Three truths and a lie - Writing Challenge Piece

"I'm not accusing you of anything," he said.

"You're putting words into my mouth," I said.  I scratched the inside of my wrist, almost forgetting the scabs were there.  I winced as I accidentally pulled one off with my fingernail.

"Those cuts on your wrist," he said, looking down at his clipboard.  "They aren't something I need to be concerned about?"

"God," I said.  "I was drunk."


Truthfully, I had only been sort of drunk.  Evan wasn't home.  It was late, and I had work in the morning.

I knew where he was.  There was a new girl who called our apartment and hung up when I answered.  I called her back once, pretending to be selling a magazine subscription.  She knew it was me.  We were both overly polite, like we were both sorry.  I liked the sound of her voice.  Hearing her speak made it so that she sort of belonged to me, too. For just a moment, I wasn't left out in the cold.  I felt something like love for her.  I just wanted everything to be okay.

She was nineteen and lived in a dormitory across town, on campus.  Evan and I were both thirty.  We'd lived together for almost ten years.  We graduated from high school together.  His dad used to beat him up.  He showed up at school with his face all messed up and bruised.  Nobody liked him.  He was too jumpy; they called him Spazz.  He almost fell out of his chair every time somebody slammed a book closed.

I didn't really like him, either, not then.  I just wanted something to bandage and nurse back to health.

My mother died of cancer when I was twelve.  My best memories were of brushing her hair smooth across her pillow and feeding her bites of ice cream from my bowl.  I snuggled up against her and watched movies on the tiny tv hanging from the ceiling of her hospital room on days when she couldn't come home.

I liked to say to Evan when we were teenagers, "Shh, now.  I won't let anything happen to you."

He only pretended to need me.  He needed to get back at them, more.  His dad and the other kids and all the people who thought he was dirt.  He sat quietly at my feet while I soothed him, waiting until he was big enough to fuck them all up.

He was big enough a long time ago.  Except that all of those people were gone, and he had no way of getting to them.  Instead, mostly he just fucked me up.


"You wrote a note?" the therapist asked.

"I did," I said.

"You locked the bathroom door?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

"You weren't expecting your boyfriend home?" he asked.

"No," I said.  "I wasn't."

"But you're not a danger to yourself?"

"No," I lied.  "I'm not."


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This week's Trifextra Challenge was to tell three truths and a lie, in 33-333 words.  I failed at the word count and disqualified myself, but there were only six minutes left before time ran out.  It was too late to do any major editing.  I'm sorry.


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