Not because she’d been crying but her actual irises were red.
She was wearing vibrant red contacts with streaks of gold in them. They were beautiful but deadly-looking and sent a shiver down the back of my spine.
“Thank you,” I said, my voice trembling slightly. I was suddenly very afraid and I didn’t know why. They were contacts, right?
She smiled, her red lips spreading slowly, until I saw all of her teeth.
Her very misshapen, sharp, dagger-like teeth.
Aside from the lipstick, she had the exact grin of a shark.
My eyes widened. A stabbing feeling erupted from my stomach.
She continued smiling. A whiff of that foul, rotten smel that plagued the Port-Town bathroom came back and swirled around her, creating a wave of nausea throughout my body.
Then she took her eyes off of me, looked past my shoulder and smiled again. A tal , beefy man with long hair and a pentagram shirt walked up to her and put his arm around her shoulder.
“Hey babe,” he said. “Stil wating?”
She nodded and they both turned around so I was staring at the back of their heads as they chatted to each other about how crappy the band was.
For some reason, I felt shaky at the incident and the stabbing in my stomach intensified. What the hel ? Did that girl actual y get her teeth shaped to look like that? Who in their right mind would do such a thing? My god, Portland was f**king weird sometimes.
I found myself automatical y taking a step back, nearly bumping into the person behind me. That wretched odor stil clung to the air and I was seconds away from throwing up.
I walked away from the line as quickly and calmly as I could and made a beeline to the women’s washroom.
As I burst through the door, I was relieved to see that it was empty, though the fact that it was a disgusting mess did nothing to stop the vomit that was threatening my throat.
I rushed into an open stal and puked my guts up, seeing the half-digested remains of my mom’s roast pork splash into the bowl. It was enough to make me vomit again.
When I was done, I leaned against the cold metal door and caught my breath. The smel was gone, thank God, but the nausea stil remained, coupled with the pains in my stomach. I sucked in my breath, trying to get air, keeping my hands on my abdomen. They felt like extreme period cramps but it wasn’t my time of the month yet. However, my last period was barely existent, so maybe my body was making up for it tenfold.
As the pain subsided enough for me to stand up straight, I left the dingy bathroom and went back into the chaotic noise of the venue. I ignored the drink line, not wanting to see the vampire-eyed, scary-toothed girl again, and went straight to Ash. It took a few moments to locate him in the sprawling mess of sweaty limbs, tattoos and piercings, so by the time I did, the pain was just as intense as before.
He looked crestfal en at my empty hands but that quickly turned into concern.
“Perry, are you OK?” he asked. He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it.
I shook my head and leaned against him, the pain so intense that I was having trouble standing up.
“Can you drive me home?” I squeaked, my eyes pinched closed.
“Of course,” he said eagerly, putting his long arm around me and ushering me outside of the building.
What transpired next was one of the longest car rides of my life. I didn’t live that far from the venue, but the pain was so bad that I was biting the edge of my seatbelt to keep from crying out. Several times Ash was adamant that he take me to the hospital but I stubbornly refused. I just needed to be home where I could be in pain without being a bother to anyone except the people I’m normal y a bother to.
I said my goodbyes to a persistent Ash, tel ing him I’d see him at work tomorrow. I doubted it, though. I barely made it to the front door.
“You’re home early,” my mother said to me from her armchair in the living room, where she was flipping through a house magazine and sipping a steaming cup of tea. I stumbled past her, clutching my stomach, heading for the stairs.
“I don’t feel well ,” I managed to say through grinding teeth.
“You drink too much?” she chided me.
I barely heard her. I leaned against the post at the base of the stairs, unable to make my way up.
“Perry? What is it?”
She joined me at my side and smoothed the hair away from my face and put her hand against my forehead.
“You’re burning up. Did something happen? When did this start?”
“What’s going on?” I heard Ada say from the top of the stairs.
I don’t remember what happened next, so perhaps I fainted. Next thing I knew I was lying in my bed, curled up in a bal on my side, with someone trying to take my boots off.
“Perry? Can you hear me?” It was my father. I lifted my head as much as I could, stil reeling from the cramps, the hot little knives that cut away at my ovaries, and looked around my room. My mother was rushing in the door with a bunch of pil bottles in her hand and water. Ada was bent over untying my laces and my father was standing in the corner, arms crossed, worried but stern.
“Where does it hurt?” he asked in a no-nonsense voice.
“Were you drugged?”
“No,” I whispered painful y. “I wasn’t drugged. It’s cramps. I’ve never had such bad cramps before.”
If my dad was the eye-rol ing type, his own would have shot up to the ceiling.
“Just cramps?”
“Hey!” Ada snarled at him. “You have no idea.”
He looked both embarrassed and taken aback. He glanced at my mother but she just nodded.
“Ada’s right, honey,” she said softly, then came to my side and peered at my face. “Just be glad you don’t suffer from them because when they are bad, they are real y bad.”
“These are scary bad, mom,” I said. My hand clutched around the corner of my pil ow as another wave of pain rushed through me.
“How is your period? Are you bleeding more than normal?”
“That’s it, I’m out of here,” my dad said quickly, and left the room. For a theology professor, he real y wasn’t very mature when it came to the female body. Or maybe that was par for the course.
Ada sighed in disgust. “Grow up, dad, jeez.” She removed my other boot and told us she was going to go find the hot water bottle.
I tried to ignore the pain by concentrating on my mom’s face as she fiddled with a pil bottle’s stubborn childproof cap. Even though it was a quiet Saturday night at home, she stil looked as elegant as ever. She was dressed in a black jumpsuit, with a mint-colored Celtic shawl wrapped around her. Her face was lined with worry (it usual y was whenever I was around), her light blonde bangs brushing the edges of her clear blue eyes. She looked every inch the Swede she was, yet at the same time, her face looked strangely familiar. Not familiar in the “d’uh, she’s my mother and has been for 23 years” kind of familiar, but that “I’ve seen someone lately who looks like her” kind of way. Of course, in my pain-riddled mind, I couldn’t begin to imagine who that could be.