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True Story
Author: Kate Reed Petty


PROLOGUE


   BARCELONA


   2015

 

 

When you last came to ask for this story, I’d already been hiding out in Barcelona for years. I live in an airy studio on the top floor of a five-story building, with tile floors and a big sliding glass door that opens onto a patio; the patio is lined with terra-cotta pots too heavy to move, left by the previous tenants and overflowing with succulents. The apartment is inexpensive and private; the neighbors keep to themselves and the landlord likes her checks in the mail. It took a little while, but now I feel safe enough here that on hot nights I don’t close the patio door, leaving my bedroom open to the breeze whispering up from the city streets and to the phantom intruders that used to haunt my dreams.

   I love this apartment the way astronauts love their ships. My only complaint is the display in the window of the pharmacy downstairs, which I pass every day on my morning run. It features three female mannequins with rounded onyx surfaces where their faces should be, their arms and legs cut off at the biceps and thighs. They’ve been arranged in come-hither poses, hips torqued out as though they were modeling bikinis—but instead, they model first-aid equipment. The one closest to my apartment door has a black lumbar support belt strapped around her waist like a corset and a blue sling for a broken arm draped around her neck. Perched in a wheelchair to her left, another has a knee brace attached at the thigh. The third leans stiffly against the far wall, a sleep mask covering the place where her eyes should be.

   For months and months now, this display hasn’t changed. Try as I might to look away, I can’t help glancing at it as I pass, the way a woman in a horror movie can’t resist going upstairs. Don’t take this the wrong way, but whenever I look at the mannequins I think of you. My oldest friend, you have always stood by me in the face of casual misogyny and bad taste.

 

* * *

 

   • • •

   WHEN YOU CAME TO BARCELONA, I really did intend to meet you at your hotel, as I’d said I would. But then I got to the street and found myself walking in the opposite direction. I needed time to think. It was one of those abundant late-summer days, and I walked in a wide arc, under orange trees ruffling their leaves in the sun. I passed old women walking arm in arm, families pushing children on swings in clean public playgrounds. I walked all the way to the Parc de la Ciutadella, where green parrots bobbled around, mingling with pigeons on the paving stones.

   I didn’t mean to stand you up. I told myself I was circling around to approach your hotel from the opposite side, but then I just kept circling.

   Eventually I walked back to my apartment. I turned off my phone, then went out and sat on my wide patio in the afternoon sun and finished a mystery novel whose ending I’d guessed from the start. I fell asleep for a while, and when I woke up I cooked a more complicated dinner than I usually bother to—pasta with olives and artichoke hearts, an endive salad on the side. It was delicious. Only when the dishes were clean did I finally call your hotel.

   I’m sure you thought I was still angry. The truth is I was embarrassed. You’ve always been the one who was brave—no, the one who was sure. You’ve always been so sure of the story you want me to tell, the story you’ve been asking me for since we were seventeen: the story about the things that happened while I was asleep. “It’s your story,” you would say. “If you don’t let it out, it will take over your life.” But the story is mine only as the victim owns the prosecution, or the whale the harpoon. Telling it has always been the privilege of the perpetrators, who have the actual facts, and of the bystanders—like you—who believe they know.

   Back then I wasn’t ready to explain. So I told the receptionist not to call your room, just to give you the message that I’d been summoned to London on short notice by a demanding client. “Tell her not to wait for me,” I said. “I’m not sure when I’ll return.” Then I turned off my phone again and went back out to the patio. I watched the lights blinking on across the city like eyes, a constellation of night watchmen. I hoped you would accept my excuse, though I knew it was obviously false.

   Now I hope you’ll accept this instead.

 

 

SATAN’S BRIDES

   by Alice Lovett

   & Haley Moreland

   9/1/95

 

 

           FADE IN:

    INTERIOR. A ONE-ROOM CABIN IN THE WOODS — NIGHT

    LISA is sitting alone with a bottle of RED WINE and a PINT OF ICE CREAM. She’s been CRYING. Her makeup is all SMEARED.

 

   LISA

        I can’t believe that bastard!

    Lisa GULPS down an ENTIRE GLASS OF WINE.

    She WIPES her mouth. She THROWS the glass across the room. The glass SHATTERS.

 

   LISA

        Fifteen years of marriage! And he leaves me for . . . Francesca!!!

    Lisa flops forward facedown onto the table. She WAILS.

 

   LISA

        Why, Jim? Why? Why?

    She reaches over and takes a big bite of ICE CREAM.

 

   LISA

   (wailing)

        This ice cream isn’t even that good!

    Suddenly: There is a LOUD THUMP ON THE DOOR!

    Lisa JUMPS. She stands up. She stares at the door.

 

   LISA

   (hesitantly)

        Who . . . who is it?

    Lisa slowly OPENS THE DOOR and sees: There is a LARGE KNIFE stuck point-first in the face of the door.

    Lisa SCREAMS and SLAMS the door closed.

    THEN: She hears the sound of A WOMAN LAUGHING EVILLY.

    Lisa SPINS around.

 

   LISA

        Who’s there?

    There’s no one else in the room.

    But: The ICE CREAM PINT has been knocked over. There’s a puddle of MELTED ICE CREAM on the table.

 

   LISA

        Oh my god.

    Lisa sees that someone has DRAGGED A FINGER THROUGH THE MELTED ICE CREAM, spelling out:

 

   SATAN STILL LOVES YOU

        Lisa SCREAMS.

    Lisa RUNS to the door and flings it open.

    She GRABS the KNIFE.

    Then she FLEES.

    EXTERIOR. THE WOODS AT NIGHT — CONTINUOUS

    Lisa RUNS through the WOODS, panicked. Looking back over her shoulder . . .

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