(no subject)
All material written by Robert Joseph Levy and taken from Go Ask Malice: A Slayer’s Diary
Historian's Note: The following diary was found on April 13, 2006, beneath the ruins of the Sunnydale, California, bus station during an archeological excavation at that site. It was discovered inside a locker alongside a woman's bloodstained tank top, a handheld video game device, and three sharp wooden objects resembling tent stakes. The present location of its author is unknown.
Listen, to whoever's reading this (and if it's you, Mom, I HATE YOU), I should tell you I'm having a hard time writing all this down. I really hope you don't expect me to say anything profound or whatever because that's not really who I am. I'm not some deep thinker who's going to solve the world's problems or have great insight into human nature or even myself. Sorry. I know I'm supposed to be working through my issues or my feelings or whatever V told me to do, but there's really not much to say. Girl in the world, not very smart, not very pretty, kind of a loser. Keep it moving, people. There's nothing here to see. - p.5
Christmas sucked. Mom finally showed up and was all, “Well, wasn’t it nice not to have me around so you could enjoy your vacation?” As if she’s constantly breathing down my neck and hassling me to do my chores and get a good night’s sleep and whatever else moms are supposed to do. I think she was just saying it to try and make herself look better in front of her scumbag boyfriend Gable, like she didn’t cut out on me for a week. After she passed out, Gable, stinking of smoke and whiskey, came into my room, closed the door behind him and sat down next to me on the bed.
I was like, “What are you doing?” and he said, “I wanted to give you a present.” From the inside pocket of his leather bomber jacket he pulled out this small gift-wrapped box and handed it to me, saying, “Merry Christmas, Faith.” Inside was a pair of diamond earrings; they looked real, too. “Wow,” I said. “Thanks a lot. These are really cool.”
“Anything for you, baby.” Then he looked toward the door real quick before he reached over and kissed me on the lips. I pulled away but he grabbed me by the back of the head and brought me closer to him, sliding himself along the bed and trying to get on top of me. For a second I was kind of in shock but then I started screaming and he put his hand over my mouth, trying to shut me up. “What’s wrong?” he kept saying, as if it wasn’t obvious, like he couldn’t understand why I was objecting. I managed to push him off me and then I jumped off the bed and went to the door.
“You ever touch me again and I’ll…” I couldn’t finish.
“And you’ll what, kid?” He leaned back on the pillow and crossed his arms behind his head, grinning from ear to ear. Just to see him lying on my bed made me want to puke. “Tell your mom?” he went on. “Get that queer you go out with to rough me up?” I wanted to pick up the lamp next to the bed and beat the crap out of him, but instead I grabbed my coat off the chair and headed out to spend the night at Tommy’s.
The worst part is, he’s right. There’s nothing I can do about it, least of all tell my mother. I mean, I’m sure she’d probably believe me, deep down, but there’s no way she’d do anything about it except blame me for bringing it on myself and messing with “the only good man I’ve ever had,” which is like a total joke. Gable’s one of the biggest dealers in Southie and has girlfriends all over town. Mom thinks she’s special, but she isn’t. She’s just deluded. Thinks he’s going to make an honest woman out of her, move her out of this dump and into a mansion, “like those fancy ones in Beacon Hill.” Right. How she can have dozens of guys use her up and throw her out and still believe in that fairy tale I’ll never understand. And every time, every single goddamn time she gets dumped, she bitches and moans for weeks, drinking herself into a stupor, acting like she’s the first woman ever to be wronged by a guy.
Please. I heard about the first woman that happened to. I think her name was Eve. -p. 9-11
I mean, he wasn’t the worst I’ve ever had or anything. It was more like I just wasn’t really into it. It hurt. Not a good hurt like with Ronnie (I do miss wearing that schoolgirl getup, bless me), but a bad hurt, like he was going at an idea of a girl, like I wasn’t even there, like he didn’t care one way or the other. Once we got started I wished it was over, but I didn’t do anything to stop it because… well, I don’t know why. Boredom? Is that a reason? Or just to try to see if I could feel something different for a little while? Sometimes I just feel dead inside.
Happy New Year! - p.15
Instead of me heading to class I went up to the gym, which was just emptying out, when I heard some shouting coming from the boy’s locker room. I put my bag down under the bleachers and then poked my head inside the entrance to the locker room, and that’s when I saw Tommy. He was lying on the rubber floor, grabbing onto his stomach, and for a second I could see his face, all screwed up, his lip busted open, blood dripping from his chin, before Sam Flynn stepped into my line of vision.
“Take a hike, “ he said, blocking me. “This is the men’s room. No snatch allowed.”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“You heard me.” I pushed past him and tried to go over to Tommy, where two goons from the football team were busy kicking him in the gut, when Flynn grabbed my arm and twisted it before shoving me over toward the showers. “You coming to save your girlfriend?” he sneered, his boys snickering as they took their attention off Tommy. “Or is this like some porno I saw and we’re going to take turns doing you against the lockers?”
“Oh, yeah, big boy, “ I answered back. “Why don’t you bring your bad self over here and show me what you got.”
“Is that what you want?” He walked over to me, towering over me; I could smell the stink on him. “Is that it?” He grabbed his crotch and leaned into me. “You want some of this?”
I met his gaze, smiled sweetly, and then kneed him where it hurts, his eyes going wide with shock before he doubled over, stumbling into the shower room. “Not anymore,” I said, walking past him and into the center of the room.
Needless to say, that didn’t exactly endear me to his two buddies, one of them grabbing me from behind and pulling me down on a bench. The other one wound back and slapped me, hard, which stung like a mother (but not as much as, oh, say, when my mother does it). But then he threw himself on top of me and I suddenly couldn’t breathe and started to panic, my skin going cold, and I felt like I was drowning in a sea of blood, gasping for air when there was none to be had. And that’s the last thing I remember.
Next, I was sitting in a plastic chair, and it’s like I was coming out of a fog. I didn’t know where I was, but suddenly it’s like I was waking up from a deep sleep, my limbs heavy, chest tight, my muscles aching. I kind of saw where I was, in the waiting area outside Principal Martin’s office-- should have been familiar, considering the number of times I was sent there in the past year-- and that’s when I looked down and noticed my hands: the knuckles bruised, my fingernails all cruddy, and then the ring on my middle finger, which had a few strands of hair, short blondish hair, stuck to my skin underneath it. That’s when my hands started to kill, and I brought them closer to my face to look at them closer up when I realized someone was sitting next to me. I turned to him, and it took a few seconds before he came into focus.
“Tommy, “ I said, noticing when I spoke how shallow my breath was, like I was coming down with something. I took in the sight of him and couldn’t help but make a face, as his had been well worked over: bloody nose, black eye, split lip, the works. “Wow, kid. You look how I feel.”
“Really?” he said, real cold. “You mean, totally embarrassed and humiliated?”
“Forget about it,” I said, waving a bruised hand. “Sam Flynn and his goon squad beat on everyone. It’s like a Southie right of passage.”
“I’m not talking about them,” he said then, a look of hate passing over his face. “I’m talking about you.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you think I mean? How would you like it if everyone teased you and called you names and beat you up for being different from all the other mooks around here?”
“Story of my life,” I said honestly.
“Yeah, but then you didn’t need a girl to come save you. God! I am never going to live this down.”
“Well, excuse me for doing you any favors,” I said, crossing my arms. “Sure looked like you needed my help, but next time I won’t bother.”
“Yeah,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Next time I need someone to go all psycho and destroy the locker room I’ll be sure to call someone else.”
“What?” I said, but just then the door to the principal’s office opened, and me and Tommy both sat straight up in our seats. Out came Sam’s boys, and they both looked like they’d been kicked around-- bruised, bloody, one of them with a large gash on the side of his head. Neither of them so much as glanced at Tommy. Instead they saved their glares for me, drilling into me, harsh, accusing. The one with the gash narrowed his eyes and, as he walked past me, mouthed the words “You’re dead” and used a finger to make a throat-slashing motion across his neck.
“Get in here and sit down,” Principal Martin barked at me, his face even redder than usual. I stepped into his office and he shut the door, waiting until I took a seat before he got behind his desk. I noticed him move away from me. “You know I’m going to have to suspend you effective immediately. Two weeks minimum while your case is reviewed. School policy.”
“For what?” I said. “I didn’t do anything wrong. They jumped Tommy, and then they jumped me, and--”
“And then what?” he asked me, and I didn’t have an answer, because I didn’t really know. “I’m aware that some of the others pick on you and Tommy,” he said, sighing really loudly. “But I have to let you know that you two bring it on yourselves. I don’t know if anyone’s tried to tell you that before, but I really feel as if it’s my duty.” I stared up at him, afraid of what was coming next. “There are certain people-- I don’t know why they are the way they are, but it’s the truth-- they’re, well, they’re asking for bad things to happen to them. And unfortunately for you, Faith, you’re one of them.”
I knew what he was saying wasn’t true, so I tried not to listen and focused instead on the sounds of kids passing by in the hallway outside. “I don’t know what it is,” he went on, “maybe it’s pheromonal, some kind of animal instinct, who knows, but let me tell you, it’s fact. This kind of person, they get stepped on and spit on and disrespected, skipped over in the line of life, you might say, and it’s almost like they deserve it, because they provoke people, even if they don’t know it. You don’t want to go through the rest of your days as one of those sad souls, believe me. The sooner you do something about it, the better.”
And this is all I could think:
I could kill you. I could turn around, throw you down, beat your head into the floor until your brains spilled out. That’s what I could do. -p.17-22
Dear Faith,
I don’t know whether you’ve been kicked out of school or not, but I didn’t want to wait around to find out. I’m too tired to deal. Tired of getting beat up at school, tired of getting beat up at home, tired of everything, and everyone. And that includes you. I think you’re a very special person who has a real chance of doing good things with her life, but sometimes, like today in the locker room, I see another side of you and it’s like you’re a whole different person. The way you wailed on Sam Flynn, kept going at him again and again, even after he begged you to stop, even after he passed out… you can’t be like them, don’t you get it? You can’t get off on hurting people. You have to be better than they are.
But you aren’t. You liked it. I could tell. I could see your hate. And me? I hate too. I hate your violence. Hate it with all my heart. And my heart is breaking for you.
I can’t go back to school, not after what you did, after what they’re going to do to me. So I’m outta here. Ed and me are getting out of this hellhole of a town, and I’m never coming back. Thank you for being my friend. And good luck, Faith. You’ll need it.
Much love,
Tommy
I can’t believe it. I can’t believe Tommy’s gone. It’s been so long since I had a friend, a real one, who didn’t think I was a freak or a bitch or a slut, which is how people always see me, because they don’t see the real me, the one on the inside, the one behind the front. I can’t believe he’s gone. I can’t believe I’m alone again. -p.24-25
“She was my imaginary friend. We started hanging when I was four or five, back when I was relative hopping before my mom took me in. Alex and me used to spend the day hunting monsters together in the projects.” Her face lit up like a bottle rocket and I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I know,” I said, putting up a hand to keep the Psychobabble Express from pulling into the station. “Please don’t. I get it, okay? Consider Dr. Freud paged. ’Hey, look who’s back just when Faith’s on her own again, it’s a friend she’s made up so she won’t be lonely!’ Loud and clear, V. Got the memo.”
“Is that what you think the dream means?”
“Uh, yeah, probably.” I put my feet up on her desk and she shot me a look so I took them down.
“Dreaming up a new friend for myself, and the best I can do is a six year old girl. Even when I’m asleep I’m an underachiever.”
“Is that how you see yourself?”
“‘Is that what you think?’ ‘Is that how you see yourself?’ ‘How does it make you feel?’ Wow, you are just full of helpful suggestions. That must be why they pay you the big bucks.”
“I ask you to share your thoughts and feelings with me because I care about your opinions,” she said, her eyes sad and mouth turned down so far that I wanted to slap that oh-so-disappointed look right off of her. “I care about you, Faith.”
“Well, that’s your job, isn’t it? To pretend that you care. Just like Mr. and Mrs. Squirrel P. Jones pretend to care about me while they’re using me as their own personal maid service.”
“Faith.”
“I mean, say what you will about my mother, but at least she’s had a messed-up life, you know? She can’t help what she’s done to me. She has no control over what she does when she drinks. None. But she can’t help it. It’s not her fault. At least that’s what she says to make herself feel better.”
“I realize that you’re angry, but we need to find a healthier way for you to deal with it, okay?”
“What about you, V, anyone ever rough you up?” I said, standing now. “How many times did you land up in the hospital before your sweet sixteen? Anyone ever drag you across the kitchen floor by that nice long hair of yours, huh? Or burn your arm with a cigarette for forgetting to pass along a message that someone called for them? ‘Cause if not, I don’t really think you have a right to treat me like I’m some kind of poor little nut job who needs to be taken care of. I’d be doing fine by myself, if everyone would stop watching me all the time.”
“Faith,” she said, “please put that down.”
She wasn’t looking at my face anymore, but was staring at something lower down. I followed where she was looking and saw in my hand that I was holding a pen and was pointing it at her. I must have taken it off her desk without realizing it, because it wasn’t one of mine. I sat back down before tossing it on the desk. V kind of shook her head, then told me my mom might be spending some time in a halfway house after she’s done with rehab. “So, in other words,” I said, “I better start getting used to being on my own?”
“That’s not what I said.” But that’s what she meant. And then she told me that Principal Martin doesn’t want me back, so I’m going to be transferred to a parochial school starting next week. The good news just keeps on coming.
I don’t know what freaked me out more, the fact that V looked scared of me like I was going to stab her or something, or the fact that I didn’t even realize how worked up I was getting about my mother, the fosters, my life-- how I have to be so hard so that I don’t let anything get to me, which I learned from my mother make one mistake after another, mostly involving men. That’s reality for me. Every day, in every way. -p.37-40
And I thought about when I was a kid, and what happened then, how lonely I was, how screwed up, all the adults who were supposed to look out for me but landed up hurting me instead. Part of me must have split off then and that’s who Alex was, and still is: the innocent me that got away. And now that she’s in my dreams it must mean that I need that part of me to come back again, even if she is only part of a dream, part of that dark looking-glass world on the other wise, the one filled with the monsters I used to fight so that the real ones wouldn’t seem so bad.- p.53-54
Private with Terrance. Talked about my mother, her drinking, my anger, and last summer, the hospital. At one point he asked me, “Do you think of yourself as a good person?” and I had to stop and think about what I was going to say for a few seconds, what kind of answer he was looking for.
“Sure,” I said, trying to look thoughtful, trying to look like I meant it. “Everyone thinks of themselves as a good person. Don’t they?”- p.85-86
Started training last week. Turns out I’m a natural: the Prof is actually going to send me to a local martial arts place since I wore her out pretty quick and it’s only our third day. “I didn’t think it would come to this so quickly, but you’re quite cunning,” she said between breaths (I told her to lay off the smokes) as she took her giant padded helmet off. “Where did you attain such confidence in your combat skills?”
“I must have just picked it up somewhere,” I said, and that’s the truth. You want to learn how to fight? It’s really easy. Just get the snot beaten out of you enough times and you’ll pick it up real quick. Promise.- p.105
“Oh, hey, V.” I immediately felt bad because I hadn’t spoken to her in, like, two months or something (I pretty much dropped her along with school, not that I meant to), but I was about to feel a whole lot worse. She asked me how I’ve been, how my new home was working out, and I said everything was fine. “What’s going on with you?”
“I have some bad news. It’s about your mother.” I didn’t say anything, just listened, and ever though I usually have a good memory for things people say to me (comes from a lifetime of being lied to, I guess), I only remember some of what she said, like I went someplace while she was talking away on the other end of the line, someplace cold and dark. The funeral’s the day after tomorrow.
“Listen, V, I gotta go,” I said, and hung up the phone just as the Prof came into the kitchen. She asked me who it was and I said, “It was my social worker. Just checking in.”
She sighed and said, “I quite specifically asked that she refrain from contacting you directly now that you’re in my charge. It’s not that I disapprove of your prior relationship, it’s simply the fact that the Council has a strict no-interference policy for potential Slayers. If you have any problems to discuss, you may confide in me. I won’t judge you. After all, there is no small amount of necessary dependence one should have on her Watcher, and that goes hand in hand with certain allowances of interpersonal confidences that may be shared, but only between…”
I couldn’t hear anymore from my dark place-- her words, V’s words, all the sounds of the world soaked up with nothing reflected back-- just the hollow thud in my chest like a hammer hitting a pillow over and over and over.
I wanted to remember when I was little and my mom used to leave me with strange men for weeks at a time, and then how she came back and how she couldn’t take care of me, never even taking me to the doctor for checkups, forgetting to make sure I brushed my teeth or bathed until I was sent home from school, shamed. And then there was the drinking to remember. And the drugs. And the memory of her as she stepped into that Cadillac, the light hitting her face, and how old she looked, how used up and tired and sad…
I wanted to remember all of these things, my hand still holding onto the receiver, like letting go of it would suddenly make it true that she was dead, make true the fact that they found her in an abandoned car in Chinatown and it took them two weeks to identify the body. I wanted to keep all the bad things about her close to my heart, where I could use them to keep hating her. But all I could think of, all I can still think of, is her crooked smile, that huge grin she got when I would tell her some stupid joke I heard at school, or when one of her boyfriends would bring her something, anything-- it didn’t much matter. All I can think of is that smile, and how it’s gone.
And now I hate her even more.- p.116-118
I wasn’t listening, instead I sat down on the edge of the bathtub to read the letter. The beginning wasn’t that interesting-- just some junk about how she was sorry to hear about my mother, and how Professor Dormer should send me to see her if my anger management issues start to flare up. (Yeah, if only V could see me down in the basement with the Prof wearing a padded suit screaming, “Come on, hit me! Harder!” at the top of her lungs while I practice my roundhouse kicks on her.) But then, I don’t know why, but I kept on reading, even though I knew there was going to be something in it that I didn’t want to know, shouldn’t know. Now I wish I could take it all back, go back to the moment before I grabbed the letter out of the Prof’s hand and just walk away.
The problem with Faith’s bursts of violence, you see, is that they are not just understandable reactions to a lifetime of physical and emotional abuse and neglect at the hands of her mother, but also a result of marked dissociation consistent with childhood trauma of a more severe degree. As we discussed a few weeks ago, Faith’s pattern of escalating rage and subsequent blackouts suggest that, rather than forming an integrated self as she progresses through adolescence, she is instead experiencing depersonalization and derealization in increasing (and alarming) degrees. The recent locker room incident on school grounds, as well as last month’s assault on the city driver, have only driven home the fact that, thanks to her substandard and frankly criminal upbringing, she stands little to no chance of becoming a fully functional individual. The reality is that, were it not for your intervention and my own advocacy on her behalf, she would be in jail at this very moment.
I stood up and shoved the letter into my pocket before going to unlock the door. My mother, through V, through Professor Dormer, was still hurting me. Even from the grave she was still hurting me, her anger, her hate still spreading like some kind of goddamn infection. I thought coming to live with the Prof was going to be a new start, but that’s because I’m an idiot who’s too stupid to know that there are no such things as new starts: wherever you go, there you are. The Prof said it herself: the past, it’s just a rabid dog that keeps coming back to bite you in the ass no matter how many times you try to put it down.
I opened the bathroom door and flew past the Prof, who watched as I grabbed my jacket and bag and headed down the spiral staircase that leads out of my room. “Where are you going?” she screamed after me. “Faith!”
But I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t know where I was headed, or what exactly I was feeling, just that I needed to run.-p.124-126
Oh my God.
I woke up tired, really tired, like I hadn’t really slept at all, and rolled over, and suddenly I could feel a stabbing pain in my upper arm. I figured I’d reinjured it somehow, so I got up to go to the bathroom to take off the bandage and have a look. Just as I was peeling off the gauze, I looked in the mirror and realized that it wasn’t my left arm, the one I’d hurt a couple weeks ago, but my right one. I watched in the reflection as I pulled back the pad and couldn’t believe what I saw, what I still see even as I write these words.
On my bicep there’s a tattoo, freshly inked and red raw, one I have absolutely no memory of getting. It’s a kind of tribal band, all black with two connected spirals, thorns spraying off them toward the back of my arm like two figures in flames, dancing to the death. It’s the slave tattoo from the dream, the one used to brand the maenads.
It’s the mark of the father.- p.180
He didn’t say anything for a while, and it took me a minute before I realized he’d started crying. I didn’t know what to say, so I just sat there until he looked up at me with those horrible hollow eyes, only this time they were red and wild. “I’m sorry,” he said, something about the way he said it made me sick. “Sorry for being such a lousy father. I never should have done it. All those things I did. You didn’t deserve it. None of it. You were just a little girl. I was such a bad man.”
He went on, all the while bawling away-- “I’m evil, I’m bad, I’m evil”-- but I stopped listening, a numb feeling taking over me, taking me away. I could still see him, and sorta hear him through the phone, but almost like I was really far away, on the other side of the world instead of just on the other side of a sheet of glass. Because I didn’t want to know what he was saying. Whatever it was, though, he could box it up and bury it in the ground for all I care. I don’t need his sorry apology, just like I don’t need him or my bitch of a mother or anyone else. Just me. And then I felt my blood rising, and it felt clean, like polished steel, and it washed over me with what I feel most, the feeling that is me, and that is hate.
“Can you forgive me for what I’ve done?” he said, placing his palm against the glass, his eyes widening in anticipation, the same way a guy’s does when he’s asked you to go all the way, all hope and magic like he’s a kid on Christmas morning and he’s halfway down the stairs in search of a shiny-wrapped present. He looked so pathetic. And all I could think was:
I curse you with all my heart.
“Dad,” I said.
You broken little man.
“It’s not your fault,” I said.
I hope you die in here.
“It’s not your fault.”
“Thank you,” he said, still crying. “Thank you.” And then something passed between us, a cold shadow, and I saw it reflected in the glass like something bad had gotten loose and taken flight. -p.188-190
Why? she asked me in my head.
“Why what?” I answered out loud.
Why won’t you let me end him?
“Can’t. Won’t. I let you take me over before. But not now.”
He killed my daughter, she sighed, and my brain felt like a icy breeze was floating across it. He killed me.
“I know.” I was white-knuckling the arms of the chair. “I felt it. It was like I was there. Hurt like hell.”
And I was there when your father hurt you, she whispered, when you were a little girl..
“This has to stop,” I said, feeling her anger cold inside me, thirsty for blood. “I feel for you, believe me, but this has to end. Tonight.”
The Prof came in and put a box down on the table, and turned toward me. “Faith, are you … you?” and I nodded. “You’re white as a sheet.”
“Get it out of me,” I said. “Get it out of me now.”- p.202
There’s a sucking noise all of a sudden, and a rush of air, and I’m sent, like I’m flying down a cosmic water slide, rocketing out into space. And then I’m out there in the great beyond, in the blackness, in nothing, floating free without any sign of land or water, alone.
Until she comes.
“You,” I say, as she appears out of nowhere.
“Who were you expecting, firecracker?” my mother says, sneering, standing right in front of me in all her glory like she’s still in her twenties and loving it. “Don’t act so disappointed.” She’s wearing the same red spaghetti-strap halter and black leather mini she wore when I last saw her in the Combat Zone, when she was getting into that stranger’s car, before I went ballistic and landed up at Belmont. “Jesus Christ, kid, look at you. You’re a mess.”
“It’s not my fault,” I say, looking down at myself to find me covered in blood and dirt, the black hole of nothingness below. “I’m trying to get better.”
“Yeah, well, take it from me, it ain’t workin’.”
“You’re dead,” I say back, and close my eyes, hoping she’ll be gone when I open them. Instead, we’re suddenly at our place in Southie, everything exactly the way it was before, down to the chipped paint and broken blinds on the windows. “I’m not really here,” I say. “This is like a dream.”
“Yeah, well, dream me up another pack of smokes. There’s an extra in the top drawer of my dresser.” She turns away from me and goes to the fridge, sticking her head inside. I step away from the kitchen and just then I can hear something upstairs, something horrible, a sound like the thick toenails of a sick dog as he drags himself across the floor, searching out a hole to crawl into to die. It freezes me in my tracks. “Go on,” my mom says, slamming the refrigerator door, fresh bottle of vodka in hand. “What are you afraid of? There ain’t nobody upstairs ‘cept yer father.”
I force myself over to the foot of the stair case and stare up at the top, the scraping sound getting louder, shaking the whole apartment. I start up the stairs, and as I got I can feel the weight of my legs, like I’m getting heavier and heavier, and it’s getting harder and harder to move. About halfway up the steps I get the strange feeling that the staircase is getting longer and wider, or maybe I’m just shrinking, and all along the wall there’s a bunch of mirrors, each one the size of a largish picture frame; I turn to look at one and am surprised to see not myself but Kenny. He looks just like he does on the Freak Wharf poster next to his bed, with his hair spiked up and dyed jet black, like how I used to see him, before I knew him.
“Faith, Faith, Faith,” he says, shaking his head in disappointment. “How could you ever think I was serious about you?” I stop. “I mean, really,” he goes on, laughing now. “You’re not a bad bang for a groupie, but isn’t it sad that I’d rather be with a dead girl than with you?”
It feels like I’ve been stabbed in the heart, and I force myself to turn away from the mirror, keep my eyes on the top of the stairs, and continue forward.
“Pssssssssst,” I hear from the next mirror, and it’s Steve, the guy from Watertown, the klepto. “I just wanna tell you that I only gave you that stuff I lifted because you’re not worth spending money on. You wanna know why? ‘Cause you’re trash, nothing’ else but.”
“Screw you,” I say, and keep going, my legs becoming shorter, the stairs becoming harder to climb. It’s like scaling a mountain.
“Yo, Faith.” Another voice, a gentle one this time, and I look into another frame and it’s Tommy, who I haven’t seen since we were back in the principal’s office, a million years ago. “How’s it going, killer?” he says, a satisfied smile pulling up the corners of his mouth. “Beaten the crap out of anyone lately? Or is it okay, now that you’ve gotten a permission slip?”
“I’m not a killer,” I say, and make myself look away, keep moving.
As I pass the next mirror, and the next, I can hear them all whispering at me from behind the frames.
LOSER, they say.
FREAK.
SLUT.
The mirrors, they’re all taunting me, each one with the face of some guy I know-- Sam Flynn, this kid Mike that used to live on my block and throw rocks at me, my old boyfriend Ronnie, even Principal Martin-- and all the while I keep on going up the stairs, knowing not to stop. I pick out one cursing voice in particular and recognize it as my grandfather, who, even though he’s been dead for years, is still staring out at me with pure disgust, like I’m the child of the devil himself.
“Dirty girl,” he spits at me from the mirror, and I flinch. “You’re a disgrace to me. You should never have been born.”
And finally I get to the top, having to crawl at the end, the steps becoming huge under my feet. It’s now that I look down and realize that I’m wearing my First Communion dress, with white tights underneath and Mary Janes, like what Alex wears in the dream. And I look up at the last mirror on the wall, and it’s a regular mirror and I see myself for the first time. I’m young, a little girl. And I’m her.
I’m Alex.
I creep into my mom’s bedroom, past the bed with the ratty old quilt I know like the back of my hand, and walk over to the dresser. I reach up for the handle of the top drawer, but I can’t quite get at it, and all the while the scratching noise is getting louder, coming from somewhere down the hall. I manage to grab the drawer handle and it’s so hard, so heavy, but finally I pull the drawer out and it comes crashing down on the floor. I rummage through the clothes and, at the back of the drawer, I find a smooth, well-carved stake. I wrap my tiny hand around it, holding it back next to my head as I turn toward the direction of the scraping noise.
I head down the hallway, the neon lights flickering and popping overhead. I realize that the noise is coming from the bathroom, and a horrible, sickening feeling comes over me, like the one I had when I was at the prison talking to my dad, like I’m about to find out something I don’t want to know. At the end of the hallway is the bathroom door, and I stand in front of it, all three feet of me like I’ve just chowed down on some space cakes from the Wonderland Bakery, and reach up for the doorknob. It’s heavy and hard to turn, so I have to put the stake in my mouth and use both hands, and it’s another minute before I get the door to click open.
Holding the stake again, I use my other hand to slide the door open, and now the nails-on-floor noise is gone, there’s only the sound of the door as it creaks open slowly, slowly. And once it’s open and I step into the room-- so strange to see it from this angle, down near the floor, dog’s eye view-- I hear a different sound now: the sound of someone crying. I look behind the door and that’s when I realize that the crying is coming from behind the shower curtain, that there’s someone in the bathtub. I walk on weak legs over to the side of the tub and, reaching up, pull back the curtain. And I see her.
I see me.
I’m sitting in the dirty water, and I’m naked and bloodied, folded over myself and sobbing. Even though she’s wearing my skin, looking just like me, I know who she really is: the old Slayer, the one in my head, the one we’ve got to get rid of. I notice the tattoo on her arm, and it’s weird to see it on me from the outside; I’m surprised at how dope it looks. I don’t know what to say, so I ask, “Why are you crying?”
She picks up her head from where it’s resting on her knees and says, “I’m crying because he still walks the earth, while I am already dead.” She looks up and past me, and I follow where she’s staring at the large mirror over the sink. And there, through the bathroom mirror, I see the Prof’s house, like I’m looking up through the chancy mirror on the floor of the library, and I can see Kenny and the Prof raising some crazy mojo around the circle, the room crackling with energy. It’s strange to see myself there in the center of the circle, eyes closed, and also here next to me in the bathtub, but neither of them are really me, I don’t think-- not looking back on it, and what happened next.
“Listen,” I say, and even now when I’m writing this I have to remind myself that she’s not her-- I mean me, “I’m sorry it came down to this. But your time is up. If I ever run into the Father, Kakistos, whoever you came back to kill, I’ll stake him good. Promise.”
“Kakistos,” she says slowly, like she was thinking about the word. “He made us call him Father, when he would…” She looked straight at me then. “You will see him. And soon,” she says, here eyes-- my eyes-- narrowing. “I’ve made sure of that.”
“Oh, yeah? How’d you do that?”
“You’re wearing his mark,” she says, leaning her head down then and licking at the tattoo on her arm like a cat in front of a bowl of milk. “As long as he remains in the world of the living, you’ll never truly feel at peace. If he doesn’t come for you, eventually you’ll have to go to him.”
“What?” Shaking suddenly, I lower the stake in my hand.
“It was the only way. I felt myself leaving this place, the way I felt once before. The mark was to remind you.”
“Thanks.” I look back at the mirror, and feel myself being drawn back into it, sucked back through time and space. “You didn’t have to take me over, you know. That ain’t right. It’s no wonder the little girl called you Malice.”
“You are mistaken.” She looks sorry then, giving me a look of pity. “I am not the one you call Malice.”
“Then who is?”
“Ask her,” she says, pointing toward the doorway behind me. And just as I start to turn, the world explodes around me in a cloud of white dust and I’m back at the Prof’s house on the library floor, the mirror in front of me smashed into a thousand pieces.
“It’s done,” the Prof says to me, wiping my forehead with a damp cloth. “She’s gone.”
And that’s all I can remember.- p.208-215
The air was thick with dirt and blood, like the whole place was a giant monster and I was in its belly, just praying that it wouldn’t wake up and eat me alive.
And I walked.
All the way, until I came into the main chamber, where they were waiting for me, like it was planned this way all along. And then I had the scary thought that the dreams I had of her, the past Slayer being taken down into his underground world, maybe they weren’t just her memories but were a look into the future, those prophetic dreams a Slayer can have. Maybe everything I thought I’d seen through her eyes was also what was going to happen to me.
“Slayer,” I hear him hiss from a darkened corner on the other side of the cavern, his voice echoing off the walls. “ I knew you’d come.“
I walked into the dank space, and was surprised to see that instead of maenads, I was surrounded by actual vampires; he’d changed his tune over the years. I couldn’t quite make him out so I tried to draw him closer to me, make him step into the light, what little there was coming from the torches along the walls. “Where is she?” I said, the sound of the vamps licking their chops all around me.
“Come closer,” he answered. “I have something to show you.”
As I stepped nearer, knowing with all my hear that I was going to die, knowing that I didn’t want to see, I still made myself look.
On the other side of the catacomb was a stone altar, topped by a throne of twisted skeletons. And on the throne was the Father, his hideous face the one from my nightmares, the one I saw that night up in the cemetery when the old Slayer first took over. He was like an animal, had changed over time into something even less human than a vampire, and I could see now that his hands were like the hooves of a goat, hard and thick. And in his hands he held her.
She was propped up on his lap, facing me, her body naked, mangled and bloody, bite marks all up and down her, half-drained but still alive, her eyes wide with terror. “Faith,” she whispered, just before he used one of his sharpened hands to rip a hole through her stomach, impaling her before he tore her open in two, ending her. Gone.
“Diana!” I screamed, everything in slow motion like I was underwater, as I was grabbed from behind by a half-dozen hands and dragged forward toward the altar, on either side of which lay the remains of my Watcher, the only one I had left in this world or the next. They brought me to him, holding me, pulling the battle-ax from my hand, the crossbow from my back, keeping my head down like they were forcing me to pray to him, their demon god.
He stepped down from the altar to where I was bent over before him, his feet like a goat’s feet, and he leaned down to look into my eyes. I tried not to look at his face, but as they forced my head up I had no choice. His gaze locked onto mine, his mouth a wide smile. “Faith,” he said, “what a pretty name you have.” I made myself cry then just to stall for time, even though I knew it would hurt worse than getting killed to really think about what he did to her, and he used the hoof of his hand to wipe the tears from my face, spreading her spilled blood on my cheeks.
“Shhhhh,”he whispered. “Don’t cry. Not yet.” he put his hand under my chin and leaned into me so that his face was just inches from mine, so close I would have been able to smell his breath, if he had any. “Daughter,” he hissed, “do you know where you are? You’re home now.”
And I flashed back to Southie, the old apartment with my mom, and then forward in time to the Prof’s place in Cambridge, and all the places in between-- my grandfather’s place in the projects, all my other relatives’ houses when I used to get passed around like a hot potato, then Tommy’s house where I would crash, the foster home, everywhere I’d ever lived my whole life-- and realized in that moment that I had no home, no place in this world to call my own. I had nothing. No one. So I was free.
“Home,” I said.
“That’s right,”he said, running his fingers through my hair. “You’re home. And you can start by calling me Father.”
That word. Father. It made me think of her, the past Slayer, how he would make her call him that, how sick it made me feel inside, my stomach turning, violent. And then I thought of the mark she gave me, the tattoo on my arm. I turned my head in its direction and that’s when I remembered the tanto I’d slipped up my sleeve.
“I want to give it to you,” I said.
“Yes?” he said, his eyes flickering in anticipation.
“Yeah.” I could feel her with me then, the old Slayer, every past Slayer, too, and every woman this monster had ever hurt, the slaves he’d turned into maenads, the mothers and daughters he’d raped and killed, all of them, all of us, suddenly one. And then the fear left my heart. And I was ready. “Are you sure you want it, Father?”
He smiled wide, his fangs white in the torchlight. “Oh, yes.”
“Okay then.” I smiled, licking my lips. “Give us a kiss.”
He leaned in, and the vamps holding me slackened their grip for just a second, one second, and I let the tanto slip out from my sleeve, and slide from its sheath.
And we kissed.
He pulled back, eyes wide as saucers, the shock washing over his face.
“You ain’t a father no more,” I said, as he staggered back against the altar, the ivory handle of the knife shining between his legs. “Not anymore.”
I remembered the dream then, the Slayers’ dying wish: She wanted a taste. I brought my hand up to my mouth and touched his blood to my lips.
And then it was on.
Two vamps tried to grab me from behind, but I batted them away, crossing my arms in front of me and reaching into the lining of my jacket to pull out two stakes. I was double-fisting now, and I spun, kicking one of them in the chest and nailing the other in the heart.
Dust.
Another punched me in the face but I just used the momentum to go into a forward roll and was up again. Three more on more but I was hungry for it now, wanted to be covered in blood, their ashes sticking to me like I’d been tarred and feathered. I took the first one by the ears and ripped them off his skull, and he shrieked, and I loved it, loved the sound of him screaming right before I got him in the heart.
Dust.
I head butted another and he flew back, a spray of blood from his nose arcing through the air between us. The next one came but I was too quick, grabbing him by the throat and thrusting the stake into him before another was on me, hitting me in the back of the head and I slammed into the vamp in front of me, stuck my hand against his stomach and dug my nails in, pulled my hand back with a piece of his flesh bloody slick in between my fingers. I didn’t know how many there were and I didn’t care. Tonight I’m a killer. Tonight I’m death itself.
Dust.
“Kill her,” I hear him say, and I looked over at him doubled over next to the altar. “Kill her!” But I didn’t care if I even lived or died. Because I was free.
Two more threw me against the wall right next to a lit torch and I grabbed it, shoved it in one of their faces before swinging it in front of me, lighting two more on fire, and they went up in flames. Then the funniest thing came into my head: “A Shameful Execution,” my favorite Freak Wharf song. And I smiled as the bassline kicked in, and then the drums, and all of a sudden Kenny was with me, rooting for me, cheering me on. And then I was dancing as I did it, dancing as I killed them, killed them all, one by one, come one, come all, all takers.-p.224-229
Historian's Note: The following diary was found on April 13, 2006, beneath the ruins of the Sunnydale, California, bus station during an archeological excavation at that site. It was discovered inside a locker alongside a woman's bloodstained tank top, a handheld video game device, and three sharp wooden objects resembling tent stakes. The present location of its author is unknown.
Listen, to whoever's reading this (and if it's you, Mom, I HATE YOU), I should tell you I'm having a hard time writing all this down. I really hope you don't expect me to say anything profound or whatever because that's not really who I am. I'm not some deep thinker who's going to solve the world's problems or have great insight into human nature or even myself. Sorry. I know I'm supposed to be working through my issues or my feelings or whatever V told me to do, but there's really not much to say. Girl in the world, not very smart, not very pretty, kind of a loser. Keep it moving, people. There's nothing here to see. - p.5
Christmas sucked. Mom finally showed up and was all, “Well, wasn’t it nice not to have me around so you could enjoy your vacation?” As if she’s constantly breathing down my neck and hassling me to do my chores and get a good night’s sleep and whatever else moms are supposed to do. I think she was just saying it to try and make herself look better in front of her scumbag boyfriend Gable, like she didn’t cut out on me for a week. After she passed out, Gable, stinking of smoke and whiskey, came into my room, closed the door behind him and sat down next to me on the bed.
I was like, “What are you doing?” and he said, “I wanted to give you a present.” From the inside pocket of his leather bomber jacket he pulled out this small gift-wrapped box and handed it to me, saying, “Merry Christmas, Faith.” Inside was a pair of diamond earrings; they looked real, too. “Wow,” I said. “Thanks a lot. These are really cool.”
“Anything for you, baby.” Then he looked toward the door real quick before he reached over and kissed me on the lips. I pulled away but he grabbed me by the back of the head and brought me closer to him, sliding himself along the bed and trying to get on top of me. For a second I was kind of in shock but then I started screaming and he put his hand over my mouth, trying to shut me up. “What’s wrong?” he kept saying, as if it wasn’t obvious, like he couldn’t understand why I was objecting. I managed to push him off me and then I jumped off the bed and went to the door.
“You ever touch me again and I’ll…” I couldn’t finish.
“And you’ll what, kid?” He leaned back on the pillow and crossed his arms behind his head, grinning from ear to ear. Just to see him lying on my bed made me want to puke. “Tell your mom?” he went on. “Get that queer you go out with to rough me up?” I wanted to pick up the lamp next to the bed and beat the crap out of him, but instead I grabbed my coat off the chair and headed out to spend the night at Tommy’s.
The worst part is, he’s right. There’s nothing I can do about it, least of all tell my mother. I mean, I’m sure she’d probably believe me, deep down, but there’s no way she’d do anything about it except blame me for bringing it on myself and messing with “the only good man I’ve ever had,” which is like a total joke. Gable’s one of the biggest dealers in Southie and has girlfriends all over town. Mom thinks she’s special, but she isn’t. She’s just deluded. Thinks he’s going to make an honest woman out of her, move her out of this dump and into a mansion, “like those fancy ones in Beacon Hill.” Right. How she can have dozens of guys use her up and throw her out and still believe in that fairy tale I’ll never understand. And every time, every single goddamn time she gets dumped, she bitches and moans for weeks, drinking herself into a stupor, acting like she’s the first woman ever to be wronged by a guy.
Please. I heard about the first woman that happened to. I think her name was Eve. -p. 9-11
I mean, he wasn’t the worst I’ve ever had or anything. It was more like I just wasn’t really into it. It hurt. Not a good hurt like with Ronnie (I do miss wearing that schoolgirl getup, bless me), but a bad hurt, like he was going at an idea of a girl, like I wasn’t even there, like he didn’t care one way or the other. Once we got started I wished it was over, but I didn’t do anything to stop it because… well, I don’t know why. Boredom? Is that a reason? Or just to try to see if I could feel something different for a little while? Sometimes I just feel dead inside.
Happy New Year! - p.15
Instead of me heading to class I went up to the gym, which was just emptying out, when I heard some shouting coming from the boy’s locker room. I put my bag down under the bleachers and then poked my head inside the entrance to the locker room, and that’s when I saw Tommy. He was lying on the rubber floor, grabbing onto his stomach, and for a second I could see his face, all screwed up, his lip busted open, blood dripping from his chin, before Sam Flynn stepped into my line of vision.
“Take a hike, “ he said, blocking me. “This is the men’s room. No snatch allowed.”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“You heard me.” I pushed past him and tried to go over to Tommy, where two goons from the football team were busy kicking him in the gut, when Flynn grabbed my arm and twisted it before shoving me over toward the showers. “You coming to save your girlfriend?” he sneered, his boys snickering as they took their attention off Tommy. “Or is this like some porno I saw and we’re going to take turns doing you against the lockers?”
“Oh, yeah, big boy, “ I answered back. “Why don’t you bring your bad self over here and show me what you got.”
“Is that what you want?” He walked over to me, towering over me; I could smell the stink on him. “Is that it?” He grabbed his crotch and leaned into me. “You want some of this?”
I met his gaze, smiled sweetly, and then kneed him where it hurts, his eyes going wide with shock before he doubled over, stumbling into the shower room. “Not anymore,” I said, walking past him and into the center of the room.
Needless to say, that didn’t exactly endear me to his two buddies, one of them grabbing me from behind and pulling me down on a bench. The other one wound back and slapped me, hard, which stung like a mother (but not as much as, oh, say, when my mother does it). But then he threw himself on top of me and I suddenly couldn’t breathe and started to panic, my skin going cold, and I felt like I was drowning in a sea of blood, gasping for air when there was none to be had. And that’s the last thing I remember.
Next, I was sitting in a plastic chair, and it’s like I was coming out of a fog. I didn’t know where I was, but suddenly it’s like I was waking up from a deep sleep, my limbs heavy, chest tight, my muscles aching. I kind of saw where I was, in the waiting area outside Principal Martin’s office-- should have been familiar, considering the number of times I was sent there in the past year-- and that’s when I looked down and noticed my hands: the knuckles bruised, my fingernails all cruddy, and then the ring on my middle finger, which had a few strands of hair, short blondish hair, stuck to my skin underneath it. That’s when my hands started to kill, and I brought them closer to my face to look at them closer up when I realized someone was sitting next to me. I turned to him, and it took a few seconds before he came into focus.
“Tommy, “ I said, noticing when I spoke how shallow my breath was, like I was coming down with something. I took in the sight of him and couldn’t help but make a face, as his had been well worked over: bloody nose, black eye, split lip, the works. “Wow, kid. You look how I feel.”
“Really?” he said, real cold. “You mean, totally embarrassed and humiliated?”
“Forget about it,” I said, waving a bruised hand. “Sam Flynn and his goon squad beat on everyone. It’s like a Southie right of passage.”
“I’m not talking about them,” he said then, a look of hate passing over his face. “I’m talking about you.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you think I mean? How would you like it if everyone teased you and called you names and beat you up for being different from all the other mooks around here?”
“Story of my life,” I said honestly.
“Yeah, but then you didn’t need a girl to come save you. God! I am never going to live this down.”
“Well, excuse me for doing you any favors,” I said, crossing my arms. “Sure looked like you needed my help, but next time I won’t bother.”
“Yeah,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Next time I need someone to go all psycho and destroy the locker room I’ll be sure to call someone else.”
“What?” I said, but just then the door to the principal’s office opened, and me and Tommy both sat straight up in our seats. Out came Sam’s boys, and they both looked like they’d been kicked around-- bruised, bloody, one of them with a large gash on the side of his head. Neither of them so much as glanced at Tommy. Instead they saved their glares for me, drilling into me, harsh, accusing. The one with the gash narrowed his eyes and, as he walked past me, mouthed the words “You’re dead” and used a finger to make a throat-slashing motion across his neck.
“Get in here and sit down,” Principal Martin barked at me, his face even redder than usual. I stepped into his office and he shut the door, waiting until I took a seat before he got behind his desk. I noticed him move away from me. “You know I’m going to have to suspend you effective immediately. Two weeks minimum while your case is reviewed. School policy.”
“For what?” I said. “I didn’t do anything wrong. They jumped Tommy, and then they jumped me, and--”
“And then what?” he asked me, and I didn’t have an answer, because I didn’t really know. “I’m aware that some of the others pick on you and Tommy,” he said, sighing really loudly. “But I have to let you know that you two bring it on yourselves. I don’t know if anyone’s tried to tell you that before, but I really feel as if it’s my duty.” I stared up at him, afraid of what was coming next. “There are certain people-- I don’t know why they are the way they are, but it’s the truth-- they’re, well, they’re asking for bad things to happen to them. And unfortunately for you, Faith, you’re one of them.”
I knew what he was saying wasn’t true, so I tried not to listen and focused instead on the sounds of kids passing by in the hallway outside. “I don’t know what it is,” he went on, “maybe it’s pheromonal, some kind of animal instinct, who knows, but let me tell you, it’s fact. This kind of person, they get stepped on and spit on and disrespected, skipped over in the line of life, you might say, and it’s almost like they deserve it, because they provoke people, even if they don’t know it. You don’t want to go through the rest of your days as one of those sad souls, believe me. The sooner you do something about it, the better.”
And this is all I could think:
I could kill you. I could turn around, throw you down, beat your head into the floor until your brains spilled out. That’s what I could do. -p.17-22
Dear Faith,
I don’t know whether you’ve been kicked out of school or not, but I didn’t want to wait around to find out. I’m too tired to deal. Tired of getting beat up at school, tired of getting beat up at home, tired of everything, and everyone. And that includes you. I think you’re a very special person who has a real chance of doing good things with her life, but sometimes, like today in the locker room, I see another side of you and it’s like you’re a whole different person. The way you wailed on Sam Flynn, kept going at him again and again, even after he begged you to stop, even after he passed out… you can’t be like them, don’t you get it? You can’t get off on hurting people. You have to be better than they are.
But you aren’t. You liked it. I could tell. I could see your hate. And me? I hate too. I hate your violence. Hate it with all my heart. And my heart is breaking for you.
I can’t go back to school, not after what you did, after what they’re going to do to me. So I’m outta here. Ed and me are getting out of this hellhole of a town, and I’m never coming back. Thank you for being my friend. And good luck, Faith. You’ll need it.
Much love,
Tommy
I can’t believe it. I can’t believe Tommy’s gone. It’s been so long since I had a friend, a real one, who didn’t think I was a freak or a bitch or a slut, which is how people always see me, because they don’t see the real me, the one on the inside, the one behind the front. I can’t believe he’s gone. I can’t believe I’m alone again. -p.24-25
“She was my imaginary friend. We started hanging when I was four or five, back when I was relative hopping before my mom took me in. Alex and me used to spend the day hunting monsters together in the projects.” Her face lit up like a bottle rocket and I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, I know,” I said, putting up a hand to keep the Psychobabble Express from pulling into the station. “Please don’t. I get it, okay? Consider Dr. Freud paged. ’Hey, look who’s back just when Faith’s on her own again, it’s a friend she’s made up so she won’t be lonely!’ Loud and clear, V. Got the memo.”
“Is that what you think the dream means?”
“Uh, yeah, probably.” I put my feet up on her desk and she shot me a look so I took them down.
“Dreaming up a new friend for myself, and the best I can do is a six year old girl. Even when I’m asleep I’m an underachiever.”
“Is that how you see yourself?”
“‘Is that what you think?’ ‘Is that how you see yourself?’ ‘How does it make you feel?’ Wow, you are just full of helpful suggestions. That must be why they pay you the big bucks.”
“I ask you to share your thoughts and feelings with me because I care about your opinions,” she said, her eyes sad and mouth turned down so far that I wanted to slap that oh-so-disappointed look right off of her. “I care about you, Faith.”
“Well, that’s your job, isn’t it? To pretend that you care. Just like Mr. and Mrs. Squirrel P. Jones pretend to care about me while they’re using me as their own personal maid service.”
“Faith.”
“I mean, say what you will about my mother, but at least she’s had a messed-up life, you know? She can’t help what she’s done to me. She has no control over what she does when she drinks. None. But she can’t help it. It’s not her fault. At least that’s what she says to make herself feel better.”
“I realize that you’re angry, but we need to find a healthier way for you to deal with it, okay?”
“What about you, V, anyone ever rough you up?” I said, standing now. “How many times did you land up in the hospital before your sweet sixteen? Anyone ever drag you across the kitchen floor by that nice long hair of yours, huh? Or burn your arm with a cigarette for forgetting to pass along a message that someone called for them? ‘Cause if not, I don’t really think you have a right to treat me like I’m some kind of poor little nut job who needs to be taken care of. I’d be doing fine by myself, if everyone would stop watching me all the time.”
“Faith,” she said, “please put that down.”
She wasn’t looking at my face anymore, but was staring at something lower down. I followed where she was looking and saw in my hand that I was holding a pen and was pointing it at her. I must have taken it off her desk without realizing it, because it wasn’t one of mine. I sat back down before tossing it on the desk. V kind of shook her head, then told me my mom might be spending some time in a halfway house after she’s done with rehab. “So, in other words,” I said, “I better start getting used to being on my own?”
“That’s not what I said.” But that’s what she meant. And then she told me that Principal Martin doesn’t want me back, so I’m going to be transferred to a parochial school starting next week. The good news just keeps on coming.
I don’t know what freaked me out more, the fact that V looked scared of me like I was going to stab her or something, or the fact that I didn’t even realize how worked up I was getting about my mother, the fosters, my life-- how I have to be so hard so that I don’t let anything get to me, which I learned from my mother make one mistake after another, mostly involving men. That’s reality for me. Every day, in every way. -p.37-40
And I thought about when I was a kid, and what happened then, how lonely I was, how screwed up, all the adults who were supposed to look out for me but landed up hurting me instead. Part of me must have split off then and that’s who Alex was, and still is: the innocent me that got away. And now that she’s in my dreams it must mean that I need that part of me to come back again, even if she is only part of a dream, part of that dark looking-glass world on the other wise, the one filled with the monsters I used to fight so that the real ones wouldn’t seem so bad.- p.53-54
Private with Terrance. Talked about my mother, her drinking, my anger, and last summer, the hospital. At one point he asked me, “Do you think of yourself as a good person?” and I had to stop and think about what I was going to say for a few seconds, what kind of answer he was looking for.
“Sure,” I said, trying to look thoughtful, trying to look like I meant it. “Everyone thinks of themselves as a good person. Don’t they?”- p.85-86
Started training last week. Turns out I’m a natural: the Prof is actually going to send me to a local martial arts place since I wore her out pretty quick and it’s only our third day. “I didn’t think it would come to this so quickly, but you’re quite cunning,” she said between breaths (I told her to lay off the smokes) as she took her giant padded helmet off. “Where did you attain such confidence in your combat skills?”
“I must have just picked it up somewhere,” I said, and that’s the truth. You want to learn how to fight? It’s really easy. Just get the snot beaten out of you enough times and you’ll pick it up real quick. Promise.- p.105
“Oh, hey, V.” I immediately felt bad because I hadn’t spoken to her in, like, two months or something (I pretty much dropped her along with school, not that I meant to), but I was about to feel a whole lot worse. She asked me how I’ve been, how my new home was working out, and I said everything was fine. “What’s going on with you?”
“I have some bad news. It’s about your mother.” I didn’t say anything, just listened, and ever though I usually have a good memory for things people say to me (comes from a lifetime of being lied to, I guess), I only remember some of what she said, like I went someplace while she was talking away on the other end of the line, someplace cold and dark. The funeral’s the day after tomorrow.
“Listen, V, I gotta go,” I said, and hung up the phone just as the Prof came into the kitchen. She asked me who it was and I said, “It was my social worker. Just checking in.”
She sighed and said, “I quite specifically asked that she refrain from contacting you directly now that you’re in my charge. It’s not that I disapprove of your prior relationship, it’s simply the fact that the Council has a strict no-interference policy for potential Slayers. If you have any problems to discuss, you may confide in me. I won’t judge you. After all, there is no small amount of necessary dependence one should have on her Watcher, and that goes hand in hand with certain allowances of interpersonal confidences that may be shared, but only between…”
I couldn’t hear anymore from my dark place-- her words, V’s words, all the sounds of the world soaked up with nothing reflected back-- just the hollow thud in my chest like a hammer hitting a pillow over and over and over.
I wanted to remember when I was little and my mom used to leave me with strange men for weeks at a time, and then how she came back and how she couldn’t take care of me, never even taking me to the doctor for checkups, forgetting to make sure I brushed my teeth or bathed until I was sent home from school, shamed. And then there was the drinking to remember. And the drugs. And the memory of her as she stepped into that Cadillac, the light hitting her face, and how old she looked, how used up and tired and sad…
I wanted to remember all of these things, my hand still holding onto the receiver, like letting go of it would suddenly make it true that she was dead, make true the fact that they found her in an abandoned car in Chinatown and it took them two weeks to identify the body. I wanted to keep all the bad things about her close to my heart, where I could use them to keep hating her. But all I could think of, all I can still think of, is her crooked smile, that huge grin she got when I would tell her some stupid joke I heard at school, or when one of her boyfriends would bring her something, anything-- it didn’t much matter. All I can think of is that smile, and how it’s gone.
And now I hate her even more.- p.116-118
I wasn’t listening, instead I sat down on the edge of the bathtub to read the letter. The beginning wasn’t that interesting-- just some junk about how she was sorry to hear about my mother, and how Professor Dormer should send me to see her if my anger management issues start to flare up. (Yeah, if only V could see me down in the basement with the Prof wearing a padded suit screaming, “Come on, hit me! Harder!” at the top of her lungs while I practice my roundhouse kicks on her.) But then, I don’t know why, but I kept on reading, even though I knew there was going to be something in it that I didn’t want to know, shouldn’t know. Now I wish I could take it all back, go back to the moment before I grabbed the letter out of the Prof’s hand and just walk away.
The problem with Faith’s bursts of violence, you see, is that they are not just understandable reactions to a lifetime of physical and emotional abuse and neglect at the hands of her mother, but also a result of marked dissociation consistent with childhood trauma of a more severe degree. As we discussed a few weeks ago, Faith’s pattern of escalating rage and subsequent blackouts suggest that, rather than forming an integrated self as she progresses through adolescence, she is instead experiencing depersonalization and derealization in increasing (and alarming) degrees. The recent locker room incident on school grounds, as well as last month’s assault on the city driver, have only driven home the fact that, thanks to her substandard and frankly criminal upbringing, she stands little to no chance of becoming a fully functional individual. The reality is that, were it not for your intervention and my own advocacy on her behalf, she would be in jail at this very moment.
I stood up and shoved the letter into my pocket before going to unlock the door. My mother, through V, through Professor Dormer, was still hurting me. Even from the grave she was still hurting me, her anger, her hate still spreading like some kind of goddamn infection. I thought coming to live with the Prof was going to be a new start, but that’s because I’m an idiot who’s too stupid to know that there are no such things as new starts: wherever you go, there you are. The Prof said it herself: the past, it’s just a rabid dog that keeps coming back to bite you in the ass no matter how many times you try to put it down.
I opened the bathroom door and flew past the Prof, who watched as I grabbed my jacket and bag and headed down the spiral staircase that leads out of my room. “Where are you going?” she screamed after me. “Faith!”
But I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t know where I was headed, or what exactly I was feeling, just that I needed to run.-p.124-126
Oh my God.
I woke up tired, really tired, like I hadn’t really slept at all, and rolled over, and suddenly I could feel a stabbing pain in my upper arm. I figured I’d reinjured it somehow, so I got up to go to the bathroom to take off the bandage and have a look. Just as I was peeling off the gauze, I looked in the mirror and realized that it wasn’t my left arm, the one I’d hurt a couple weeks ago, but my right one. I watched in the reflection as I pulled back the pad and couldn’t believe what I saw, what I still see even as I write these words.
On my bicep there’s a tattoo, freshly inked and red raw, one I have absolutely no memory of getting. It’s a kind of tribal band, all black with two connected spirals, thorns spraying off them toward the back of my arm like two figures in flames, dancing to the death. It’s the slave tattoo from the dream, the one used to brand the maenads.
It’s the mark of the father.- p.180
He didn’t say anything for a while, and it took me a minute before I realized he’d started crying. I didn’t know what to say, so I just sat there until he looked up at me with those horrible hollow eyes, only this time they were red and wild. “I’m sorry,” he said, something about the way he said it made me sick. “Sorry for being such a lousy father. I never should have done it. All those things I did. You didn’t deserve it. None of it. You were just a little girl. I was such a bad man.”
He went on, all the while bawling away-- “I’m evil, I’m bad, I’m evil”-- but I stopped listening, a numb feeling taking over me, taking me away. I could still see him, and sorta hear him through the phone, but almost like I was really far away, on the other side of the world instead of just on the other side of a sheet of glass. Because I didn’t want to know what he was saying. Whatever it was, though, he could box it up and bury it in the ground for all I care. I don’t need his sorry apology, just like I don’t need him or my bitch of a mother or anyone else. Just me. And then I felt my blood rising, and it felt clean, like polished steel, and it washed over me with what I feel most, the feeling that is me, and that is hate.
“Can you forgive me for what I’ve done?” he said, placing his palm against the glass, his eyes widening in anticipation, the same way a guy’s does when he’s asked you to go all the way, all hope and magic like he’s a kid on Christmas morning and he’s halfway down the stairs in search of a shiny-wrapped present. He looked so pathetic. And all I could think was:
I curse you with all my heart.
“Dad,” I said.
You broken little man.
“It’s not your fault,” I said.
I hope you die in here.
“It’s not your fault.”
“Thank you,” he said, still crying. “Thank you.” And then something passed between us, a cold shadow, and I saw it reflected in the glass like something bad had gotten loose and taken flight. -p.188-190
Why? she asked me in my head.
“Why what?” I answered out loud.
Why won’t you let me end him?
“Can’t. Won’t. I let you take me over before. But not now.”
He killed my daughter, she sighed, and my brain felt like a icy breeze was floating across it. He killed me.
“I know.” I was white-knuckling the arms of the chair. “I felt it. It was like I was there. Hurt like hell.”
And I was there when your father hurt you, she whispered, when you were a little girl..
“This has to stop,” I said, feeling her anger cold inside me, thirsty for blood. “I feel for you, believe me, but this has to end. Tonight.”
The Prof came in and put a box down on the table, and turned toward me. “Faith, are you … you?” and I nodded. “You’re white as a sheet.”
“Get it out of me,” I said. “Get it out of me now.”- p.202
There’s a sucking noise all of a sudden, and a rush of air, and I’m sent, like I’m flying down a cosmic water slide, rocketing out into space. And then I’m out there in the great beyond, in the blackness, in nothing, floating free without any sign of land or water, alone.
Until she comes.
“You,” I say, as she appears out of nowhere.
“Who were you expecting, firecracker?” my mother says, sneering, standing right in front of me in all her glory like she’s still in her twenties and loving it. “Don’t act so disappointed.” She’s wearing the same red spaghetti-strap halter and black leather mini she wore when I last saw her in the Combat Zone, when she was getting into that stranger’s car, before I went ballistic and landed up at Belmont. “Jesus Christ, kid, look at you. You’re a mess.”
“It’s not my fault,” I say, looking down at myself to find me covered in blood and dirt, the black hole of nothingness below. “I’m trying to get better.”
“Yeah, well, take it from me, it ain’t workin’.”
“You’re dead,” I say back, and close my eyes, hoping she’ll be gone when I open them. Instead, we’re suddenly at our place in Southie, everything exactly the way it was before, down to the chipped paint and broken blinds on the windows. “I’m not really here,” I say. “This is like a dream.”
“Yeah, well, dream me up another pack of smokes. There’s an extra in the top drawer of my dresser.” She turns away from me and goes to the fridge, sticking her head inside. I step away from the kitchen and just then I can hear something upstairs, something horrible, a sound like the thick toenails of a sick dog as he drags himself across the floor, searching out a hole to crawl into to die. It freezes me in my tracks. “Go on,” my mom says, slamming the refrigerator door, fresh bottle of vodka in hand. “What are you afraid of? There ain’t nobody upstairs ‘cept yer father.”
I force myself over to the foot of the stair case and stare up at the top, the scraping sound getting louder, shaking the whole apartment. I start up the stairs, and as I got I can feel the weight of my legs, like I’m getting heavier and heavier, and it’s getting harder and harder to move. About halfway up the steps I get the strange feeling that the staircase is getting longer and wider, or maybe I’m just shrinking, and all along the wall there’s a bunch of mirrors, each one the size of a largish picture frame; I turn to look at one and am surprised to see not myself but Kenny. He looks just like he does on the Freak Wharf poster next to his bed, with his hair spiked up and dyed jet black, like how I used to see him, before I knew him.
“Faith, Faith, Faith,” he says, shaking his head in disappointment. “How could you ever think I was serious about you?” I stop. “I mean, really,” he goes on, laughing now. “You’re not a bad bang for a groupie, but isn’t it sad that I’d rather be with a dead girl than with you?”
It feels like I’ve been stabbed in the heart, and I force myself to turn away from the mirror, keep my eyes on the top of the stairs, and continue forward.
“Pssssssssst,” I hear from the next mirror, and it’s Steve, the guy from Watertown, the klepto. “I just wanna tell you that I only gave you that stuff I lifted because you’re not worth spending money on. You wanna know why? ‘Cause you’re trash, nothing’ else but.”
“Screw you,” I say, and keep going, my legs becoming shorter, the stairs becoming harder to climb. It’s like scaling a mountain.
“Yo, Faith.” Another voice, a gentle one this time, and I look into another frame and it’s Tommy, who I haven’t seen since we were back in the principal’s office, a million years ago. “How’s it going, killer?” he says, a satisfied smile pulling up the corners of his mouth. “Beaten the crap out of anyone lately? Or is it okay, now that you’ve gotten a permission slip?”
“I’m not a killer,” I say, and make myself look away, keep moving.
As I pass the next mirror, and the next, I can hear them all whispering at me from behind the frames.
LOSER, they say.
FREAK.
SLUT.
The mirrors, they’re all taunting me, each one with the face of some guy I know-- Sam Flynn, this kid Mike that used to live on my block and throw rocks at me, my old boyfriend Ronnie, even Principal Martin-- and all the while I keep on going up the stairs, knowing not to stop. I pick out one cursing voice in particular and recognize it as my grandfather, who, even though he’s been dead for years, is still staring out at me with pure disgust, like I’m the child of the devil himself.
“Dirty girl,” he spits at me from the mirror, and I flinch. “You’re a disgrace to me. You should never have been born.”
And finally I get to the top, having to crawl at the end, the steps becoming huge under my feet. It’s now that I look down and realize that I’m wearing my First Communion dress, with white tights underneath and Mary Janes, like what Alex wears in the dream. And I look up at the last mirror on the wall, and it’s a regular mirror and I see myself for the first time. I’m young, a little girl. And I’m her.
I’m Alex.
I creep into my mom’s bedroom, past the bed with the ratty old quilt I know like the back of my hand, and walk over to the dresser. I reach up for the handle of the top drawer, but I can’t quite get at it, and all the while the scratching noise is getting louder, coming from somewhere down the hall. I manage to grab the drawer handle and it’s so hard, so heavy, but finally I pull the drawer out and it comes crashing down on the floor. I rummage through the clothes and, at the back of the drawer, I find a smooth, well-carved stake. I wrap my tiny hand around it, holding it back next to my head as I turn toward the direction of the scraping noise.
I head down the hallway, the neon lights flickering and popping overhead. I realize that the noise is coming from the bathroom, and a horrible, sickening feeling comes over me, like the one I had when I was at the prison talking to my dad, like I’m about to find out something I don’t want to know. At the end of the hallway is the bathroom door, and I stand in front of it, all three feet of me like I’ve just chowed down on some space cakes from the Wonderland Bakery, and reach up for the doorknob. It’s heavy and hard to turn, so I have to put the stake in my mouth and use both hands, and it’s another minute before I get the door to click open.
Holding the stake again, I use my other hand to slide the door open, and now the nails-on-floor noise is gone, there’s only the sound of the door as it creaks open slowly, slowly. And once it’s open and I step into the room-- so strange to see it from this angle, down near the floor, dog’s eye view-- I hear a different sound now: the sound of someone crying. I look behind the door and that’s when I realize that the crying is coming from behind the shower curtain, that there’s someone in the bathtub. I walk on weak legs over to the side of the tub and, reaching up, pull back the curtain. And I see her.
I see me.
I’m sitting in the dirty water, and I’m naked and bloodied, folded over myself and sobbing. Even though she’s wearing my skin, looking just like me, I know who she really is: the old Slayer, the one in my head, the one we’ve got to get rid of. I notice the tattoo on her arm, and it’s weird to see it on me from the outside; I’m surprised at how dope it looks. I don’t know what to say, so I ask, “Why are you crying?”
She picks up her head from where it’s resting on her knees and says, “I’m crying because he still walks the earth, while I am already dead.” She looks up and past me, and I follow where she’s staring at the large mirror over the sink. And there, through the bathroom mirror, I see the Prof’s house, like I’m looking up through the chancy mirror on the floor of the library, and I can see Kenny and the Prof raising some crazy mojo around the circle, the room crackling with energy. It’s strange to see myself there in the center of the circle, eyes closed, and also here next to me in the bathtub, but neither of them are really me, I don’t think-- not looking back on it, and what happened next.
“Listen,” I say, and even now when I’m writing this I have to remind myself that she’s not her-- I mean me, “I’m sorry it came down to this. But your time is up. If I ever run into the Father, Kakistos, whoever you came back to kill, I’ll stake him good. Promise.”
“Kakistos,” she says slowly, like she was thinking about the word. “He made us call him Father, when he would…” She looked straight at me then. “You will see him. And soon,” she says, here eyes-- my eyes-- narrowing. “I’ve made sure of that.”
“Oh, yeah? How’d you do that?”
“You’re wearing his mark,” she says, leaning her head down then and licking at the tattoo on her arm like a cat in front of a bowl of milk. “As long as he remains in the world of the living, you’ll never truly feel at peace. If he doesn’t come for you, eventually you’ll have to go to him.”
“What?” Shaking suddenly, I lower the stake in my hand.
“It was the only way. I felt myself leaving this place, the way I felt once before. The mark was to remind you.”
“Thanks.” I look back at the mirror, and feel myself being drawn back into it, sucked back through time and space. “You didn’t have to take me over, you know. That ain’t right. It’s no wonder the little girl called you Malice.”
“You are mistaken.” She looks sorry then, giving me a look of pity. “I am not the one you call Malice.”
“Then who is?”
“Ask her,” she says, pointing toward the doorway behind me. And just as I start to turn, the world explodes around me in a cloud of white dust and I’m back at the Prof’s house on the library floor, the mirror in front of me smashed into a thousand pieces.
“It’s done,” the Prof says to me, wiping my forehead with a damp cloth. “She’s gone.”
And that’s all I can remember.- p.208-215
The air was thick with dirt and blood, like the whole place was a giant monster and I was in its belly, just praying that it wouldn’t wake up and eat me alive.
And I walked.
All the way, until I came into the main chamber, where they were waiting for me, like it was planned this way all along. And then I had the scary thought that the dreams I had of her, the past Slayer being taken down into his underground world, maybe they weren’t just her memories but were a look into the future, those prophetic dreams a Slayer can have. Maybe everything I thought I’d seen through her eyes was also what was going to happen to me.
“Slayer,” I hear him hiss from a darkened corner on the other side of the cavern, his voice echoing off the walls. “ I knew you’d come.“
I walked into the dank space, and was surprised to see that instead of maenads, I was surrounded by actual vampires; he’d changed his tune over the years. I couldn’t quite make him out so I tried to draw him closer to me, make him step into the light, what little there was coming from the torches along the walls. “Where is she?” I said, the sound of the vamps licking their chops all around me.
“Come closer,” he answered. “I have something to show you.”
As I stepped nearer, knowing with all my hear that I was going to die, knowing that I didn’t want to see, I still made myself look.
On the other side of the catacomb was a stone altar, topped by a throne of twisted skeletons. And on the throne was the Father, his hideous face the one from my nightmares, the one I saw that night up in the cemetery when the old Slayer first took over. He was like an animal, had changed over time into something even less human than a vampire, and I could see now that his hands were like the hooves of a goat, hard and thick. And in his hands he held her.
She was propped up on his lap, facing me, her body naked, mangled and bloody, bite marks all up and down her, half-drained but still alive, her eyes wide with terror. “Faith,” she whispered, just before he used one of his sharpened hands to rip a hole through her stomach, impaling her before he tore her open in two, ending her. Gone.
“Diana!” I screamed, everything in slow motion like I was underwater, as I was grabbed from behind by a half-dozen hands and dragged forward toward the altar, on either side of which lay the remains of my Watcher, the only one I had left in this world or the next. They brought me to him, holding me, pulling the battle-ax from my hand, the crossbow from my back, keeping my head down like they were forcing me to pray to him, their demon god.
He stepped down from the altar to where I was bent over before him, his feet like a goat’s feet, and he leaned down to look into my eyes. I tried not to look at his face, but as they forced my head up I had no choice. His gaze locked onto mine, his mouth a wide smile. “Faith,” he said, “what a pretty name you have.” I made myself cry then just to stall for time, even though I knew it would hurt worse than getting killed to really think about what he did to her, and he used the hoof of his hand to wipe the tears from my face, spreading her spilled blood on my cheeks.
“Shhhhh,”he whispered. “Don’t cry. Not yet.” he put his hand under my chin and leaned into me so that his face was just inches from mine, so close I would have been able to smell his breath, if he had any. “Daughter,” he hissed, “do you know where you are? You’re home now.”
And I flashed back to Southie, the old apartment with my mom, and then forward in time to the Prof’s place in Cambridge, and all the places in between-- my grandfather’s place in the projects, all my other relatives’ houses when I used to get passed around like a hot potato, then Tommy’s house where I would crash, the foster home, everywhere I’d ever lived my whole life-- and realized in that moment that I had no home, no place in this world to call my own. I had nothing. No one. So I was free.
“Home,” I said.
“That’s right,”he said, running his fingers through my hair. “You’re home. And you can start by calling me Father.”
That word. Father. It made me think of her, the past Slayer, how he would make her call him that, how sick it made me feel inside, my stomach turning, violent. And then I thought of the mark she gave me, the tattoo on my arm. I turned my head in its direction and that’s when I remembered the tanto I’d slipped up my sleeve.
“I want to give it to you,” I said.
“Yes?” he said, his eyes flickering in anticipation.
“Yeah.” I could feel her with me then, the old Slayer, every past Slayer, too, and every woman this monster had ever hurt, the slaves he’d turned into maenads, the mothers and daughters he’d raped and killed, all of them, all of us, suddenly one. And then the fear left my heart. And I was ready. “Are you sure you want it, Father?”
He smiled wide, his fangs white in the torchlight. “Oh, yes.”
“Okay then.” I smiled, licking my lips. “Give us a kiss.”
He leaned in, and the vamps holding me slackened their grip for just a second, one second, and I let the tanto slip out from my sleeve, and slide from its sheath.
And we kissed.
He pulled back, eyes wide as saucers, the shock washing over his face.
“You ain’t a father no more,” I said, as he staggered back against the altar, the ivory handle of the knife shining between his legs. “Not anymore.”
I remembered the dream then, the Slayers’ dying wish: She wanted a taste. I brought my hand up to my mouth and touched his blood to my lips.
And then it was on.
Two vamps tried to grab me from behind, but I batted them away, crossing my arms in front of me and reaching into the lining of my jacket to pull out two stakes. I was double-fisting now, and I spun, kicking one of them in the chest and nailing the other in the heart.
Dust.
Another punched me in the face but I just used the momentum to go into a forward roll and was up again. Three more on more but I was hungry for it now, wanted to be covered in blood, their ashes sticking to me like I’d been tarred and feathered. I took the first one by the ears and ripped them off his skull, and he shrieked, and I loved it, loved the sound of him screaming right before I got him in the heart.
Dust.
I head butted another and he flew back, a spray of blood from his nose arcing through the air between us. The next one came but I was too quick, grabbing him by the throat and thrusting the stake into him before another was on me, hitting me in the back of the head and I slammed into the vamp in front of me, stuck my hand against his stomach and dug my nails in, pulled my hand back with a piece of his flesh bloody slick in between my fingers. I didn’t know how many there were and I didn’t care. Tonight I’m a killer. Tonight I’m death itself.
Dust.
“Kill her,” I hear him say, and I looked over at him doubled over next to the altar. “Kill her!” But I didn’t care if I even lived or died. Because I was free.
Two more threw me against the wall right next to a lit torch and I grabbed it, shoved it in one of their faces before swinging it in front of me, lighting two more on fire, and they went up in flames. Then the funniest thing came into my head: “A Shameful Execution,” my favorite Freak Wharf song. And I smiled as the bassline kicked in, and then the drums, and all of a sudden Kenny was with me, rooting for me, cheering me on. And then I was dancing as I did it, dancing as I killed them, killed them all, one by one, come one, come all, all takers.-p.224-229