Chaotic strobe lights stutter across the club, illuminating the tacky floors covered in spilled spirits, piss, and vomit. I lurk in the corner, flipping a round token of frayed paper in my hand. Last week’s high has dwindled, leaving me in a state of punch-drunk haziness, a feeling I’ve learned to ride out, a place between remembering and feeling everything, to stay vigilant and awake.

From across the room, a finger points at me in accusation.

You? What did you do?

Paranoia snakes through my belly when I’m on a come down like this, hallucinations too. A man breaches the neon lights and the manufactured smoke wafting across the dance floor—his eyes lock with mine. He gestures to the side door—nearest the bathroom—and I follow.

Dope, tonics, or medicinals: I’ll take whatever he has on him.

The walls of the single stall are plastered in show fliers for bands like Bone Rot and Indiana Panic; stapled into oblivion as if the first punch of the u-shaped metal wasn’t strong enough to keep the posters from falling down. Ammonia burns the inside of my nostrils, and despite the atrocious smell of rot and decay, the excitement builds as the dopamine floods me out of the earlier haze and warms the back of my neck.

“Are you Amos?” I ask. “I was told I wouldn’t owe you anything, to just give you this…”

The token, now drenched in the sweat bleeding from my palms, is enough to settle the sound of incessant cries chasing me. I replay every sinful moment of my life over in my head—like the B-side of a record no one has ever listened to—throughout all hours of the night until my eyes feel like they might fall from their sockets.

The dealer pockets my payment and shakes the amber medicine bottle with its label peeled off; I can’t decide what’s more beautiful, the stranger offering me drugs or the drugs themselves.

“This is Mercy.”

I don’t miss the glint passing through Amos’ eyes. Every man I’ve ever encountered reveals their sparkle first before delivering the power they have over me. Amos scrunches up the sleeves of his henley to his elbows, revealing a tattoo of a marionettist’s hand. The fingers—feminine—are inked in delicate lines with red strings coursing down his arm to emptiness, controlling nothing.

“Where’s the puppet?”

Lenora, don’t ask stupid questions you already know the answer to.

My reflection catches in the sheet of metal above the sink where the mirror used to be. The dark moons under my eyes melt to my chin, pulling me into a distorted likeness of my current self—unbeautiful and wrathful. A hand meets the side of my cheek, brushing my hair behind my ear, and for a split second the marionettist’s fingers dance lightly on Amos’ arm. The gesture is familiar but fleeting.

I snatch the drugs from his hand, relieving the bottle of its pointless safety cap. Two pills fall to the ground and lie in the filth. Without hesitation, I retrieve them from the loosened grout that crawls like mealy bugs over my fingernails and squat in front of the feminine hygiene receptacle. I pop the capsules apart, pouring their contents into small mounds of snow on top of the trash bin that holds the curse myself and other women endure for not having a child every single month.

I’ve heard all kinds of things about Mercy. How one pill is enough to forget and maybe even forgive myself—to stop the punishments—to stop the cries.

         Looking for attention aren’t you? It’s what mother would say if she were here.

“Hey, whoa. This is your first time, you should take them in pill form. Let them release in their own time.”

How the drugs are ingested is the least of my concerns, as I’m not one to ask permission, let alone forgiveness, for how I do things. My face says as much and Amos lets out a sigh of defeat, reaches into his pocket and passes me a rolled up dollar bill. My hand signals for him to move to my side, I want him close for this. He shies away at my preferred platform for the drug. A drug dealer who is afraid of a little bit of blood, it’s laughable.

I snort one line of Mercy and offer Amos a turn.

“That’s alright, you take it.”

The drugs bypass my nose and flood my insides like an unmanned fire hose, loose, whipping about. The sticky-sweet high swims in my head with visions of domesticity fit for a housewife, one where I speak no ill of myself and where there is no pain and no more blood.

Let someone else pull the strings for once.

#

I wake in a tangle of a top sheet and pool of sweat. My breath escapes me and routine panic sets in. Amos rolls to his side, reaching out for the shell of my body, coming up empty-handed.

The doctor calls them night terrors, I call them bullshit.

Amos looks at me like I’m a beautiful, slightly hungover woman in his bed who had a bad dream, but I’m just a vessel who needs more. The hand of the marionettist reaches for me and pulls my tepid body into his. My eyes are heavy as I rub them with the back of my hands. Flowery phosphenes erupt beneath my lids and Amos’ arms squeeze against my rib cage with a sharpness that takes my breath away.

“Hey, it’s alright. Nightmares can be a side effect. Mercy only lets you forget for so long.”

Amos nuzzles his handsome face into the crook of my neck. The rhythm of his breathing moves my hair across my bare skin, making my nerve endings crawl, more insect feeling than goosebumps. I thumb the ink on his arm and notice that it filled in overnight. The strings are now tied to half a torso, with long flowing hair. The woman’s arms are postured  in a cradled position as if they’re holding something not there. Her face is empty aside from vibrant dahlias blooming from her eye sockets. 

All twenty-four ribs twist and wrap their brambled vines around a hollowness. There is no heart or set of lungs, only me catching my breath at the empty sight.

Just like you. Filled with oddities and yet, still empty.

“Was this here last night?”

Amos leans upon his elbow to see what I’m talking about.

“You don’t remember?”

You took Mercy to forget.

The memories are muddled. I sort through them as Amos boils water in the kettle to fill the French press. He hunkers over his retro kitchen table with what appears to be a sketchbook splayed open in front of him. Like saltwater taffy being pulled over itself, the smoke of his clove cigarette pulls through the air and out the open window in big billowy pockets.

There are flashes of body parts, a snake coiled up inside of me where the large intestine should be, striking at me with every swallow. The clamoring of its tail like a baby rattle filled with dead things, warning those around me to stay away. A mess of my mouth on Amos’ hits me violently.

Imagining things again are you? You don’t know him.

“You never asked me what my name is.”

“I know what your name is, Lenora. We’re not strangers.”

The clock on the windowsill ticks in time with the slow thud of my heart.

“Bear with me. The day after an all-nighter is pretty fuzzy for me, especially with someone new.”

Amos pours the aromatic coffee into a mug and offers it to me with a smile. I accept the hot beverage as if this exchange is the most mundane thing in the world. The haziness creeps in.

Pictures litter the front of his refrigerator. Snapshots of Amos and a breathtaking woman on what appears to be their wedding day, heads bowed towards each other as the sun kisses the aura around them.

“You’re married?”

“I am.”

“What the hell am I doing here then? And you have a baby?”

A baby with a bow on her non-existent hair, all chubby-cheeked and wrapped like a burrito lies in Amos’ arms in one picture.

The handwriting on the Polaroid reads, “Olive + Daddy.”

 Complete adoration beams from his face. In another, the wife holds the baby high above her, their smiles outshining the morning daylight. Incantations of baby coos sing to me from far off.

The jarring sound of drugs against the medicine bottle twitch me to attention.

“Lenora, maybe some Mercy with your coffee. To take the edge off?”

I open my mouth like a baby bird and allow Amos to deposit the Mercy in my mouth. Taking them as needed and as directed like Amos had suggested last night. I wash them back with the coffee. Amos kisses the top of my head, returning back to his spot at the table he scribbles in his book.

Let yourself forget for a little while.

#

Sleep cements me to Amos’ bed, the dreams come softly at first. Sweet lullabies fill my ears and warm kisses from a handsome man plaster the side of my face. The marionettist is there, she lifts her arm just so, indicating me?

What’s she pointing at? You already know.

The shrill cries consume the sweetness from before and my hands smack at my ears, begging for silence, or to wake up, or to just die—to make the screaming stop.

The marionette nails gouge deep valleys down my chest, releasing spurts of shattered glass. The baby from the picture gnashes at my breast as I try to soothe her with milk. I rush throughout the room, the walls covered in metal sheets bounce the image of a monster back at me. Amos stands in the doorway, frozen, shouting silently. I can only make out parts of his pleas.

“Lenora! Give me the baby. Now!”

What’s she pointing at, Amos? Tell me.

Amos finds his way to my ear as it slides from my skull and growls with authority, “The condemned.”

You won’t ever forget. No one will forgive you.

                                                  
#

Mercy settles into my bloodstream, in a slow wash, eradicating the hallucinations from my mind. My cries come harder this time, replacing the wailing of the babe I can never seem to shake. Amos wraps me in a weighted hug, holding me in a fetal position across his lap.

“Shhh, it’s going to be okay, Lenora. It wasn’t your fault.”

But it was.

“Amos, where’s the baby?”

A fragile grievance leaves his mouth in a way that leaves me teetering on the edge. Affection and grace radiate from his embrace.

“Lenora, I think it’s best if you just sleep now.”

Tired. Delusional?

The tattoo is different yet again as I brush my shaky hand over the beautifully grotesque image. The red strings hold the puppetted woman upright, raising her arms ever so gently in front of her fractured torso, in her hands lies an olive branch with verdant leaves and bluish-black fruits.

I rest now as the cries get quieter and everything becomes clear.

He could forgive you. You loved a baby once. You could do it again.