HOW TO SLAY A DEMON

By Rebecca Schultz

CHAPTER ONE

Pain.

Fuck, I feel sick. On my way “home,” again, if you could even call it that. I always enjoy the morning bus ride to my middle school. Normally no one bothers me as I stare out the window and dream of a fantasy world in which I consider myself to reside part-time. Through the translucent glass, I have constructed gorgeous fashion, feats of architecture, and lovely decor for my alt-home. I recently procured a new CD-player and can listen to Dum-Diddly by the Black-Eyed Peas while adventuring. It is a relief and a great privilege to think freely.

Often, I am not allowed to catch myself off-guard. En-garde is my homeostasis, my more permanent residence. The boys behind me are kicking my seat, pushing more firmly every few seconds to see if I will notice or retaliate. On my way to school, I often engage. On my way to school, I fight back, speak up, and secure my presence. But I am en route to “home,” and I no longer have the privilege of my halcyon morning hour. I shift forward in my lonesome seat and lean more heavily on the lower-glass pane of the window. Comfort is not high on my list of priorities on the way home. Alertness. Awareness. Good-girl Behavior. These are the priorities after three o’clock.

The bus pulls up to Chris Campbell’s beautiful manor. Does his family really make the soup?, I wonder. Maybe I could marry Chris Campbell. He probably has a big, full, real family. I bet they spend holidays at his manor, preparing food in large quantities and taking it out back. I bet they don’t eat their scraps. They might use paper plates and rent games and sports equipment for their backyard reunions. I’ll need to get much prettier than this if I plan on marrying into a wealthy family. I imagine, I might die before I get the chance to become beautiful. What if I never get boobs?

I glance down between the two small bumps on my chest and believe I at-least have sprouts of breasts. Then I remember that it is mostly padding and lift my chin back towards the window. Resting my cheek against the glass, I find it fascinating how cold it feels when the rest of my body is so hot. It’s at least eighty degrees out today. Well that is what one of the recess administrators kept grumbling after lunchtime.

The hot weather never bothered me. It reminded me of living in Florida years ago. Back in Florida, I was happy all the time. I never fell ill from going home. In fact, I can’t recall feeling ill much at all. In Florida, I did not have a step-mother or a grandparent. We never had a car before. I used to enjoy it just being me and my dad. We rode his bicycle everywhere we needed to go - even to school. My car-seat was tied to the back bicycle seat, and I can recall how hot it was and how good it felt to get caught in the rain. Every fleck of water, a kiss of relief from the heat, a promise of continuous redemption for every difficulty. This one cold cheek offers me evidence of that continuing promise. I relish it until I can not feel it anymore.

The heat is little on my mind. My stomachache diverts my attention back to the issue at hand - I will be “home” soon. Beau Buriak, the Forbes siblings, and all the other rich kids have been dropped off. No one has been dropped off in almost ten minutes, which means we should be getting closer to my street soon. The neighborhood changes drastically. Perfectly manicured lawns turn into patios garbaged with old, broken washing machines and lawn mowers. It wasn’t like living in the city, where everyone seemed to share their backyards as well as their struggles. Here, there was actual land. You really couldn’t hear what was going on in the house next door to you. At least, I have to believe that to make sense of why I am still living this God-forsaken nightmare.

“Hey Bitch.” Britney abruptly slams down on my seat and jokingly makes fun of me for looking like a recluse. She doesn’t use the word recluse. “You’re like a nun, sitting over here by yourself all the time.” Britney leans forward and relaxes her shoulders. I can always see straight down her shirt. I mean I can actually see nipple. I wonder, as I always do, whether I should tell her that her bra is too big for her, but I decide that there is no possibility she is that oblivious or that dense. “Do you want to hang out this weekend?”

In the morning, I love to chat with Britney, or anyone really. But Britney is making me nervous. I tell her, “Maybe. I’ll ask my dad when I get home,” but I know I won’t ask my dad for anything. I am still thinking about the test we had earlier this week and wondering how I performed. If I did well, I could ask my step-mom later in the week to sleepover at Britney’s house.

“God, Becky, what happened?” Britney scowls, “sometimes you are no fun to be around.” She gets up and goes back to talking to the boys in the back. When I hang out at Britney’s house, I have a great time. We have a good time, I think. Britney and her parents live above the garage behind her grandparent’s house. It is the nicest garage-house I’ve ever seen. It might be the only garage house I’ve ever seen. When I’m up there, I feel like we are on a boat, sailing around the world, avoiding land. It feels remarkably safe. I wonder if Britney feels safe all the time. Maybe that’s why she lets her nipples show.

I do not feel safe at all right now. In fact, I never really feel safe. I am very, very concerned about that test. As we pull away from Britney’s house, we finally make it to the last stop on this bus route, mine. In the morning I watch as every other rider joins me. In the afternoon, I watch as everyone leaves, one-by-one until I am all one. It provides me at least the solace of knowing no one is looking at me when my face muscles and stomach muscles tighten. I let out a small fart, in hopes it will bring me some relief, but there is no relief. There is only pain.

As we pull up to “home,” I first check to see whose car is in the driveway. It’s my father’s truck. My only hope now is that my father is working the night shift and leaving soon. Then, of course, I hope my step-mother won’t be returning from her job either. It is rare that I get the house to myself. As the bus stops, I take my time grabbing my book-bag and checking around me. I would feel sick all night if I left anything here. I check quickly under the seat just in case I set something down but don’t remember it. There is nothing. Nothing is left for me here. As I step off the bus, I think I hear the bus driver say something, so I nod, but I stay fixated on my feet, stepping carefully down the steps. The bus pulls away, as it does everyday, repeatedly abandoning me, and I it.

I leave my personality on the school bus and enter “home.”

CHAPTER TWO

Work.

The smell of smoke overwhelms her as she coughs through her makeup powder. In the mirror, Jen sees a woman in red lipstick, a Marilyn Monroe. She pulls knots from her hair with her fingers and grabs her curling iron. Well, not her curling iron. Everything belongs to Tony D. She wasn’t sure what the “D” stood for. Dick, maybe, she thought, and suppressed her lip’s twitch from laughter. This isn’t the place for funny. And no one would want to see her weird tooth. Jen had practiced keeping her mouth closed for years now. She practiced portraying herself as shy so that no one would expect her to smile.

Jen hated the music in this place. The Beautiful People, by Marilyn Manson just came out. She had hoped the song would end before her name was called. This place was built for men and curated demons, not that there was any difference. She would much prefer to walk out to Girls, Girls, Girls by Motley Crue, but only because there was no chance this place owned any Elton John records. She had almost saved up enough money to purchase tickets to the “Identity Theft Prevention” seminar, where she could receive training in Identity Theft Protection sales. It was never one of her childhood fantasies to make money as a salesman for an insurance company. No - it offered even more than she had ever fathomed as a younger girl; it offered security, safety, and stability. The Three S’s, she thought—and that’s exactly what she’d sell them.

As The Beautiful People ended, Jen stopped fussing with her hair. It had gotten curly enough to appear soft and flowy during her dance routine, though not done enough for an actual performance. The artistry here was straightforward and limited - swing your hips around as much as possible and spread your legs whenever there is an opportunity. Fortunately, for small-chested girls like her, there was little to be gained from shaking her ‘Tatas,’ and she never had enough bum in the back to shake a real “money-maker.” The lingo they used to describe women’s bodies in this place made her crazy. When she danced, she would never make real eye contact with the men below her. Instead, she would fake-smile at them, imagining their slow, painful deaths and their subsequent pilgrimage to Hell. Their limbs would be slowly pulled from their bodies to a repeated playlist of nothing other than The Beautiful People.

Maria wasn’t like Jen. Maria liked the big feather boas, the disco balls, the stench of liquor spilled on the floor and the sound her heels made when they clacked over the old, scratched wooden floors. “Oh honey! I have to get out of these SHOES!” Maria set her large, red-feathered boa on the old hat hook by the entryway and sat down at the vanity next to Jen. “All I want in the whole world is someone to come into my life to rub my feet.” Jen smiled, but she wasn’t up for talking right now. She always got called after Maria was done. “Have you eaten yet, honey?” Maria was two years older than Jen, but she spoke like she was generations Jen’s elder. Jen always thought that was disrespectful. Why are young women always speaking down to other young women?

“Yeah I had dinner before I got here,” Jen lied.

“Well you’re going to need the energy tonight because the boys out there are hungrier tonight than us.” Jen smirked, uncomfortably. She knew it was getting close to her time, and it became harder to imagine non-faced men getting their limbs ripped apart from their bodies. It was time to start pretending she enjoyed the performance, the attention, the stage time. “Come to the back room, honey. I’ve got a snack for you that always does the trick. You look like you need an energy boost.”

CHAPTER THREE

“Home”

As I open the door, I can hear the sound of bullets coming from the “Florida” room in the back. And then my father screaming, “what the FUCK Joe77?! Where were you man? I needed a fucking HEAL!” My father playing video games makes me feel tense. If he had work tonight, he would probably be taking a shower and getting ready to leave. This meant he was probably going to be home tonight and easily irritable. On the other hand, he would probably just play video games until long after my bedtime and leave me alone. I should be free to hang out in my bedroom or watch Disney Channel on the television. I try to close the door behind me quietly, but not too quietly, or he might suspect that was just what I was trying to do. I did not want to appear as if I was trying to avoid him.

Another explosion from the game surely diverted my father’s attention from my entrance. He was back in the zone, for now. I will try to make my appearance known later in a more organic setting, such as by making food in the kitchen and nonchalantly asking if he would like some too. I lean my book-bag against my bed and decided to finish my homework later. I grab the small stack of CD hand-me-downs I acquired (mostly from my Aunt Cherry) and threw Who Let the Hits Out into my CD/Cassette Boombox. As the first song starts, my youngest brother, Grady runs into my bedroom. “Becky! Popcorn!” My two-year-old, blonde-as-can-be baby brother instinctively jumps up into my arms.

“Okay, Grady! But first, want to dance?!” I pick him up and throw him high until he can almost touch the ceiling. His face expresses both fear and joy as he bursts into laughter. With one hand under his bottom and one on his back, I hold him on my hip and dip him to the beat of the music. His laughter was my favorite sound in the world. Then, I put Grady down and he begins copying my dance moves. He turns and turns in circles until I can see little beads of sweat piled upon his forehead. He is getting tired, and probably still hungry. “Okay, Grady. Popcorn?”

“Popcorn!” He runs into the kitchen, ahead of me, still shouting - almost singing - “Popcorn! Popcorn! Popcorn!”

I press pause on my music and take a second to catch my breath from all the dancing. As I walk out of my room and go to wipe sweat off my forehead, I hear something fall. Kernels. I started to laugh to myself that Grady already made a mess and we haven’t started cooking yet when I hear a second crash - my father. Oh no. I had just got close enough to the kitchen to see Grady, with a puffed lower lip and wet eyes. My father smashed his keyboard. It was too late to grab Grady or to turn around. So I just stood there and watched my father grab Grady by the wrist and yank him off the ground. I couldn’t make out my father’s words. It was the tone with which I became most familiar. My father began to scream at my brother, making almost animal-like wails. If I wasn’t so terrified, I might have laughed at my pathetic dad, screeching something about us making loud noises and ruining his raids.

I was trying to look at the ground without letting any tears form. I tried to pretend like there was nothing wrong with this, to change the wiring of my brain so that watching my brother get hit or grabbed didn’t make me cry. Hopefully he would not hit Grady this time. Maybe he just needed to yell a little. Then my father stopped and took a breath. He finally noticed me standing there, just outside the kitchen. “You think this is funny?”

“No,” I said quietly. Having any sort of tone usually earned me at least a headlock if not a stomach punch. Or two. Or three.

“Is this funny?” He went for my hair this time. I knew questions were never rhetorical.

“No,” I said, still somewhat quietly, but loud enough to promise sincerity, but not to appear as sarcastic or offensive. As he grabbed more hair into his fist, he began to drag me. My knees kept buckling from the constant shift of my weight being yanked around, repetitiously. Like he lifted Grady by the wrist, he also lifted me by my hair. I responsively grabbed my hair back and tried to pull it closer to my head, to attachment. If he hadn’t been holding so much, he’d likely have ripped it out. He threw me towards the couch, still yanking me by my hair. When I fell, I felt some relief from physical pain, but I never knew what to expect once he started. It could stop now or it could take all night.

“Stand up,” told me this wasn’t going to be over anytime soon. By now, Grady was probably still crying in the kitchen, but none of that was on my mind now. Now, my job was to submit respectfully until my father exerted whatever sense of control or power he needed. I stood up tall and firm. I pressed my lips together so tightly I could no longer taste the tears streaming down my face. I peered directly ahead at his chest to avoid appearing remotely confrontational. I awaited my punishment. I should not have been there. It was all my fault. The more I repeated these asinine remarks in my head, the more I might appear to believe them on the outside. I believed that was what he wanted. He wanted to see that I knew I deserved this.

Without warning, he punched me in my gut with his whole fist. This time, when I fell back, there was no escape from pain or suffering. It was all suffering, all lack of oxygen. The pain of oxygen-less lungs was the most unbearable. It reminded me of all those times he held my head underwater, how it made me fear I would never breathe again.

Once I had finally began to force a patterned breath back into my body, he whispered those words, “stand up,” again. And so I went about my routine. Submit. Press lips. Widen eyes. Stare at chest. Await punishment. Believe in it.

My father punched me in the stomach four times that night. Each time he punched me, I would fall back into the couch. And each time I fell, he would tell me to “stand up” and if I was crying he would say, “that’s for crying.”

When it was over, he grabbed a beer from the fridge and went back to the Florida room to finish his raids. I knew it wouldn’t benefit anything to get Grady, so I went back to my bedroom without him. Fortunately, he came running to me as soon as it was over. He didn’t say anything. He just cried and crawled into my lap, wiping his snot on my tee shirt, mixing it in with my own snot and tears. I cradled him back and forth, pretending like my stomach wasn’t hurting. One way or another, this house always has a way of making my stomach feel pain.

….

“Once upon a time, there was a young child named Bean. Bean had a best friend named Nova. Bean and Nova lived on a planet far, far away from Earth. It was their own planet, and they had a very enjoyable life living within hollowed-out trees and eating the plentiful food that grew on all the plants. Even when the sun went down at night, there was never a moment of darkness because the fireflies would come out and provide beautiful twinkles throughout the world.

Bean and Nova spent their time walking around the massive planet, and named it themselves.

What did they name it, Grady?”

"Ummm Boohbah!” Grady sniffled and looked at me with his red, swollen eyes. His eyes showed interest in the story. I was proud to be able to get his mind off of the train-wreck of a night and away from his probably empty stomach. I laughed at him.

“Of course it is called Boohbah. Planet Boohbah had so much space to run around and there was so much different land. Sometimes Nova and Bean would find fields of only yellow flowers or rows of silver waterfalls. There was even snow, but it never melted, and Nova and Bean were always warm.”

I looked down and saw that Grady had fallen asleep on me. My leg was starting to go numb from his weight, but I was too happy to see him sleeping. Although we were on the floor, I leaned back against my bed and reached up and grabbed a pillow to pull down. I shifted my weight so that I could lay my head against the pillow and give my eyes some rest. Not because I was tired, but because crying makes your eyes burn. Although, maybe I was a little tired too.

…

I found myself within the woods in unknown territory. There was a house behind me in the only appearing clearing. Woods were all around. I felt unsafe. I heard a man growl, “I’ll find you…” and before I knew it, I took off running. The farther I ran, the more I began to realize things like the fact that I wasn’t wearing shoes, that the ground was wet and slippery and constantly slowed me down from steadying myself. The more I ran, the more it appeared as if there was nowhere else to go. Like an endless loop, I started to think, “I passed this broken log before, didn’t I?”

And then I realized why I kept thinking something tastes like metal. When I reached my hand up to wipe my mouth, I saw what appeared to be blood. Dark, reddish-brown, slimy residue, and what appeared to be - chunks of some sort.

I woke up abruptly from panic. Why am I tasting blood? I saw Grady still soundly sleeping on my chest when I realized I had been dreaming. The vividness still made me feel in shock. I could not help but to still fear so deeply from the dream. I could not stop thinking that it felt so real.

I finally shook away my belief and looked at the alarm clock on my nightstand. 11:02. I better get Grady into his own bed and go back to sleep. I tucked Grady into his crib and went back to my room. It took me a while to fall back asleep as my thoughts became obsessed with the realness of my unconscious.

Maybe Becky gets into writing at school but hides it there to protect it. Or maybe she gets scared of writing things down, so she continues to keep her thoughts to herself, begins telling herself stories.