XXIV. First, You Will Crash...

4

Marcella grew impatient.

Driving the heel of her boots into the door, Marcella exploded into the menʼs room. As the door practically came undone at the hinges, she panted, growling, the white honed travertine hitting the dull brown tiles with every crunch of her boots. The dark, earthen walls that slapped the room were suffocating, sweat and shaving cream stains blocking out any light, and in the dark, Marcella grew anxious. Tense. Wood chips scratched and scarred the walls, and in her impatience, the shit and the piss hit the fan. Clogging her vision, clouding her judgement. Growling in frustration, Marcella skirted along the floor, the bloodlust calling to her, egging her on.

She kicked down the stallʼs door.

Panting dangling around a Twelfth Night patronʼs ankles, confusion creasing his face, Marcellaʼs fingers yanked the man against the edge of the stall – crushing him, breaking him, her reaction quick and violent. Pinning him under her fingers, tears crusted along her face – paling it, illuminating it in the rills of demonic blackness, pressing, closing, deepening, and in her shuddering torment, she stared. Her screams strangled.

"Where are the books?"

"I donʼt know," the man wheezed, his cries gutting up his throat. "Let me keep it a hundred, baby girl, Iʼm high as hell right now and the last thing I am gonna do is read."

Wrong answer.

Her fingers dug into his skin, fingers pushing against his Adamʼs apple until spit sputtered onto her face. Her pulse skipped a few beats just his did along her fingertips, her heart trapped in her throat, and as his face turned bright crimson her eyes coughed with crippling tears.

"Please, I need to know," she babbled as the man desperately tried to pry Marcellaʼs fingers off of him. Snapping her nails in half, she buried them under the skin of his neck – her voice tightened like a corset. Begrudgingly, she let him go, and she sobbed.

With a petulance, with a gut-wrenching despair. Hugging herself, Marcella cried regretful tears, bitter tears, falling into the nightʼs arms in a frenzy. Her fingers caressing the rich, sad welts on her skin, trapped, and she kicked. Kicked and clawed and scratched the door of the stall as she screamed into the deafening silence. Muffled by the ache in her heart.

It has to be here. Pull yourself together.

She hopped onto the lid of the toilet seat, rimmed in the manʼs urine and chalk full of his sh*t, wet and thick. Flushing it, Marcella dug into a crook nestled below the air ducts. It was slick with grime and mold and incarnadine rot, and as she searched, her anxiety pounded and eviscerated and regurgitated right through her. The hiss of her hands slapping the rusty vents, and the shelves above, were repulsive. The walls whispered in hush-hush, mocking, susurrations, her demons and her insecurities wrapped around her with the sticky wetness of the walls and her winsome tears, until...

They were adorned in spider webs. 

Crisp in the skin of vodka and vermouth stains and plastic that had been in damp, dark places. Breath hitching, Marcella ran her fingers along the covers with sweat staining her hair and her mind a knot of regret as a reggaeton record would be on her motherʼs jukebox. The books were bound in grisly flesh, flesh that was pumped into the bloodstained pages, and the rawest bone. It beat her, repeatedly.

Snapping into her self-control, splintering her throbbing head with a dread that whipped its fist at her unhinged, petit frame. As Chicago burned, Marcella burned with it, and the urge to fight killed her again. Thrust its knife deep into the seams of her esophagus, covering her in a lukewarm quilt of blood, making her pupils dilate and swallow themselves in blackness.

As Marcella stepped out of the Twelfth Pub restrooms, an unsettling chill settled through her. Greedily unearthing every Cuban demon and ripping the skin from her g*ddamn bones.

It was too easy.

It was all too easy.