The rain was almost over. I wanted to go on, but Irene said it was impossible to get to the waterfall after a downpour, and she seemed to have chafed her foot.

I dragged two plastic chairs over to the transparent screen that shielded us from the fresher wind.

“Tell me about yourself.” I asked. “How did you end up on this Island?”

“Do you want to know if I’ve always been like this?” The shadow of a smirk crossed her lips.

“No, not at all,” I answered hastily, even though that was exactly what I wanted to know.

“Vik,” she moved her chair closer, “did your parents love you when you were a child?”

“I think so,” her question caught me off guard. “What about yours?”

“I was a nuisance to mine. My mother didn’t want me to be born, and didn’t love me. Don’t interrupt,” she stopped me with a gesture. “When she got pregnant with me, she was so afraid of getting fat that she decided to have an abortion. My father objected, but she got some pills and started poisoning me. She sat in hot bath for hours and bandaged her belly tightly. But I was born anyway, a tiny, six-month old. They say this baby didn’t even have fingernails, but the doctors saved me. I guess it was for nothing, they shouldn’t have bothered with me.”

“Did your mother tell you that?” I was surprised.

“My grandma. My folks didn’t have time for me. We lived in Glasgow, Scotland, my father was a carpenter and he drank like a fish, and my mother was all about her body, she was on a diet, she didn’t eat sweets. She worked as a costume maker in the theater and had hoped to settle her love life, to find someone better than her carpenter husband, but instead she was constantly beaten by him. Although my father was a drunkard, he loved my mother, but not me.”

“Why not? If I understand correctly, he wanted a child, right?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugged. “Maybe he thought I wasn’t his daughter, because my mother could say anything in a fight. She loved to blame my father for all her troubles; she had married him not out of love, but because she had grown up in the country and longed to move to the city, where my father had an inherited apartment. He earned a little, and as long as I can remember, my mother always nagging him about it, and at the same time nagging me about being born and ruining her youth. In the summer I was sent to my grandmother’s house in Kilmun, but she didn’t need me either, and sometimes I didn’t even have anyone to talk to except a doll. My granny didn’t keep any books, except for herbal and medical books. So there was nothing to do. But soon I had a friend – we were about five or six years old at the time. His name was Ashley. His family lived next door to us and I used to visit him. Ashley had a brother, Ethan, who was a year older than us. The three of us used to climb trees in the woods, go swimming at the lake, and play ‘hospital’.”

“The three of you?”

“Yeah. I’d lie in the bed, and the brothers would take turns ‘examining’ me. Ashley would pull up my shirt and put a cold phonendoscope on my chest – their mother was a nurse and the house was full of all kinds of medical stuff. He would listen intently to my breathing for a few minutes and then ask me to turn my back to him and pull down my pants a little so he could give me a ‘shot’. The injection was real, but without a needle, so I wasn’t afraid, I did everything he asked, and it even felt good. Ashley was so sweet, so gentle. Unlike him, Ethan was a rude one, he was always trying to pull down my underwear, and when I resisted, he told me I had bugs in there, and he just wanted to catch them so they wouldn’t bite me.”

“Did you really believe him?”

“Yes, I did. While he was ‘catching bugs’ with his fingers, I lay quiet as a mouse. Only sometimes would I ask him to show me what he’d caught, but Ethan would lie and say he’d dropped a matchbox and all the bugs scattered. At first I was terribly ticklish, but then I began to feel such excruciating sweetness in my lower abdomen that I was ready to forgive this clumsy boy anything, especially since after the ‘hunt’ he always covered me with kissed from head to toe and begged me not to tell anyone about our game.”

“What a trickster!” I grinned, remembering how I used to play ‘doctor’ with my friends in kindergarten. “Did ‘nurse’ Irene treat the rascal brothers the same way?”

“No,” she blushed. “The boys always resented me for that. Sometimes they’d take their pants off and ask me to give them a ‘shot’, but would pretend to be asleep and they would just lie down next to me, and the three of us would cuddle together foe long time.”

“Oh!” she suddenly exclaimed. “Enough talking, you have to go.”

I didn’t want to leave, but there wasn’t much time before the club opened. I squeezed her hand:

“Promise me you’ll tell me everything later!”

“Okay,” she smiled and pushed me towards the exit. “Don’t wait for me, Vik, run.”

When I burst into the club Randy was already waiting for me behind the bar. Judging by the scowl on his face, the old fox had gotten wind of something and was nervous.

“Where the hell have you been?” he grumbled. “Do you want to lose your job?”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“I’m getting fired anyway, what difference does it make when it happens – a week earlier or a month later?” I counted the cases of drinks, calculated in my mind if there would be enough for the evening, and asked:

“Will you stand at the bar for me instead? I’m going to the warehouse?”

“Damn, dude, what’s wrong with you?” Randy got angry. “You think you fucked that redhead and got tough?”

“Oh, how could I!” I retorted. “Didn’t you say she doesn’t even look at guys like me?”

“Well, if you want to know, she fucks everybody, shuffles men, like a card dealer.”

“She rejected you, though” I looked under the counter. “Have you seen the keys to the warehouse?”

“Fuck you!” Randy threw the keys at me and pointed his index finger at me. “You’ll see, with the Golden Ticket this bitch will be mine! You’ll see! And you’ll be left with nothing, just like your artist friend.”

He turned and walked quickly to the door.

“That’s not going to happen!” I yelled after him. “Did you forget the yellow scale?”

Without turning, he gave me the finger. Well, the hell with him, it was not me who started this fight. But Irene, what if Randy’s right and the untold riches of the Ticket really do turn her head? I don’t care, though. I can’t give her everything this baby is used to, so what’s the point of trying to keep her?

Since that night, Randy had been avoiding me, never speaking to me, and funeling all work orders through the club administrator. Irene was nowhere to be seen either. She probably figured she had me hooked and now I had to go after her myself. She’s got the wrong guy! A man shouldn’t let himself get trapped. If she wants to see me, she’ll come, if she doesn’t, that’s her right. And yet I missed her.

But when she finally came, I hinted that I wanted to be alone on my day off, citing a headache. She bit her lip, but didn’t leave. She offered:

“Let me help you?”

“Irene!” I snapped, “I have a really bad headache.”

“I can see that,” she came close and placed her palms on my temples. “Don’t be angry. Relax, it’ll ease the pain.”

After a few gentle strokes, I started to feel better.

“So you’re a witch?” I glared at her.

“Yeah, I’m an evil Bastinda!” she snapped her teeth as if to bite me, and then laughed:

“Come on, Vik, my grandma was a healer, I think it’s from her.”

The pain was gone, and with it the resentment and anger towards Irene. I put my arms around her and laid her down on the bed. It didn’t matter where or with whom she’d been all this time – she was here and that was all that mattered. I just wanted to lie there be with her – so gentle and desirable, watch her lowered lashes quiver in the light, stroke her hair, kiss the dimples on her cheeks.

“You promised to finish the story about your friends,” I reminded her.

“Yes, indeed,” she rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling as she continued her story. “Ethan and Ashley and I had been inseparable friends until their cousin Sean and his mother came over for the holidays. He was fifteen and had something wrong with his leg, a slight limp. When Sean found out that we were playing Doctors, he got terribly excited and wanted to examine me. I was a little embarrassed to undress in front of him – he is almost an adult, he even had a mustache growing. But he said I shouldn’t be ashamed of my body in front of the doctor. He gave his cousins money for ice cream and soda and pushed them out the door, and then he pulled my dress off and told me to get into bed. Then he took out his dick, which was huge, not like the boys. I was numb with horror…”

“You should have called for help...” I couldn’t take it anymore. “The grown-ups must have been home.”

“Do you really think I didn’t do it?” she burst out. “I cried and begged him to let me go, but he put his hand over my mouth and told me he was going to operate on me. I almost wet myself – that’s got to hurt. ‘No, Sean reassured me, he was going to give me a potion, and I wouldn’t feel a thing. And before he went into the kitchen to get the “medicine”, he threatened me: ‘If you make any noise, it’ll be worse for you!’”

“Why didn’t you run away?” I took her hand. Her palm was ice-cold.

“I was afraid. He came back with a glass of some cloudy liquid and told me to drink it. I took a sip and bitterness almost made me vomit, but he made me drink it all, and everything went blurry before my eyes. I woke up because Sean was doing something to me, breathing heavily into my face and poking his lips into mine, his eyes glassy, and his lips drooling like a puppy. And then his mother burst into the nursery, dragged to the floor by the hair, slapped my cheeks, and screamed that I was a mean girl, who had deliberately seduced her son by taking advantage of his mutilation. I remember a terrible pain between my legs and then I fainted.”

“What a bitch!” I clenched my fists. “She saw what her precious offspring did to you, didn’t she?”

“She did, so what? She had to protect him somehow, blame it on me. The neighbors forbade the boys to communicate with me and complained about me to my grandmother, who immediately called my parents and asked them to take the “little whore” home, because she felt guilty about me in front of the neighbors – such a shame in her old age. Oh, how angry my mommy was with me!” Irene grinned, but tears filled her eyes.

“Come on, don’t cry,” I hugged her and pulled her closer to me, trying to calm her down.

It did not help – a waterfall of tears fell on me, as if a dam had burst inside her.

“Wait,” I said, “I’ll be right there.”

At the table, I took a deep breath, poured water into a glass and brought it to her.

“Thank you,” she sniffed her nose. “I’m sorry, Vik.”

“Never mind,” I waved my hand. “Maybe we’d better get some air?”

“Good idea!” she agreed, wiping away her tears. “I’ll just wash up, okay?”

To be continued