When Dreams Stick

Alice could fly and would it matter? It would just be another shifting reality of meaningless dribble. Here she stood, as real as ever, with the sun hot on her face, baking her skin olive. And did it matter? She was still too small. She was still just a kid in all the ways it mattered. Alice wanted freedom. She wanted to spread out her arms and reach out her fingertips until she could feel it against her skin.

“Alice?”

“Yes?”

“Have you been bad?”

Oh, have I ever. “Me? Bad? Never!”

She wants him to smile and laugh with her as if they were in on a big joke. He doesn’t. He just gazes at her with eyes framed in long lashes. One day, she daydreams that she could be the girl she wanted to be.

Every woman has her daydreams.

“Alice? Who was it this time?”

She tosses her head back and laughs, her mouth hanging open like a dark gaping hole ready to suck the victims in with her humorlessness.

“Does it even matter at this point, puppy?”

“It does matter. I will kill anyone that hurts you or insults you,” Danny comes to stand in front of her, his hands coming to rest on her shoulders. “Or bores you or even looks at you funny out of the corner of their eye. You never have to be bad, Alice. I’ll be all the bad for you.”

She tilts her head to the side and considers him. She sees his whole heart through his eyes, soulful and heavy, all directed at her.

“Where is the fun in that?”

She kisses him hard on the mouth when he doesn’t smile. When was the last time she had seen him smile at her? Taking his hand, she led him to her car parked under a willow tree.

“Aunt Janet is in there,” she says. A smile spreads across his face, cruel and joyful at the same time.

“You got number thirteen without me,” he attempts a pout. “You really have been bad.”

When Alice had met Danny, he had been exactly what she’d been looking for. Her goal had been to make Danny as corrupted as she was. Every woman has her goal.

“If you want to be technical, this is number ten on the list,” she corrects him, “Remember? We skipped her.”

They had made a list of all the awful people that had done terrible things to them. Now they were finding them and punishing them.

Alice pops the trunk. They look down at a bound and gagged woman with stringy brown hair and hollow cheeks. Danny pulls at the gag so that the woman can talk.

“Please,” she wheezes, “I ain’t did nothing wrong. Please, let me go.”

“Nothing wrong?” Alice asks nonchalantly. “How about fifteen years ago when you locked me in a closet to die. I believe I almost starved to death in there.”

“Ali Cat, that’s not what happened, I took good care of you children.”

“Yeah,” Alice replies quiet now. “You’re right. There’s only one scar left permanently on my body because of you. The others left so many more. Not that you ever cared to notice.”

“Please, I’m not perfect,” she tries to plead for her freedom again.

“No. You aren’t. Now he’s going to make you pay.”

Alice steps back, cold now. She slides a glance at Danny as he puts the gag back in her Aunt’s mouth. Big wet tears splashes down her Aunt’s face. It was pathetic and it made Alice feel good. Danny closed the trunk on her Aunt and faced her.

“I love you,” he says.

“I love you, too, puppy.”

He doesn’t touch her before getting into her car and driving away and she likes that. She wonders about her daydreams then. About who she could have been. She wonders if Danny would have loved her if she were the girl she wanted to be. She wanted to be free from the anger, the pain, and the humiliation.

She walked back to her spot in the sun, her skin warming in the brightness. Her dream of freedom is what motivated her to keep living and she would keep on doing that. She liked that. And people like the way dreams have of sticking to the soul.

Alice’s dream of one day being free had stuck to her soul like a nightmare.

Her phone vibrates and it’s a text from Danny. It’s done, it says. Her heart feels lighter and she reaches above her head this time in an attempt to touch the sky.