The police chief and I had a lot of history. Most of it was good. Some of it was a little more tragic. He’d found me all those years ago after the accident. I called it an ‘accident’ because the word attack always made me shudder uncontrollably and hyperventilate. Basically, the dictionary definition of a panic attack, but I’d never been to see a psych about what happened that night. Or what I thought had happened. There was always something there at the edge of my consciousness, something I’d well and truly blocked out, and that drove me just as crazy. It was always on the edge of my mind, like if I had a little more sanity, I could just reach out and grab it. Instead, I had recurring nightmares that I couldn’t escape, always just a little bit different so I knew it was a dream and not a memory.
I’d healed quickly after the accident, at least physically. When Tony and his wife Sue had found me, my clothes had been torn and bloody and I had eight bite marks, a broken wrist and a huge bump on my head. They’d called the hospital and the local doctor had come out to determine if it was safe to move me to the emergency room. They’d sedated me for most of the first two days, my weird ramblings and wild behavior nearly getting me thrown in a padded room, so most of my convalescence was a pleasant haze. My body healed, but the whole thing had turned me into the recluse I am today.
Then there were the rumors. They started in the hospital. I’d heard the nurses whispering as I was just coming out of my sedated slumber.
“Her neck, Tina, look at it.” The voice had hissed. “She should have bled to death in minutes from those wounds, but they are already scabbed over and on their way to being scars. It’s not right, not possible.”
Tina, my primary nurse, had shooed the other nurse out of the room.
It ballooned from there of course, spreading like wildfire when I left the hospital. Most of the rumors were wild and unrealistic, like the one where, while bleeding to death, I had lit a fire and cauterized my own wounds with a rock from the fire. I had always laughed at that one.
Others were more malicious, the worst one was spread by the older citizens who accused my mother of child abuse. My nails dug into my palm. I always got angry thinking how much that rumor hurt her.
But teenagers? They were the worst. Teenagers could manage to be cruel just by breathing, which was quite a feat if you think about it.
The nickname ‘Chew Toy’ didn’t take long to catch on, and it was fuelled as much by my icy demeanour as it was by the large raw bite mark on my neck. High school was half the reason I hated coming into town now, and almost the entire reason that I wrapped myself protectively in a persona of insanity.
I caught up to Chief Tony, and he wrapped me in a bear hug.
“How are you doing, Layla?” For some reason, coming from him, the question didn’t irritate me like the others had, and tears actually started to well in my eyes. I blinked them back and smiled wanly at him.
“I’m okay, Tony. It’s been hard, but I’m doing alright.”
He smiled back. “I bet you are getting sick of being asked that question, right? Look, Sue said that if I ever saw you in town I was to invite you to dinner. Actually, she said insist that you come to dinner.”
Tony looked sheepish, and I could almost hear Sue’s commanding tone. She could be quite compelling for a plump grandmother of eight. Sue and my mother had been best friends, before my mother’s mental health had turned a corner and she’d stopped coming out of the house. Even still, Sue dropped off casseroles and meals a couple of times a week, and washed the linen for me once a month.
“I wish I could but…” I couldn’t think of an adequate excuse so I just shrugged. Tony, as expected, just nodded his head and smiled sympathetically.
“I should be going now. Crime stops for no man.”
“Also, the diner is only running its lunch specials for another fifteen minutes.”
He let out a booming laugh, and I chuckled along. Crime in Roseau was nonexistent. It was hard to be a knife wielding axe murderer in a town where your neighbors knew what time you brushed your teeth at night.
As I waggled my fingers in a goodbye wave, I headed to my SUV and took in this tiny speck on the map that I called home.
It looked average. Small town America in a nutshell.
I got to my SUV, patting the rear passenger door as if it were a faithful horse. I would probably cry when it chugged its last breath, and that day was coming soon. It squeaked where it shouldn’t squeak, and chugged when it shouldn’t chug. Turning the key, it roared to life, the noise in the cabin almost deafening. It probably needed a new muffler too. I didn’t mind though, the rough chug stopped me from thinking the inevitable bad thoughts.
As I sped away from town, it was comforting to know that I wouldn’t have to make that journey again for another month. Hopefully that was enough time for the townspeople’s memories to dim and for me to decide what to do with my life. With Mom gone, there was really nothing tying me to Roseau anymore.
I navigated the straight country roads on autopilot, my mind preoccupied with the pile of bills on the passenger seat. I knew I wanted to leave Roseau, but I couldn’t. I’d planned to leave as soon as my mother died, but the time came and went and I couldn’t drag myself away. It wasn’t that I felt any real affection for the town of my tormented childhood. I knew I could go back to college and finish the nursing degree that I’d abandoned to care for Mom, then maybe start a nursing career at one of the major hospitals. However, the more firmly I made up my mind to go, the more I procrastinated about actually leaving.
Letting out a heavy sigh, I finally noticed the turn off to my place, the Double U Ranch. It wasn’t actually a real ranch, more of a hobby farm. Its maintenance had provided an easy existence for two people, but I soon found out it was a lot of work for just one. I had a full run of chickens, two dairy cows, a horse called Monster and five acres of veggies and orchards.
I squeezed the bridge of my nose and opened the front door of the house. Fred, the Labrador, lifted his head off the rug in the living room, and gathering it was only me, promptly fell back to sleep. My cat, Pip, was more excited to see me. He was a feral kitten I’d rescued from the top of an apple tree before he was even three weeks old. That was just the kind of nature he had. Since then, he had been a mischievous little shithead who didn’t take attitude from anyone, not even Monster the Horse.
After ten or so trips back and forth from the car to the house, the sun had disappeared behind the mountains and I was ready to collapse onto the couch. I had armed myself with a sandwich, a good book and the local radio station playing in the background. The snow had started up again, making the radio a little fuzzy. They were predicting a heavy snowfall, one of the first of the season, and I was glad that I hadn’t procrastinated the trip to town until tomorrow.
The fire was crackling nicely, throwing off heat that was only partially blocked by Fred’s position on the hearth. This was the only time of the day I ever achieved any kind of calm, where the pressures and the problems of the day disappeared with the daylight, and the dreams that interrupted my sleep were still safely tucked away.
A few hours later my legs were dead, and my eyes were beginning to droop. A scratching at the door interrupted my trek to bed, but it wasn’t unusual before a snow storm. Animals knew when to seek shelter, and I had more than a few half-domesticated ones rolling around my yard. Still, I grabbed the shotgun from by the door just to be on the safe side. You never knew when you were going to get a grizzly instead of a raccoon on your front porch. Loading the shotgun, I peeked around the door, switching on the porch light to stun the animal.