Please Forget

On occasion, Molly enjoyed the overly-pungent scent that filled the cheap nail salon. This was one of those occasions. Her cuticles were ripped to shreds, the wear and tear of the last two years controlling her mind, urging her to continue nit-picking those sad remainders of fingers. Her eyebrows had a perfect arch, but were much too thin. Any small black hair poking itself out from beneath the others was doomed to the tweaking and tweezing that was only made worse by the 5x magnified mirror she had bought at the drugstore earlier that week. As the woman attending to her nails was cleaning what she could on those sad digits, she asked whether she would prefer acrylic nails or the gel fill-ins. Molly thought about which would be easier to bite off, which would taste worse, and began to wonder why she even walked in the salon to begin with. She then reminded herself that sometimes we like to waste money on things that are considered normal. “Acrylic. And I’d like a bold purple on them.” The stylist wandered away for supplies, and Molly looked at her fingers, stretching them wide, feeling the pull of the joints working against each other. She bent them, watching the veins on her hand bulge and disappear back into the fabric of her body, and thought curiously about the inner-workings of herself. She remembered slicing into her arm, going past the thin layers of skin, to the thicker, white layer of fat, which, once she got through, would take her straight to the muscle. She loved being able to see things in her open body, things that you can't see through any medical textbook or model. She could explore as much as she wanted, because she was the one who decided how much she could take. After digging far enough, she would turn a full bathtub redder than you would think, without losing too much blood. The pressure of the water can hold some of it back, which she found to be a miracle of nature, but sometimes she would accidentally go too far, sometimes she couldn't stop the blood. But sometimes, she didn't want to.

The woman came back with the polish and imitation nails, and began to glue them on, one by one. Molly was startled by the sensation, which always surprised Molly, but she had been so absorbed in her mind lately, that anything would surprise her. The polish applied itself thickly, and made the edges of her fingertips look less horrid and destructed. The weight of her new fingers was an odd balance after having nothing there for so long, and she tested the wind resistance, swinging her arms back and forth. She walked to the front counter, not bothering to sit and wait for them to dry, and handed sixty dollars to the woman, leaving without asking how much she owed, or waiting for change.

Once she reached her car, Molly slammed the door and lit a cigarette, pressing her arm out the cracked window to ash. Not bothering to start the car, Molly thought about where she would go, could go, and should go. The keys turned quickly in her ignition once her mind was made up, the tires flying, moving her car out of the lot. Molly directed the car into a neighborhood, numbly driving many miles over the speed limit. After making many turns and curves, she slows herself, pulling into an empty driveway with a “No Trespassing” sign and a broken gate. Driving down the crumbled road, she soon found the end of the road, near the pier. She sat for a moment to prepare herself. She hadn't been here since he left. Stepping out, she grabbed the lighter, her cigarettes, and her small bag, and began to walk the wooden steps, speeding her movements to avoid thinking any more than she thought she should.

When the island became her next step, she slipped off her sandals, tossing them into the waves, not caring about retrieving them later. She watched the foam padding riding the waves, then slowly tipping and plummeting into the bottom of the bay. Avoiding the ragged house on the island that once was lively, Molly went to the other side, with the rocks, and sat. She dipped a foot in the chilled water, letting shivers go up her calf, all the way to the little hairs being raised on her thigh. The lighter flickered in front of her face as she inhaled, creating the beautiful red ember on the end of that long white stick. Holding the cigarette in front of her face, she examined the way the embers danced among themselves, growing slightly darker with each puff that she didn’t take. Inhaling again, she looked to the heavy waves, watching them gain and lose mass, seeing the steady rise and fall. She was soon reminded of the first time she had been here. The boy that had brought her, the cheap cologne he wore that somehow still managed to make him smell like he was born a man. She thought about the way his hand had slid up her skirt, and the way she couldn’t even manage to stifle her pleasuring gasps. She could almost still feel the way he kissed her breasts, even after all these years, and remembered even more the way their lips always matched each other’s perfectly, the biting and tugging and teasing that helped to rip off their clothes, but most of all, she remembered the thing he would always say as they were curled up afterwards. “You love me, right?” His sad, juvenile eyes always looked a little soggy after these words slipped out, and Molly would brush his hair with my fingers, whispering, “There’s no other way for me to feel.” This ritual went on for two years, the longest ones she had ever lived, and for the only period in her life that mattered, Molly was happy.

Taking the cigarette that was almost burned out, she inhaled again, lighting up the red embers, flaring her memory. She slid the edge of her skirt up her thigh, and pushed the red-orange salvation deep into herself. The face of her lover lit her mind as the end of her cigarette lit her skin, and she thought bitterly about the only day she ever hated him. She saw herself standing beside the examination table, looking at the bruises left by the rope he had tied around his neck. She had heard that he was found hanging from the emergency fire escape in his building, and she thought about the note he had left. “Please forget me”, was what it had said, with her phone number scribed on the back, and he had tucked it in his pocket, presumably right before he slid of the steps, making his last willful move.

Molly lifted the end of her cigarette from her leg, just now waking herself to the over-stimulated nerves pulsing through her leg. She had let the cigarette go out on accident. She lit another, and grabbed her bottle of anxiety-relievers from her bag. She opened the bottle, and looked inside. There were too many to count. She had been saving them, and getting refills to build her supply. She poured them out onto one of the rocks, and separated each and every one from the others. She didn’t have any drinking water, but had taken her pills dry so many times that it didn’t matter to her. She pinched one in between her thumb and forefinger, declaring a count out-loud. “One.” She took another puff, and took another pill. “Two.” She continued this process, but grew impatient with the amount of swallows, and began taking three at a time, pressing the red embers into her leg with her left hand, and pitching the pills to her throat with her right. As the dizzy feeling began to wash over her, she took one last puff, and threw herself into the water. She let herself bounce into the water, and glanced at the rocks one last time, to see what she had left to be found: the half-pack of cigarettes that remained, her small bag, which had his note in it, the empty bottle of pills, and her etching in the rock, which read, in her horribly shaky writing, “Please forget us.”