Take Me Home

Written By: Chester Rogalski 

There are two types of women in the world, those who wear makeup and those who lie about it. And that's really what set this all in motion. How it all began. 

Eyeshadow.

Jared and I rode out to Vegas on his Harley coming up on twenty-five years ago. Just the clothes on our backs and a backpack full of other shit on our way to get married. Elvis was going to officiate our holy matrimony at A Little White Chapel. I think it was the same one Michael Jordan got married in. The proposal came hard and fast, right after a heated argument. About Jared looking at some girl’s ass at dinner at Pascal’s. A cute little French bistro in South Hollywood. They had these cute little plates with the Eiffel Tower on them, but who knows if that place is even around anymore. We made up in the bedroom, like we always did, after screaming our heads off at each other the whole way home. That right there is a recipe for disaster, but I mean a little late now, right? Lying there on his bare mattress next to the pile of clothes that served as his dresser, Jared asked me to marry him. And I said yes. That I'd love to be Mrs. Celia Camden. How cute my initials would be. CC. God, what an idiot I was. 

We pulled into a fly-by-night motel off the strip. When I say off the strip, I mean way off the strip. I don't remember the name and I'm sure the place has probably had quite a few since then. A red neon sign declared it a MOTEL and another little sign advertised weekly and monthly rates. HBO and COLOR TV. A regular Ritz-Carlton. The lot was full of jalopies, the kind that belonged to people who coasted in on hopes and dreams, packed full of garbage bags and luggage. And suckers who lost it all on the roulette wheel or blackjack. Deadbeats chewed up and spit out by Sin City. 

Jared got the room while I leaned against the wall outside, smoking. I was a looker in my twenties. Black hair down past my shoulders and a pair that women in Hollywood would shell out twenty grand easy for. Why am I telling you this? I don't know. Things came easy, doors opened for me because of how I looked. Guys get to remember playing in the big game in high school and I get to remember I was hot. Nothing wrong with that. But too bad it didn't do much to get me out of the jam I got in, I still remember the headlines. “Vampy Vixen Kills” was one that stuck out. Like a Lifetime movie. But it doesn't begin to scratch the surface of what happened. There's a lot more to it. Like a lot, a lot.

Jared got the keys and told me the room was on the ground floor. I complained about how I didn't want a door that opened up into the parking lot, because who the fuck would? I mean some asshole walking by could have seen everything if we forgot to close the blinds. But the sun was setting, and it’d been a long ride, so I rolled my eyes and I let it go. Jared told me to stop riding him about it, that it was the only room available. We went inside, the place smelled like cigarettes, which pissed me off. I smoked, but I smoked outside. Only junkies and degenerates smoked inside. 

I grabbed what little I had out of Jared's Harley. Saddlebags don't hold much. Makeup and my dress took up about three-quarters of the space in them. The other twenty-five percent was Jared's wrinkled-into-a-ball periwinkle suit and a pair of ugly as sin red patent-leather dress shoes he was going to wear. Periwinkle was bad enough, but red shoes like Ronald McDonald pushed me over the edge. I walked back inside holding Jared’s sour cream and onion smelling shoes in front of me like a dead fish. There was no way in hell he was marrying me in them, and I was going to make sure.

Now, I have to admit. Jared hit me and I hit him too. A real Ozzie and Harriet we were. Everyone got a good smack here and there. Sometimes they even deserved it. I didn't even get the whole set of words out of my mouth, though, before he gave me a backhand that sent me spinning onto the twin bed by the door. Told me to shut up and he was tired and didn't want to hear any more bullshit out of me. I simmered like a kettle on low boil, ready to go off. Explode. We were getting married, and it was supposed to be a nice time. A nice time. I sat there on the edge of the bed, rubbing my cheek. Called him an asshole then shoved him hard against the dresser with the TV on it. He stumbled toward the kitchenette steadying himself against a little wooden table before walking away to the bathroom and slamming the door. 

I knew what would happen if he didn't walk away. One of us would end up spending the night in jail. I'm sure he knew that it woulda been him and that time he woulda deserved it. I knew how to ham it up, too, when the cops came; fake tears, rubbing my cheek, and talking in a baby voice that for some reason caused men to crumble. A secret middle finger just for Jared in the backseat of the cop car as it pulled away. I’d done it before. I remember picking him up from LA County and how he walked out with his head hung like a little boy who got picked on at school. I’m sure the gangbangers gave a pretty boy like him a hard time. Too bad. Not. 

The bathroom door slammed hard behind Jared as I rifled through the contents of my makeup bag. I was looking for my blue eyeshadow, the same color Nomi Malone wore in Showgirls. I must’ve seen that movie five or six times in the theater when it came out. Jared’s smack smudged up my makeup and I leaned into the mirror next to the TV to fix it. There was a little notepad and a pen next to a couple of takeout menus for restaurants in the area. The top one was this cartoony Italian man with a mustache throwing pizza dough in the air for some pizza place. The door to the bathroom creaked open. I didn't look over. Just kept fixing my makeup. I heard him say that he fucking hated blue on me and that I looked like a cheap whore. I grabbed the pen next to the notebook. That kettle simmering? Yeah, it was a raging whistle at that point. I swung around and stabbed him in the neck. About two inches into it. I let go as he collapsed onto the carpet, squirting blood like something out of a low-budget horror movie. I watched as he kicked his legs and gurgled up blood for about ten seconds until he slowed down. 

And then stopped. 

I sat on the bed looking down at him. His hair was slicked back with too much gel and his dark brown eyes were wide open with a frozen look of surprise on his face. Jared was handsome. Like Ethan Hawke without the facial hair because it never grew in right even though he was almost thirty. 

Once reality set in of what I’d done, the panic came next. I’ll admit I was a cool cucumber watching him die, but honestly, it was because none of it felt real. Like it was just a really vivid daydream, or wishful thinking. I kneeled down beside him and saw that yeah, he was dead. Very dead. With arterial spray all over the wall and TV and dresser. I was definitely a girl in big, big trouble. I paced around the room wondering how the hell I was going to clean up. All my life I was told I was trouble. Well, here trouble was baby. I got mad at that point. Kicked Jared’s dead shoulder causing his head to loll around, making me feel a little queasy. I wasn’t going out like that. Not over an asshole like Jared. I grabbed the keys to his Harley and my leather jacket and bag and left him there. Hopped on the bike and sped off. You know what I was thinking in that moment? That I was happy I bothered him enough to teach me how to ride. 

And that I finally felt free. 

I picked the closest highway heading out of Vegas and just kept going. I had a full tank of gas, about a thousand dollars in cash in my purse so I knew that I was ok for a bit. The way the desert unfolds when you leave Vegas and how quickly you leave the streetlights and civilization behind and venture out into a Mars like atmosphere is pretty wild. After about an hour on the highway everything quickly turned black around me with nothing but a blanket of stars in the sky overhead. I pulled over to the shoulder and sat there for a minute taking it all in. They were so damn bright it was like they were 3D and I thought if I sat there long enough, that they might swallow me up. I looked straight up into the stars and told them, “Please. I need this.” Just a runaway girl in the desert on a Harley wishing upon a star. Kind of like that Bon Jovi song. I mean just picture that scene though. How romantic is that right? Like a Disney movie. 

There was a sign for 95 about thirty feet in front of me. And I had a thought that I was at least heading in a northernly direction. I didn't have a plan at that point, just a desire and a need to get the hell out of there as fast as I could. Try my hand at disappearing. I was going to be a girl with a future and there was no way a life sentence was going to get in my way. I hopped back on the bike and continued on.

It's hard to understand just how vast and big America is until your smack dab in the middle of nowhere. And I was. So, when I saw the little dot of light way off in the distance, I drove towards it. I was hungry and hoping for something to eat and maybe a stiff drink. A double cheeseburger with bacon, lettuce, and tomato. Mayo and ketchup. Pickles. Fries. Fries. Isn't it funny that no matter how full you are there's always room for more fries. Just one more bite and then another and another until you’re a blimp at Weight Watchers. An ice-cold Coca-Cola. Goddamn is there anything as good when you're thirsty as a Coke? Maybe lemonade. 

The closer I got the more I was able to make out. It was a squat, square white building with Christmas lights all around it. And a neon sign near the highway. LUCKY LINDA'S in bright pink with a horseshoe over the middle of it. I pulled into the lot and parked. It's pretty cold in the desert at night and I was happy to have somewhere to go in and take a break. The only other vehicle in the lot was an old rusty light blue Ford pickup truck. Not a single window on the building. Not really that weird for most bars. There was a glass diamond shaped windowpane on the door, but it was covered up by what looked like electrical tape. IT’S YOUR LUCKY DAY was painted neatly on the door in a yellow old western font. I pushed it open and stepped inside.

The big thing that stuck out to me was that the place was totally empty. A long bar ran the length of the side of the bar with more Christmas lights, tinsel, all kinds of holiday decorations. Stockings were stapled to the bar top and hung down in front of empty wooden stools. The wooden floor was old but clean. Marred with scratches and divots from years of use but still polished to a high shine. There was a stage straight ahead with a banner reading MERRY X-MAS 1981. Considering it was 1996, the party should’ve been over long ago. A lone microphone sat in the stand on the stage with a single spotlight shining down on it. I called out but no one answered. Not a soul in the joint except me shouting hello to no one. I walked over to the bar and sat down. Grateful for a moment to sit and think. Gather my thoughts. I redlined it all the way out into the desert, but I still hadn't really formulated a plan. I thought maybe I could try my hand at dancing if things really got bad, someplace upscale where you could just sway your hips back and forth in a bikini. That's how rationalizations start right? Girls butt naked showing the world everything they've got at a truck stop somewhere outside of Abilene to a handful of truckers greedily grasping dollar bills, more as bait than actually spending money, probably started somewhere more modest. I buried the thought. I'd rather steal the money out of a church collection plate than show a slob with hamburger grease on his shirt my body for a dollar. Waitressing was the conclusion I came to. Diners always needed help. I was gonna use the cash I had to get a room and take as many shifts as I needed to keep my head above water. 

The old jukebox came on sitting by the wall near the stage as I made plans in my head. A Wurlitzer. Stainless steel in the front with a glass facade so you could see the record you picked get grabbed up by the mechanical arm and played. The overhead light flickered inside the machine as a staticky record started up. It was a country song I'd never heard before, just a man with a guitar singing. I only really remember the first couple of words to it. The only words that ended up mattering.

Honey, I don't know whyyyy, your givin' me, that evil eyeeee. But I know that you'll always, love me.

I stood in front of it and watched the record spin ‘til the song finished. Put my hands to the glass and pressed my face to it, to try and see who was singing. The print was tiny, and I could barely make it out. I fell back away from it once I read it. 

Jared Camden. 

I put my hand to my mouth in shock. I looked back over at the bar where I was sitting. Something moved out the corner of my eye. Jared was standing there behind the bar with the pen still sticking out of his neck and blood all over his shirt. Smiling. I steadied myself against a chair at one of the tables near me and blinked hard, shaking my head. My heart felt like it was going to explode. Jared just stood there with a blank face and his eyes solid black. Then he cocked his head to one side and started singing those lyrics again.

I screamed at him. Whatever he was. His head cocked even further as he kept on repeating those lines over and over. The TV that was in the corner clicked on and I saw a man in a newsroom cut to a woman standing in the parking lot of our motel. Caution tape on our door. 

I snapped out of it and ran for the door I came in to get the hell out of there. Locked. I pounded my fists against it as Jared kept on singing. Right before it happened, he stopped. And the TV clicked off. Another record started. This one I knew. Blue Oyster Cult. “Don't Fear the Reaper”. That iconic intro riff started clear as day. No static on that record. The roof of the bar slowly crept open, splitting down the middle as the music continued. I looked up and there was no sky. Just solid, bright, white light. It pulled me gently off the ground and into it, the bar disappearing beneath me the higher I went. Whatever primal fear I was supposed to have was gone. Maybe I was too overwhelmed, like eating something so spicy that your mouth goes numb. It was too much for my brain to process, so it stopped. And after a couple of minutes being pulled up, I passed out.

I came to in an all-white room. Well, all white at first. After about a minute the room transformed into my childhood bedroom, and I was sitting on my old pink bed. Posters of New Kids on the Block and Madonna were plastered all over the walls just like I remembered. My old composition notebook sat on my dresser filled with the boy's names I thought were cute and plans for the future with them. I got up from the bed and walked over to the window and looked outside. My dad was sitting in the backyard facing the flower garden he and my mom planted when I was six. I could only see the back of his head and the tattered pair of pink Bermuda shorts my mother hated on him because it was too close to his skin tone. Mom walked out with a tray of lemonade, her blonde hair shining in the sun. That's when I snapped out of it. They loved each other but she was firmly in the get your own damn lemonade category and staunchly against anything that might put her in the Susie Homemaker box. 

Right as that thought entered my head, they both turned their heads slowly around. Except where their faces should have been, there was nothing. Just smooth skin. I turned quickly away and backed out of the window. What the fuck is an understatement. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror I in the corner of my room. I was me. Adult me. Leather jacket, t-shirt, same clothes I had on in the bar. My bedroom door creaked open, the hinges whining a low flat tone like a yawn. A pair of eyes floated in the air, watching me. A black nothingness behind it. I blinked once and it transformed into my third-grade teacher. A balding, chubby man who always wore short sleeve dress shirts with fun ties and khakis with mysterious stains on them. Mr. Garrison. This time he had on a tie with little UFO's and aliens on it. He didn't speak but a thought popped into my head telling me to follow him. I stepped slowly towards him. He nodded slowly, turning and walking away. Deeper inside. 

Once I passed the threshold of the doorway to my bedroom, I was in a long corridor with big rectangular windows on both sides. Mr. Garrison beckoned me to follow. Inside the first window was me at about three years old sitting on a swing set being pushed by my dad at the little park down the street from our old house. Probably the earliest memory I have. The window behind me was my first day at school. That morning, I held onto the corners of our minivans open door with my feet locked into each of the bottom corners forming a big child shaped X. Begging not to go. 

Each of the windows I passed by were all the important memories I had. First kiss with John Debil in the fifth grade outside on the basketball court. He had one of those breath sprays with him and gave himself a couple of sprays before we kissed. Which I thought was the cutest thing in the world and still do. First date. Mom in the hospital bed with cancer as I sat there listening to the beeps reminding me she was alive. They were accessing my life. All the moments that made it up. What they were doing though, got no idea. Maybe studying. But all of it was on display. The last window though. My body was on a flat table. A thin red line crept down the center. And then my chest opened up. I grabbed at my body, the one my mind was in and felt around. I was intact. I ran up to the window and banged on it. Screamed. My lungs floated out of my body and hung in the air off to the side. My heart. Stomach. Everything. I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder and whirled around. No one was there and when I turned back the window was solid black. Mr. Garrison was gone but the door at the end of the hall was open. 

Next area was solid white like the room I woke up in. I walked deeper inside away from the door. I looked behind me and saw it had disappeared. When I turned back around my mother was there. Standing in her hospital gown. Her blonde hair wet with sweat from fever. She was crying, whimpering quietly. And then her head snapped back, and her mouth opened. A beam of white light shot out of her mouth and hit me in the chest. It sounded like a lightning strike. In that moment I saw everything to come. Wars. Catastrophes. Elections. Natural disasters. Pandemics. It ran through my mind like a video tape on fast forward. I saw myself in a court room. In an orange jump suit. A padded cell and a smiling doctor with a dripping syringe. And then I collapsed.

I woke up on the shoulder of the highway back in the Nevada desert. My lips were cracked and dry and I felt like I was on fire. A cop was standing over me, talking into his radio. He stood me up and placed handcuffs on me. As we walked towards his car, he told me I had a good amount of explaining to do. Particularly about the fact I was riding a motorcycle registered to a guy who was stabbed to death.

The cops had me dead to rights over Jared's murder. Between the security camera footage showing the two of us walking in and one of us walking out, I didn't really have a leg to stand on. But I had a plan, an idea. I gave them the full story including my abduction. It still feels off to even say it. That I was abducted by aliens and even then, I felt like I was making it up. Like it was a hallucination. A vividly real daydream from being dehydrated and exhausted. But I told those cops everything in that dingy interview room. A single lightbulb hung over us, the two-way mirror off to the side. The cop interrogating me was a fat guy with a flat top haircut and no neck who introduced himself as Detective Lowell. He grunted here and there as I spoke acknowledging that he heard me and to keep going. I asked for a cigarette, and he handed me one out of a pack he kept in his jacket pocket. Newport 100's. He leaned over the table and lit it for me because I was handcuffed to the desk. His breath smelled like salami and dirty socks. After I finished telling it all, he set his pencil down. And laughed at me. Not going to lie, I was pissed at that. Something snapped in me. And I started singing that song from Lucky Linda's to myself. Low, almost whispering.

Honeyyyy, I don't know whyyy, your givin' me, that evil eye. But I knowww that you'll always, love me.

Detective Lowell stared at me. Nodded, closed his notebook and left. He shut the door quietly on his way out and turned back to me placing his finger over his lips like he was telling me to be quiet. A couple of generic cops in tan uniforms came in and took me to a holding cell. I laid down on the steel bed and stared up at the ceiling. Lifted the collar of my t-shirt and looked down it. There was a long thin scar from my sternum going down my chest. It continued down my stomach passed the waistline of my jeans. Definitely wasn’t there before all this. It’s my proof. That I really was abducted. 

The dream I had that first night is the same dream I have every night now. I'm standing in the white room on what I call the ship and there's a selection of floating rectangles in front of me. Each of them is a version of me I can zoom in on and watch, like a TV screen. There are thousands of different ones. Different versions of me in different looking worlds. It’s still earth and it’s still me, just like a different me if that makes sense. Some of them I die awful deaths as a kid. Some of them I'm happy and am married with a hot husband and a van full of kids. I can watch these lives as long as I want. There’s also a larger rectangle where I can see the future of my current world. It’s like a highlight reel of all major events to come, like everything that’s going to happen has already happened. Too bad I’m a murderer though, right? Fat load of good that’ll do anyone because zero people would believe me. When I'm done in the dream, I turn around and leave through a revolving door like the ones you see in an office building. I push through it and I'm back in my body. Awake. 

The first time I experienced this it kind of hit me that I never really had a choice. In anything. Like I was just strapped in for a ride and that everything in my life had already been decided. Which is kind of liberating right? I like to think so. 

Another detective came to me the next morning and told me he was taking over the case. That Detective Lowell had gone home and shot himself because he somehow got wind that his wife was cheating on him. New detective gave his name as Detective Robeson. Reminded me of Denzel Washington with a really great smile. He grinned, saying how my story was very strange, and how a very strange thing happened after I sang that song in the interview room. I showed him the top of the scar that I got from the abduction. Robeson just smiled, shook his head and left. Smart guy. He almost put the pieces together before I even really fully understood what had happened to me.

I had a public defender in court because I was guilty, and it didn't really matter to me who it was. Plus, I was flat broke. He was a nervous guy with red cheeks who didn't make eye contact with me but sat really close to me on the bench in court so our thighs touched. Gross. Judge gave me twenty-five years. Possibility of parole in ten. Minutes after he struck his gavel, I was on a bus to Southern Nevada Women’s Correctional Facility outside of Vegas. 

First couple of days, you spend a lot of time alone. Back then, there was a guard who thought he was gonna be cute with me. Grabbed my ass when he was escorting me to my new cell after I was done with fresh meat isolation. So, what did I do? I tried it again. Sang the song quietly to myself. He shut up the rest of the walk down the cellblock and ushered me into my cell. I never saw him again after that. If he died, I have no idea, news isn't exactly easy to come by in prison. My cellmate was a shaved-head, big girl with a big skull tattooed on her beefy left arm who introduced herself as Margaret. Only a week later, she starts in with me. Bitching about how I snore. I don’t snore, never have. Or how my stuff takes up too much of the cell. I didn't have anything aside from the standard prison issue stuff. Finally, one day on the basketball court outside she cornered me alone with three other big women. All ugly. All with shaved heads. They told me I gotta ask for a transfer, get a new cell. Margaret punched me dead in the face. And the rest of them started kicking me.

And I started to sing.

That night, I lay awake listening to her cry. After a bit I heard little whimpers and stifled mumblings over a repeated gushy slapping I couldn’t place. I got out of bed and blood was all over the walls. Her bed. Something metallic clanged to the floor. I picked it up like an idiot. It was a homemade shiv, slick with blood. Not my brightest moment. I yelled like crazy for the guards to come. The warden pinned it on me of course.  Who else could have done it? And I’d already stabbed someone to death too. Which was how I made it to the Row. 

Death’s waiting room. 

It clicked for me though what that song does after that. If I concentrate and focus on someone when I sing it, it fills their head with bad thoughts. Dark, intrusive thoughts that push them over the edge. Till they cash in their chips and turn out their own lights. 

I spend a lot of time asleep now, browsing through the different lives I could have had. Seeing the future for this world bored me a long time ago. It’s all the same violent sameness and cycle of wars and ugliness around the world. I even found a version where me and Jared got married by Elvis and lived happily ever after. Guards don't come by unless they absolutely have to. Pretty much only to bring food and escort me to the yard for exercise. Everyone is super nice and tell me they're just doing their job. I’m sure there’s rumors of some sort about me, not that I’d know. I’ve been in isolation for a long time. It's been years now that I've been locked up. 25 to be exact. I don't even recognize the woman in the mirror. I’ve seen how this life ends already in my dreams. A smiling doctor with a dripping syringe. My execution date is slated for next week and I think I've already got down what my last words will be. Mom loved Patsy Cline. I think I’ll sing to the tune of her when the time comes. 

Honey, I don't know why, your givin' me, that evil eye. But I know that you'll always, love me.

I just hope the ship beams me up after. Maybe if I wish again hard enough it’ll rescue me one last time. 

Chester Rogalski is an active member of the HWA and lives in New York with his wife Vanessa, dog Clarice, and the spirit of their ancient black cat Jung.
Website: https://chester.mmm.page/