Compulsion

I sat in my wooden chair in the middle of the basement, staring out the window; trying to keep my thoughts from going "there." Anywhere and anything else I would have welcomed the thought of. But it was still there, biting at my brain, slowly crawling up my skin.
The need was surging through me once more; like that of a person trying to quit smoking. But who said that I wanted to actually try? And who said that my desires were anything less than nicotine? It was more, far more than that of what was understandable.
My fingers played with the intricate patterns on the chair arms. It had been two months since the last kill. Just thinking about it sends thrills down my spine and gets my blood pumping faster, as if it had been committed just one hour ago instead of one thousand four hundred eighty-eight. The girl had been short, maybe just a little over five feet. Cute, too with her straight blonde hair and shiny blue eyes...I shifted around restlessly at the very memory.
I had first seen her at a bar. Of course I did, a classic murder scene that it was. Except for the ending...but anyway, I saw her alone at a table away from the counter, where I happened to be sitting. Our eyes met for a brief moment. I looked away quickly, as I had never had much confidence when it came to sexy blondes like her. But something propelled me to look back, where I saw that she surprisingly hadn't even looked away. I offered a weak smile in which she returned.
I turned back around in my bar stool and took a drink of my Jack Daniels. Another dinky blonde she was, I thought resentfully. The blondes always were the worst type of trouble you could get yourself into. All of my worst break-ups were with women who happened to be blonde. Coincidentally, they also were the best relationships I'd had, I realized.
But the thing was was that most of them were no good. In middle school most of my tormentors were these blonde, rich girls who had the best clothes and hair. They had the "hottest boyfriends," as they put it, and huge four story houses with parents who'd buy them whatever whims their cold, little hearts desired. Meanwhile, there I was, not at all tall with unruly reddish hair and clothes that weren't exactly of "Guess Jeans" material. One doesn't need to be a calculus whiz to fill in the blanks as to what happened to me as a small and quiet teenager in the intimidating depths of middle school...
It wasn't my parents' fault, really. They were good people and made enough for us to get by. They always wanted the best for me and for me to succeed in whatever I did. They were the type of parents who were up in the principal's office for the umpteenth time, vouching for my case against all those nasty girls who made my life miserable. All those blonde girls...
Anyway, the agony I felt as a twelve and thirteen-year-old subsided some when high school came. But that's when the crushes developed. That's when the crushes on light-haired girls came about. I never told them directly. I was too shy for that; not to mention the crap I'd get for it. That first girl I had a crush on-- blue-eyed Destiny, she was beautiful. Too beautiful, really. So it was really no surprise when I opened my locker and out tumbled a brutally straight-forward note that read: "How pathetic! Sorry, I don't play that way, lezbo!"
I had left her an honest note that kind of told about my feelings for her; that until her I'd never even looked at a girl in "that way" before, and that was what I'd gotten back. The letter I'd written was nice, too, not revealing too little or too much. And she had flat-out humiliated me in return. I guess that she had maybe told a few of her gossipy friends because before long people were staring at me like I was an alien and calling me all sorts of mean names in the hallway.
It was completely awful. My confidence quickly went on a downward spiral. And despite all, I couldn't stop liking the girls around school, mostly all blondes. I always did the note thing I had first done with Destiny. They all turned me down; some did it in a kind way, but most laughed and hurt me even further. But none of them were able to deject me like Destiny had; when she'd told everyone that I liked girls.
Yet in a way, she had made it easier. Almost all of them knew, so confessing my feelings with the knowledge that the person more than likely already knew that I was a lesbian, made things a bit less complicated. Though of course, it didn't make anything less chagrined.
After awhile, I stopped trying to go after those "gorgeous" girls. I kept my feelings in because I knew if I didn't, it would only lead to rejection and more pain. They were brutal to me, especially blue-eyed Destiny. By the time high school was over I had a thing against blondes. I promised myself that I wouldn't pursue one unless she pursued me first.
So there I was: five years later and at a bar where I'd made the stupid mistake of smiling at a blue-eyed blonde. Then again, she had been the one that stared. Could that mean--
"Another drink?" The bartender asked, interrupting my thoughts. I guess he had seen me playing with my shots glass, gazing at it longingly as I had let all of my unpleasant memories of the past take over.
"Sure," I responded and handed it to him. He noticed my somber expression.
"Long day?" He pressed, to which I shrugged in response. He gave me my glass (in which I downed right away), and didn't try for more information with his questions. So I zoned, letting the thunderous music fill my ears and head so I wouldn't have to think anymore.
Unfortunately, that plan didn't follow through very well because before I knew it, the petite girl had walked up to the counter. I didn't even know it until she had spoken.
"I'll have another Jack, please," she told the bartender.
Hmm, a Jack Daniels, I thought. Same as what I was having.
He gave her her drink and she turned to leave until she noticed me to her left, pretending to be minding my own business. Now I was done pretending. How could I when she was looking right at me?
“Hi,” she said in a small voice, giving a shy smile.
“Hi. I’m Skye,” I introduced myself.
“Nice to meet you,” she replied, “I’m Alex.”
She kept standing there, looking around, like she was dying trying to think of something to say. I decided to help her out; it was now or never…
“Do you want to sit?” I finally settled on, pulling out the stool next to me.
“Sure, thanks,” Alex replied and sat down.
I looked over at her. Along with the blonde hair and blue eyes, she had freckles here and there around her face in addition to small lips and dimples that formed when she smiled, I noticed. I couldn’t recall seeing her around here before.
“Do you come here often?” I asked casually.
She gave her head a small shake. “This is like my second time here,” she admitted.
“Mm,” I replied while taking a drink, “Your second and my thousandth.”
Alex laughed easily, and I followed.
We kept the conversation and Jack Daniel’s going for an hour and a half. It wasn’t very hard to do. It turned out that we had a lot in common.
Somehow, we got on the topic of animals and I told her how I’d always wanted to be a veterinarian because I adored animals.
Her face brightened, dimples and all, and she exclaimed, “I love animals, too! I have two pit bulls and a shar pei. You should come and see them. I’ve been needing some girl time, anyway, what with the way things are going…”
“Ok, that sounds awesome!” I agreed, “I’d love to meet them.”
Now, we were both pretty drunk at this point. Not drunk enough to not recollect anything later on, but certainly not sober enough to drive. We were a little over “buzzed,” well, I was probably way more, actually, but she at least looked that way.
We hailed a cab and Alex gave the driver directions to her place. It wasn’t until we arrived that I could tell without needing to think it through that I was far more drunk than she was. Even with the outside lights on I stumbled and tripped up the porch steps. Alex laughed and reached out to help me, while she herself took to the obstacles with relative ease.
Sure enough, three dogs came up to greet us at the door. I sort of fell on the couch in my dizzy stupor and pet the dogs while Alex used the bathroom. She then took the chair across from me, watching me with her dogs.
“They’re really cute,” I told her.
“Thanks,” she smiled, “the brown pit bull is Rocky, the black one’s Lucy and the shar pei is Buster.”
I nodded, pretending to understand all of what she had just said.
“I really like dogs,” I informed her, scratching one of the pit bull’s backs. “And—I think I really like you, too.”
She stiffened suddenly in her chair, looking very uncomfortable. “Skye, I don’t—“she started, “do you want something to eat?”
“Sure,” I half slurred, “food is good.”
Thirty minutes later we were seated across the table from each other, eating cheese pizza.
“Mm,” she relished, taking a bite. “I haven’t had pizza since—“she stopped, looking like she regretted bringing it up.
“‘Since’--?” I questioned, encouraging her to go on.
Her eyes darted around the room and she gave a little sigh.
“Every weekend, if we weren’t fighting, I’d make pizza for my boyfriend and I,” Alex explained with sadness in her voice.
“And now you don’t?” I asked.
There was a moment of silence of us just enjoying the pizza. For a little bit, I thought she wouldn’t tell me.
“He broke up with me a few days ago, felt some things for another girl.”
Alex looked down and shrugged.
I guess her words wouldn’t stop swirling around through my clouded mind. I recall sitting next to her on the couch, watching T.V and only thinking one word: “boyfriend.” She had had a boyfriend, boyfriend…yet she was different. She just couldn’t be “that way…” I guess I wasn’t thinking very logically that night (hell, I was drunk, how could I have?), because the next thing I did was an action that, without it, could have prevented everything that had followed that night. It was something that changed things in a bad way. Something that I still kind of regret to this day…
The commercials came on and I turned to her. “You know, you deserve better.”
“What?” She questioned, sounding perplexed.
“You deserve someone who won’t cheat; someone who would love you unconditionally.” I scooted a little closer, “someone like—me.”
Unthinkingly, I leaned in to kiss her. I remember feeling surprised that she didn’t resist. Maybe it was the little bit of Jose Cuervo we’d had with the pizza. Maybe she actually wanted to…but at the time I’d been too blinded by the alcohol to care, though. I guess I wasn’t to know how much not having the answer would keep me up at night in the weeks and months that followed. I guess I didn’t know how much I’d wonder about it when it was already too late…all I did know that night was that she was single; and her lips were warm and inviting.
It ended the way it always did; and by then I knew that she was far from being “buzzed” as well. We had a truly wonderful night. For some reason, I still count it as one of my favorites, that time being with her. I remember feeling so good that I wished I could stop time and make that night last for as long as we wanted it to. But I guess the daylight would have had to come either way…
That morning, I felt sicker than a dog and all I wanted was to sleep forever. But she woke me up. I could hear Alex hyperventilating in my half dream state. My brain felt too groggy and dead to make sense of anything she was babbling about, but I could hear her hysterics.
“Oh, God Oh, God Oh, God Oh, God!” She was saying. “How did this happen? How did this—oh, my God. I can’t believe what I did! What the hell, Alex?! What the hell were you thinking?! What the hell did you do?!
I cracked open a tired eye at the disturbance. Alex looked like a bloodshot mess. She looked straight at me.
“I’m not gay! I don’t do things like that, I’m not that way!”
I grunted in my sleep and turned over; wondering, briefly, if she’d said that specifically to me or if she was just giving herself a post-lesbian-sex-encounter pep talk. I fell back asleep before I could come up with the answer.
“Skye? Skye? God, is that even her name?!”
She was shaking me awake, or trying to, anyway. I was so hung over that morning that it would have been a miracle if a nuclear war itself had managed to wake me up.
“Skye, you have to go home. I made a huge mistake…”
Reality sank in. Faint memories of last night resurfaced: the girl at the bar, the dogs, an ex-boyfriend, the kiss…
I struggled to get out of her bed but stumbled to the floor almost immediately. I have no idea how I was able to dress myself. It all was a fuzzy blur of events, really. Alex told me that she’d call a cab for me to take me home. I remember worrying about how I’d get in a car when I could barely pull myself up off the floor as it was. And the feeling in my stomach wasn’t all too reassuring, either.
I hurled into Alex’s toilet. Just vomiting and vomiting up all the beer I’d consumed. When was the last time I’d been this hung over, I wondered? It was awful, it just wouldn’t stop coming up. I began to sob while regurgitating into the bowl. I was aware of Alex standing in the doorway, unsure of what to do. But the way the toilet lid had been up when I entered told me that she had gone through the same agony that morning.
It seemed like twenty hours before I finally stopped throwing up and was able to pull myself together enough to cease my crying and to clean myself up a little. By that time the cab had showed up. Alex helped me down the porch steps. I could tell today that she too was having difficulty with the steps; or really anything that required movement. When we got to the bottom, we both sort of looked at each other awkwardly. What were we supposed to say? Something like, “wow, that was a freakin’ good time we had! Especially the part where I kissed you and then you told me you were straight the next morning. That was the best!” Yeah, no, that wouldn’t work…
“Sorry about throwing up in your bathroom,” I tried, meekly.
She shrugged, “the toilet will live. We were both pretty wasted, anyway.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, cracking a smile, “and we should totally do that again sometime.” The ice between us didn’t break, she wasn’t amused. “Well, I mean, hanging out; not getting drunk like that,” I corrected myself. She nodded slowly, her eyes looking out into the distance in a way that told me that she was not convinced.
I started to head toward the cab, when I tripped over something and fell down in a heap. She came over to help me up and into the car. I laughed a bit at myself, but she didn’t really return the sentiment.
“Well, bye,” I said flatly.
“Bye,” Alex said, shutting the door after me.
She didn’t wait up to see me leave; but then again, why would she? So I watched what I was certain would be the last of my ever seeing Alex again as the driver pulled out of the driveway and onto the road.
Numerous times on the way home I had to ask him to pull over so I could puke. I don’t know how he dealt with me, but I did know that I was too sick to even feel embarrassed. After the fourth time of pulling over, I leaned my head on the side of the door, exhausted from all of the physical exertion. I closed my eyes, hoping for some sleep so I could stop with this pattern for awhile. But all that I saw in the darkness were her eyes. Her clear blue eyes staring right at me…