They Could Kill You

Part 1: Janie

Chapter 1

"There was a blue tarp that had seen better days covering a window shattered long before we checked in. Mama splurged for a room on the second floor, but that hadn't done us any good. The tarp was the only defense we had, and it was about as useful as covering your head with a blanket at night. A blanket can't save you from the monsters in your closet any more than a blue tarp can save you from the monsters on the street.

Mama promised it would be over soon. We had been running from things only she could see for two years, and I was still young enough to believe her. I was only 7 years old when a thunderstorm cut the power to that dingy Nevada motel.

She got antsy like she always did in the dark. She shoved me under the bed, and I hid and waited. I knew better than to argue with mama. It was always nothing, but she believed monsters lurked in the shadows, and I guess I must have been young enough to believe her.

This time, there was a loud crash and then a scuffle. I heard the crinkly sound of the tarp as it fell to the ground, and the room illuminated in flashes of lightning. I saw mama's bare feet by the window, and a pair of black boots standing next to her.

"Don't hurt me!" she screamed.

My heart was racing as I searched along the floor for something, anything that could help. My nails scraped along cigarette burns in the old carpet, but nothing else.

There were empty beer bottles lying all around when we first checked in, but mama insisted on cleaning up as much as we could. "It don't befit a lady to live amongst garbage," she said as we carried bags down to the bins.

It didn't befit a lady to check in to the only motel that would rent a room without any form of I.D either, but mama had her quirks. I wish there had still been beer bottles littering the floor. Then I could have taken one and cracked it over that man's skull."

I pause to examine my fingernails, casting a cautious glance up my new therapist to gauge her reaction. To her credit, she doesn't so much as flinch as I explain to her how badly I wanted to kill a man. I take a shaky breath and continue.

"Instead I had to listen, and stay quiet as mama kicked and screamed and threw her punches.

'Shit,' the man muttered. I hoped it was because she had clawed out one of his eyes, but it wasn't.

Mama was a fighter though. She knocked him to the ground and for a moment he locked eyes with me, there hiding under the bed. He looked just long enough to sear his face into my memory forever. Then he was up again, and they continued to fight.

Another bang of thunder, another flash of lightning, and the room went silent. My heart was beating so loudly I was sure he could hear it. He had stared right at me. I was certain that he would come for me next. But the next thing I heard was the creak and bang of the door opening and shutting behind him.

He must have looked straight past me.

"Mama?" I whispered, worried he had taken her with him.

She didn't answer.

I swallowed. "Mama?" I tried again, louder this time.

Still nothing.

I don't know how long it took me to work up the courage to get up and look for myself. I know the sun was beginning to rise, and the storm had passed. I know that my jaw hurt from how long I'd been clenching my teeth... and that my back hurt from being contorted under the bed.

I think a part of me knew already. When you grow up the way I did, you know the difference between a thunder clap and a gunshot. Still, until I looked and knew for sure, mama could still be alive.

Finally, I unfolded myself and stood up, staring out the shattered window as if the man in the black boots might still be standing just outside. I hung the tarp back up over the window, Out of ways to stall, I turned around.

There, on the bed, mama...or what had been mama, lay dead. Her eyes were open and glazed over, and there was a red circle on her forehead where she'd been shot. Turns out mama had kept her promise.

It was over.

I think there was more blood than what I remember now though, like I've blocked out part of the memory... so I can move on from it."

"Do you think you've moved on from it?"

"Do you think I'd be in therapy if I had?" I snap.

The therapist pulls her face into a thin line and scrawls something on her clipboard.

"Sorry," I say, "I'm just so sick of telling this story. I don't see why I have to relive this if the goal is to move on."

"I know," she says pursing her lips. "It's necessary to begin at the beginning. That way, we can see every step you've taken since, and see which directions are healthy for you and which have not been."

I want to roll my eyes at her. "I know" she says, as though she could possibly relate. She looks a few years younger than I am, with blonde hair from a bottle and stylish frames on glasses she probably doesn't even need. A woman like her is about image, not safety. If she knew what I knew, she wouldn't leave the house with her hair in a ponytail like that...too easy for people to grab. She wouldn't wear that fancy scarf either...she might as well beg strangers to strangle her.

I learned something that night; something I don't think I was supposed to about the way this world works. You see, anyone can kill you. Most people are just waiting for the opportunity.

"I think this was the wrong step," I admit, balling my fists and slowly releasing them, a move a different therapist taught me. "Thank you for your time," I add.

She walks me back out to the waiting area and shakes my hand, apologizing about how I haven't found what I am looking for. I stare past her, smiling and nodding, when something on the television catches my eye.

My hand goes rigid in hers. "Are you alright?" she asks, but I barely hear her.

Those eyes. I've seen them everywhere ever since that day. It's always been a trick of the light, or my mind, blinking always reveals the mailman or the store clerk...but this is no trick of buzzing fluorescent lights.

On the right side of the screen is a picture of the man who killed my mother. On the left is him, in the flesh. The camera follows him as he smiles, stepping outside into the light and exhaling with the joy of a man feeling the sun for the first time in 20 years. It's disgusting. The anchor is talking about justice and reevaluation...the entire world feels too heavy as they say he is being released. He stares in the camera and smiles, talking about how he's so grateful...how he still has so much to do. Thanking justice and mercy and grace...

Her tight grip on my arm is the only thing keeping me from sliding to the floor. The anchors are smiling, the man is smiling, and my heart is breaking. How can this be justice?

His freedom is my prison. I convinced myself when I was 7 that he somehow hadn't seen me, but now I am certain he did. I know the only reason he worked so hard to trick judges and juries into letting him go is so that he could come finish what he started. He is coming to kill me.

"I have to go," I say, finally shaking my hand out of hers.