Excerpt: Women Scorned

Chapter One
Red lights pulsed in the night, bathing the forested back road with harsh hatred. The police cruiser sat behind a beat-up looking Datsun 210. The blue car rocked in the headlights. Grunts and moans came from within. Police uniform slacks pooled around a man’s ankles as his feet clad in black shoes pushed in the dirt outside the passenger-side back door. The rocking stoped. A metallic jingle came from the backseat. The policeman stood and stuffed a woman’s legs back into the car and closed the door with a gloved hand leaving behind smeared, red fingers. In his other gloved hand, he held a fistful of chains with various charms of various materials and sizes. With bloody face, hands, groin and knife, he duck-walked to a bucket sitting next to the police cruiser and cleaned himself, stripping the latex from his hands, scrubbing red from the lines in his fingers and from under his nails. When he finished, a fleck of blood still adorned his pale cheek, but he didn’t notice. He pulled his pants up and smacked dust out of the fabric. After dumping the bloodied water onto the graveled shoulder, he placed the bucket in the trunk, rubbed his hand over his black, marine style hair, and got in his cruiser. Looking at the Datsun, he grinned, the red light pulsing over his features, creating harsh lines in his face that made him appear the troll squatting in his hidey-hole, ready to attack on a whim. With a satiated sigh, he pulled away from his mess, his taillights diminishing to pinpricks before disappearing around a bend in the road.
A loud pop in the night and a dark form materialized, shifting toward the car resting on the shoulder of the deserted back road. Her matted hair untouched by wind, her naked body covered in scars, she moved with the darkness, of the darkness. At a touch, the passenger-side back door opened, exposing legs covered in blood and new bruises. The body inside lay motionless. The shadowed woman with matted hair laid her hands on the legs hanging from the back seat. Blinding light seared the night, radiating from inside the car, illuminating for one brief moment a picture on the dashboard of a smiling girl with short dark hair and haunted dark eyes. A man was torn out of the picture; his fingers were all that remained just inside the picture's tattered edge. And then the light was gone. The shadowed figure stood and became as immaterial as the darkness surrounding her. Nothing remained of her presence accept the open car door and the legs protruding into the night.
Silence pervades the back road, the only sound the Datsun’s engine ticking in the night. Indifferent stars go on their nightly course overhead and the trees sway in a new wind. Yellow eyes from the shadows between the trees glow in the moonlight. The eyes disappear as a howl cuts through the silence, wavering at its peak before it trails off to mingle with the other night sounds. A large gray wolf trots from the forest, circles the car then rests next to the open back door. It howls again. A response of many voices issues from the trees. Five smaller wolves file out and take up places around the car. Once they form a circle, they sit, all throwing their heads back in unison to howl once again, the dominant male’s howl lasting longer and louder than the others’. They grumbled and growled around the car sounding like a chant, the largest wolf’s fur glistening in the moonlight, rippling with a light of its own. The leader’s eyes remained fixed on the white toes hovering above the ground, dripping blood. When the toes twitched, the wolf stood and walked back to the forest. The others followed.
Blood dripped from the backseat of the car, soaking into the gravel on the shoulder. The blood came from between Camilla’s cold legs, saturating the cushion she rested on. Her torn shirt exposed breasts with hand shaped bruises. Belly and shoulders covered with semi-circle wounds. A gash on the side of her head oozed, the blood cold and tacky. On her left ear, a silver rose dangled, entangled in her hair. The right lobe split and smeared red, the matching earring gone. Her arms rested above her head, crossed at bruised wrists.
But her face, dark and haunted, was untouched, unmarred by tooth, hand, or other object. Vacant eyes gazed at nothing, glazed with death's kiss. The smooth skin looked supple, the shadows cast from moonlight giving her face the look of a foreign landscape, her pointed nose a possible mountain, her lips the foothills, eye sockets the valleys. Black makeup caked her eyes and streaked down her face in tear stains. Her nose ring glinted. Her slack mouth exposed a small overbite, white teeth gleaming in the dark.
Camilla sat up, screaming while she inhaled, a drawn out, whistling sound lost in the wailing wind. Body tense, she splayed her arms to either side, bracing herself against the seats in the car, drawing her knees to her chest. She pushed herself against the closed door and stared around her with darting eyes. Looking out the back window, out the open door, out the front window, over her shoulder, moaning deep in her throat, the girl pawed her face, her head, her breasts, her legs.
"I'm alive," she whispered. Then she said it again, screaming so that she could feel her throat beginning to tear. "I'm alive." She checked the windows again and began murmuring to herself, her voice high, strained, the words spilling over one another, eyes still searching. "Where's the cop? He can't be gone. He can't be. Where is he? There's no light. No light. It's so dark. Where'd he go?" She felt her chest and neck. “My necklaces. Took my necklaces.”
She fluttered her fingers over the laceration above her right ear and winced, pulling away red fingers. She felt her breasts and cringed and then her fingers slipped to the place between her legs still bleeding. Her fingers slipped inside a slit much larger than it should be, made larger by some sharp and precise object. As she pulled her fingers out of herself and looked at the bloody mucous draping over her fingers like string, she began to cry and moan softly to herself, shuddering. She pulled her torn shirt around her, leaving bloody smears on the white fabric and scrambled for her pants, hands shaking so badly that it took her a couple tries before she could get her feet into the correct holes.
"Oh, god. What's happened to me?" She sobbed, a quiet sound in the dark.
She scrambled between the two front seats, eyes wide, leaving red traces of herself on the upholstery and plopped into the driver’s seat. The scent of cherries wafted around her. She couldn’t start the car. Slamming her palms into the steering wheel, she screamed a negative over and over again. The horn bleeped.
“Okay.” She looked around her. “Okay, okay, okay.” Hands up to her face, eyes squeezed shut, breathing heavy. Her eyes popped open. “Gotta go.” She opened the car door and headed in the direction her car pointed. Town up ahead. A hospital. A hotel. Something. She could make it. She could hitchhike.
Rocks bit into her naked feet. Her duffle bag, full of clothes, sat in floorboards, forgotten. She hugged her body. Her open shirt fluttered in the wind. Blood oozed from between her legs leaving red runnels down her thighs and calves like veins. She walked away.
Night turns to day as she shuffles onward leaving bloody footprints behind her. A car approaches from behind. She sticks out her thumb and stops walking, turning toward the vehicle, a half smile on her face, her eyes lit for the first time in hours. The driver didn’t acknowledge her before passing. Her hand dropped and smacked her leg in its descent.
“Fuck!” She kicked the ground leaving a red smudge in the dirt. “Is everyone blind?” she yelled, clenching her hair in her fists. “Why isn’t anyone stopping for me?” Her voice took on a whining quality, so she stopped talking to herself. She shuffled on.
The sun set and rose on two more days. Camilla took to twirling her belly button ring as she walked, shoulders hunched, head drooping. Her matted, black hair stuck out at odd angles, the gel she’d used to style her hair from days before still there, holding the basic shape of her textured spikes. The pink chunks from underneath were losing their luster. Another car approached from behind. She didn’t raise her thumb, but instead extended her middle finger at the dwindling taillights.
“Fucker!”
She stopped. A look of confusion and concentration creased her brows. Her brown eyes lost their focus as she looked inward, her lips moving as she counted under her breath. “Shit,” she whispers. “I’ve been walking for three days. Oh my god.” She looks around the ground then into the forest. “I should be resting,” she whispers. “I need to eat something.” She steps off the shoulder and toward the forest. “That’s what I’ll do. I’ll find something to eat or I’ll get weak. I’ll get weak and I won’t be able to defend myself incase…” Her voice trails off as she searches for a place to sit.
Finding a mossy patch at the base of a tree, she reclined, back against the rough trunk. The darkness swarmed around her, choking out the light, but she didn’t seem to care. She closed her eyes, heaved heavy sighs, and shuddered. Her body tensed as she tried to relax, back arched, neck straight, head against the tree. Camilla wrapped her hands around her knees and hugged them close to her chest causing more blood to ooze from between her legs to soak the moss beneath her.
She listened to the sounds of the forest, the bats chirping, the insects buzzing, and then a different noise alerted her attention. Heavy breathing next to her cheek and the smell of thick air. She opened her eyes and gasped coming face to face with a large, furry, gray face and golden eyes. The wolf growled and took a step back. It sat two feet in front of her, its tongue lolling and its tail batting the ground at its haunches, and threw its head back letting loose a ululating cry that echoed through the forest. Five other wolves lunged from the trees and nipped at her. She didn’t scream. She didn’t cry. She scrunched her eyebrows and cocked her head listening to their grumbling and growling.
“Okay,” she said, and stood up. The large one snapped at her ankles, its teeth grazing her ankle enough to hurt but not enough to draw blood. “I’m going,” she said. The wolves watched as she walked back to the road. Once she reached the tarmac, the wolves walked back into the shadows. Just over the next hill, a city sprawled beneath her, only a few miles downhill. She ambled along, glancing over her shoulders every once in a while. She no longer tried to hide her body with the tattered remains of her shirt.
The sun lit the sky from behind the city, turning the night an early twilight blue. She smiled for the first time in a few days as she made good time going down the hill. Her feet made squishing sounds and her thighs made wet smacking sounds as she slid through the twilight towards the town. The metallic smell of cold hung in the air.
In the city, streetlights cast orange pools on the sidewalk. She walked through the cream -cicle glow of each pool as she followed the road signs directing her toward the hospital. In front of the hospital, she stopped and stared. The massive building went five stories up and who knew how many stories below. She looked down at her bloodied legs.
“I made it,” she whispered. A man walked past her in the parking lot. She glared at his back and sighed. Something was severely wrong with people in this area. Were they demented? No one seemed to care about a woman covered in blood standing mostly naked in the road. She walked across the parking lot without pause, head held high, shoulders back.
“I won’t cry,” she said and took a deep breath. “Be strong Camilla. You’re a big girl. You can do this.” She braced herself and walked to the front doors. A yellow sticker on the door cautioned her that it was automatic. She walked into it, bumped her nose and breasts against the glass then bounced back.
“What the fuck,” she said rubbing her nose. A nurse came up behind her, walked right past her, and up to the doors. Camilla raised her hand, a warning for the nurse on her lips when the double doors slid open and the nurse walked inside. Camilla stepped in before the doors could close on her. She looked back at the doors, shrugged, then went to the nurse’s station, wrapping her arms over her breasts and trying not to make eye contact with the patients waiting in the emergency room lobby. At the nurse’s station, she looked up at the closest nurse typing on her computer.
“Excuse me,” she said. Her voice came out in a squeak. The nurse didn’t look up. She cleared her throat and tried again. “I need help,” she said, louder this time. The nurse still didn’t look up. “Hello!” She snapped her fingers in the nurse’s face. The nurse sighed and turned around.
“Mary, do you have the file on Brian Clark? He’s the one came in with the broken foot.”
“Hey, Bitch! I need some help here,” she yelled.
“Mommy,” a little girl to Camilla’s right said. “Mommy, what’s wrong with that lady?” The little girl, her brown eyes large and teary in her pudgy cheeks, her black hair hanging lank and tangled around her face, pointed with one chubby finger right at Camilla. “She’s bleeding, Mommy. What’s wrong with her? Look.”
“Don’t point, Britney. That’s rude.” The mother pushed her daughter’s hand down, but Britney still stared at Camilla.
“Someone help me!” Camilla called out to anyone who would listen.
“Help her!” Britney yelled and began to cry into her mother’s arm. Her mother held the little girls finger. It was wrapped in a bloody bandage. “Mommy, she scares me. Someone help her.” The little girl wouldn’t look at Camilla anymore.
Nurses ran in to see why Britney was crying. They shushed her and tried to calm her. She pointed in Camilla’s direction again and said something indistinct. The nurses turned and stared past Camilla at an old woman hunched in a chair with an oxygen mask over her face. The cooed to the little girl and told her that the old woman needs the mask to breathe.
“That’s not the lady I’m talking about,” she said. “She’s right behind you,” the girl wailed. The mother, panicking, rocked her daughter back and forth as the girl tried to curl into her mother’s chest. The nurses looked around the room apparently not seeing the bloody women frightening the little girl.
“I’m right here, you fucking idiots.” Camilla whispered now, unable to put the force in her words. “What the hell is going on here?” She sank to her knees. No one but the little girl looked at her. The nurses brought the child a mild sedative and she relaxed against her mother, the stained bandage on her finger now a brighter red. One of the nurses walked past Camilla and knocked her to the floor, not turning once to see who she’d bumped into.
Camilla allowed herself to fall back. She drifted. Her eyes fluttered shut and all went dark.
***
The nurse behind the counter called a patient’s name. She looked into the lobby to see who would stand up. The scream that came from her sounded too large for her small frame. Her pale skin turned pasty and she swayed on the spot as she stared at the bloody woman sprawled on the lobby floor.
“What’s going on,” the head nurse bellowed. She came around the corner, saw the body and gasped. She stood for a moment with her hand cupped over her mouth, eyes wide. She then turned and ran through the double doors to come back with a stretcher. Two orderlies helped her lift the bloody woman onto the stretcher. The orderly checked for a pulse. The people in the waiting room moved away, all panicked, no one sure why they hadn’t seen her there before. People moved away and huddled together staring at the strange woman’s body.
“She’s dead,” the orderly said, his face sagging as he glared at the head nurse. “How did this happen? Who is she?”
“I don’t know,” the nurse said. “No one saw her come in.”
They covered her with the white sheet and rolled her to the morgue. After writing what they knew about this mysterious woman, they strung a Jane Doe tag over her right big toe and placed her in one of the coolers.
“What happened to her? She’s all bruised up and I bet those are bite marks on her breasts,” the mortician said to her assistant as they left the room.