Muses Ch. 07

"She's trying to get your attention." Nikki said standing up and walking to her combination sink and toilet turning one of the knobs and testingly putting her hand beneath

.

"No, she's not. I can tell when she wants attention. This. . .it's not the first time she's been on suicide watch."

"I fucking hate this thing." She hissed pulling her hand back. "Hot and cold my ass. Somebody just chooses if they are going to freeze or burn you, these knobs don't do shit!" She slapped the entire contraction. The toilet flushed and the water from the faucet turned cloudy, then stopped all together. "So what's the real part of the problem you're having?"

"I almost told her to go ahead." I paused as the horror settled over her face. " mean if she's really in that much pain, if she really believes she has nothing left then what's the point?" I've never had anybody look at me the way that Nikki was glaring at me right then. I thought she was going to try to reach through the screen and kill me. "Really, best case scenario is she gets ten years, serves I think eight for good behavior maybe gets out a few months earlier than that on a work release. Her kids will hardly recognize her by that point. Realistically she'll probably get twenty, her youngest son, the infant, will be sharing his birthday beer with a mother he might never have seen before. Worst case she could get upwards of forty. Even for a young person forty may as well be a life sentence. She really would be better off dead."

"You don't believe that. How could you even think that about me!" She shrieked driving her fist into one of the walls then screaming again as blood ran from her busted knuckles.

"Calm down."

"Calm down? Fuck you! You just thought, even for a second that I would be better off dead! Fuck you!" She screamed cradling her hurt arm.

"What's the point of going on for her, to get letters from me once or twice a week? She's won't survive prison. Even if she does she'll be a sixty five year old felon who's last job was part time at Walgreens!" I look over at the stacks of letters from he, close to one hundred, at least well into the eighties over the last year.

"You don't know that! Even if it is do you think she's guilty? Do you think I'm guilty?" She paused and looked at me throwing open her jail cell door and walking into what had once been her home. A young boy was absorbed completely by his Nintendo Wii. I only got a glimpse of him, enough to know that he got his mother's light complexion. A girl, a few years older was pretending to read a book. She wasn't actually reading, she'd memorized Hop on Pop and Are You my Mother so she was just reciting the story out loud and turning the page when her finger reached the end of the page. It was a neat trick, one that impressed the neighbors but it was a trick nonetheless. Considering I knew what she was doing I didn't get even as clear a look at the girl than I did the boy.

That was because we weren't here about them. We were here because of an infant lying in his crib. There was a bright red mark on the left side of his head. It could have been a rash, or a bruise. The rest of his flesh was pale. If he was breathing I couldn't tell. He was so small. I'm told all twins are small but he was tiny even by that standard. Premature birth didn't help with that at all.

"Go on say it. You think I did it!" Nikki screamed standing over the child.

"You did do it. Now why you admitted it is beyond me." It was a fact that she'd done it. It was undeniable.

"Say it. I'm a murderer." Her eyes were red with tears as she looked at them. "Make sure you include it in my stories. "Make sure they know that I deserve worse than what Officer Garcia does to me. Make sure they understand that I'm a monster, a murderer. That they should have shot me for what I did!"

"No."

"Why not?"

"It's not true. You're not a murderer, you're not a monster. You're a human and you fucked up. We all did."

Nikki took one last look into the crib then walked back into her cell without so much as glancing at her other children and slammed the door shut behind her. "Stop it. We didn't fuck up. I did with my hands. With my hand." Her right hand was coated in blood. She looked at it in horror. "I did it. I'm the murderer."

"No you're not. You were under incredible stress and you snapped. If I thought for one single second that you meant to do it I'd never write to you or about you and you'd only show up when I needed something to kill. You'd be Kenny." I took a deep breath again glancing to her letters, the newest sitting on top. "If I thought you had a mental illness, like that woman who dr(deleted) who God spoke to I'd want you behind bars for your own good. For some one who snapped in a way that normally wouldn't have the results that have happened I don't know what punishment I'd give. I'd probably take your children away, I'd probably even put you in jail for a few years. All of that doesn't make you a murderer. Murder is on purpose."

Nikki turned the water her sink on and started washing the blood from her hand. She was trying at any rate it just wouldn't wash away. "It doesn't matter."

"Yes it does. It makes a huge difference." She was still trying to scrub the blood away and it still wasn't working. She was hurting herself, peeling off hunks of skin. Of course from the outside looking in it was obvious that the blood on her hands was her own she didn't know. "Stop it Nikki. Let me deal with the blood. Just sit down."

"No! It's my fault!"

"Yes it is. It is your fault. You should have asked for help! You should have asked me!"

"I did! I've been your friend for thirteen years. For half of my life I've known you. I've hunted you down when you ran, when you joined the Marine Corps who found your address by tracking down a friend who could track down a friend who could get in touch with your family?" Nikki screamed.

"You." It was a rhetorical question anyway.

"Who found you when you went to war for nine months?" She stopped trying to wash the blood from her hand and sat back down on her bunk content to stare at it.

"You."

"In that time how many times did I tell you that we should meet one day? Barely ever, we joked about it but it was the same way you say it to guys you just met. If you happen to drive by my house tell me so I can buy you a drink. Twelve years of that and one Monday I tell you I'll be by on Friday and you don't fucking figure out?" She lowered her head. "What did I need to do, ask you for help? Make a billboard? Beg on my hands and knees?"

"Stop it."

"No. I want to know what I needed to do so you would get that I needed help. If after all that time I never once tried to come down what did you think it was about? That I really wanted your cock?" She flipped her shirt up over his head. "Do I look like the kind of woman who needs to fly to California to get laid?"

"No."

"So why the fuck after twelve years of internet friendship did I suddenly decide that I was going to fly down to California for a weekend of sex including a three way with your ex?"

"You didn't actually fuck me, in fact I didn't even get the hug I made you promise me."

"Shut the fuck up Sean. I was there because I trust you. Because when my life was falling apart there was nobody else that I trusted to fix me. To get me through it and you failed." She buried her face in her hands for a moment trying to block her tears. Instead she just left a read smear on the left side of her face. "I came to you for help and you didn't help me."

"I didn't know and you didn't ask. Maybe I should have read the signs. But you know what? Your dad lived in the same house as you and he didn't read the signs. Stephen was your fiancée, and they were his children and he didn't read the signs. Karen. . .Kitten was talking to you nearly everyday and she knew you had PPD and she didn't see the signs. Child Protective Services makes a living by reading the signs and preventing tragedies and they didn't read the fucking signs!"

The left side of Nikki's face was red with blood when she looked up. "None of them were my bff. None of them spent all day on the internet with me! None of them were you! You were supposed to be different!" She shrieked leaping to her feet.

"I know." What else am I supposed to tell her? Am I supposed to tell her that I shouldn't be the one she turns to? That when times get tough she should talk to someone else? The fact is that she's right. That I fucked up and if I'd done what I was supposed to do, if I'd said the right things or acted right her son would still be alive and she wouldn't be in jail.

"Just go home. Go home put my letter in the mail box and drink enough for both of us. I don't want to talk to you right now." She turned her back and lay down.

"Nikki." She curled into a ball and went silent. It was obvious that she wasn't going to say anything more to me right then so I shut down my laptop.