The Ones You Hate -Chapter Two

[excerpt]

Chapter Two - Nany

The next day I sat in the living room and drank some orange juice and ate a Pop-Tart that was filled with chocolate cream. The TV was running, but I didn't pay much attention. The air was kind of sticky and strangely overheated. The sun came through sometimes. The summer holidays had just begun and I already felt worn out and bored. I didn't feel like doing anything. I just wanted to sit here and do nothing all day. Hours gone by. From the bathroom I could hear my mother getting ready for the night shift in the psychiatry. The stench of her perfume came through the rooms and the dull noises from the hair dryer drowned out the TV.

"I'll go then.", she said as usual.

I didn't respond as usual.

When she was out of the door, I got up from the sofa and looked out of the window. I watched her getting in the car and driving away.

Then I put on a jacket and shoes and went to the kiosk store across the street. 

The old man in there, didn't care about the age of his customers. He sold me Schnapps and cigarettes. When I came back Maria sat in the hallway. I was startled and almost dropped my purchases. She put her phone back in her pocket and jumped on her feet, waving her arms in a weird cheerful way. I let her in and we shared the Schnapps and the cigarettes. We watched TV. Then she turned off the volume.

"Are you mad at me or something?", she asked.

"No.", I said without looking at her.

"Are you sure?", she asked.

"Yes, I'm sure.", I said. "Why would I be mad?"

"Because I didn't tell you about the... you know what."

"No.", I said again.

"Good.", she said and turned on the volume again.

Then she began to rant about our friendship and indulged in old memories and how quickly everything has changed. I didn't know how to react and just said, "Yeah sure."

"You also kind of changed.", she said then.

"Really?", I said and shrugged.

She got up from the sofa and went to the window.

"Not that it would matter to you.", she murmured to herself.

"What do you mean?", I asked, although I didn't want to know.

"Nothing.", she said, turning her back to the window. She braced herself against the heater and gazed at her shoes for a long while. It looked like she was about to cry. But then she came silently back to the sofa, drank some Schnapps and lit a cigarette.

"Was it from Dennis?", I asked while zapping through the program.

"Dennis? No... of course not.", she said. "You don't know him.", she added after a brief pause.

We stood in front of an Aldi store and Oliver had bought chips and Pepsi. It was cloudy and somehow and oppressive air - later there was thunderstorm.

We were standing in front of a clothes container and in front of it, were many plastic bags, with blankets and sheets in it. Maria bent down and tried to pull up a carrying bag, that stuck between the plastic bags.

"What are you doing! This is for the poor.", I said to her.

"Uhm, yes, I know.", she said and indicated that she in deed understood herself as one of the poor.

"The very poor.", Oliver stressed.

"There are no levels of poverty.", she replied. "When you're poor you're fucked anyway."

Then she had managed to pull out the suitcase. She knelt down as before a precious treasure and pulled on the zipper. But the zipper somehow stuck and the more she pulled on it the more it got stuck. She sighed. She didn't give up though.

"Help me.", she eventually said and Oliver didn't move at all, but I settled down next to her and tried to open the zipper very gently. But that didn't work either and we became very frustrated with it. And Oliver became frustrated because of us and he called us "Dumb b*****s" and I called him a "Sexist"

But then Oliver really managed to open the zipper and Maria got excited and clapped in her hands. She couldn't wait to see all of her new clothes. The sides of the bag gaped open and as the inside revealed itself, we all recoiled from the bag. Me and Maria both screamed at the same time.

"What the f**k is that?", Oliver cried in horror.

"I have no idea.", I said in a whiny tone, clutching to Maria.

"Something hairy.", Maria said.

"Stuffed animals.", me and Oliver said unison.

We looked at each other and relaxed again. 

"Stuffed animals.", Maria repeated and we let go of us.

Slowly we moved towards the bag and Oliver opened it a bit more with the tip of his shoe. The content rolled out a bit.

"Ewwwww! A rat.", Maria screamed and we startled again.

"A big, fat, dead rat!"

"That's not a rat! That's another gross thing!"

"Take a look, it's definitely a rat!"

"That is way too big for a rat, and its head is all white!"

"Maybe that's the deathly pallor and its bloated or something like that."

"Guys, this is not a rat.", I said, googling it. "That's a possum."

 I showed them the picture and it was identical.

Later we went to an old factory side. Maria said it was "the new s**t" to go there and the cops almost never show up.

Her "new s**t" was a Junkie-Injecting-Equipment-Idyll, with filthy foam mats and scrawny bodies wrapped in cobwebs. There was a smell of alcohol; and the smell of gasoline; and the smell of feces and urine and stale rat poison. I banged my knees against the edges of broken pipes and my shoes got tangled up in tangled cables lying on the floor. Maria pressed her shoulder against a wooden plate and said it was the "secret room" and actually it was just some kind of back room, that shielded us from the junkies. 

The room was quite small and stuffy and thick layers of dust were everywhere on the furniture. In the middle of the room stood a scuffed sofa, as one could know it from the GDR, with a holey and tattered upholstery. On the sofa sat a girl, blond, tanned and enchained, with full lips and a very red face. She was shivering and weeping. The slimy snot ran out of her nostrils. Her strong legs stuck out of a pair of jeans hot pants and she exposed so many eye-catching tattoos. 

Dennis was bent over her and held a penknife to her carotid artery.

"What did she do?", Maria asked someone, who was standing next to her.

"I'm not sure, but she probably kept some of Dennis' stuff and sell it herself or something."

The girl started wriggling and kicked her legs like a horse.

"I didn't sell it, I took it myself, I took it myself, I swear!", she yelled through the room in a jarring voice.

On the table, which also seemed to come from the GDR, was a bag of wine gums. Oliver reached for it and offered me some. I took a wine gum and watched the whole thing like I was spellbound. The girl tried to defend herself. Dennis didn't believe her; he beat her and kicked her in the genital area. The girl was moaning and kept desperately murmuring unintelligible words. Her eyes were only half open and blood was draining from her nostrils. No one made a sound, the room was filled with just the weeping from the girl. Then Dennis took out a syringe and placed it also on the carotid artery of the girl. Then he leaned forward and whispered something into her ear, that made her even more nervous, and therefore her audience too.

My hands were quite sweaty and the bitten piece of wine gum stuck between my fingers. Nobody even dared to breathe. And then Dennis put the penknife to her lips and stung deeply into them and cut quite bloody all around her mouth. Meanwhile, she was just slightly twitching and actually she wasn't really present anymore. The shred of lips fell to the ground and Dennis pressed a  towel on the bloody spot. Then he pushed her from the sofa and settled in her seat. The group in the back room began to disperse. Awkward murmur emerged. Maria, Oliver and I exchanged a few glances. Then Maria shrugged and sat down to Dennis on the sofa.

"Are you in a bad mood today?", I heard her asking. His respond was unintelligible. Oliver and I seemed a little lost in this whole area. But at least he had the wine gums. 

The whole place was ailing, rotten and battered. A shlimy thick liquid seemed to cover the floor. Shoe soles stepped on shards and plastic foil - a barrier tape - WARNING DANGER.

Nobody belonged here.

Then Dennis stood next to me.

I had wandered to the far end of this room, holding a leaked battery in my right hand. It smelled metallic bland.

"Hey.", I said, just to say something.

He nodded. He had preceived me.

"She stole money from me and got her lips done.", he eventually said.

"Ah.", I said, not knowing what else to say.

"I don't like such fake and pumped up b*****s and I don't like being lied to and certainly not when you're robbing me, you know."

"Okay.", I said. "Good to know.", I added, patting him on the left shoulder blade, like an old buddy, that he was not.

"Really good to know.", I mumbled, while disappearing from him.

"Can someone please put that away from here!", he shouted into the room. And initially nobody moved. But then two tall guys eventually came out of the shadowy area. They heaved the girl up and one threw her over the other's shoulder. The towel fell to the ground - it was quite bloody and her whole teeth were bared. She looked grotesque. And some didn't even dare to raise their eyes, when she was relatively laboriously carried out of the room. Just very softly, from somewhere in the back corner, it was to hear: a whispering, shaky, little voice, saying, "Poor Nany."

And she left bloody drops on a surface where it would never be noticed.