AnimeCon Harem 14: Christine and Chloe (Patreon)

   By the time Christine stepped down from the passenger’s side door of the ambulance, gurney wheels were already down on the pavement and Brian was whisked away into the depths of the hospital. They’d situated her in the front of the vehicle rather than in the back beside Brian’s stretcher like she’d grown to expect from seeing situations in movies, and no small part of her was surprised that she was asked to accompany him at all. They didn’t know who she really was to Brian, they weren’t aware of all of the things she’d done.

   The police officers and paramedics had a sense of urgency that was tempered by the repetition of this sort of emergency becoming routine to them, and used calm voices and practiced patience to explain everything to her. So she stared, hearing but hardly listening, she nodded or shook her head when prompted with a repeated question, and looked about in a daze. They seemed to expect this and told her she was in shock, and Christine thought that maybe she was—but she very much doubted they meant the same sort of shock that she did.

   The horrific magical migraine had given way to a silent silvery stillness that Christine found so unnerving that she could only describe it as haunting. She wished that headache was back, she wished for any and every muddling distraction from this unwelcome mental clarity. Emptiness. Something—no, everything—had gone terribly, impossibly wrong. This entire weekend was a deeply personal drama gone impossibly awry, acted out in vicious malevolence by all of the worst parts of herself that she didn’t want to admit existed. Realizing it all, looking back on everything with clear eyes, understanding how far out of control she’d become was beyond stunning.

   In culmination… Christine felt like she was now forever damned. The things she’d done—the things she’d said—what she’d become, the blind gleeful malice that crowded out every other thought—there was no excusing any of it, and now she had to live with it, even though there was no way she could live with what she’d become.

   A pudgy uniformed police woman who looked more soccer mom than city cop took her aside to a restroom and provided Christine with new clothes. The torn blouse and the cutoffs she’d been wearing were surrendered over into evidence bags, and then the officer led her back out into the emergency care waiting room. Christine was guided to sit near a quiet corner of the room as far away from everyone else as was possible to give them plenty of space. Gentle, probing questions began while the officer hunched over a set of paperwork and started filling out a report. The cop, an Officer Judy, had to keep asking the questions over again, because despite Christine’s sudden unwelcome clarity of thought—everything around her seemed wrong or out of place in surreal, incredibly distracting ways.

   I think I’m really losing it, Christine blinked. I’m just—yeah, losing it. I’m losing my goddamn mind.

   The metal armrest of the seat she was in felt soft.

   The metal armrest felt soft. What looked like single waiting room chairs were actually attached to each other in batches of five like she remembered of the seating at airport terminals. Only the seats on either end of her row had armrests, and hers was malleable; soft. Softer than lead, softer than metal had any right to be, it deformed and twisted easily in her grip. Just like Brian’s wrist had been crushed when she grabbed it back then.

   Adrenaline couldn’t explain it. Nothing Christine could think of made the things she was feeling make any logical sense. Her vision swam with fine detail and texture no matter which way she turned, regardless of distance, as if everything around her was in focus all at once. Seat cushion upholstery sported a visible herringbone weave, the waiting room carpet was a lot filthier than she wanted to think about, and the woodgrain of the nearby table holding pamphlets and children’s books was deceptively porous. The emergency care waiting room wasn’t small, but she could easily read tiny magazine print past the shoulder of a woman two rows away from her, when that should have been a scarcely visible blur. She could distinguish the specific scents of different brands of antiseptic being used deeper down the hospital hallway, even though she knew nothing about chemical stuff.

   Christine felt stronger than ever, but in an unfamiliar and unpleasant predatory way, like her strength was intrinsically linked to a predilection for violence. Or feeding. The tickle of inner ear that helped dictate her balance had become utterly strange and solid, to the point that loosing her footing ever again seemed unimaginable. Everyone around her was full of blood. It gushed through Officer Judy beside her in a throbbing flow of fluid motion, warm and powerful and just millimeters below the woman’s fragile skin.

   No. No no no. Stop. Just. Don’t think about it. Think about something else. ANYTHING else.

   She looked down at the rather plain, unmarked gray sweatshirt and sweatpants that Officer Judy had given her, and she could smell that they were brand new. Her now oversensitive nose could now tell that they’d been sealed in a plastic pack prior to this, and, if she was so gauche as to press her nose into the cloth and really try, Christine suspected she’d be able to elaborate even further upon other scant traces she normally shouldn’t have been able to detect at all.

   Which is… impossible. Right?

   The idea was persistent, and Christine finally dipped her head, tugged the front of her sweatshirt up to her face, and inhaled deep. She caught the scent of Officer Judy’s hand lotion from the moment when the woman had briefly handled the sweatshirt, there had been a packet of silica gel desiccant in amid the plastic packaging, and the new clothes smell in the fabric was actually a distinct and rather pungent combination of pre-wash soap, dye, and formaldehyde. Distinguishing those kinds of absurd specifics wouldn’t have been remotely possible before. There were also elusive, almost intangible elements—sewing machine oil still clung to the stitch threading, and she could taste the distant dust from whatever production floor the sweatshirt had been put together in.

   Yeah. Fucking… impossible.

   She was glad to be out of those designer cutoff shorts and rid of the bloodied blouse. They had been sexy, expensive, and of course intentionally ruined by her own hand in a constructed deceit—such trappings couldn’t possibly be any more Chloe, and she’d needed out of them. If Christine was to have any hope of staving off insanity, every last bit of Chloe needed broken away like a cicada husk and discarded.

   “Christine?” Officer Judy prompted. “Hey. Christine? Do you want to talk about—”

   “I was not raped,” Christine said in a dull voice. “They—they tried to rape me, but my boyfri—my ex-boyfriend, he came and. He stopped them. He saved me.”

   “Can I have his name one more time?” Officer Judy asked, hunching over in the hospital waiting room seat so that she could scribble into the forms on her clipboard.

   “Brian Douglas,” Christine answered. “He stopped them, an-and, they all fought, and. They almost beat him to death.”

   “This was the same Brian Douglas from the 911 call?” Officer Judy asked. “The call that you made about somebody following you? White? Twenty-three years old, brown hair, green eyes?”

   “Y-yes,” Christine gave a nod. “Yes, but. He wasn’t really following me, or anything like—”

   “Well, it’s a good thing if he was, if he was able to prevent things,” Officer Judy assured her.

   “No, no, I mean—he really wasn’t at all. I called him. I was, I had this whole horrible thing, I was so angry, I was… I don’t know how to describe it. I was crazy. And. I was trying to get him in trouble, but that was fake. That was all fake—I was trying to make it seem like he raped me, and then, then he got there just in time to save me when these other guys, they actually were about to rape me.”

   Once again, Christine couldn’t help but notice that partway through her explanation, the officer woman stopped penning the words into the report.

   “I mean it, I’m telling the truth,” Christine insisted. “All the proof is—you can just see the call logs in my phone. Please. Please.”

   “Okay, okay,” Officer Judy sighed. “And you’re sure you wouldn’t be more comfortable with just a quick medical exam?”

   “I’m sure,” Christine said. “They—they got my shorts off, but nothing went inside me. He didn’t let them rape me.”

   “The exam isn’t scary at all,” Officer Judy promised. “It’s quick and painless, and you’ll feel a lot better afterwards. Just knowing that it’s taken care of and not anything to worry about or think about it anymore.”

   “I’m sure,” Christine said again. “Can you. Can you please write down, put it in your report or whatever that I was making it all up, that I was trying to frame him for this crime, and then he saved me from that same thing happening.”

   “Sweetheart, I know you feel that way,” Officer Judy said, meeting her eyes. “But, you’ve just been through a very terrible ordeal, and I think we should give you some healthy amount of time to sort it all out before I… put down anything in ink that’s going to contradict what you’d said before.

   “You’re going to be feeling a lot of things right now, and some of those things are going to conflict with each other, and I don’t think we should write anything up that could incriminate you or anything like that right this moment.”

   “Please?” Christine insisted. “Can you please just write it? Please?”

   The police officer gave her a long, searching look before heaving out a sigh.

   “Alright,” Officer Judy relented. “I’ll jot it in as a note, and we’ll get everything sorted out into a statement a bit later on. Okay? I’d again really encourage you to come in with me for a quick checkup. Just to make sure you’re okay—and I’d be right there in the room with you. We could take it all as slow as you want. What do you think?”

   “No, but thank you,” Christine said. “I’m really okay. I’d like to just sit by myself and wait and—process everything. For a bit.”

   “Okay,” Officer Judy said. “I’m going to be nearby while we wait to see what they say about your friend that went into intensive care. Alright? I’m giving you some space but I’m not going anywhere, I’ll be sitting right over there filling out some paperwork. So if you need me for anything, or if you want to talk—anything—don’t be shy about interrupting. Do you want a water bottle or anything? Do you need to get those contacts out?”

   “No—no, I’m fine,” Christine answered after a moment of hesitation. Contacts?

   She barely managed to keep from flinching back as the uniformed police woman rose out of the seat next to her and moved a ways down the aisle of the waiting room. Officer Judy wasn’t threatening or intimidating in the slightest, and Christine would even bet that this cop had been stuck with keeping an eye on her for exactly those reasons. It wasn’t Officer Judy she was afraid of.

   Something was wrong. Really wrong. Wrong beyond sudden trauma or narrowly escaping sexual assault. Maybe even wrong beyond crimping a metal armrest with a gentle squeeze or having faint urges to rip Officer Judy’s throat out and gorge herself on the woman’s lifeblood. Christine had gone on for so long without self reflecting on who she was turning into that when a silvery pane finally appeared to reveal who she’d become, what she found shocked her, revolted her.

   “This is like some kind of nightmare…” Christine murmured in disbelief, only able to give the rest of the hospital waiting room a numb stare of incomprehension. Chloe wasn’t supposed to become REAL. How did this—this shouldn’t have ever happened. But, somehow it did, somehow I—

   Her every attempt at understanding how her life had spiraled so far out of control felt like excuses, and any and all excuses turned to ash in her mouth, because there simply was no excusing the things she’d done. The things she had become. In turn her mind continued to travel in manic circles as she failed to rationalize how she’d gone from who she used to be all the way to Chloe.

   Because, I’m NOT Chloe, Christine wanted to scream. Chloe isn’t ME. How does—how did—how could this have…?!

   This guy named Brian was hurt because of what she’d done. No, hurt didn’t begin to describe what she’d done, what she’d tried to do—this fanatical Chloe part of herself had hyperfixated on him and set about taking him apart piece by piece over years, had worked to dismantle everything about him in frantic revenge for—

   “For what?” Christine demanded of Chloe.

   Brian only SUPERFICIALLY resembles my dad. He’s just tall and good-looking and has the same name by a different spelling. He’s NOT my dad, he’s not anything like my dad. Even—even if he WAS, that would never justify, it would, it would never—

   “You holdin’ up okay, hon?” The police woman called over from across the room—she seemed to have been on the lookout for Christine’s distress. “Need a drink? Bottle of water or anything?”

   “I—” Christine stopped herself from admitting how thirsty she was. She wasn’t thirsty for water. “No, thank you, I’m… I’m fine.”

   I’m CHRISTINE. Not Chloe. Chloe isn’t real, I made her up. Was moving out on my own for college and just couldn’t stop fantasizing about leaving the old me behind. Getting away from everyone who knew me as the gangly, awkward teen who starts to speak more and more loudly when I’m excited about something, until someone gets embarrassed and reminds me to lower my voice. I wanted—I wanted to reinvent myself, I wanted to be like Claire. Cool. Clever, sexy, sophisticated.

   But, then she couldn’t stop remembering Claire on her hands and knees on that office sofa, her dad thrusting into her. The naked skin she shouldn’t have ever caught a glimpse of, the immediate and jarring reversal of every naive impression of them she’d romanticized. It twisted in her stomach like a sickness, it reached into her gut and pulled a little bit more every time she fell into the new Christine persona she was trying so hard to adopt.

   My middle name was Chloe, and Chloe sounds refined and classy, in sort of the same way Claire does, Christine thought. She felt like throwing up all over again. And it wasn’t CHRISTINE, it didn’t reek of dorky naivete and ignorant innocence to me like CHRISTINE does. Did. Not DOES, DID. I—I don’t know anymore.

   The more she turned over what had happened in her head, the more horrifying it became. Christine built up her new Chloe identity out of her years of envious longing to be just like Claire and meet a handsome winner just like her father. But, always buried within that mess was a vicious conflicting streak that couldn’t forget the truth about her dad and his personal assistant. She thought that after burying that cruel pang of outrage and spite deep in the pit of her stomach, it would eventually just dissolve, digest, fade away and be forgotten. Instead, everything seemed to feed it.

   When she found herself looking for the negative in people, it never became hard to find. At first that simply helped her play the part, at first that casual cynicism made her feel mature, worldly, even. It lent itself to bitter humor, it earned laughter and agreement from the new peers who knew her only as Chloe, not stupid fucking awful Christine. However, as that first year dragged on it became harder and harder to look past how jaded—with everything, everyone—she was becoming.

   I INVENTED her, because I was moving away from Mom for college and going to be out on my own, and I wanted to be Claire, Christine repeated to herself. I didn’t want to be the gangly awkward girl I was in high school, I wanted to be cool. Sophisticated. But, then I also wanted to be a Claire who—who never EVER got taken advantage of, who never—never—never—

   Officer Judy returned with a pair of water bottles to set down on the open seat next to Christine, and Christine fought the urge to wet her lips or think about how soft and supple Officer Judy’s unprotected neck had appeared.

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/// Sorry, this came out way later than I expected. Lot of stuff going on and there's some (potentially good? maybe?) big news regarding... stuff, but I can't talk about it because I signed an NDA. Word is, early December stuff gets announced, and then I can talk about it.

   Also really struggling with what to do with AnimeCon Harem publishing-wise. I really hate the idea of it being Amazon exclusive for KU, but the two publishers (not counting Aethon) I've talked to have been firm on it and everyone I know is telling me how stupid / pointlessly stubborn I am about that. I've been told that Trash could've done 5x the numbers it does now, I've been told the difference between AnimeCon going wide release and going KU could wind up being like 50 - 60k difference.

   Just too much to think about when my family (and my shitty trailer) have me stressing out about the future and where the hell I'm gonna live. Because I don't think it can be here, I was telling myself last year this place wouldn't hold up another winter and yet... here I still am. Head falls into a bad place and it wound up being a bad time to try to dig back through my old scrapped Christine sections, haha. But maybe for the best, I don't want to be in this kind of mood and try to write the current RE:TT sections either. I don't know. Too much going on.

   Also it's getting cold.