inthewildwood | Fic: Hagiolatry (Chapter One) (Reply)

The alarm went off three times before Frankie groped her way out from under the blanket and slapped the snooze button. Peering out from under her pillow, she eyed the clock and groaned. 8:17. Technically, she wasn’t late- yet- but she wasn’t early either, and if she didn’t get her ass out of bed, she would be late.

The phone shrilled loudly in the distance, as if irritated that she hadn’t gotten up yet. “Coming!” she called to no one in particular and pulled herself out of bed, gathering up the robe she’d dropped on the floor the previous night. No sign of Steven, of course. She’d more or less given up on hoping for him to act like an actual boyfriend and stick around after the sex, so it didn’t sting anymore. For the most part.

The phone kept going, so she broke into a trot, and grabbed it on the sixth ring. “Hey Mom.”

“Frankie?” Her mom’s voice crackled over the lines- long distance. “How did you know it was me?”

“You have a very persistent ring.” With her free hand, Frankie grabbed a teabag from the cupboard and dropped it into her mug. She turned the tap on and held it under the water as her mother chattered. “-in this village called Bela Quinto. Have you heard of it?”

Frankie switched the water off and put her mug in the microwave. “Yeah, we covered it in my Brazilian geography class.”

“Ha, ha. Anyway, I sent you some souvenirs on Tuesday. Have they arrived yet?”

“One second.” Flipping the microwave on, Frankie padded out to the front hallway where she’d left yesterday’s mail. Sure enough, there was a brown paper box sitting on her hall table. “Yeah, got it.”

“Have you looked inside yet?”

“No, but I am now.” With her fingernail, Frankie split the tape on the box’s flaps and opened it. Inside was a miniature broom, an equally tiny hat, and . . . “A necklace? It’s pretty.”

“Well it’s not a necklace, exactly- it’s a rosary. You know, that thing Catholics use to pray?”

Frankie sighed, and set the box down. “Mom . . .”

“I know, I know.” It may have just been the weak connection, but her mother’s voice sounded suddenly distant. “Anyway, I just wanted to talk to you before I left this afternoon- I’m going on a hike in the mountains, so I won’t be able to get in touch with you.”

The microwave beeped. Startled, Frankie fumbled with the phone as she reached out to grab her mug. “Okay, Mom. Watch out for jaguars.”

Her mother laughed, normal again. “I don’t think there are any in this part of Brazil, but I’ll make sure. I love you, honey.”

“Love you too. Bye.” Frankie clicked on the off button, and dropped the phone into its cradle with a sigh. Her mom had gotten weird since she’d started going back to church- well weird by her standards, which mostly just meant talking about God a lot and dropping endless hints about how great it would be if Frankie started going to church. Stuff like “the ladies at St. Michael’s would all love to meet you” and “did you know the Vatican is actually thinking of changing their stance on birth control?” and “you know, the deacon has a son about your age I think you’d really get along with.” Since her “hook Frankie up with Jesus” campaign had been unsuccessful so far, she guessed Mom was going for a “look, the church gives you jewelery!” approach now. It was somewhat less pressure than being prodded to date the deacon’s kid, she guessed, but she still needed to figure out a way to convince her mother that she and God just weren’t going to happen.

Sipping from her mug, she dangled the necklace- rosary- in front of her face, examining it. It really did look like a necklace- like the crucifix jewelry Donna sometimes wore. Instead of being suspended on a gold chain, the cross dangled on the end of a string of shiny wooden beads. It also smelled nice, which wasn’t something she’d ever associated with necklaces, but- she brought it to her nose and sniffed- it had a faint aroma of flowers, like it’d been packed in potpourri. Weird.

The door buzzer sounded, and Frankie dropped the beads on the table and padded over. “Yeah?”

“It’s me,” Donna’s voice crackled over the speaker. “You coming down, or should I tell Patty you’ve got food poisoning?”

Frankie grinned. “I’ll be right there.”

“You’ve got something in your hand.”

Frankie looked down. Sure enough, wrapped around her key ring was the rosary from earlier. She must have grabbed it off the table along with her keys. “Shit, I meant to leave that at home.”

“Can I see it?” Frankie shrugged and passed it over. “Present from Mom. I think she’s trying to bribe me.”

Donna, who was already familiar with the Get Frankie To Church Campaign, held it up and squinted at it. “Shit, she got you a rosary? That’s not bribery, that’s a kickback.”

Frankie rolled her eyes, grinning. “I’m pretty sure they’re the same thing, Donna.”

“Not when it works.” Donna frowned and sniffed the air. “What smells like flowers?”

While Frankie explained the box of gifts, the propped her elbow up on the car door and watched the city fly by outside. When she’d moved to Pittsburgh, her parents had thrown twin fits about it. Dad had gone off about the lack of jobs and the climate and football (which, okay, he was probably joking about that last one) while her mother had begged her to move to someplace a bit less crime-ridden, or at least less smoggy. Riding off her newly-acquired diploma and a job offer, Frankie hadn’t cared. She still didn’t. The city was everything her parents had said and more- it hadn’t stopped raining all week, she was still in the job she’d moved there to take, and there’d been three muggings on her block in the last month alone. But it was her city. Somewhere along the line, Pittsburgh had become her home, and all the parental fussing in the world wasn’t going to drag her out. They’d have to carry her first.

“Cool,” Donna said, breaking into her thoughts.

Frankie raised her eyebrows. “Cool? You know she’s just going to keep doing this."

Donna shrugged. “Yeah, but at least you get sweet jewelery out of it. It looks like the ones the nuns at school used to wear.”

“You said the nuns at school used to throw erasers at you guys!”

“Well some of them did,” Donna said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes. “There were some cool ones, though. Sister Jean dyed her hair green and took off her habit to show us when the Mother Superior wasn’t in the room. You could be, like, a cool punk nun instead of an asshole eraser-throwing one.”

“Yeah,” Frankie said, reaching over to tug the rosary out of Donna’s hand, “I’d make a great nun. Miss Celibacy, that’s me.”

Donna just shrugged. “Whatever, you know some of those nuns were all up in each other’s-”

“Donna!” Frankie swatted her with the rosary. “Don’t you guys go to hell for saying shit like that? Besides-” She grinned evilly- “-I’d be happier debauching the priests.”

Donna laughed. “Which reminds me, heard from Steven?”

“Sex with priests make you think of Steven?” Frankie blinked. “I worry about you sometimes.”

“Not that.” Donna waved a hand impatiently. “He told Darren that he was going to take that job in Harrisburg. He didn’t mention it?”

Frankie’s stomach sank. “Nope. Didn’t say anything.” Especially not last night when we were fucking in my bed. Asshole.

“Oh.” Donna patted her knee. “Well, he said he’s not leaving until the end of the week. You could probably say goodbye to him before then.”

Frankie curled her lip. “Why would I wanna do that?”

Donna nodded, and they spent the rest of the car ride in silence, Frankie stewing quietly to herself. She didn’t have any reason to be pissed, really. It wasn’t like they’d been together, or dating, or anything but screwing occasionally. She didn’t want anything more than that; she’d occasionally listened to him when they weren’t sleeping together, and he was kind of a douche. So what if he was taking off without calling? Good riddance.

Asshole.

When they got to the salon, Patty had already opened up, and was cheerfully blasting the Smashing Pumpkins over the loudspeaker while sharpening her nail file. She waved a pair of clippers at them as they came in. “Hey guys!”

“I can’t hear you over the music!” Frankie yelled back, but Patty just shrugged and went back to bobbing her head along to the song. Frankie grinned. Guys came and went, but some things never changed, and Patty’s Billy Corgan fixation was one of them.

They fell into the rhythm of the day easily- people started coming through the doors at ten, and they had a steady stream of customers until closing at five. Counting up the register, Donna slapped a hand down on the counter triumphantly. “Five hundred and fifty!”

Frankie glanced up from her station. “Before or after taxes?”

“Before, smartass.” Patty skirted around the counter to grab Donna in a hug. “But this week’s take is enough to get us out of the hole and replace the busted straightener, so quit your bitching.” She glanced over. “You coming to the Jackpot tonight? They’re having a three-for-one on rum cocktails.”

Frankie shook her head fondly at them. “I’ll be there.”

And she was, although she almost changed her mind before Donna showed up to drag her out the door. She’d gotten a weird ache in her hands sometime in the afternoon, which she dismissed as sore muscles- could you get carpal tunnel from cutting hair?- but around dinnertime, it had been joined with a weird floating sensation, like she was barely tethered to her body, and a vague headache behind her eyes. Basically, she felt crappy, but she’d promised to be there, and the free cocktails would at least put off the headache for another few hours. Plus, she didn’t have work in the morning.

Her headache only intensified when she stepped through the doors- the music seemed louder than usual, though maybe her ears were just sensitive- so after she dropped Donna off with Patty, she headed over to the bar to start drinking it away. The bartender, who knew her by now, nodded as he mixed the first drink. “Bad week?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” she groaned, and downed half the cocktail in one gulp. It burned going down, which was weird, because this was pretty low on the alcohol scale- there was more Grenadine than rum- and she’d never had a problem drinking it before. Maybe she was coming down with something.

“Heyyy, baby!”

Oh for fuck’s sake. She took another swig from the drink and turned around to face Steven- who, as usual, was dressed like he was trying to be a greaser and failing, and yet somehow looked really stupidly hot.

Emphasis on the “stupid."

“Missed you this morning,” she said coolly, taking another sip. Headache aside, the alcohol was starting to feel better and better. It made Steven that much more tolerable, for starters.

“Well, you know how it is.” He tried to sling an arm over her shoulder, but removed it at a look. “Places to see, people to do. Wanna go home with me tonight, or did I wear you out already?”

She chose to ignore that. “Donna says you’re moving to Harrisburg.”

“Yeah baby, this guy whose girlfriend is dating my cousin needs a new mechanic since the last one quit and Bob told him I had skills, so I’m moving out at the end of the week.” He moved in to try and bite Frankie’s earlobe, but she shoved him off. “You gonna miss me, baby?”

“Maybe I’ll miss your dick,” she allowed, staring at the bottom of her glass. The headache was coming back. “You, not so much.”

He pouted. “You don’t have to be bitchy about it.”

“I’m not.” She waved an arm at the bartender, who started to pour her another glass. “If I was really being bitchy, you’d know.” The bartender handed her the drink, and she took a gulp from it. Much better.

“You mad at me or something?” He pouted again. It was getting less attractive every time he tried it. “What’d I do?”

She still had a free cocktail to drink, but she suddenly felt too tired to order it. In addition to her hands and head, her stomach had apparently joined the pain party. She probably was coming down with something- either that, or she had one hell of a case of PMS. “You didn’t do anything.” She grabbed her jacket and slid off the bar stool. “Hope you like Harrisburg.”

She tried to track down Patty and Donna on the dance floor, but by the time she tracked them down- they were swaying to “Last Kiss” and Frankie didn’t want to break in just to tell them she was taking off. They’d figure it out anyway, and if the way they were dancing was any indication, they wouldn’t notice she was missing until next morning at the earliest. She waved goodbye just in case, trying not to feel a pang of jealousy, and headed out.

When she got back to her apartment, she tossed her jacket onto her armchair and went straight for the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. She shook two capsules of Tylenol out into her hand before deciding “fuck it” and taking two more. She was too wiped to go into the kitchen for a glass, so she just scooped up a handful of water from the tap and washed them down with that before staggering into her bedroom and falling onto the bed. She managed to kick off her shoes and jeans, but figured that anything else was overkill and getting in the way of her main goal, which was getting the fuck to sleep long enough for her head, stomach, and hands to stop tag-teaming her. She stuck her head under the pillow and fell asleep.

The dream started immediately, but it wasn’t like any other dream she’d had before. There was nothing linear about it, just a barrage of images assaulting her subconscious, each screaming at the top of their lungs. There were rocks thudding to the ground at her aching feet, thrown to the tune of jeers and screams from the surrounding crowd. She couldn’t see any faces, just a bright, dust-clouded mass of people, all clamouring for her blood. Her hands were being wrenched away from her on either side and dragged high in the air as a red mist rose before her eyes, obscuring her view of the ground. Oh, my Father, why do they hurt me?

When the first blow stuck, a scream ripped itself from her mouth, loud enough to silence her tormentors. She hadn’t meant to cry out- some of them would come to regret this day, and she didn’t want to make their guilt worse. They surged forward again, louder than before, screaming and baying like hounds on the scent. She knew her mother was in the crowd somewhere, but she couldn’t see her. A fine red mist had risen over her eyes, and intensified with each fresh blow. She wondered if she would die now, before they even raised the cross. She wondered if her mother would be permitted to mourn. Father, make her way light. Ease her pain. Did He hear her?

She woke with a jerk, slamming both hands down on the mattress as she sat up in bed. Her breath was coming in shallow pants, chest heaving like she’d run a marathon. She’d never had a nightmare like that before- not one that had woken her up. And it had felt so real- she could still feel the nails piercing her wrists, the heat pounding down on her head. What the hell had been in that Tylenol?

The sheets underneath her felt sticky and damp, and when she kicked the covers off, she saw that her guess about PMSing had been right- and just to make her life that much easier, her period had showed up overnight, drenching the sheets. Ugh, it looked like she’d been sleeping in a fucking puddle. Her underwear was wrecked, the sheets were too, and she’d probably have to empty out the mattress to scrub it as well. What a fanfuckingtastic way to spend her Saturday.

She twisted around to grab a tampon from her nightstand and frowned. There were cherry-red smears across the sheets next to her pillows- where she had most definitely not been sitting, unless she’d thrashed around in that nightmare way more than she’d thought. Plus, it wasn’t the same colour. The sheets around her waist were dark red, brownish in places, where the stains by her pillow were brighter. Either she’d bled in two different places at two different times, or she’d bled two separate types of blood in two different places. What the hell?

She was raising her hand to her nose to check for a nosebleed when she saw it. Her arm was drenched in blood from the wrist down, drying and flaking from her sleeves. The blood was still seeping out from a tiny hole in her wrist- almost dead centre. She raised her other arm. Same thing.

“The fuck?”

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