Julia opens her mouth in an awkward smile that suggests she’s not sure whether to cackle uproariously or not. Sniffling a little, she absentmindedly wipes at her nostrils with the back of her hand. As she does so, I can see her wrist trembling a little, and her fingers actually miss their mark the first time, sliding up the bridge of her nose to a point between her eyes before she can even correct herself.
“You want to know about me, huh?”
“Of course,” I repeat, taking a few steps closer to her. I’m not sure it’s in my best interests to get so within her range, given her increasing lack of sobriety, but I know making her feel like nothing is amiss is more important than ever right now.
“Like what?”
“Oh, you know…” I drawl. “The interesting stuff.”
Julia’s eyes pop out a little, and somehow I feel like she would’ve done it even if she wasn’t slurring her words. Her open mouth closes slowly and twists into a cutely sly smirk.
“God, you’re just so… so…” she begins.
“Inquisitive?”
“Hot.”
“Well, thanks. You’re not so bad yourself,” I continue, now standing right next to the exterior of Julia’s bare thigh as she stretches her legs out before me. I press a hand to her warm skin.
“Really?”
“Are you kidding me? Have you looked in a mirror lately?”
Julia blushes so hard that her cheeks seem to rival tomatoes, though I have to assume some of that is from the increased heat generated from her beverage. Her skin, although usually very apparent in its warmth to someone of my size, is noticeably toasty, with the very beginnings of a film of perspiration forming.
“I don’t have much… much to say…” Julia responds with a slight struggle, wrapping her fingers around the neck of the vodka bottle again and bringing it so quickly to her lips that a few droplets splash out the opening and hit her in the cheek. “Whoops. I’m so klutzy.”
“It’s okay. It happens to everyone.”
“You want more?”
“Only if you’re gonna have more.”
“Of course, baby,” she drawls, wrapping her pink lips around the bottle edge and swigging hard from it. I’m tempted to be impressed. She’s clearly trying hard to put on a good show of experience for me.
If my desire to see her rot in hell for the rest of eternity wasn’t so great, I’d be entertained at the idea of her trying to navigate young adult life with this kind of access to alcohol and her clear lack of forethought into such things.
“And now you,” she directs, tilting the bottle and dipping her finger into the liquid as it runs along the glass siding.
She lowers her hand again, instead pressing her fingertip into her thigh just above where I’m standing with my hands against her skin. Twisting her finger a few times, she allows the droplets of vodka to trickle off her finger and onto her leg. Slowly but surely, the clear drops roll their way along her firm quad and down her hot thigh.
Understanding perfectly, I press my face against her soft leg flesh and lap up the sticky droplets as they make their way down the side of her skin. I can feel the goosebumps on her skin rising underneath my tongue as I greedily suckle at the droplets. Have to keep this up.
Finally, pulling back and wiping my mouth off with my wrist, I gaze up at Julia, who now has her eyes closed, apparently just riding the wave with a smooth smile on her lips.
Her rich dark hair seems wilder than before, as though she had just gotten through commuting in a hurricane. Whipped over her shoulders and forehead, it makes her look untamed. More unpredictable than usual, even. Somehow, I’m encouraged onward by this.
“There has to be more to tell. I know I’m… your first… but I want to know what drives you,” I press.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. What makes you hungry?”
“Hungry, huh? Just hungry?”
“And thirsty,” I solemnly state.
“Well, right now, for more of this stuff,” she announces a little more loudly than she probably intended, swigging a final time from the bottle and setting it down to rest beside her once again. She wipes her wrist roughly across her wet lips and blinks a few times, as though unsure for a moment of where she is. “But that’s not all.”
“Oh?”
“Nooo…” she giggles, working through her words with increasing difficulty. “I’m thirsty for you. And I don’t just mean you. Like, not just hot guys. I like…”
God, I’m not sure I’m ready to handle this emotionally. I grit my teeth and begin to stroke my fingers back and forth along a small spot on Julia’s thigh.
“I like the little people. The shrinkies. I think they’re the best… best fucking thing… ever.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Since I was like… was like six or something. I’ve liked them. I mean, it wasn’t sexy or something weird to me back then, I was still a normal… kid.”
Somehow, I highly have to doubt that.
“But… but I could tell,” she continues. “I knew what I liked. And I remember when my daddy was prepsecuting… I mean, prosecuting somebody who used a PM… PMR… um, the machine… on somebody, and it was on the news and stuff and he explained it to me and I was like… oh my God…”
“I’m sure.”
“And I knew… I knew that day, even though I was like nine, what I wanted. I knew that I didn’t really care about having a b… boy… boyfriend or something who was like me, because I didn’t want somebody like m-m-me, I wanted somebody… that could be mine.”
“Of course,” I say reassuringly in the small pauses where Julia frowns to collect her thoughts.
“And when I was thirteen. On the news they had a thing about a lady who was in trouble for putting a thing on the internet. She got beat up by her husband and he raped their kid and so she got a shrink thing and… and… and she…”
“Yes?”
“She took a pencil, and bent him over the back of her hand, and stuffed it up his ass. Over and over. And over. And he was screaming and telling her he was sorry and he’d never touch her again and she just kept doing it until her whole hand was covered in his blood and then… and then the pencil…” Julia gasped breathlessly, her words quickening with each sentence, her eyes growing wider, her voice not clutched with horror but awe.
I felt like I was about ready to vomit.
“And then the pencil tip went so far in it went all the way through him and came out his… mouth.”
“Wow,” I gawked, really just trying to keep myself from bowling over.
“And I found it online and my dad got mad at me because he said it was too violent and stuff but when I left the room, I… I… I could feel, in my pants, I was all wet, well… it was my first time I ever felt a… you know.”
“Yes, I know.”
God, how badly I wish I didn’t know.
“And so… yeah… I got one. I found one.”
“How?”
“A guy on the street. Not on the street, though. You… you know what I mean, right? In a house. Out in the country. He fixed computers and stuff but he also… also fixes… I mean, he messes with and makes them work on anybody… shrink machines, I mean. He used to work in the company. The big one, the Techi-whatever thing, and… he’d do it for a lot of money.”
My genuine-sounding interest obviously was working just fine on the usually overly paranoid Julia, and I couldn’t help but feel a glow of self-satisfaction as I listened to her continue without skipping a beat.
“And he didn’t think I could pay for it since I was only 13 but my parents… they like me to have fun since they’re gone so much, and I… I’d never really spent any of it. Saved it so I could get one. And he gave it to me, and then…” she snickered with satisfaction, raising an eyebrow. “I knew… I knew he couldn’t get caught. Just like I couldn’t. It’s a fella… felon… felony, I mean, you know, to use the shrink machine thing?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, so… he was perfect because we both couldn’t get found or… something.”
I could already tell very plainly where this was going.
“So I waited for him to go home, and when he came outside, I got him, and took the bus home. Nobody even knew I was… was gone… it was so weird, and I knew then that it wouldn’t be that hard to make him be mine, forever, until… until he was stupid… and then I didn’t want him anymore. And he tried to get away, but… but I know… he didn’t. I made… made sure.”
Jesus fucking Christ.
“Oh?” I say as calmly as possible.
“I knew… so long ago… that I had to have one. A machine, and… and a person. Of my own.”
Somehow this all is beginning to make a cruelly twisted kind of sense.
“And I get what I get… I… I… I get what I want,” Julia struggles, her words slurring together more and more as the explanation continues.
With surprise, I notice tears forming in her eyes.
“But… b-but you know what, J-Jack?”
“Yes, Julia?”
“It’s not really what I want. Not now. Not after they all tried to… to leave me, when they’re all I have. They… they’re mine, can’t they understand that? No one else’s, and I know that. It doesn’t have to be like this. I used to do everything all of you needed. EVERYTHING,” Julia screeches, her skin rattling under my touch with the intensity of it. Her voice is cracking every couple of seconds as she fights back the drunken tears. A few flecks of spittle spray from her lips. “And what do I get for it? They all try to escape. Like they… they h-h-hate me or…”
“No!” I gasp, and seeing an opportunity, cause my voice to waver and crack as much as hers. “That’s not true. I love you Julia, you know that. And… and they could too, it’s just that they don’t understand yet. Understand you, I mean. They don’t know you like I do, but… but… but maybe I can help you fix that. And then they’ll all understand.”
“Really?” Julia gasps, whimpering dryly, as she dabs at her eyes with her thumbs.
“YES!”
“How?”
“You just have to trick them into thinking it’s back to normal now. Put them back in the house, and put me in there too, and I can convince them. I know I can. They trust me.”
Julia’s eyes were positively glistening from the moisture. “Jack, I love you… I love you so much… and the truth is, I… I love all of you, just not like how you love… a boyfriend, or a girlfriend, or… you know.”
“I do.”
“I love you the way you used to learn in Sunday school how… how He… loves all of us. That’s how I love all of you.”
Julia’s hand lowers quaveringly down her body and rests next to me after bopping awkwardly on her thigh. I’m not sure I trust her stability at this moment, but this isn’t the time to miss capitalizing on Julia’s feeble emotions. I hop aboard and am lifted up to her face, and although she manages to not drop me, I can tell she’s putting every bit of focus she has into keeping her hand level.
“I believe you can… can make them do it… understand, I mean.”
“I know I can,” I restate firmly.
“I’ll put them back in the house… right… right now… or soon. I don’t want to leave you yet.”
“I’m not going anywhere now, Julia. I’m right here,” I answer, my heart pounding wildly with fear and aggression rolled into one uncomfortable package. As she holds me closer to her face, I press my hand to her cheek and rub away at a moist tear on her rosy skin.
“And I know you all could understand me, if you only tried,” Julia sniffles. “Because you do, and Charlie does, and...”
“I know, I…” I begin, before stopping myself short. “Wait. What did you say?”
“I said I know you all could understand that I love you, because you do.”
“Of course I do. But did you say…”
“Charlie?” Julia repeats, a small burp blipping in her throat. She blinks excessively, clearly made slightly uneasy by the word, but with how much her eyes have glazed, and how thoroughly her words have descended into 4 am fever dream standards, she just can’t help herself. “I know he loves me, too. He understands what I am to all of you, just like you do.”
“Charlie,” I repeat dumbly. “But… didn’t he try to help them… escape, too? He… he’s in a jar in there,” I say, gesturing in the direction of the closet.
“Oh, yeah,” she snickers. “I don’t think he was expecting that. I think he wanted me to… to take him around, and let him be out here with me, but… but I couldn’t ever do that to you… not with what we have together,” Julia grimaces. “So, I put him in there. Maybe I’ll reward him sometime, though. Somehow. I don’t know. I don’t know how.”
“For what?” I gasp, so struck with misunderstanding that I’m having trouble keeping up my façade of drunkenness in my words.
“For telling me about Beth, silly,” she giggles. “He couldn’t wait to tell me, the little cutie.”