You can still feel her fingers - Cameron Darc

Content warning: suicidal ideation and mention of violence

This is the second time you meet the skinny teenage American. There is a V carved into her left wrist, bleeding through a Band-Aid. Her sweater, big and navy, has holes in the shoulders and smells like mothballs. 

—It was my father’s, she says, pushing up the sleeves, elbows on the table like a child.

Her hair faded pink in the sun. Her stockings ripped. She’s too high to sit upright, one leg crossed under her ass. One heeled boot under her pleather skirt, its twin jumping up and down on the sidewalk. You are a man with what she calls a stupid computer job. You hide your tattoos under button-down shirts. You send emails. Your job is so stupid, you tell her, she’s right.

—Have you ever killed anybody? she asks.

Her sweaty hand dances on the table, dangles in your lap, slides to your knee.

You tell her you’ve never killed anyone but a rabbit, once, by accident.

—But you’re Russian.

—Not that kind of Russian.

She nods vaguely at the street and asks for the envelope of money. You push it toward her quickly, looking down, embarrassed you forgot to do it first, before ordering the coffees.

—The last time I was crazy, she says, It was enough to put all my shit in trash bags and imagine it. Suicide. Over and over, every possible way. 

You take her to the cheapest hotel with a vacant room. She returns from the bathroom less than coherent. She tells you about the pigeonhole and an Australian who is her cousin and a missing set of keys as she removes her clothes. Her eyelids start to flutter somewhere before she gets to her underwear. She droops over the foot of the bed, looking at you from upside down, spreads her legs in a V.

—You can hit me if you want.

You ask her why she does this.

—I … I hate myself.

—Don’t say that. 

Her skull smacks the floor, a dull thud, almost a bounce. 

You did not hit her. She slid off the bed.

You pull the comforter back and lift her into bed. Push hair from her sweaty forehead. Take her jaw into your hands and halo your lips around her mouth. You struggle underwater until she swallows your tongue. Then you drown. You think it’s since your dog died. Something snapped. Pain all inside you. Looking for a way out.

—I want to live, Daddy, she says, coming up for air.

You are not her father. You are no one's father. 

—Sleep now.

You let her sleep. Go to the bathroom, drink whiskey from the bottle you hide in your briefcase, swallow the pills you’ve stashed, collapse next to her. Listen to her soft snore until you cannot hear anything anymore.

You wake up. Your life is a map of failures. 

The girl is gone. You look at your phone. Eleven a.m. She has texted you a picture of an orange flower. You remember the first time you saw her in the metro. You remember how she curled her upper lip and dipped her eyes. You remember the shock when she touched you, unbidden. 

In your apartment you take out your acrylics. You paint the flower on a piece of cardstock, alive. 

When you finish you lie down on the couch where your Labrador used to sleep. His course black fur under your cheek. It still smells like him: swampy. 

You get a voice memo. The girl again.

—Suicide doesn’t mean you have to die, she says. It means a part of you has to die so the rest of you can live. 

Originally published by Bull Magazine in the print anthology Bull # 11: Fragile Like a Bomb, June 2024

Cameron Darc is a writer and French translator. See more of her writing at camerondarc.com