The Pipe

TW: Mentions of past sexual abuse to a minor, mentions of violence, murder, unhealthy coping mechanisms.

The pipe is dripping again.

It’s her lullaby, her calming song, her heartbeat ringing in her ears. It lulls her in ways that the rhythmic twitching of her fingers, nor the hitching of her breaths that are beginning to sound like a beat to a song, cannot. 

She comes back to herself, sucking the air from the room and clenching those twitching, nervous fingers into fists that rest upon her bent knees.

The blood is drying.

It feels like the stickiness she would get on her hands as a child, when she would shovel sweets into her mouth and lick the residue from her palms. She unclenches her fists, and her skin sticks together, tacky and irritating.

It bothers her. She’s always liked being clean. 

She clenches her teeth. The grinding of bone is another sound added to the orchestra of her surroundings. She is reminded of musicals she would watch with her mother, of sounds crescendoing together to make a catchy tune that they would play for weeks on end afterwards.

Her mother. It’s been only hours, but her face feels shiny and glossed over. Too good to remember after the hell of her capture.

She supposed a lot of things will appear different now. Isn’t that what trauma does? Changes the things you loved, until they are warped. She doesn’t remember if such changes were a part of her childhood. Perhaps the abuse went on for so long, that life was always a little shiny and distorted. 

Capture. Is that what it was? She’d gone with him. She’d kissed him. She’d walked with him into his home. She’d given closed lipped smiles as he cradled her jaw just a little too tightly. But that was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Attention from a man like that. 

This wouldn’t have worked, otherwise. 

She always liked attention. Always like handsome men who would buy her things and smile at her with white, shining teeth and sickly-sweet words dripping from their tongues. She was pretty, she knew that, but greedy too. Greedy for sweets making her fingers tacky, and for men winsome failed to give her the adoration she craved.  

He’d made sure if that. He’d twisted her until she was sure there was no one who could meld against her. A friend, one of the few she used to have, spoke of Greek Mythologies, where people were two halves of the same whole, born united, but separated by Zeus because to his jealousy and fear.

What other half could she possibly have, when he had ruined her so? She has tried again and again to feel, and it was only now, with bloody fingers, that she felt. 

Her mother tried to make up for what men had done to her, before she even understood what he had been doing to her. Before she understood that a father's love was not hushed whispers in a dark bedroom, nor cold hands touching the insides of her skinny thighs. Love was musicals and her mother's face and her mother's love and her mother's rage. 

She wonders if the blood felt tacky on her mother's hands, too. Wonders if the regret felt something like gulping in fresh air, like excitement tingling her nerves, like revenge.

Perhaps it isn’t regret at all. She doesn’t think to dwell on it. She’s always been bad at identifying her feelings. 

The pipe drips. Her fingers beat against her knee in time with it. 

Perhaps she’ll make her own musical after this. Perhaps she’ll be famous. Would that be such a bad thing? How many stories were there of women who managed to fight back? Who managed to defang the snakes that liked around their ankles? Who managed to kill first. A heart wrenching few. 

She speaks, for the first time in hours, to his corpse on the floor. ‘You deserved it,’ she rasps, because her voice was lost in the aftermath, when she screamed and screamed and plunged the knife meant for her into his chest over and over. Perhaps she saw her father in the face of her attacker. 

Perhaps she’s trying to make this more poetic than it really is. 

It’s not like she hadn’t planned this, after all. Sought out a man like the one who touched her in the darkest, quietest of nights as a child. Googled in the local Library the best dive bars in town. That’s where they lingered, the ones who yearned to touch pretty girls like her. 

She understands such temptations, but hers have changed so drastically over time. As a child, temptations consisted of chocolates and sweets and toys. Perhaps he spoilt her out of guilt. Perhaps he felt none at all.

She was his good girl. Maybe she enjoyed being bad so often, so that she could prove him wrong. Not that he would see it.

He lay under the oak tree in their garden, worms working their way through his long-rotted flesh. 

She feels no guilt now. She supposes her temptation is different – should she feel such guilt for giving into it? She double sinned. Giving into a temptation, when that temptation was exacting revenge? When that temptation was control, was murder?

Oh, she’s destined for the flames. Perhaps there, she can find her father's face amongst the masses, slide her hands around his throat, and exact range for all of eternity.   

Is it murder if it was defence? She sought out the baddest of seeds, after all. She may have freely walked with him into his home and tasted his tongue, but he planned to hurt her. Perhaps they were alike in that way. They had both gone out into the night with the temptation of hurting someone. 

There is no denying, in the aftermath, that the ice she wears around herself has been chipped. Was this the cure, that so many therapists had been unable to prescribe her? Murder. No, not murder, revenge. 

Perhaps she could offer warmth to others, if she did this enough. Perhaps she could fix herself, and not take the advice of others who did not understand. 

Hell hath no fury, and all that. 

The pipe drips, and with it comes the slamming of footsteps. Shouts. Her name. Sirens. Lights filtering through the narrow window of the basement, just level with the yellowing grass of his lawn that she had spied out hours ago as they tumbled from the taxi. 

Her toe nudges the body. Her mouth lifts. ‘We’re about to be famous,’ she tells him. She clenches and unclenches her fists. The blood is dry now, the tackiness fading. She wonders how long it will be until she can shower. 

She hopes it isn’t like this every time. 

She blinks and breathes in. The footsteps are in the house now. In her exhale, her face crumples. Her tears come. Her stiff legs bring her to her feet.

She’s practiced this in the mirror. 

The pipe drips. Her screams become part of the musical, and wonders if there will be a sequel. 

She hopes so