad things.

Carrie was a victim, and her circumstance was life.

And mine was thinking I could ever save her.