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He roared at me unintelligibly and shoved me to the side. I fell back against one of the bar stools, turning it over and toppling to the floor. My head rapped against the hardwood, sounding eerily like he had thrown a stone pot on the floor and sending funny-colored splotches floating across my field of vision. “You have no right to be here!” he shouted down at me. “You are not welcome! I will not permit you to harass my wife any longer.”
I looked up from the floor at him, my voice increasingly venomous as I snarled back at him, “You are pathetic. You think you’re so damn high and mighty because you can beat up a girl less than half your size and threaten your wife when she cooks the wrong meal. Well, I’ve got news for you,Daddy. You’re not so tough when you’ve got nobody that’ll let you push them around. You’re just a sick coward. I’d love to see you try to control someone with a backbone.”
As I said the last few words, I shoved the barstool off of me and made to scramble to my feet, but only made it dizzily to my knees before a perfectly polished leather shoe connected with my side, emitting a sharpcrack,and sent me sprawling again, gasping and clutching at my ribs. “Youstupid,ungratefullittleBITCH!”he shouted.
Dimly I could hear Mrs. Aaron sobbing, but she wouldn’t protect me, and I did not expect her to. I had earned this, but it was worth it. The bloody lip, broken rib and concussion were all worth standing up to him.
Mr. Aaron grabbed my wrist and I winced as he yanked me to my feet. Shaking with fury, he dragged me to the basement door, threw it open, and held me inches from him on the top stair. His eyes blazed like windows into Hell itself, if Hell were blue. I thought of Dante’s description of the ninth circle of Hell as frozen over. For my last show of defiance, I spat in his face and asked, “How does it feel not to be feared?”
Grimacing and leering like some kind of enraged beast, Mr. Aaron wiped the spit off his face and screamed at me, “For what I care, you can join your damned parents in Hell!” Then, he hooked my ankle with his leather shoe and shoved me, tripping me back…
…And sending me careening down the basement stairs.
I flung out my arms instinctively and felt my fingertips graze against the walls. My left hand caught the railing, but I felt my feet slip over the stair and toppled backward, my own weight wrenching my hand free. I went straight backwards, catching a step in my tailbone, then knocking the back of my head against the wall before rolling on down. It was a miracle the stairs were thinly carpeted, or unconsciousness and death would have been instant. My legs continued over me, sending me tumbling down faster. I tried to regain some form of balance and ended up twisting myself into a barrel-roll down, my face scraping on the stairs and crunching my nose into the steps. I tried to protect my head with one arm and grab onto the stairs with the other, but couldn’t slow the fall.
Finally, I landed flat on my back on the concrete floor. My head came down on the concrete with a sickeningthuddespite my arm over my head and my hand on the back of my skull. The fingers screamed in pain and I thought a few might be broken. I could hear Mrs. Aaron screaming as if from underwater, but the noise faded as her husband shut the basement door and locked it, plunging me into darkness.
My eyelids were heavy and I let them slide shut. Every inch of my body was throbbing or much worse. Most spots were on fire with pain. My wrist ached and I wondered if I had sprained it. My fingers felt shattered. My head was pounding and something felt warm and sticky in my hair. I hoped it wasn’t blood, but there was nothing else it could be.
Somehow I knew that if I let myself fall asleep, I would never wake up, so I opened my eyes and winced as I sat up, putting pressure on my tailbone, another casualty. My nose was bent at a bizarre angle and I pinched the bridge, jerking my hand quickly and crunching it back into place. Then, I checked the back of my head. My hand came back drenched in blood that danced in my vision.
Vertigo hit me as I sat up farther and I rolled onto my knees, retching on the concrete floor. I continued to kneel there as the room spun around me and my body seized with the shudders that come with stomach convulsions. I didn’t know much about emergency medicine, but I knew for sure that dizziness, sleepiness and vomiting were concussion symptoms.
I needed to escape. I limped into what had been my room while I lived here, trying to ignore the way the basement was rolling back and forth like a ship in the ocean. It wasn’t real; I would not let a head injury turn me into a maniac. Five more steps to the window…
Thud. I walked straight into the wall, hissing as I bumped my broken nose on it. Trying to ignore the pain and rolling sensation, I doubled back and on the second try made it to the window. Unsuccessfully blocking out the way the frame was spinning and twisting, I stood up on tip-toe and stretched to open the window and pop the screen. Then, being very careful, I stood shakily atop an old end table, hoping it would hold a hundred pounds of weight. Struggling, I scrambled up into the open window, digging my fingernails into the cement frame. My fingers bloodied as my thin, weak nails ripped and I grimaced, using my injured wrist as more leverage to force myself up and out through the window.
Finally, I rolled out into Mrs. Aaron’s rosebushes. I scarcely noticed the thorns with all the pain I was in, just began crawling through them to the narrow side-lot, which consisted of about two feet between the house and a fence, and towards the front of the house. Scrambling to stand, I limped towards the street, and, ultimately, the nearest hospital. Just standing straight was next to impossible and if I wasn’t covered in blood, I could’ve been mistaken for a drunk. Once, halfway to the street, the world spun and I landed on my side in the cold grass. The no longer green grass was crisp with frost and the blades sliced my cheek.
I waited for the spinning to slow a bit, then got up and started again towards the sidewalk. I needed a hospital.
I continued walking even as the realization hit me. I couldn’t pay a hospital bill. I was lucky if I could keep up on my electric bill. The state I was in, though, would cost me several thousand dollars in medical bills. A head injury meant I would have to get an MRI and in my mind, MRI was code for Monstrous and Ridiculous Investment.
I made it to the sidewalk and began staggering down the street, half of me thankful that no one was home to see me like this and ask questions while the other half of me wished there was someone who could help me.
Stopping before one of the massive rowhouses, I was contemplating the odds of being able to successfully break in and find a stapler to sew my head wound up with when the street tilted and I fell sideways onto the icy cobblestones, where I laid immobile in my pain. I couldn’t even stand. There was no way anyone could staple their own head shut, much less someone suffering from a concussion and serious blood loss. I needed help.
Who was going to help me, though? I didn’t know anybody besides the Aarons and my coworkers and I wasn’t comfortable with any of them helping me, even if I had their phone numbers.
Suddenly, my hand darted to my jeans pocket, right beside my apartment keys. Shakily, I drew out my stone-age cellphone and the scrap of paper with Frost’s number on it. The phone rang once, twice, thrice… I was beginning to resign myself to him not answering when his voice suddenly appeared on the line. “Detective Caleb Frost, Homicide.”
“That’s how you answer your personal cellphone?” I asked wryly.
I could hear voices and bustling in the background and guessed that he was at the police station. “Poe?” he asked. “I didn’t think you’d call.”
“Neither did I. Are you busy?”
The voices seemed to dim, as if he was walking away from the source of the racket. “Where are you?”
“You can’t answer my question with a question.”
There was the slam of a door and the line was quiet. “I know you wouldn’t have called if you didn’t need help. Now tell me where you are.”
I sighed and replied, “The Heights.” The grey, cloudy sky was starting to twist above me like a kaleidoscope and I decided to stay there on the ice until he arrived. Trying to stand on ice in this condition would not end well.
“I’ll be there in ten.” He hung up and I slid my phone back into my pocket, staring up at the sleeping trees above me, their black arms stretching across the grey sky, reaching for me with clawed hands.
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