Mud Vein(60)

At noon the lights turn on.



Isaac’s head appears through the trapdoor a minute later. I wonder where he’s been. My bet is on the carousel room. He takes one look at my face and says, “You knew.”

I knew.

“I suspected.”

He looks incredulous. “That the power would come back?”

“That something would happen,” I correct him.

I knew that the power would come back.

He disappears again, and I hear his steps pounding down the stairs. Clomp, clomp, clomp. I count them until he reaches the bottom. Then I hear the front door hit the wall as he swings it wide. I flinch at all the cold air he’s letting in, then remember that the power is back. HEAT! LIGHT! A WORKING TOILET!

I feel impassive. This is a game. The zookeeper gave us light. As a gift. On Christmas Day. It’s symbolic.

He thinks light came into my life on Christmas Day when I met Isaac.

“You’re just a badly written character,” I say out loud. “I’ll kill you off, my darling.”

When Isaac comes back his face is ashen.

“The zookeper was here,” he says.

I get chills. They skitter up my legs and arms like little spiders.

“How do you know?”

He holds out his hand. “We have to go downstairs.”

I let him pull me up. He doesn’t like me to walk on the leg, which means he’s making an exception, which means this is dirt serious. I use him as a crutch. When we reach the ladder he helps me sit on the floor. Then he climbs down first. He has me lower my injured leg through the hole first. It takes me ten minutes to get it right, to maneuver it while not falling over. But I am determined. I don’t want to be in the attic a second longer. When both legs are through, he reaches for my waist. I think we’re both going to fall, but he gets me down. Steady hands, I remind myself. A surgeon’s steady hands.

He hands me something. It’s a tree branch—almost as tall as I am—shaped like a wishbone. A crutch.

“Where did you get this?”

“It’s part of our Christmas present.”

He stares intently into my eyes, and motions for the stairs. A few weeks ago we were burning everything we could. There is no way this could have escaped our fire. I lean on my crutch as I hobble for the stairs. I want to scream at how long it takes to make it to the bottom. I look around. I haven’t seen this part of the house since I broke my leg. I have a need to walk around, touch things, but Isaac pushes me toward the door.

It’s dark outside. So cold. I shiver.

“I can’t see anything, Isaac.”

My foot is about to sink into the snow when my cast hits something.





They never found the man who raped me. There was never another report of a rape in those woods, or any woods in Washington. The police said it was an isolated incident. With blithe nonchalance, they told me that he had probably been watching me for a while and possibly followed me into the woods. They used words like “intent” and “stalker”. I’d had those before: letters, e-mails, Facebook messages that went from high praise to intense anger when I didn’t respond. None of them were men. None threatening enough to concern me. None with the tone of a rapist, or a sadist, or a kidnapper. Just angry moms who wanted something from me—recognition maybe.

But there was something I never told the police about the day I was raped. Even when they pressed me for more details. I couldn’t bring myself to say it.



No, I didn’t see his face.

No, he didn’t have tattoos or scars.

No, he didn’t say anything to me…



The truth was that he did speak to me. Or perhaps he just spoke. To God, to the air, to himself, or perhaps to some person who abandoned him. I can still hear his voice. I hear it when I sleep, whispering in my ear and I wake up screaming. From the moment he started to the moment he finished, he chanted one thing over and over.



Pink Zippo



Pink Zippo



Pink Zippo

Pink Zippo





It was an omission. Maybe he got away because of it. Maybe another woman will be raped because I could have done more. But in that moment, when you’ve been violated, your soul darkened for no reason other than someone’s sadistic cruelty, you’re only thinking about your survival.

I didn’t know how to live with my survival, and I didn’t know how to kill myself. Instead, I plotted what I’d do to him. While Isaac was feeding me, and pulling me out of dreams that made me thrash and scream, I was cutting up my rapist, throwing him into Lake Washington. Pouring gasoline over him and burning him alive. I was carving his skin like Lisbeth Salander did to Nils Bjurman. I took the revenge I would never get in my flesh and blood life.

But it wasn’t enough. It’s never enough. So I took revenge on myself for allowing it to happen. I felt worthless. I didn’t want anyone who had worth to be near me. Isaac had worth. So I got rid of him. But here we were; locked up and caged. Starved. The man who chanted Pink Zippo might have been a stalker, but he had nothing, nothing on the zookeeper. You can stalk a woman’s body, but this animal was stalking my mind.





My cast hits something. Isaac flicks the switch that turns on the bulb above the door. It’s been so long since light and not darkness has been my companion that it takes a moment for my eyes to catch up. The zookeeper has indeed left me something; a box, rectangular in shape, it reaches my knees. The box is pure white, shiny and smooth like the inlay of an oyster shell. On its lid are red words, the letters look as if someone dipped a finger in blood words that look as if someone dipped a finger in blood before tracing them. For MV.