The Last Strand

Dear Miss Andrews,1

Thank you very much for meeting with us……it was a pleasure……we have decided to select another applicant at this time……”2

Jane threw the letter in the garbage, disgusted. It was the second rejection this week, the same for many weeks. She wasn’t so surprised. She knew the reason, the lack of incongruity between jobs and the fact that she had been out of work for several years, but still she thought she had that one in the bag. The interview had gone so well. She felt like crying, but decided to wait until all the negative forces would run together and collide as surely they often did. The stoplight turned red and she crossed the street without really looking.3

Screeeeaaach!!! The car stopped just in time to avoid hitting her.4

“Get out of the street, you fat cow!” the driver yelled in her face as he swerved hastily around her. Nope, that still wasn’t enough to make the water flow, but she could feel the noose tightening around her neck. It started with her ponytail, the one her husband wouldn’t let her cut. Her children would tear and pull at it all day and try to ride on her shoulders while they used her hair like a horse’s reins. She hated it, but they were just kids. 5

She approached the wall, the one she would prop her back up against waiting for the bus. She envisioned her head smashing into it face first, her body limp, controlled by the dominating force clinging to her thin strands behind her. It would be spitting some hateful words, cursing her for her existence. She would submit. The people would watch and smile painfully, but would not stop to take much heed.6

The bus came and she quickly boarded. She stopped to ask the driver a question, a young black man.7

“Huh?!?” he replied, irritated. She had interrupted whatever he was listening to in his headphones and was angry he had to remove them. She was usually soft-spoken and became even more so faced with confrontation. He glared at her. She could feel his eyes penetrate right through her, like she was some kind of apparition. She decided not to rebuff. Looking around, she saw no friendly faces.8

She stood by a rack of some sort, the kind used to place luggage. The bars seemed enticing. There was one close to the floor that she stared at for a long time. She thought she might be able to slip her head through if it forced her. She felt her body being held in that position with the bars encompassing her throat. The bus lurched forward and her face would go red from the pressure, but she wouldn’t feel anything.9

The driver slammed on the brakes, but her body did not move. The invisible hand was still holding her ponytail from behind. It had its own mind and would slam her into any inordinate object when it damn pleased. The corner of the opened door seems like a good place and she would envision the hand, the webbing of its fingers interspersed completely throughout the head of her hair, more tightly wrapped than a piece of chewing gum. She repeatedly let it propel her until she caught glimpse of a passing billboard. On it was the face of a woman holding her head and crying. It mentioned something about battered women. She looked at it fleetingly and paid no more attention than as if she was being sold a common household item.10

A memory that had been taking refuge inside her decided at that moment to reintroduce itself. She was reminded of a former lover who then reminded her of yet another, and another. They enjoyed holding her head and wrapping their hand throughout her hair, as she would perform fellatio on them. The men would feel like they were in total control this way, though she never felt that they were. She would in actuality have a sense of empowerment that would come over her and arouse her even when she was doing all the pleasing. She wasn't sure, but she thought this was probably the same delusional element that got most women like her through their day. How else could they be so content with pleasing one man, the husband, when he acted like another small child at their hip.11

The hand took her hair again, this time very upset. It whispered something in her ear from behind and she could not immediately tell if it was arousing her with playful sweet talk or confessing its urge to kill her. It felt like the same thing. Her head went flying into the next available hard-edged object and she was told to stop disrespecting the good women out there by comparing herself to them, she was not like them at all. There were a handful of women on the bus with her, most of them of Southeast Asian decent. The hand was right. They would admonish her completely, even her own family would if they knew who she really was.12

The hand had a gun now and it was making clicking sounds in her left ear. She closed her eyes and braced herself willingly. She could see the x-ray of her brain, an opaque rectangular-shaped item lodged somewhere in the middle with a trail of nothing behind it.13