My words are: margarita, ceiling fan, flogging, stilettos, bungee cord and were submitted by www.themomisodes.com
*also I feel like this post needs a trigger warning.
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She lays in her bed, sheets haphazardly tossed across her legs. She’s not really awake yet but somewhere in that between-state that comes with a hangover, head full of cotton, achy, unable to pull out of dreamland completely. The remnants of an unfinished margarita from the night before sours in the heat of the room while she watches the slow swirl of the dust-covered ceiling fan above her. Flogging Molly’s Salty Dog plays lightly, as lightly as a band like that can anyway, from the iphone dock on the nightstand making her wonder just what the hell is the deal...this isn't something she would ever play.
She groans at the thought of having to move to change the fucking station, but this just really isn’t helping things at the moment. Her music tastes, whatever she listened to at the moment, were totally dependent on her mood, and she was in no kind of mood for fast-paced Celtic rock songs about pirates or whatever the hell this was. Attempting to roll over forces a wave of nausea to take her for a ride threatening to send her running for the bathroom, but it passes. She pushes on for the phone but immediately cries out from a stabbing pain in her side. She looks down and notices one of her neon yellow stilettos still in the bed with her, poking her roughly in the ribs and tosses it down angrily causing another blanket of sickness to whirl around in her head.
Grunting with effort she reaches for her phone to change this shitfest of a song when she notices the huge bruise on her arm just below her elbow. What the fuck happened she thinks rolling back onto the bed, the song currently forgotten. She examines it closely seeing the distinct outline of fingers which only confuses her more. She doesn’t have a clue what could have happened.
She lays there, staring at it, trying to make the fuzziness of the night before dissipate. The pieces don’t seem to want to fall into place, though, and she finds herself tracing the lines of the bruise with her other hand, getting lost in the mottled blues and purples. Whatever happened, the person must have had a big hand. The bruise wraps around her entire arm and extends halfway down her forearm.
A tune by Creedence comes on the phone snapping her out of her near-trance. Bad Moon Rising. She wonders if maybe there is something in her messages that might lead her to piecing back the night before. Rolling over and stretching for the phone is a chore even without the stiletto stabbing into her ribs, but she finally reaches far enough to push her fingers into it knocking it from the speaker stand into her reach.
She enters in the passcode to unlock the phone and sees she has 17 text messages and nearly as many voicemails. She starts with the text messages first. 15 of them are from her best friend, Lacey, who was out with her last night, so she checks those first.
where r u
did u leave w that guy
Come on Julie pick up the phone
Im worried
Did u make it home
Call me pls
Julie don’t make me worry
The messages from Lacey were all the same, in a nutshell. Concern, worry, fear, begging…totally out of Lacey’s character. What fucking guy, she thinks? I don’t remember any guy.
Then she sees a text from an unknown number.
Had fun wit u lst nite ;) Hope I wasnt 2ruff. Gimme a call when we can do it again lol
What the hell happened?
The room is still spinning when she sits up in bed, but she pushes past it, determined. She needs to know what happened. With the sheets thrown off her and her mind a little more focused, she sees the bruises covering her legs and the absence of any clothing. She isn’t the kind of girl who sleeps in the nude. Everything is wrong. Why cant I remember? A sense of desperation to pull back the fog and figure out her night starts to rise in her throat burning like indigestion and pushing her forward.
Once out of the bed, she finds her clothes spread around the room on the floor. The panties she had on last night are ripped in half and several of the buttons on her favorite corset blouse are popped off. She grabs a tshirt and pajama pants to throw on then heads to the kitchen for something to drink, ice water. She needs coffee, hydration, and hangover food stat so she can get this sorted.
After downing a 20 oz bottle of water in almost one gulp, she grabs some cherry Pop-Tarts from the cabinet and sets her Keurig up for a 10 oz cup of pumpkin pie flavored coffee. Maybe it’s a weird combination, but she’s okay with weird. The coffee steams and drips in a slow stream into her favorite mug—a blue asymmetrical cylinder with a malformed handle that she made in a high school art class. The process hypnotizes her in a way, her mind a blank.
The too-loud ringtone of her phone pulls her back to the real world with its repetitive snippet from her favorite cartoon. “Eat my shorts! Ay Caramba! Ow! Quit it.” She sees Lacey’s photo pop onto the screen and figures she may as well answer it. Maybe she will find out more about what happened that way…
“Hello?”
“Wherethefuckhaveyoubeen!!??!? I have been worried sick, Julie. What the fuck?!”
“I just woke up.”
“I thought that guy you were talking to had left you for dead, for fuck’s sake!”
“No, Im still here. But…well… what guy?”
“What do you mean ‘what guy?’”
“I don’t remember any guy.”
“You don’t remember the guy you were flirting with half the night? The one that offered to take you home when you started feeling bad? The cute one with the undercut and the beard? That guy?”
“Uh….no. No, I don’t remember much of anything after getting to the show. I do have a text from some dude who says that he hopes he wasn’t too rough on me. And Im covered in bruises and freaking out right about now, so don’t get all accusatory. Just tell me who the hell he was. And what do you mean I started feeling bad?”
Lacey explains it all. The hole in the wall bar having shitty acoustics. The local band with the cute bearded guys that sounded like dying cats having one last half-assed attempt at sex. The sparse audience. Luke warm beer. All in all the night was turning out to be a complete shitfest. Lacey’s words. But then these two guys walked up and offered to buy them yet another luke warm beer. Lacey had passed on the drink, but Julie obliged. The guys, Mason and Pete, were flirty and gorgeous so the two girls had to run to the bathroom, the awful smelling, piss covered bathroom, to gush about them. All of this was coming back to Julie piece by piece. She remembers the guy now, Pete, touching her arm, laughing at her jokes… The two of them going to the bathroom then coming back out. She remembers talking about cartoons with the guy and drinking her beer then nothing. There’s nothing but blankness after that. Lacey says that’s when things got weird. Julie had started feeling like hell, lightheaded, sleepy, and off. Lacey started to get up and take her home, but the guy, Pete, had offered. Lacey hadn’t felt right about it, but Julie (and Mason) had insisted that Lacey stay and have a good time. Lacey had agreed but had tried calling and texting Julie the rest of the night to no avail and had even come by the apartment knocking on the door but didn’t get an answer.
“So I started feeling bad after the beer he bought me? Did we leave it with them while we went to the bathroom?”
“yeah. We did. Like idiots.”
“Ugh. Do you think I was drugged?!!? I cant remember shit, Lacey.”
“Seems that way. Do you want me to come get you to take you to the hospital? Maybe they can check. I think it stays in your system for a few hours at least afterwards. Maybe a couple days. “
“I don’t know, man. I… what do you think will happen? What if Im overreacting, Lace?”
“Is anything else weird? What about your room? Your clothes? What do the bruises look like?”
She feels tears swelling in her eyes, her voice wavering with emotion when she finally says, “my clothes are torn… I wasn’t wearing anything when I woke up and you know I don’t like sleeping naked…” She sighs, tears spilling down her cheeks, “And there are bruises on my arm shaped like a hand, more on my legs. I haven’t checked all over yet though. Can you just come over so we can figure out what to do next?”
“Jules, you need to get to the hospital now. I’m coming to pick you up so get ready.”
“We’ll talk about it when you get here. I don’t… I don’t want to go through what Amber did when that dick she works with tied her up with bungee cord and well…you know. Everyone knows what he did. There were pictures for fuck’s sake and nothing had happened to him.” I can’t do it, she thinks. Amber was put through hell answering questions about who she had slept with and if she provoked the dude and why she didn’t fight back…it was over and over and over with the questions and accusations until she couldn’t take it anymore and had killed herself. Jumped out of her apartment window.
“I’m on my way, but I’m not letting this go. You HAVE to do something or he’s going to do this sick shit to other girls, Jules.”
She couldn’t deal with this conversation. Not right now. She ends the call knowing Lacey will be pissed but needing to get away from her regardless. She cant even remember what happened. How is she supposed to be a savior for allllll these other women? Apparently none of them thought enough to report him and save her the trouble!
As soon as the thoughts float to the surface, she feels guilt like a heavy weight pulling her down to the floor. She slides down the cabinets, hugs her legs to her chest, and wails.
She takes her phone in hand again and dials.
“Mom? Mom, I need you. No, Im not okay. I think I’ve been…Mom, just come get me please. Lacey is coming to take me to the hospital and I want you there.”
She ends the call already a completely different woman than she was when she set foot in that bar the night before.
http://www.BakingInATornado.com Baking In A Tornado
http://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com/ Spatulas on Parade
http://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com The Bergham’s Life Chronicles
http://themomisodes.com The Momisodes
http://stacysewsandschools.blogspot.com/ Stacy Sews and Schools
http://sparklyjenn.blogspot.com/ Sparkly Poetic Weirdo
http://eileensperpetuallybusy.blogspot.com Eileen’s Perpetually Busy
http://batteredhope.blogspot.com Battered Hope
http://www.southernbellecharm.com Southern Belle Charm
http://www.someoneelsesgenius.com Someone Else’s Genius
http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch Confessions of a part-time working mom
http://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com Climaxed
http://singlemumplusone.blogspot.com Searching for Sanity
http://www.eviljoyspeaks.wordpress.com Evil Joy Speaks
http://gndisney.wordpress.com Disneyland in Kentucky
She lays in her bed, sheets haphazardly tossed across her legs. She’s not really awake yet but somewhere in that between-state that comes with a hangover, head full of cotton, achy, unable to pull out of dreamland completely. The remnants of an unfinished margarita from the night before sours in the heat of the room while she watches the slow swirl of the dust-covered ceiling fan above her. Flogging Molly’s Salty Dog plays lightly, as lightly as a band like that can anyway, from the iphone dock on the nightstand making her wonder just what the hell is the deal...this isn't something she would ever play.
She groans at the thought of having to move to change the fucking station, but this just really isn’t helping things at the moment. Her music tastes, whatever she listened to at the moment, were totally dependent on her mood, and she was in no kind of mood for fast-paced Celtic rock songs about pirates or whatever the hell this was. Attempting to roll over forces a wave of nausea to take her for a ride threatening to send her running for the bathroom, but it passes. She pushes on for the phone but immediately cries out from a stabbing pain in her side. She looks down and notices one of her neon yellow stilettos still in the bed with her, poking her roughly in the ribs and tosses it down angrily causing another blanket of sickness to whirl around in her head.
Grunting with effort she reaches for her phone to change this shitfest of a song when she notices the huge bruise on her arm just below her elbow. What the fuck happened she thinks rolling back onto the bed, the song currently forgotten. She examines it closely seeing the distinct outline of fingers which only confuses her more. She doesn’t have a clue what could have happened.
She lays there, staring at it, trying to make the fuzziness of the night before dissipate. The pieces don’t seem to want to fall into place, though, and she finds herself tracing the lines of the bruise with her other hand, getting lost in the mottled blues and purples. Whatever happened, the person must have had a big hand. The bruise wraps around her entire arm and extends halfway down her forearm.
A tune by Creedence comes on the phone snapping her out of her near-trance. Bad Moon Rising. She wonders if maybe there is something in her messages that might lead her to piecing back the night before. Rolling over and stretching for the phone is a chore even without the stiletto stabbing into her ribs, but she finally reaches far enough to push her fingers into it knocking it from the speaker stand into her reach.
She enters in the passcode to unlock the phone and sees she has 17 text messages and nearly as many voicemails. She starts with the text messages first. 15 of them are from her best friend, Lacey, who was out with her last night, so she checks those first.
where r u
did u leave w that guy
Come on Julie pick up the phone
Im worried
Did u make it home
Call me pls
Julie don’t make me worry
The messages from Lacey were all the same, in a nutshell. Concern, worry, fear, begging…totally out of Lacey’s character. What fucking guy, she thinks? I don’t remember any guy.
Then she sees a text from an unknown number.
Had fun wit u lst nite ;) Hope I wasnt 2ruff. Gimme a call when we can do it again lol
What the hell happened?
The room is still spinning when she sits up in bed, but she pushes past it, determined. She needs to know what happened. With the sheets thrown off her and her mind a little more focused, she sees the bruises covering her legs and the absence of any clothing. She isn’t the kind of girl who sleeps in the nude. Everything is wrong. Why cant I remember? A sense of desperation to pull back the fog and figure out her night starts to rise in her throat burning like indigestion and pushing her forward.
Once out of the bed, she finds her clothes spread around the room on the floor. The panties she had on last night are ripped in half and several of the buttons on her favorite corset blouse are popped off. She grabs a tshirt and pajama pants to throw on then heads to the kitchen for something to drink, ice water. She needs coffee, hydration, and hangover food stat so she can get this sorted.
After downing a 20 oz bottle of water in almost one gulp, she grabs some cherry Pop-Tarts from the cabinet and sets her Keurig up for a 10 oz cup of pumpkin pie flavored coffee. Maybe it’s a weird combination, but she’s okay with weird. The coffee steams and drips in a slow stream into her favorite mug—a blue asymmetrical cylinder with a malformed handle that she made in a high school art class. The process hypnotizes her in a way, her mind a blank.
The too-loud ringtone of her phone pulls her back to the real world with its repetitive snippet from her favorite cartoon. “Eat my shorts! Ay Caramba! Ow! Quit it.” She sees Lacey’s photo pop onto the screen and figures she may as well answer it. Maybe she will find out more about what happened that way…
“Hello?”
“Wherethefuckhaveyoubeen!!??!? I have been worried sick, Julie. What the fuck?!”
“I just woke up.”
“I thought that guy you were talking to had left you for dead, for fuck’s sake!”
“No, Im still here. But…well… what guy?”
“What do you mean ‘what guy?’”
“I don’t remember any guy.”
“You don’t remember the guy you were flirting with half the night? The one that offered to take you home when you started feeling bad? The cute one with the undercut and the beard? That guy?”
“Uh….no. No, I don’t remember much of anything after getting to the show. I do have a text from some dude who says that he hopes he wasn’t too rough on me. And Im covered in bruises and freaking out right about now, so don’t get all accusatory. Just tell me who the hell he was. And what do you mean I started feeling bad?”
Lacey explains it all. The hole in the wall bar having shitty acoustics. The local band with the cute bearded guys that sounded like dying cats having one last half-assed attempt at sex. The sparse audience. Luke warm beer. All in all the night was turning out to be a complete shitfest. Lacey’s words. But then these two guys walked up and offered to buy them yet another luke warm beer. Lacey had passed on the drink, but Julie obliged. The guys, Mason and Pete, were flirty and gorgeous so the two girls had to run to the bathroom, the awful smelling, piss covered bathroom, to gush about them. All of this was coming back to Julie piece by piece. She remembers the guy now, Pete, touching her arm, laughing at her jokes… The two of them going to the bathroom then coming back out. She remembers talking about cartoons with the guy and drinking her beer then nothing. There’s nothing but blankness after that. Lacey says that’s when things got weird. Julie had started feeling like hell, lightheaded, sleepy, and off. Lacey started to get up and take her home, but the guy, Pete, had offered. Lacey hadn’t felt right about it, but Julie (and Mason) had insisted that Lacey stay and have a good time. Lacey had agreed but had tried calling and texting Julie the rest of the night to no avail and had even come by the apartment knocking on the door but didn’t get an answer.
“So I started feeling bad after the beer he bought me? Did we leave it with them while we went to the bathroom?”
“yeah. We did. Like idiots.”
“Ugh. Do you think I was drugged?!!? I cant remember shit, Lacey.”
“Seems that way. Do you want me to come get you to take you to the hospital? Maybe they can check. I think it stays in your system for a few hours at least afterwards. Maybe a couple days. “
“I don’t know, man. I… what do you think will happen? What if Im overreacting, Lace?”
“Is anything else weird? What about your room? Your clothes? What do the bruises look like?”
She feels tears swelling in her eyes, her voice wavering with emotion when she finally says, “my clothes are torn… I wasn’t wearing anything when I woke up and you know I don’t like sleeping naked…” She sighs, tears spilling down her cheeks, “And there are bruises on my arm shaped like a hand, more on my legs. I haven’t checked all over yet though. Can you just come over so we can figure out what to do next?”
“Jules, you need to get to the hospital now. I’m coming to pick you up so get ready.”
“We’ll talk about it when you get here. I don’t… I don’t want to go through what Amber did when that dick she works with tied her up with bungee cord and well…you know. Everyone knows what he did. There were pictures for fuck’s sake and nothing had happened to him.” I can’t do it, she thinks. Amber was put through hell answering questions about who she had slept with and if she provoked the dude and why she didn’t fight back…it was over and over and over with the questions and accusations until she couldn’t take it anymore and had killed herself. Jumped out of her apartment window.
“I’m on my way, but I’m not letting this go. You HAVE to do something or he’s going to do this sick shit to other girls, Jules.”
She couldn’t deal with this conversation. Not right now. She ends the call knowing Lacey will be pissed but needing to get away from her regardless. She cant even remember what happened. How is she supposed to be a savior for allllll these other women? Apparently none of them thought enough to report him and save her the trouble!
As soon as the thoughts float to the surface, she feels guilt like a heavy weight pulling her down to the floor. She slides down the cabinets, hugs her legs to her chest, and wails.
She takes her phone in hand again and dials.
“Mom? Mom, I need you. No, Im not okay. I think I’ve been…Mom, just come get me please. Lacey is coming to take me to the hospital and I want you there.”
She ends the call already a completely different woman than she was when she set foot in that bar the night before.
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Here are the links to the other participants! Read through and enjoy!
http://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com/ Spatulas on Parade
http://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com The Bergham’s Life Chronicles
http://themomisodes.com The Momisodes
http://stacysewsandschools.blogspot.com/ Stacy Sews and Schools
http://sparklyjenn.blogspot.com/ Sparkly Poetic Weirdo
http://eileensperpetuallybusy.blogspot.com Eileen’s Perpetually Busy
http://batteredhope.blogspot.com Battered Hope
http://www.southernbellecharm.com Southern Belle Charm
http://www.someoneelsesgenius.com Someone Else’s Genius
http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch Confessions of a part-time working mom
http://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com Climaxed
http://singlemumplusone.blogspot.com Searching for Sanity
http://www.eviljoyspeaks.wordpress.com Evil Joy Speaks
http://gndisney.wordpress.com Disneyland in Kentucky
Oh, shooooot. Roofies?
ReplyDeleteGreat job on using your words. Geez, you never know where they lead you, right?
You always take me on the wildest rides with these challenges. But this one really hurts. Such a serious problem. Women need to be alert and know never to drink anything that's been out of their sight.
ReplyDeleteForever changed after that night....transformation indeed.
ReplyDeleteAs always masterfully written. Disturbing piece but unfortunately this happens and too many feel the need to silence it. Thank you for writing important pieces that are hard to digest.
SO powerful. And something that needs to be talked about more.
ReplyDeleteWonderfully written. I am sitting there with her. VERY powerful.
ReplyDeleteWonderfully written. I am sitting there with her. VERY powerful.
ReplyDeleteThat was always my biggest fear in my clubbing days, I've had friends and family members who were drugged, and it always scared the crap out of me, to the point I never let a guy buy me a drink unless I was standing at the bar next to him so the bartender could hand it straight to me. I hope your story is fiction, even though for many people it's probably too close to the truth. You did an amazing job with your words..
ReplyDeleteThis post rang a few bells that I thought I had squashed. You did a brilliant job in weaving those words around a sensitive subject.
ReplyDeleteYou're writing is amazing. Well done.
ReplyDeleteso real. you drew me and kept me with you the entire. way. just wow.
ReplyDelete