Chapter 7: Killa

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7. “Killa”

“Hey, Killa,” a sweet high voice with a Southern accent called from behind me.

We were on our way out of my second day of therapy session. I turned to glare at the bleached blonde girl who had sat next to me the both days. It was my intention to let her know with my glare that I had no intention of speaking to anyone. I had been successful at that since revealing the essence of my sin the day before.

I start to turn away to go on back to my room, but this girl grabbed my arm and wheeled me around to face her. I knew that I wasn’t going to take her on. She was bigger than me a beauty mark mole over one lip and a snake tattoo up her muscular arm. But I also was not intimidated. I wanted to call her ‘bitch’ or something, but was not willing to break my self-imposed code of silence to do so.

“We don’t have murderers here, as a rule. The rest of us were caught with drugs, or we stole something like a car, and some of them were whores – not me, but I think that you’re our first murderer.” She bit her lower lip, showing me that for all her cockiness, she was still insecure about approaching me.

“I was charged with manslaughter, and I’m not proud of it. If I could I would take it all back.” It hadn’t occurred to me that I could use the title to be threatening. I just wanted people, all people, including Judy the therapist, to leave me alone.

“Okay, okay. You got a regular name?”

“Allison.” I whispered. If this girl had paid attention on that first day of therapy, Judy had told the group. But of course, I hadn’t learned any names when she went around the group. And for this girl I didn’t give a shit. “You happy now?” Couldn’t everyone see that I just wanted to be left alone.

“I’m Erika.” She smiled and started to hold out a hand as if we were going to shake, but then pulled it away when she saw the look I gave it.

“Okay, Error-eeeka. I’m going back to my room.”

“Wait. We gotta stick together, in case there’s trouble.”

I figured that I might as well play it tough-girl if I was going to be considered a cold-blooded killer. “I think by now I can handle trouble so I’ll leave you alone, you leave me alone, and we won’t have any trouble. Are we good with that?”

Erika was chewing her lip again. “Okay, but you know, we white girls, we gotta stick together. It’s just the way it’s gotta be.”

Of the twenty-three of us prisoners, “clients” in the terminology of the place, nineteen of us were white, four were probably classified as black, including the girl with the beautiful skin, and one girl was definitely Asian. I realized that I had done a count at some point, but I wasn’t about to get involved with any of this girl’s racist bullshit. “Not for me. I’m not on anyone’s side, so you’ll have to do your little club without me.” I turned to go back towards the solitude of my room.

“But what will you do when the trouble comes?” she seemed to be genuinely worried about this stuff.

I put a snarl on my face this time when I turned back to answer her, “Then I guess you’ll find out if I can live up to my killer reputation. And you might find yourself on the wrong end of that reputation.”

I stalked on back to my room, feeling rather sickened and furious by the whole idea that one of these privileged white girls was trying to play out a race war in our little comfy “imprisonment.” I had no idea what she had done to get there, but none of us were without sin, even if I was the only one who had actually killed someone.

On my way to the stairs, I passed a small girl with ebony black skin. She looked about twelve years old because of her small frame and short height, but I knew that she had to be older to be there at Holshue House with the rest of us. She sat in an old plastic arm chair in the first floor hallway reading a book. The name Michele seemed right, but I don’t know why her name was in my mind when I couldn’t remember any of the other names of people at Holshue House.

She looked up at me quickly and I flashed a smile that was returned with a scowl and a wrinkling of her nose before she turned back to her book. Had she seen me talking with Erika? Had she heard or felt the hatred? The way she pulled herself back into her book reminded me of my spider days, the spider fear. It was different from the fear that seemed to be fueling Erika’s racism. A tear formed on my cheek thinking someone would want to attack this delicate creature simply because of the color of her skin.

It felt good to retreat to the safety of our room where I lay on my back in my bed. Allison-inside was still staying very quiet, leaving me lonely and unheard, much like the black bug that scuttled across the ceiling high above. Part of me remembered me, the spider, and wanted to think of the bug as food, as something to be trapped in a web and consumed. But of course I quickly came out of that, because I was now a full-size human female, one who had been labeled a killer, at least by Erika. Now, without the context of Allison’s memories, the skin I inhabited felt somehow foreign. If there had been a pre-spider me, what had my skin been like? What color had it been? Or had I been something furry, perhaps even monstrous?

There was a knock at the door and I went to open it, knowing by the confidence of the knock that it was someone on the staff and that if I didn’t answer the person would just barge on in. As I said, there were no locks on the bedroom doors. Only the doors to the outside and to areas where we weren’t allowed had locks.

When I opened the door Ms. Slanick stood there with a piece of paper and some books. “You’ve had four days now to get your act together, Allison. So tomorrow you are expected to start attending classes.”

She thrust the paper at me which was the schedule and then handed over four heavy, obviously well-worn text books.

“Judy says it’ll be good for you, enough of sloughing around here. I can’t make you talk to anyone. She can’t make you talk. But at least you’ll be sitting in classes, listening. Understand?”

I looked at the schedule, and nodded. I accepted the books and retreated back to my bed. There was nothing to say, but I figured that sitting in class was as good as sitting anywhere else.

When I returned to my prone position on the bed my eyes, to the smell of my body and my dirty hair, I sought out the bug I had been watching and saw that it had made it to the corner and was now coming down the wall. Part of me wanted to go over there, await its arrival and then kill it, but more of me knew I couldn’t be a killer any more.

I opened the world history book, which looked like it had been published twenty years before, and started leafing through the pictures. That was when I remembered the girl with the beautiful skin and the long slender hands. I wondered if she would be in my classes.

Submitted: August 31, 2023

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