Betray Me Not: Stories of Revenge by Robert White
About Betray Me Not: Stories of Revenge:
Excerpt:
Girl, Furiosa
Rayna sat in front of the mirror removing her makeup and wondered who she would discover underneath. Rayna Soleil admired what she beheld on the surface. At the same time, she was aware of another Rayna, lying still at the bottom of a swimming pool, holding her breath, staring upward at the sun-dappled, turquoise water. Incredible pressure builds in her lungs, a vein at her right temple throbs with a fat worm of blood . . .
Rayna breathed deeply, exhaled; she becalmed herself. Years of power yoga and self-denial gave her that ability. The body’s tone came more easily than the mental—the one that kept that other Raina safe beneath the waters. Women her age began worrying about a little sag here and there. She pinched fat at her belly and felt the reassuring layer of muscle beneath. It wasn’t for vanity. She needed to be in good physical shape. Her right hand wandered over her abdomen, past her shaved pubis, but she pulled back before her fingers found the swell of her cleft—an unconscious habit.
Compulsive masturbator, a psychiatrist explained to her foster parents, a typical symptom. One of many, he added. Poor girl . . . Poor girl, they said.
She
wished he could see her now—that phony little man with his gleaming bald head.
To this day, she hated bald men. She stood up from the mirror, hands cupping
her breasts, tried to recapture the good moments when she sat down. moment. But
it was too late; the black mood was descending too fast to stop, all pleasure
watching herself in the mirror now spoiled. His words and her parents words
came flooding back, seeping from her neocortex like a viscous excretion: “ . .
. she’ll be violent more often . . . expect these spontaneous outbursts . . .”
So hurtful, so hurtful. She
wanted to cry then. Now she wanted—something else.
An attack on a sibling with a kitchen knife ended her stay with them, a long record of lying, stealing, and a multitude of self-destructive tendencies that dogged her into her teen years when she advanced to slicing her inner thighs with a straight razor.
Rayna still saw therapists. Only women nowadays. Not that they were easier to fool but that males were “too Freudian” when it came to the female psyche. Everything came down to the genitals for men whether or not they had framed diplomas on the wall.
Robert, for example—so predictable. His pickup line was an invitation to see his etchings. His actual etchings, my God. His spacious apartment overlooked Central Park. True, the etchings were as tasteful as the rest of the apartment except for the China Blue Delft ceramics on display, which made her wonder if he inherited the place from his mother.
She couldn’t see Robert’s face well from that angle. Very few held on to that wonderful, look she craved—not surprise, not recognition exactly. Something indefinably satisfying to her before their irises were swallowed by the new moons of pupils. Then it was gone.
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