Chapter 79

A week and a day later we all agreed it was time for me to go. The small black plane met me at a drug smuggler's airstrip outside Biloxi Mississippi. The flight to a small dirt strip outside Williamston Alabama was a short hop by plane. I was wearing new clothes yet again. I used the pilots phone to call a taxi before I let him leave.

The taxi took me to the storage locker, which held my tricycle and my own cell phone. I stopped by the office to check that my bill had been paid and to pick up the spare key they held for me.

The power was still on inside the storage locker, so the chargers for both batteries had them well charged. I walked around the trike thinking back on my old life. I could go back to being Iris Martin, if I wanted to be.

"Well are you going to ride that death machine to Mossberg, or are you going to stand here admiring it?" the voice in my head asked.

"I'm going to ride it home," I said aloud. I found my first stop was going to have to be the Walmart store. The weather had changed since I had been 'on vacation' through the summer. The weather wasn't cold, but there was a chill in the air.

The backpack in the locker not only held my cell phone but my wallet as well. From it I took the Debit card to an ATM inside Walmart. After checking my bank balance, I withdrew $200. I remembered I had clothes at the Studio but I needed a Nylon parka to wear home. The only one I could find was a thin lightweight black one, so I bought it and a thermal sweatshirt.

After all that, I bought half a subway steak and cheese sandwich. Actually I bought a steak and cheese sandwich on half of a roll. Either way it was good. I couldn't even finish the half I purchased. I suppose my body still wasn't back to normal though it was on the way, I hoped.

With the memory of the sandwich in mind, I returned to Walmart for two pairs of smaller jeans. I rode the bike over an hour to get back to Mossberg.

When I pulled up behind the studio/apartment I was facing the shed. I stood beside the bike and debated whether to get back on it and just ride away.

In the end I opened the door to the shed, then rolled the bike inside. I walked to the rear door of the Studio/apartment building and went inside. I felt a chill inside the studio portion of the building. It had been summer when I left the building last. I hoped that there hadn't been a cold spell. At least not one cold enough to freeze the pipes. I checked the small half bath and found the floor dry and the water running fine even in January it hadn't been cold enough to freeze.

I set the downstairs, through the wall, heat pump on 68 degrees then climbed the stairs. Even though I had ridden the 20 odd miles home, I was still exhausted. I didn't have much stamina after being starved, infected, and beaten for over six months. I make it sound worse than it really was but it was bad enough.

I learned to manage on the less than 800 calories a day. The 800 calories was on a good day, some days it was less. Sometimes none at all, if the guards didn't like my attitude. I had been slapped a few times but only beaten twice. That was by other prisoners. The guards didn't break it up and had possibly arranged it. By far the worst was the parasitic infections that drained me of my strength and my will to resist.

In six months I was probably raped a hundred times. Trust me there is no such thing as laying back and enjoying it. Rough sex is one thing, real rape is quite another. Real rape is never about sex, it is about power. Who has the power and who doesn't.

I remembered it all and I had dreams about it all. The doctor wanted me to see a therapist. We both recognized that I suffered from PTSD. We just differed on how to treat it. I took the antidepressants, but not the therapy. I wasn't ready to talk about it.

I found the upstairs just as I had left it. Well it had a lot more dust, but I didn't mind. I fell into the bed and slept from 3 PM till 5 AM the next morning. I took a shower in the warm bathroom thanks to the additional heat provided by the ceramic heater. The automatic account debits, by the utility companies, meant I had electric and water. It was also the reason I had the storage locker which was more or less empty at that moment.

It was still dark when I went outside, wet scalp and all, to retrieve my batteries from the trike. I hadn't forgotten them the night before I was just too tired to bother. I carried the two lithium batteries into the studio portion of the downstairs and the fake batteries I stored by the rear door as if they were of little or no value. The value of the metals hidden inside the battery cases was somewhere over 25k when last I checked. They were part of my bug out kit. The backpack I had brought from the storage locker contained the other items.

By the time I was dressed in my new jeans, which was only one size too large as opposed to my old one at least two or three sizes too large, it was time for the diner to be open. I walked to it rather than ride the trike out to the Dairy Queen.

"You look like shit," the boxer said.

"Good to see you as well," I said with a smile. "How about some eggs and bacon."

"You didn't bring your coffee cup," he said. "You gonna try mine?"

"Sure why not. A cup of your best swill," I said.

I could only get half of the breakfast down. It was a combination of the maintenance doses of the anti parasitic meds and the anti depressants. One or both of them killed my appetite. That along with my shrunken stomach did it.

"More coffee?" he asked in a concerned voice.

"Sure," I said smiling. I knew it wasn't a bright smile but it was all I had.

"So where you been," he asked.

"A South Seas Island vacation," I replied.

"Where was it? Devils Island? You look like hell," he said.

"What do you know about Devils Island?" I asked.

"I read books, when I wasn't getting the shit beat of me," he said.

"Yeah, I did as well," I replied.

I just couldn't eat as much as I did before. I was even skinnier than I remember Sylvia Porter. She had been one of the most unattractive women I had ever met. The problem was I was beginning to look more and more like her.

Sylvia always had short cropped hair and since the lice problem I was going to have it a while as well. She had almost no breasts and my implants were hanging like a couple of water balloons from my chest. My first purchase when I was still living in Arnold's hotel suite had been a strong bra to hold them in place. There was nothing like that in prison, so I just had a lot of pain and a lot of deformity afterward.

I wore the cast iron bra for two weeks after I got back to Mossberg. Then I decided I felt well enough to have it fixed. I no longer gave a crap about impressing people. My attitude at the moment was fuck em all. I rode the trike to Williamston where I caught the bus up to Mobile. From the bus terminal I took a taxi to the Mobile Alternative Medical Center. It was a medical center where displaced Cosmetic Surgeons had gone to die.

The HHS controlled medical centers had decided cosmetic surgeons were obsolete. Since the new HHS plan didn't cover cosmetic surgery, it was going to be on me. Since I didn't give a shit about anything but comfort, the doctor and I decided just to remove the implants. I suggested he take most of the extra tissue as well. He insisted on doing a cover up. That was just a matter of trimming and using very fine stitches to hide the scars. The clinic was within two blocks of a decent motel. So I checked into it while I waited for the Post Operative three day checkup.

It took almost a week to go from a d+ cup to a non existent cup. I was as flat as a preteen, which was just fine with me. I really didn't want a man near me or a woman either at that moment. I finally looked like a bull dyke or an androgynous person with no sex markers at all. I was going to confuse hell out of people, and I didn't give a shit.

I stayed a few days in the motel more than I needed. Well it was more than I should have needed, but I had no one to drive me home. Since I didn't have anyone and not even a car of my own to drive home I stayed put until I healed.

I intentionally didn't tell the Dovecheck family about the surgery. I wanted nothing more to do with any of them. I accepted the bank transfer that went to Farmer's Grove. I took it because it was his way to make himself feel better. I took the money and used it for the repair of my body. It had no effect on the injury to my soul. It was just money after all.

For the first time in my life I understood that I wasn't Supergirl. I could be hurt and I could be broken. It wasn't something you should know before your death watch. It made living very hard. According to all the doctors I had a pretty good chance for thirty or forty more years. I had no idea what those years were going to be like. I was sure as hell retired, and nothing was going to get me back into the business. I could not take that kind of abuse again.

On the afternoon of the tenth day since I left Mossberg, I returned. Since things had run on autopilot for eight months, I found no need to jump right into anything. I ate, slept, and watched TV on the computer. It was humbling to realize the world had gone on for those eight months without my input. It even seemed to do fine. Well fine in those segments which government had kept their heavy hand out of.

After another two weeks at home, I felt the need to engage with the community again. Miss Sadie came by everyday for those two weeks to invite me to lunch. After two weeks at home, I was finally ready to interact.

We went to the diner for lunch as we had before. I had the lunch lady special. That day it was spaghetti with meat sauce. The only thing it had in common with the school version was that the pasta sat in the tomato sauce for a couple of hours between the first and the last orders. It was very good and it was cooked to death which is how we all remembered it.

"Honey there are all kinds of rumors going around. You are going to have to tell someone or they will never stop," Miss Sadie said. She was obviously expecting to be 'the someone'.