A Day Like Any Other
Dec. 1st, 2006 03:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
teleidoplexTitle: A Day Like Any Other
Rating: NC17
Media: Mummy - The Resurrection
Character: Eve (pre-Sefekhi)
Summary: Character background fic for a table-top Mummy game
Disclaimer: White Wolf owns Mummy, Eve Salomé Carmichael is my own creation.
Warning: This fic disturbs even me.
It was a day like any other.
She was up at 5:00 am to clean all the little daily messes of a household, make father’s and Amy’s lunches, do homework, and maybe work on the comic. It was Eve’s favorite time of the day. The house held a silence that was different from its normal silence. When father was awake, the silence was a tension, a waiting for Eve to say something, to do something, to awaken his ire. Then the house would explode with yelling and violence that would eventually diminish into silence once again.
But in the morning, before anyone else was up, the silence was a silence of peace. Eve loved it.
By 7:00 am she’d showered and dressed, and her mask and armor was firmly in place. Tousled hair, dark red lips, artfully smudged eyes, thrust up breasts and bared navel. She was the jezebel her father accused her of being. She crept into Amy’s room and prodded the child awake.
“Hey there, brat. It’s time to get up,” Eve’s words were curt, but not really cruel. Eve couldn’t ever be really mean to Amy, even though she probably should – if father knew that Eve cared for Amy, he might use the child against her. Instead, Eve pretended a self-involved indifference. It was the only protection she could offer the girl.
Amy woke with her usual 8-year-old crankiness, the type that only manifested on schooldays, and Eve bullied her through the morning routine. In the year since her orphaned cousin had come to live with them, Eve’s private morning time had been severely diminished, but she no longer minded. In Amy, she could pretend a familial normalcy that had disappeared from the house years before. Just a normal 16-year-old, caring for her normal little sister, getting them both ready for school. Bliss comes in many forms.
Father came down just as Eve was spiriting Amy and herself off to school.
“Good morning children. How are – Eve, you’re not going to school like that.”
No. Not now. Not today. Not again.
“Do you see me walking out the door with my backpack? Sure as hell looks like I am.” The attitude, the words, the clothes. She could see herself being everything he accused her of being, everything the world thought her of being, everything she knew she’d always been – jezebel, slut, harlot – but she couldn’t stop herself from giving him what he expected.
“Don’t talk to me like that, young lady. You are not going to school dressed like that. The principal’s husband is a colleague of mine. I’m tired of you embarrassing me. Embarrassing this family. Now go back inside and change.”
“Screw you,” She turned to leave, ignoring Amy’s wide-eyed stare. Father grabbed her arm and pulled her back. She didn’t resist too much. She knew this game, and knew it would be worse if she resisted. Besides, she needed to get Amy out of here.
“You’ll do as I say, Miss Eve. Now get your butt upstairs.”
“If I do that, Amy will miss the bus, and we’ll both be late to school. You wouldn’t want us to embarrass you by being late.” She could feel the bravado draining out of her. She could never fight him. He was always too strong and too sure.
“Amy can walk to the bus stop on her own. I want you upstairs, now.”
She’d won. Amy was safe to leave. With a surly yank, Eve pulled away from her father and stormed upstairs. She could hear his tread behind her, but didn’t stop until she reached her room.
“So, are you just going to watch this time, you fucking hypocritical pervert, or do you want me to get you off and be really late?”
She expected the open-handed blow that struck across her cheek. She deserved it. She always did. That’s what he’d always said.
“Be quiet you insolent, evil child. If your mother could see you, could hear you now, it would break her heart. I’m doing this for your own good.”
“You’re doing this cause you’re a horny sicko who’d rather stick it in his own daughter than try to get a real woman to give him the time of day. And mother never paid attention to it when she was alive, so I don’t know why she’d care now that she’s dead.” Eve was backing into her room now. It was like one of those medieval morality plays that she’d read about. Always the same. Scripted. Expected. Predictable. Father grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her roughly.
“You shut your dirty little mouth, and don’t you ever speak of your mother like that.”
“You like my dirty little mouth. It gets you off.”
“Stop it, Eve. Don’t make me do something we’ll both regret,” his fingers clenched convulsively around her arms, “You know that I’ll need to punish you if you keep on like this.” She could see he was nearing his breaking point. She just wanted to get it over with so that she could escape to school. She leaned in close to him with a sneer.
“Punish me? You’ve got a fucking perverse idea about how a father is supposed to punish his kids. I bet if I went and told the cops how you ‘punished’ me, they’d haul your ass to county, and then some nice inmate would force you to be the cocksucker that we both know you are. I bet your colleagues would think that was a riot.”
With a snarl he shoved her onto her bed
“Shut up! You’ll never tell, because they’ll never believe anything that comes out of your foul, lying mouth. Everyone knows you’re just a lying, druggie trollop. They all feel sorry for me, that I have to put up with your crap and your attitude. As far as my department is concerned, I’m a fucking saint!”
He unbuckled his pants and shoved her micro-skirt to her waist.
“And don’t pretend like you don’t want this, you little whore. You beg me for it. You dress like a tramp and you talk like a slut, and you come up here without resisting at all, and you make it so I have to teach you your place. You beg me to punish you. You don’t just deserve it. You want it.”
Her underwear came off with a tearing sound, and his fingers bit deeply into her thighs as he thrust her legs apart. Distantly, she realized that by evening she’d have new bruises over the fading old ones. At least he wasn’t quoting scripture at her this time. She closed her eyes. Soon it would all be over and she could get to school.
Eve lay back as her father rutted atop of her, and listened to the silence of the house.
~***~
“Hey, Eve.”
“Hey, Ethan.” Eve slid into her seat for her second period Fundamentals of Art class, head bowed, face set. She’d had to change into a pair of low-rise jeans after father left her this morning. None of her skirts were long enough to hide the bruising. She didn’t get to wear skirts very often anymore. She opened her notebook and studiously avoided Ethan Carruthers’ questioning look. Ever oblivious to social cues, he prodded her.
“What happened? You’re ten minutes late, and Wendy said you weren’t in Geometry.”
“I didn’t feel like going, okay? I had better things to do this morning.” As usual, her churlish words bounced right off Ethan.
“Hey, that’s cool. I grok that.” Grok? “Anyways, whatever. You got the pages?”
Carefully, she opened her notebook and slid the drawings over, glancing up to make sure Mrs. Malone, who was droning on about pottery glazes, didn’t notice. Beside her, Ethan trembled in excitement as he paged through them.
They were writing a comic book. It was a ridiculous thing, really. She didn’t know much of anything about comic books besides what Ethan had shown her, and Ethan had the artistic skills of a carrot, but somehow, they’d decided to write a comic book for their final art project.
It was weird. Normally she wouldn’t even look at a guy like Ethan, except maybe to laugh at him and mock him for the benefit of her friends. His dark hair was a little long and really messy. He wore glasses, and white socks with black tennis shoes. He was tall and gangly and totally uncoordinated. Sure, he was cute in an over-eager puppy dog kind of way, but she’d never tell anyone that. When she ended up sitting next to him in her art class, she’d been completely disgusted. He was a total loser. He played dungeons and dragons (“role-playing games”, he’d insistently correct her), read comic books, and gabbed on about weird magical shit all the time. At first he’d tried to ignore her as much as she tried to ignore him. Real girls, especially ones like her, made him nervous.
Then he’d seen her drawings.
She drew what she saw in her mind’s eye. All the nasty, terrible things that she never talked about, she drew them. Nobody else understood. They just thought she was drawing disgusting things like rape and sodomy because she wanted to shock people. That’s what jezebels do, after all. Ethan, though, he thought her drawings were really good (“They remind me of Preacher”), and not out of some sick, prurient appreciation, either.
He forced her to read Sandman and Promethea and Preacher. He told her about the comic book he wanted to do, and somehow she agreed to do the artwork. Ethan was a great writer, but he couldn’t draw for shit. Somehow they’d ended up as partners for the final project. Somehow they’d become friends.
Eve still harbored the notion that it was all a strange, geek-ploy to get her to fuck him.
But Ethan just avidly poured over her artwork. He drooled over it more than most guys drooled over her. Like he was doing now. He got to the full two-page panel of her depiction of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and grew still.
“Eve. Wow. This is…incredible,” his long fingers stroked down the Virgin’s form. Like an avenging angel, she cut a swath through the pimps and street thugs of a Miami ghetto, while underage Hispanic prostitutes cowered. In the light of the Virgin’s glow that washed over them, each of the huddled girls’ faces looked like their savior’s. Eve was guardedly proud of it. Mary was everything she wished she could be.
When they’d been talking over what to write a comic book about, they’d discovered a weird convergence. Ethan knew about mystical and folkloric shit, but Eve knew about Christianity in all its varied forms. Having a father who was one of the pre-eminent experts in comparative theology at I.U. was apparently good for something after all. Ethan and Eve quickly hit upon the idea of doing a Promethea/Sandman-esque book about the Bloody Mary folklore that was prevalent amongst Hispanic street children in Miami. In their book, she was a gentle, motherly comfort to the children that could be called upon to protect them in times of dire need. And when she did, she was a holy terror…Bloody Mary, The Virgin of Guadalupe.
“Wow, this is just great. It’s a perfect first appearance for Mary. I really like what you did here,” he gestured to the head pimp and his gang, “y’know with their…their things frying off like that in her holy light.”
“Cocks, Ethan. If you have one, you can say it.”
“Uh, well, yeah,” he blushed, and she smiled. He really was a total loser.
“So, um. Well, here’s what’s going to happen next…” He passed the next portion of the script over to her, and they spent the rest of the period whispering about their holy superheroine’s next installment, while Mrs. Malone rattled on about firing temperatures and clay consistencies.
Amy, mornings, peaceful silences, Ethan, the comic book. Even when life totally blew, some things were still good.
~***~
“Sorry kid. No I.D., no entrance.” Eve stood outside the Bluebird, shivering slightly in the cold. Skimpy clothes became increasingly inconvenient as Fall got underway. Still, the chill made her nipples nice and hard under the thin cotton of her top. She thrust them towards the new doorman and pouted.
“C’mon, man. Joe knows me. He lets me in all the time. I just forgot my I.D. Really.”
“Yeah, right. In your lunchbox, maybe.” Eve’s eyes started to narrow. If she couldn’t get into the club, Nick and Jay would be furious. They didn’t like their arm candy to give them problems. They’d get mean if she didn’t get in soon. She opened her mouth to make her usual back-alley offer.
“Let her in, Mark. That’s Eve. We know her. Comes in all the time. She’s cool.”
Mark shot Joe an incredulous look as Eve sauntered through the door, but didn’t make any protest at his boss’ quelling glance. Joe caught Eve’s arm before she could escape into the darkness of the club. She froze, thinking of father’s hand on her arm this morning.
“Thanks,” she managed to choke out.
“Not a problem. I’ll make sure Mark knows to let you in from now on. You owe me one.”
“Yeah,” she sighed resignedly, then quickly sidled up to him, pressing her breasts against his chest and brushing a hand across his crotch. He leaned into her, “I got a few moments now, if you want to go into the break room.”
“Later,” he growled, “I’ve got to watch the door, and we’ve got a whole bunch of dykes here tonight, and those bitches are always trouble.” She felt a rush of relief at the reprieve.
“Sure thing. Later then.” She sauntered off to the dance floor, swaying her hips for Joe’s benefit.
It was a pretty wild crowd. Whoever’d scheduled the line-up was a complete idiot. The opening band was this group of Ani DiFranco wannabes, but the main act was pure hard rock – women were for tit-fucking, and lesbians were only interesting if they were performing for the benefit of the guys.
It was a recipe for fucked-upedness.
Eve didn’t notice any problem for a while. She had lost herself in the dancing. Sometimes she could just trance out on the movement, and not notice how screwed up everything was. Not notice Nick and Jay groping her, biting her, talking all sorts of shit about her. As long as she looked hot and rubbed up against them on occasion, they mostly left her alone.
Then the dykes started making-out with each other.
Nick and Jay started shouting shit, of course, and it pulled Eve out of her trance. She figured out pretty quickly that if something didn’t distract the guys soon, they’d be even meaner when they fucked her later. They’d want to show Eve her place, to re-assert their masculinity or something. They might even start sticking shit into her. They’d done that a few times before, when they were feeling really mean, mostly just bottles and shit. But last time a friend of Jay’s had threatened to stick a gun up her cunt. She’d been so scared that she hadn’t been able to do anything. She just froze as the cold metal muzzle entered her, as he wiggled it insider her and asked if she wanted a really good bang. Luckily the other guys talked him down after a few minutes. She couldn’t take that again. Not tonight. Not after today.
Fucking dykes, ruining her fucking evening.
So she went up to them, started yelling some shit. Grabbed one of the dykes and started tonguing her deeply, grinding against her, making it a show for the guys. Giving them back their ridiculous virility so they’d be nicer to her later. A few of the other dykes pulled her off the first one, and she got into a shouting match with one of them. The woman was really stupid, just spouting out popular feminist drivel that even Eve knew was lame. Eve started shouting biblical stuff back at her, all the things her father recited as he violated her, about a woman’s place, and proper behavior, and what she owed a man, blah, blah, blah. The woman didn’t even realize that Eve was mocking her by matching her drivel for drivel. The guys were eating it up, cheering her on.
Eve glanced around for Joe. Why the hell wasn’t he coming over to break this up. Finally she caught his eye and realized that he wasn’t going to rescue her. He was enjoying it as much as Nick and Jay. Eve didn’t know what to do. Tentatively, she pushed away the dyke who was in her face, hoping that the group of women would attack her and somebody would do something about them. Sure enough, the moment it broke into a physical confrontation, Joe, Mark, and a few other bouncers were there, pulling them all apart.
“Get them the fuck out of here,” Joe shouted at Mark as the dykes started yelling about discrimination. He turned angrily, “And Eve, I don’t want you starting shit in this bar. You pull this again and I’ll have you thrown out on your ass, you got it?”
“Whatever,” she shot back, “They fucking started it.”
“I don’t want to hear it. Just don’t fuck around from now on.” She turned away and started dancing with Nick and Jay again, sexing it up to calm them down, but she knew she’d owe Joe an even bigger one now.
Fucking dykes.
~***~
It was after midnight by the time she got home. She couldn’t quite get the taste of cum out of her mouth. Nick was doing some new drug and it gave his semen this weird, sickly sweet aftertaste. It was disgusting. She popped another altoid in the hopes that it would help.
She’d made it to the top of the stairs before father came out of his room. He was looking very self-satisfied, like he always did after he’d “punished” her. Her head drooped, sweaty hear hanging limply in her eyes. She felt so hollow that she couldn’t even cry.
“So, the little tramp finally makes it home. How many guys did you sleep with tonight?”
“Only three. But weeknights are usually pretty slow,” she replied with a sneer. Father looked distressed, disappointed, almost like he really cared. Fucking liar.
“Eve. Eve. Haven’t you learned yet that as long as you follow the path of the temptress, you’ll continue to be hurting and unhappy.” Great. He was in a scripture-quoting mood. Well, she knew how to stop that. She smiled cynically.
“See, I keep hoping that if I ‘follow the path of the temptress’, I’ll eventually catch an STD and give it to you when you fuck me. Hopefully something really deadly, although venereal warts wouldn’t be bad. I wonder how you’d explain that one.”
The false-kindness left father’s face, and for a moment Eve thought he’d hit her. Instead he did something infinitely worse.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you. I think maybe it would be a good idea if you didn’t spend so much time with Amy”
Eve responded with surly bravado, even though her heart was constricting in her chest, “Whatever. Like I really want to spend time with that brat.”
“I’m serious, Eve. Your attitude is starting to rub off on her. She used to be such a good little girl, but recently she’s developed quite the little mouth. I don’t like it, and I won’t have it.” Luckily, father turned and walked down the hall, shutting the door to his room with a quiet menace. He didn’t see the stark fear on Eve’s face.
Eve yanked open the door to Amy’s room, expecting to see a child in tears, trembling in terror and pain, just as Eve had so often cried and trembled when she was Amy’s age. But Amy was fast asleep, arms flung widely, a light snore emitting from her softly pink lips. He hadn’t touched her. Yet.
Eve huddled against the doorframe of Amy’s room, eyes wide against the darkness, tears welling in their depths. Her hollowness had suddenly been filled with a numbing terror.
“Oh god. I don’t know how to protect you. I don’t know how. Oh, god…oh god…” She sank to the floor, rocking back and forth as she cried into the silence of the house.
Thus ended the day like any other.
Rating: NC17
Media: Mummy - The Resurrection
Character: Eve (pre-Sefekhi)
Summary: Character background fic for a table-top Mummy game
Disclaimer: White Wolf owns Mummy, Eve Salomé Carmichael is my own creation.
Warning: This fic disturbs even me.
It was a day like any other.
She was up at 5:00 am to clean all the little daily messes of a household, make father’s and Amy’s lunches, do homework, and maybe work on the comic. It was Eve’s favorite time of the day. The house held a silence that was different from its normal silence. When father was awake, the silence was a tension, a waiting for Eve to say something, to do something, to awaken his ire. Then the house would explode with yelling and violence that would eventually diminish into silence once again.
But in the morning, before anyone else was up, the silence was a silence of peace. Eve loved it.
By 7:00 am she’d showered and dressed, and her mask and armor was firmly in place. Tousled hair, dark red lips, artfully smudged eyes, thrust up breasts and bared navel. She was the jezebel her father accused her of being. She crept into Amy’s room and prodded the child awake.
“Hey there, brat. It’s time to get up,” Eve’s words were curt, but not really cruel. Eve couldn’t ever be really mean to Amy, even though she probably should – if father knew that Eve cared for Amy, he might use the child against her. Instead, Eve pretended a self-involved indifference. It was the only protection she could offer the girl.
Amy woke with her usual 8-year-old crankiness, the type that only manifested on schooldays, and Eve bullied her through the morning routine. In the year since her orphaned cousin had come to live with them, Eve’s private morning time had been severely diminished, but she no longer minded. In Amy, she could pretend a familial normalcy that had disappeared from the house years before. Just a normal 16-year-old, caring for her normal little sister, getting them both ready for school. Bliss comes in many forms.
Father came down just as Eve was spiriting Amy and herself off to school.
“Good morning children. How are – Eve, you’re not going to school like that.”
No. Not now. Not today. Not again.
“Do you see me walking out the door with my backpack? Sure as hell looks like I am.” The attitude, the words, the clothes. She could see herself being everything he accused her of being, everything the world thought her of being, everything she knew she’d always been – jezebel, slut, harlot – but she couldn’t stop herself from giving him what he expected.
“Don’t talk to me like that, young lady. You are not going to school dressed like that. The principal’s husband is a colleague of mine. I’m tired of you embarrassing me. Embarrassing this family. Now go back inside and change.”
“Screw you,” She turned to leave, ignoring Amy’s wide-eyed stare. Father grabbed her arm and pulled her back. She didn’t resist too much. She knew this game, and knew it would be worse if she resisted. Besides, she needed to get Amy out of here.
“You’ll do as I say, Miss Eve. Now get your butt upstairs.”
“If I do that, Amy will miss the bus, and we’ll both be late to school. You wouldn’t want us to embarrass you by being late.” She could feel the bravado draining out of her. She could never fight him. He was always too strong and too sure.
“Amy can walk to the bus stop on her own. I want you upstairs, now.”
She’d won. Amy was safe to leave. With a surly yank, Eve pulled away from her father and stormed upstairs. She could hear his tread behind her, but didn’t stop until she reached her room.
“So, are you just going to watch this time, you fucking hypocritical pervert, or do you want me to get you off and be really late?”
She expected the open-handed blow that struck across her cheek. She deserved it. She always did. That’s what he’d always said.
“Be quiet you insolent, evil child. If your mother could see you, could hear you now, it would break her heart. I’m doing this for your own good.”
“You’re doing this cause you’re a horny sicko who’d rather stick it in his own daughter than try to get a real woman to give him the time of day. And mother never paid attention to it when she was alive, so I don’t know why she’d care now that she’s dead.” Eve was backing into her room now. It was like one of those medieval morality plays that she’d read about. Always the same. Scripted. Expected. Predictable. Father grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her roughly.
“You shut your dirty little mouth, and don’t you ever speak of your mother like that.”
“You like my dirty little mouth. It gets you off.”
“Stop it, Eve. Don’t make me do something we’ll both regret,” his fingers clenched convulsively around her arms, “You know that I’ll need to punish you if you keep on like this.” She could see he was nearing his breaking point. She just wanted to get it over with so that she could escape to school. She leaned in close to him with a sneer.
“Punish me? You’ve got a fucking perverse idea about how a father is supposed to punish his kids. I bet if I went and told the cops how you ‘punished’ me, they’d haul your ass to county, and then some nice inmate would force you to be the cocksucker that we both know you are. I bet your colleagues would think that was a riot.”
With a snarl he shoved her onto her bed
“Shut up! You’ll never tell, because they’ll never believe anything that comes out of your foul, lying mouth. Everyone knows you’re just a lying, druggie trollop. They all feel sorry for me, that I have to put up with your crap and your attitude. As far as my department is concerned, I’m a fucking saint!”
He unbuckled his pants and shoved her micro-skirt to her waist.
“And don’t pretend like you don’t want this, you little whore. You beg me for it. You dress like a tramp and you talk like a slut, and you come up here without resisting at all, and you make it so I have to teach you your place. You beg me to punish you. You don’t just deserve it. You want it.”
Her underwear came off with a tearing sound, and his fingers bit deeply into her thighs as he thrust her legs apart. Distantly, she realized that by evening she’d have new bruises over the fading old ones. At least he wasn’t quoting scripture at her this time. She closed her eyes. Soon it would all be over and she could get to school.
Eve lay back as her father rutted atop of her, and listened to the silence of the house.
~***~
“Hey, Eve.”
“Hey, Ethan.” Eve slid into her seat for her second period Fundamentals of Art class, head bowed, face set. She’d had to change into a pair of low-rise jeans after father left her this morning. None of her skirts were long enough to hide the bruising. She didn’t get to wear skirts very often anymore. She opened her notebook and studiously avoided Ethan Carruthers’ questioning look. Ever oblivious to social cues, he prodded her.
“What happened? You’re ten minutes late, and Wendy said you weren’t in Geometry.”
“I didn’t feel like going, okay? I had better things to do this morning.” As usual, her churlish words bounced right off Ethan.
“Hey, that’s cool. I grok that.” Grok? “Anyways, whatever. You got the pages?”
Carefully, she opened her notebook and slid the drawings over, glancing up to make sure Mrs. Malone, who was droning on about pottery glazes, didn’t notice. Beside her, Ethan trembled in excitement as he paged through them.
They were writing a comic book. It was a ridiculous thing, really. She didn’t know much of anything about comic books besides what Ethan had shown her, and Ethan had the artistic skills of a carrot, but somehow, they’d decided to write a comic book for their final art project.
It was weird. Normally she wouldn’t even look at a guy like Ethan, except maybe to laugh at him and mock him for the benefit of her friends. His dark hair was a little long and really messy. He wore glasses, and white socks with black tennis shoes. He was tall and gangly and totally uncoordinated. Sure, he was cute in an over-eager puppy dog kind of way, but she’d never tell anyone that. When she ended up sitting next to him in her art class, she’d been completely disgusted. He was a total loser. He played dungeons and dragons (“role-playing games”, he’d insistently correct her), read comic books, and gabbed on about weird magical shit all the time. At first he’d tried to ignore her as much as she tried to ignore him. Real girls, especially ones like her, made him nervous.
Then he’d seen her drawings.
She drew what she saw in her mind’s eye. All the nasty, terrible things that she never talked about, she drew them. Nobody else understood. They just thought she was drawing disgusting things like rape and sodomy because she wanted to shock people. That’s what jezebels do, after all. Ethan, though, he thought her drawings were really good (“They remind me of Preacher”), and not out of some sick, prurient appreciation, either.
He forced her to read Sandman and Promethea and Preacher. He told her about the comic book he wanted to do, and somehow she agreed to do the artwork. Ethan was a great writer, but he couldn’t draw for shit. Somehow they’d ended up as partners for the final project. Somehow they’d become friends.
Eve still harbored the notion that it was all a strange, geek-ploy to get her to fuck him.
But Ethan just avidly poured over her artwork. He drooled over it more than most guys drooled over her. Like he was doing now. He got to the full two-page panel of her depiction of the Virgin of Guadalupe, and grew still.
“Eve. Wow. This is…incredible,” his long fingers stroked down the Virgin’s form. Like an avenging angel, she cut a swath through the pimps and street thugs of a Miami ghetto, while underage Hispanic prostitutes cowered. In the light of the Virgin’s glow that washed over them, each of the huddled girls’ faces looked like their savior’s. Eve was guardedly proud of it. Mary was everything she wished she could be.
When they’d been talking over what to write a comic book about, they’d discovered a weird convergence. Ethan knew about mystical and folkloric shit, but Eve knew about Christianity in all its varied forms. Having a father who was one of the pre-eminent experts in comparative theology at I.U. was apparently good for something after all. Ethan and Eve quickly hit upon the idea of doing a Promethea/Sandman-esque book about the Bloody Mary folklore that was prevalent amongst Hispanic street children in Miami. In their book, she was a gentle, motherly comfort to the children that could be called upon to protect them in times of dire need. And when she did, she was a holy terror…Bloody Mary, The Virgin of Guadalupe.
“Wow, this is just great. It’s a perfect first appearance for Mary. I really like what you did here,” he gestured to the head pimp and his gang, “y’know with their…their things frying off like that in her holy light.”
“Cocks, Ethan. If you have one, you can say it.”
“Uh, well, yeah,” he blushed, and she smiled. He really was a total loser.
“So, um. Well, here’s what’s going to happen next…” He passed the next portion of the script over to her, and they spent the rest of the period whispering about their holy superheroine’s next installment, while Mrs. Malone rattled on about firing temperatures and clay consistencies.
Amy, mornings, peaceful silences, Ethan, the comic book. Even when life totally blew, some things were still good.
~***~
“Sorry kid. No I.D., no entrance.” Eve stood outside the Bluebird, shivering slightly in the cold. Skimpy clothes became increasingly inconvenient as Fall got underway. Still, the chill made her nipples nice and hard under the thin cotton of her top. She thrust them towards the new doorman and pouted.
“C’mon, man. Joe knows me. He lets me in all the time. I just forgot my I.D. Really.”
“Yeah, right. In your lunchbox, maybe.” Eve’s eyes started to narrow. If she couldn’t get into the club, Nick and Jay would be furious. They didn’t like their arm candy to give them problems. They’d get mean if she didn’t get in soon. She opened her mouth to make her usual back-alley offer.
“Let her in, Mark. That’s Eve. We know her. Comes in all the time. She’s cool.”
Mark shot Joe an incredulous look as Eve sauntered through the door, but didn’t make any protest at his boss’ quelling glance. Joe caught Eve’s arm before she could escape into the darkness of the club. She froze, thinking of father’s hand on her arm this morning.
“Thanks,” she managed to choke out.
“Not a problem. I’ll make sure Mark knows to let you in from now on. You owe me one.”
“Yeah,” she sighed resignedly, then quickly sidled up to him, pressing her breasts against his chest and brushing a hand across his crotch. He leaned into her, “I got a few moments now, if you want to go into the break room.”
“Later,” he growled, “I’ve got to watch the door, and we’ve got a whole bunch of dykes here tonight, and those bitches are always trouble.” She felt a rush of relief at the reprieve.
“Sure thing. Later then.” She sauntered off to the dance floor, swaying her hips for Joe’s benefit.
It was a pretty wild crowd. Whoever’d scheduled the line-up was a complete idiot. The opening band was this group of Ani DiFranco wannabes, but the main act was pure hard rock – women were for tit-fucking, and lesbians were only interesting if they were performing for the benefit of the guys.
It was a recipe for fucked-upedness.
Eve didn’t notice any problem for a while. She had lost herself in the dancing. Sometimes she could just trance out on the movement, and not notice how screwed up everything was. Not notice Nick and Jay groping her, biting her, talking all sorts of shit about her. As long as she looked hot and rubbed up against them on occasion, they mostly left her alone.
Then the dykes started making-out with each other.
Nick and Jay started shouting shit, of course, and it pulled Eve out of her trance. She figured out pretty quickly that if something didn’t distract the guys soon, they’d be even meaner when they fucked her later. They’d want to show Eve her place, to re-assert their masculinity or something. They might even start sticking shit into her. They’d done that a few times before, when they were feeling really mean, mostly just bottles and shit. But last time a friend of Jay’s had threatened to stick a gun up her cunt. She’d been so scared that she hadn’t been able to do anything. She just froze as the cold metal muzzle entered her, as he wiggled it insider her and asked if she wanted a really good bang. Luckily the other guys talked him down after a few minutes. She couldn’t take that again. Not tonight. Not after today.
Fucking dykes, ruining her fucking evening.
So she went up to them, started yelling some shit. Grabbed one of the dykes and started tonguing her deeply, grinding against her, making it a show for the guys. Giving them back their ridiculous virility so they’d be nicer to her later. A few of the other dykes pulled her off the first one, and she got into a shouting match with one of them. The woman was really stupid, just spouting out popular feminist drivel that even Eve knew was lame. Eve started shouting biblical stuff back at her, all the things her father recited as he violated her, about a woman’s place, and proper behavior, and what she owed a man, blah, blah, blah. The woman didn’t even realize that Eve was mocking her by matching her drivel for drivel. The guys were eating it up, cheering her on.
Eve glanced around for Joe. Why the hell wasn’t he coming over to break this up. Finally she caught his eye and realized that he wasn’t going to rescue her. He was enjoying it as much as Nick and Jay. Eve didn’t know what to do. Tentatively, she pushed away the dyke who was in her face, hoping that the group of women would attack her and somebody would do something about them. Sure enough, the moment it broke into a physical confrontation, Joe, Mark, and a few other bouncers were there, pulling them all apart.
“Get them the fuck out of here,” Joe shouted at Mark as the dykes started yelling about discrimination. He turned angrily, “And Eve, I don’t want you starting shit in this bar. You pull this again and I’ll have you thrown out on your ass, you got it?”
“Whatever,” she shot back, “They fucking started it.”
“I don’t want to hear it. Just don’t fuck around from now on.” She turned away and started dancing with Nick and Jay again, sexing it up to calm them down, but she knew she’d owe Joe an even bigger one now.
Fucking dykes.
~***~
It was after midnight by the time she got home. She couldn’t quite get the taste of cum out of her mouth. Nick was doing some new drug and it gave his semen this weird, sickly sweet aftertaste. It was disgusting. She popped another altoid in the hopes that it would help.
She’d made it to the top of the stairs before father came out of his room. He was looking very self-satisfied, like he always did after he’d “punished” her. Her head drooped, sweaty hear hanging limply in her eyes. She felt so hollow that she couldn’t even cry.
“So, the little tramp finally makes it home. How many guys did you sleep with tonight?”
“Only three. But weeknights are usually pretty slow,” she replied with a sneer. Father looked distressed, disappointed, almost like he really cared. Fucking liar.
“Eve. Eve. Haven’t you learned yet that as long as you follow the path of the temptress, you’ll continue to be hurting and unhappy.” Great. He was in a scripture-quoting mood. Well, she knew how to stop that. She smiled cynically.
“See, I keep hoping that if I ‘follow the path of the temptress’, I’ll eventually catch an STD and give it to you when you fuck me. Hopefully something really deadly, although venereal warts wouldn’t be bad. I wonder how you’d explain that one.”
The false-kindness left father’s face, and for a moment Eve thought he’d hit her. Instead he did something infinitely worse.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you. I think maybe it would be a good idea if you didn’t spend so much time with Amy”
Eve responded with surly bravado, even though her heart was constricting in her chest, “Whatever. Like I really want to spend time with that brat.”
“I’m serious, Eve. Your attitude is starting to rub off on her. She used to be such a good little girl, but recently she’s developed quite the little mouth. I don’t like it, and I won’t have it.” Luckily, father turned and walked down the hall, shutting the door to his room with a quiet menace. He didn’t see the stark fear on Eve’s face.
Eve yanked open the door to Amy’s room, expecting to see a child in tears, trembling in terror and pain, just as Eve had so often cried and trembled when she was Amy’s age. But Amy was fast asleep, arms flung widely, a light snore emitting from her softly pink lips. He hadn’t touched her. Yet.
Eve huddled against the doorframe of Amy’s room, eyes wide against the darkness, tears welling in their depths. Her hollowness had suddenly been filled with a numbing terror.
“Oh god. I don’t know how to protect you. I don’t know how. Oh, god…oh god…” She sank to the floor, rocking back and forth as she cried into the silence of the house.
Thus ended the day like any other.
