EDITOR:
Miriam Belle
CREATIVE CONSULTANTS:
Simply_Cyn, Amanda G. Moon and Miriam Belle
Author's Note:
"There has been some concern from, well, one reader about the category of this story. I consider it to be erotic horror simply because the evil and horror of everyday life is more profound and closer to home than any werewolf or vampire or ghost ever could be. Violence between men and women is what scares me the most of all, so here the story rests in the comfort of erotic horror. If there are any typos, please let me know as a few always seem to slip through... Cheers!"
***
Mandy Fisher sat her heavy black suitcase down on the flowered comforter of the queen-sized bed. It was a gaudy, unbelievably happy floral arrangement dyed into the cloth, consisting of red roses, blue posies and white daisies. As her eye was drawn to the design (in the same morbid way one has to look at a car accident on the expressway) she thought she saw yellow sunflowers lurking behind the green leaves. She rubbed her eyes, feeling fatigued and overwhelmed with her day. It was going on nine in the evening, the worst day of her life coming to a slow but eventual close.
She opened the curtains of her seventh story hotel room and looked out across the glimmering nightlife of Sacramento. The lights of cars passing in the street below seemed blurred to her. The muted sounds of bumper-to-bumper traffic and horns blaring seemed to be a thousand miles away. Mandy sighed and shook her head, letting the thin, vaguely transparent drapes fall back into place. In the dim light of her room, she felt tired and alone.
The flight here from New York had been long and filled with enough turbulence to make her teeth chatter even now. Her stomach still hadn't forgiven for the ride across the country. The bitter taste of bile was strong in the back of her throat despite efforts to hide it with several sticks of Winterfresh gum. She had never given much thought to the airsickness bags during her previous flights. But after she managed to eject half her breakfast into one of those small bags (only after the initial wretch had landed on the woman next to her) she had a whole new appreciation.
"Oh God, just shoot me," she breathed as she opened the suitcase.
In a direct contrast to the busy comforter on the bed, the bathroom was elegantly simple, colored in tones of beige and loaded with complimentary soaps and shampoo. She turned the light on and looked at herself in the mirror. Circles of dark exhaustion shaded her normally bright blue eyes. Her hair was looking limp and worn out, the midnight black locks losing their curl and hanging lazily at her shoulders. Her black business jacket had been taken off and tucked away after her vomiting on the plane (she didn't know what was worse, cleaning up in the small airplane bathroom or walking back to her seat as people snickered and looked at her doubtfully).
With a sullen sigh she unbuttoned her blouse and pulled it away from her body. She didn't want to look at her chest. If she did, she might have had to look at the large bruise above her right breast, blooming like a purple and green explosion on her milky flesh. If she looked, she would have to remember how that bruise had gotten there. And that would require recalling her husband, Carl, and right now he was the last person on Earth she wanted to think about.
Once she had stripped down and placed her clothes on the toilet seat (always in a neat pile, starting with her skirt, shirt, panties and bra) she looked in the mirror anyway. At the age of forty-one, she was still looking as good as she had when she was thirty-one. Life hadn't graced her with many blessings, but she had been given a youthful attractive body. Her full breasts, still pear shaped and perky, rested down from their long confinement in her bra. The bruise was still there, ugly and misshapen. Part of her had hoped it would simply vanish, like some special effect in a Hollywood movie. But it hadn't.
Along the side of her left thigh were several marks, all of them matching in color to the bruise on her chest. She looked at them and felt angry. She felt like a boiling cauldron of water, rising in temperature under the intense heat of relentless flame. She had hidden her feelings for a long time, placing the lid over the cauldron so to speak. She would steam and she would whistle and even rattle as the heat rose, as her insides boiled. But in the end, the lid stayed on.
Mandy kept it on now, as much as she wanted to scream, she kept it on.
Under the name of Amanda Moon, she had written about women like her now, battered women who had to find the courage to stand up to their oppressors. She wrote about women who took that lid off the rage, women who weren't afraid to let it boil over and burn anyone foolish enough to touch. She had made a lot of money as Amanda Moon, writing about that deep well of courage to stand up and fight for one's self. Her many readers enjoyed the truth and honesty of her characters, the intensity of the sex and quality of the stories. But most of all, they enjoyed her vision and courage.
'No,' she thought, 'Amanda Moon's vision and courage. Not mine.'
Amanda Moon would never have put up with Carl's bullshit.
She knew better.
For a long time, she had wondered if Mandy Fisher and Amanda Moon were even the same woman. Late at night, usually after finishing one of her many one-sided sexual encounters with Carl, she would hear Amanda speaking in her mind, chastising her for being so malleable, so easy to bend. The idea that Amanda was always a part of her gave her hope. Amanda was the voice of reason when all else failed. She was empowering and gave Mandy an outlet for her repression.
But now, after many hours flight time and a continent's worth of distance between her and the man she used to love, Mandy was beginning to believe Amanda was no more than a mask she wore. Would her readers have bought a book from timid, normal shy Mandy Fisher? Would they have paid the $29.95 to read a story from her? She doubted it. They craved the power of Amanda's words, not the uncertainty Mandy basted in everyday.
She was afraid to rock the boat, to face her problems.
Amanda wasn't.
How could such a starkly contrasting personality truly be a part of her own?
Mandy wondered how her readers would react to know she was a fraud? All good writing was about truth in the end. What was the truth about her as a person? Instead of beating Carl to within an inch of his life with the hand blender or grabbing a vase and smashing his thick head with it, as her alter ego would have done, she had run. She had waited until he went to work this morning and then slipped out the door with only her suitcase and the discs on which she saved her stories. She had run from one end of the country to the other, from sea to shining sea to avoid him.
"Jesus," she shook her head, "Where are you?"
The shower felt good and reinvigorated her enough to shave her legs and crotch. She washed herself thoroughly, not only trying to remove the funk of the day but also the essence of her fear and of her shit-kicking husband. She looked at the rings on her finger, a simple gold band behind which was an elegant engagement ring, mounted with a diamond the size of a pea. When she had first worn it, she loved it as she loved the man who had given it to her. Now, her resentment and hate was equal in intensity and scope.
Mandy stepped out of the shower and pulled the two rings off her finger. She stood there, naked and dripping wet as she held the rings out in front of her. She angled them in the stark light, watching them flash and glitter. With one hand, she opened the toilet lid and with the other she positioned the rings over the bowl. She bit her full bottom lip slightly between her teeth as she debated.
"You asshole," she said through clenched teeth and dropped the rings into the bowl. They splashed and then scraped down the porcelain incline to the mouth of the outlet pipe. The bands glittered there under the water, distorted by the ripples radiating on the surface.
Amanda Moon would have been proud.
Mandy wrapped the plush towel around her tired body and stepped out of the bathroom. With another towel she dried her hair, vigorously working the strands back and forth. She turned to face the bed and then froze.
A man was sitting there by her duffle bag facing her. He was dressed in black, a smart set of slacks with matching shirt, tie and jacket. His shoes were shined and impeccably clean. Later Mandy would think it crazy she noticed his shoes with such detail, especially when just after that observation she noticed the solid looking gun resting in his left hand, a shadow against the floral bedspread. The stranger had dark features, his hair equal to his clothes in color and as neatly kept as his shoes. His dark blue eyes looked to her with a quiet amusement, the kind of stare a shark might give a floundering fish as it spasmed in a cloud of it's own blood.
"Please," the man said, his deep voice slightly on the graveled side, "Don't speak."
Mandy dropped the towel from her hair, eyes wide and her heart thundering in her chest. She looked at the gun again.
"I'm going to ask you a few questions. Is that okay, miss?" the man looked at her expectantly, his tone kind and oddly concerned.
Mandy nodded.
"What's your name?"
"Amanda Fisher," she whispered, her legs feeling like hot rubber.
"Mandy for short?"
"Yes..."
