Amy Wilson

The Obsession

     I stoop my shoulders, and hang my head low as I enter the store. Each time is more difficult than the last, but every time is satisfying. Before anyone has time too see me and wonder what this giant grizzly bear could need, they smell me. I reek of disappointment and regret which oddly enough smells like sweaty clothes going on a week old.  As I saunter up to the counter, I notice the wide eyed look of fear on the clerks’ faces; everyone always wears that same mask when they see me. I still haven’t figured out if it’s my smell, or the wild lost look in my dark eyes that scare them. The clerks think they are operating smoothly, playing paper, rock scissors under the counter to see who waits on me but I notice, and immediately decide to lower my level of patience.  Ah damn! The male clerk has to wait on me. I hate it when I don’t get a female clerk.  Especially this young brunette with long fluttering eyelashes. Her emerald green eyes remind me so much of my dead wife’s, why did this male have to ruin everything for me? That is okay for now though, I am sure I can break him. And so I begin my slurred speech at a quiet decibel hoping to confuse the young man enough that he would send his female companion over to help. I request a lottery ticket, but don’t specify which kind, but the male clerk stays on his game, neither my smell nor my slurred speech seem to thwart him. As I raise my voice louder, to specify which ticket, it appears to the clerks that I am nothing but a sloppy drunk, thrust upon them by fate to make their night miserable.  That’s when I decide to go into my tragic story, still hoping to drive the young male mad, until he sends his female companion.  As I tell him my story, I slur my speech, and with every pause in between words, the sound as if I am snoring with my eyes wide open, the young man stays in place. I tell him how my voice came to sound like sick, drunk pig, being buried alive, well it can have that effect on you.  I tell him that I met my wife while I was in a coma; she nursed me back to health, and had the patience to listen to stutter once I was well again.  The young man looks at me, still unmoving and simply says, “Oh.”  Damn. I’ll just have to dig deeper to scare him away. Maybe, just maybe if I tell him how my wife died, he will have had enough and send his young female companion. I could only hope for so much. I explain to him the night my wife lay in bed thrashing about unresponsive as I call her name. I let him know I tried to call for help and the operator just thought I was drunk, and trying to cause a scene. I finally went to the neighbor’s house, he called for help but by then it was too late, the woman who nursed me back to health, she was dead herself.  The young man remained unmoving with no look of sympathy on his face. Damn. Each time harder than the last. How far will I have to take this to get the young man to leave? Surely I cannot tell him about my shady past, a past that has not yet caught up to me, but haunts my memories every minute of the day.

            I stare blankly at the young man as I remember forty years ago, when I first came out of my coma.  The unfamiliar, starch white room was too familiar in the same unfocused glance. An eerie silence engulfed the room; drowning out the beep of a nearby heart monitor. I hear stories almost too often today about people who spend months, days, even just hours in a coma, and when they come to they never quite recall the details of what landed them in the stiff uncomfortable bed to begin with. I was not so lucky. Even now as I long for the female clerk, I can still recall too many details from the night that left me alone in the cold, dull hospital room, tied down by tubes and paralyzed by consequence of my actions.

            I had been young man, handsome by the definition of that time. I had a strong jaw line, full persuasive lips, a perfectly centered nose neither too big nor too small, and warm, rich chocolate brown eyes.  These features helped in making me appear charming, the charm helped me get my way, especially when it came to women. I traveled a lot, leading me to a variety of different places across the United States; my favorite places always had a college with a nursing program. I was into nurses before it became the kinky trend it is today. I thought sleeping with them would cure me from any physical or emotional aliment I had. I never stayed very long in any one place; nurses were easy, causing me to get bored quickly and anxious to move on. I continued my nomadic ways of landing in college towns for nearly two and a half years when I finally ended up in a small town in North Carolina.  I was making my way through the youngest group of nursing students at the nearby college when I met one student, Sandi, who did not melt at the thoughtfulness of my eyes, or surrender to the persuasiveness of my lips. I did not handle her rejection very well, and quickly found myself imagining ways to humiliate this young woman, to make her regret not giving in to me.  These new found feelings of rejection caused me to stay longer than I normally would have, and so I began to start my way through the older nursing students. I quickly caught a break, overhearing one of the older students talk about a hazing ritual planned for the youngest of the nursing students, Sandi included, that could surely work to my advantage in revenge.

            The young nursing students had been left alone, tied up and blind folded by their elders for a little over three hours when I opened the door to the room they were stuck in. Sighs of relief rang out through the drab, stuffy hotel room as I stepped through the doorway. The four girls in the room were lucky to be blind folded, as they were spared from seeing the cheesy colored prints bolted to the walls, or the off white color of the room, unclear of whether it was painted that shade or made that way by years of people smoking in the room.  Being blind folded also spared the girls from recognizing their nightmare, not their savior had stepped through the doorway, and as I continued further into the cramped room I knew what I had to do to make this seem like a prank gone wrong.

            I knew I would start with the other three girls first, and save Sandi for last. She deserved to be last, to suffer the longest after rejecting me.  I had already been with the first three and felt no desire to be with them again leading me to go straight to the part where I strangled them with handkerchiefs; I didn’t want to leave bruises representing fingerprints behind.  I paid no attention to how much harm I was actually doing to the first three, all I cared about was getting to Sandi. When I go to Sandi, I ran the back of my hand down the side of her jaw line, traced her lips with my fingertip, and then ran my hands through her hair before I forced myself on her. She tried to fight me at first, but she quickly lost the will to struggle and became limp like a rag doll. When I was finished with her, I grabbed the handkerchief and did to her like I did the first three. Never again would Sandi reject me. Never again would she have a chance to. My final step into making this crime of passion seem as though it was a prank gone bad involved a pocket knife I always carried with me. I sliced my forehead, going for the effect of lots of blood, and then I walked to the balcony of that thirteenth floor hotel room, spread my arms out like a bird, and dove towards the ground like a dolphin diving into the waves.  I was never sure how long it was before someone found my body in the parking lot, but when I came to in the hospital, the most beautiful nurse I had ever seen hovered over my bed. Her deep emerald eyes saw past my façade and it didn’t take long while she nursed me back to health for me to fall madly in love with her.  I never bothered to find out if any of the girls survived, being haunted by the memories of my vicious night of revenge, and hoping the woman I planned on marrying would never find out,  had been punishment enough.

            I am still remembering a past life and day dreaming about my very dead wife when I am snapped back to reality by the clearing of a throat. But it is not my male friend; instead it is the female clerk clearing her throat, staring at me as though she understands my frustrations.  But I know she has no way of even knowing, let alone understanding my frustrations, and with her remarkable resemblance to my still dead wife, I know I must find a way to lure her to my rusted out 1981 Honda Accord. I keep a pair of pink fuzzy dice in the rear view mirror, and always something like zebra print covers on the seats, it is important to keep up the camouflage of trust. It has been a long time since I have been to North Carolina, and I know once this female clerk is in my car that I will take her to see North Carolina. She will see the room that the others were blindfolded to, and I will watch the look of shock and horror wash upon her face as she realizes what hand fate has dealt her.  Shock and horror quickly fade into confusion as I force myself on her. She doesn’t understand why I chose her, but in my mind’s eye it’s clear. I miss my lifeless dead wife, and this female clerk reminds me of her.  First though I must get her away from this counter.