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Stainless Steel

by Robert Eggleton

      Shelly and Faith had become the best of friends. They were roommates at a children’s mental health institution on Earth, the planet with the highest sentient incarceration rate in the universe. Twenty-six girls shared the same dormitory at the facility, but Shelly was the only one that Faith trusted with her secret – she hadn’t even told her therapist.

      Outside of her own family, one other person on the planet also knew the secret. It was Lacy Dawn. She was Faith’s best friend back home. Before she had confided, Faith made Shelly and Lacy Dawn make cross-your-heart promises not to tell anybody else, especially not an adult.

      All three girls were eight years old. This admission was the fourth time that Faith had gotten herself locked up for her own good, compared to two for Shelly. Lacy Dawn had never been put in a facility. She had the magic to protect herself, plus some left over to help other kids, and Lacy Dawn even made perfect grades in school.

      “I’m getting stronger! Soon I’ll fix everything in the whole world!” Lacy Dawn had screamed as the deputy shackled Faith to take her to the institution almost six weeks ago. Since then, for comfort, Faith had replayed that scene every night at 7:00 p.m. – the mandatory bedtime.

      After Faith had been hauled off by the deputy, Lacy Dawn chanted a magic verse – “he used to be a good man” – and elevated above the ground to glide home. She had needed to find the only other best friend she’d ever made – a naked guy that lived in a spaceship up the path behind her house in the hollow. The guy didn’t have any private parts. Otherwise, she would have never trusted him.

      Even though she was locked up, or perhaps because of it, Faith believed in Lacy Dawn’s magic, and knew that it would be there to help when she got out of the institution. Each day, she counted the next until release, and, at night, she schemed various plots to revenge against the people who had put her there – the school principal and psychologist, her scared mother, a big sister, a tattletale named Brittney, and most of all, her daddy.

      Younger girls at the facility would have screaming fits several times a day. They would be put in padded isolation rooms, given shots, and left until their energies had drained. That’s what Shelly and Faith used to do – scream, scream, and scream some more. Older girls would spit out the medicines that stopped their hallucinations, so that they would have something interesting to talk about during the otherwise boring and ongoing group therapy sessions.

      Shelly and Faith were in the middle group of girls – too old to continue the screaming fits that didn’t rid the pain anyway, and too young to have achieved effective dissociation from their traumas. They were the cutters, along with six other girls in their dormitory who were about the same age. However, Shelly and Faith were the only two who had never intentionally scarred their faces. It was what had bonded their friendship – an understanding that one day they might deserve to be pretty – a shared belief that Lacy Dawn’s magic was real and that, thereby, relief from victimization was at least a theoretical possibility.

      Their hope blossomed on such a pretty day, of unknown designation or date by inmates. Shelly and Faith played within the fenced outdoor recreation yard. It was a scheduled time and the one hour period required by state statute. It was also a smoke break for the facility staff. The girls looked for sharp objects to use for self-mutilation. Pieces of plastic spoons were the best.

      “Don’t number that scar. It was a cat scratch.”

      “Thanks for being honest.” Shelly said and skipped one of the best scars on Faith’s right forearm. She went to the next. With the ballpoint pen that she’d stolen from her therapist, Shelly numbered it, and continued down Faith’s arm to count the other scars.

      “Twenty-seven, twenty-eight…alright, you win this time. But, I bet I beat you next time,” Shelly conceded.

      “I cut a lot more on my left arm. I like it best,” Faith said, held it up, and rotated left and right so that the scars shone in the afternoon sun.

      The girls looked around to make sure. No security guards were watching. No adults were in view. Cigarette smoke formed a cloud that floated from around the corner of the building.

      “I can’t wait to be old enough to get my belly button pierced,” Shelly changed the game, lifted her Metallica tee shirt, and pinched her navel until it turned red.

      “I can’t wait to get big enough to kill my daddy,” Faith said, and jabbed a knifeless fist into Shelly’s abdomen. They giggled and didn’t stop until the school bell signaled the end of recess at the children’s mental health center.

      Security herded the kids toward the entrance of the facility. They would remain inside the light-green walls until the next good-weather-day required outdoor recreation. In protest, one roommate, Robin, banged her head on the cinder-block wall beside the door that read FIRE EXIT.

      “I bet she’d stop that if you took off her helmet,” Faith said to Mrs. Jackson, a 250 pound positive role model that worked the 7 to 3 shifts.

      Mrs. Jackson was a Behavioral Rehabilitation Specialist. She had a high school diploma and was strong enough to physically restrain acting-out youth, regardless of how big they’d grown. Most of the girls in the program liked her, and some liked her so much that they would act out on purpose to be held. For some, it felt like a bear hug by one of the few humans on Earth who was worth loving back. Older girls tended to avoid physical restraints. The subsequent injection in the butt was debilitating to participation in group therapy – an acquired addiction.

      “I know that’s right, honey,” Mrs. Jackson agreed and knocked three times on Robin’s helmet. Mrs. Jackson couldn’t remember any of the girls’ names, so she called them all honey. “Ain’t you the one getting discharged tomorrow? Your Medicaid money ran out and so you’ve got to go home. The government has to pay for you to be here and, well, I don’t understand it all. But, that’s what the Director said in the staff meeting this morning? All he ever talks about is money, money and money. I guess he knows what he’s doing. I sure need more money. Are you Faith?”

      Tears swelled in Shelly’s eyes, but she turned her head before anybody noticed. Faith punched the wall, but not so hard that it would have busted a knuckle – been there, done that.

      “Yeah, I’m Faith. I didn’t know nothing about being discharged this soon. I’m not ready. I’ll help Mr. Stan clean the dookie off the walls in the bathrooms if he’ll let me stay longer. Tell the director, please….”

      “I’ll tell the boss, but you know he don’t care about no shit on no walls unless there’s an inspection coming up. Why do you girls smear it everyplace?”

      “I wish Lacy Dawn was here to help me,” Faith whispered to Shelly. “No I don’t,” she said after reconsideration. “I would never want her in a place like this.”

      Mrs. Jackson scooted the girls up a landing toward group therapy. Robin slid her shoulder against the wall along the way and continued to bang her head. Inside the room, Shelly grabbed Faith’s hand and refused to let go. Their assigned seats were not adjacent. Given the choice between an incident and its formal report, or allowing the girls to hold hands, the therapist rearranged seats. The other girls in the session didn’t object. They grabbed hands and an invincible circle around the table was established.

      “Who won?” the therapist asked about the self-mutilation contest. He had noticed the numbered scars on Faith’s right arm.

      Without letting go of hands, Shelly sat down last. Her tears formed a pool on the shiny table top. The girl beside Shelly, not the usual one, but the one that ended up there after the seating rearrangement, began to cry. The girl beside her did the same. And, the one beside that girl started. The sequence got to the therapist, who formed the biggest puddle of tears on the table top. Twelve girls, a gray-haired do-gooder, and Mrs. Jackson wept before the group therapy session had been called to order. Robin cried as she continued to bang her head on the table top – recurring resonating thuds.

      “Why are we crying?” Mrs. Jackson asked ten minutes later to call some order to the group.

      “Faith is going home tomorrow!” Shelly screamed so loudly that it alerted additional staff to help out during an emergency – two janitors who had been trained in the physical restraint of kids, especially girls.

      “Oh, my God!” the therapist reassessed the situation and the janitors left. The group cried for five more minutes.

      Mrs. Jackson left the room and returned with a roll of paper towels to wipe the table. Because it was disruptive, she then gave Robin the option to stop banging her head or to be put in the isolation room. Robin stopped. All of the girls looked to the therapist for direction. He blew his nose. Robin gave him the finger.

      “I’ve only spit out and saved up fifteen pills since I’ve been here this time. I need more,” Faith said to begin the girls’ obligatory disclosures.

      “There’s a bunch in the flower pot next to the nurses’ station,” Sandy, a girl who looked like a boy recommended – the doctor had triple checked her gender at admission so that she/he would be in the correct dorm.

      The rejected psychotropic spit into the dirt had killed the plant – a common occurrence at nurses’ stations all over Earth. Most of the pills at this facility were rejected by older girls who liked their dissociative relief better than the medication. Some were from kids that enjoyed the way ADHD felt. And, other pills were from girls with Bipolar Disorder and within the manic mood swing. It was a poison mixture, but not necessarily a fatal combination for the murder of a very mean human daddy on any planet – and Faith’s father was as tough as nails by any measure in the universe.

      “I’ve got a case of sample medication for you to take home,” the therapist whispered to Faith. He had tried to close the topic and begin another by passing out a written exercise – “Color My Feelings.” The children’s worksheets turned red – all red, streaked beyond the black borders of the picture outlines, and onto the table top.

      Overwhelmed, the therapist processed his own feelings about Faith’s scars, her recurring readmissions to the program, and her unwillingness to disclose anything about her family. “I’ll slip a bunch more medication into your suitcase after this session,” he said out loud. “Good luck.”

      Faith nodded agreement, the girls smiled, and let go of each other’s hands.

      The next morning, the administrator insisted that Faith put on a long-sleeve shirt to cover the fresh scars on her arms. She was packed, including the take-home drugs secretly provided by her therapist into her plastic trash bag “suitcase.” He was the best therapist she’d ever met, and the bag contained the most drugs she’d ever owned.

      Faith waited in the reception area used for admissions and discharges at the children’s mental health institution. It had been three hours since her Medicaid eligibility period had expired. The administrator was annoyed that he couldn’t bill for the cost of the staff member who kept watch on her during the discharge process by occasionally opening his eyes from a snooze.

      Two hours later, the security glass in front of the facility’s telephone operator slid open. “Your father called, Faith. He said that the truck broke down. He’ll be here as soon as he finds a new fuel pump.” The glass slid shut.

      “Can I go talk to Shelly while I wait?” Faith asked her half-awake guard.

      “No, you’re discharged,” he yawned, sipped a coffee that had gone cold, and shut his eyes again.

      An hour later, a pickup truck driven by Faith’s twelve year old sister parked in front of the mental health institution. Her father staggered in. Faith stood. He smacked her on the butt, and went to the counter to sign a form that the receptionist held out on a clipboard. Faith was officially discharged from the state mental health system with a guarded prognosis.

      “Shotgun!” she yelled before they’d taken the first step out of the facility. It didn’t work. Faith climbed into the middle. The truck had bucket seats, but there was a storage compartment with a plywood lid between them. Her father flopped in and rubbed Faith’s leg from knee to hip several times before he fell asleep. Faith’s older sister smiled approval, and put her father’s dirty hand between Faith’s legs, where it stayed until, an hour later, the truck turned onto the hollow road.

      A hollow is a place with no relevancy to universal time measures. They exist under standards other than the commonly accepted cultural values of any planet, and with historical tradition beyond any governmental intrusion. Not very many places in the universe qualify to be hollows, but that’s where Faith, Lacy Dawn, Shelly and several other families lived – a hollow. Things are different there. Things are different within every hollow on every planet within the universe, and every planet that sentient beings occupy has such private places. “Hollows are Necessary,” according to an ancient memo issued by the management structure of the Universe, but otherwise not expounded upon since.

      The county had asphalted to the bottom of Faith’s hollow – the last school bus stop. When her daddy’s truck hit the gravel and potholes beyond the paved road, the bounce was too much for sleep. Faith’s father awakened. There was one chug of warm beer left in the last forty, so he downed it. He squeezed Faith’s leg, and almost barfed out the window, but he didn’t roll it down quick enough. The glug spurted all over the truck cab.

      “Daddy, that’s gross!” Faith’s older sister said and hit a big pothole on purpose, and wiped the inside of the windshield to clear the wet smear with her bare hand.

      The gravel road turned to dirt, then mud. When the truck got stuck, the truck’s occupants walked the quarter-mile home. It was late spring. There was bright green everyplace, except for the brown that stuck to their shoes and that made them so heavy. Faith’s mother waited on the front porch. She’d been there for hours.

      “I know what I told you. I said that I’d help you kill him this time, but…,” Faith’s mother whispered to her, and pulled off a shoe so that mud wouldn’t be tracked into the house.

      “Just like last time.” Faith accused. “Why do you put up with daddy?”

      She lugged her suitcases, two plastic garbage bags, to the small bedroom that she shared with her sisters and came back downstairs to redundantly confront her mother. It didn’t matter this time, just like all the other times that had been planned before.

      The next morning, Faith went to visit Lacy Dawn, who lived down the hollow a ways. They talked in the outhouse so that nobody could see them.

      “Be cool,” Lacy Dawn said to calm Faith. “The solution is not your own mental health – no child should be expected to just accept it. But I’m impressed that your therapist gave you a bunch more pills to kill him this time – it shows that there are good people in this world.”

      Everything around Lacy Dawn was greener than green. Through an increasingly bright aura, she exuded survival. Although he switched her real good at least once a day, Dwayne, her father, had never touched her in the most very wrong way. Otherwise, he would have been instantly deader than dead – not even a soul left to file an appeal. And her indigence might have exploded the planet Earth and taken a bunch of innocent people with it. She wasn’t close to her peak in the maturity of power, but one wrong touch would have had explosive consequences. Lacy Dawn acknowledged her own lack of maturity to Faith.

      “I’m still growing up, too,” she had said.

      “Yeah, but you’ve got a good mommy,” Faith retorted.

      Lacy Dawn’s mother would have helped nail the coffin shut given victimization of her child – not a bit like Faith’s mother, who used other’s pain as the best means to reduce her own.

      “Your magic is getting stronger,” Faith said. “You’ve never ended up on the pissed on end of a mental hygiene proceeding. And you’re a virgin. I can’t hear it, but I can tell that nature talks back to you, maybe it’s god, I don’t know which one is the right answer. You go places without walking or getting mud on your shoes. You made that bruise go away on my face before the teacher called child protective services, which would have got me beat again. And you’re getting pretty. I wish that I could do that.”

      “I’ve got a boyfriend,” Lacy Dawn said.

      “Did you let him see your panties?” Faith asked.

      “No, not yet, but I’m getting stronger. I’ll make it happen if I decide to. I ain’t got no good pair to look at right now.”

      “Why does he like you then?”

      “He says that he needs me to help fix things. I don’t know. Boys always need something, but the main thing is that you’re home and that we figure out a way to kill your daddy. My boyfriend says that he’s the meanest and toughest individual he’s ever heard about.”

      “Yes, the main thing is that you grow strong enough to help me kill daddy,” Faith agreed. “I need a plan.”

      “Get two beer bottles – Budweiser, the kind that he can’t afford but buys when he’s drunk. Steal a little beer, here and there, and pour it into the empty bottles until they’re almost full. Keep the bottles in the cellar with the lids on so that they stay cool.”

      “That’s what I tried last time,” Faith complained.

      “I ain’t finished,” Lacy Dawn said. “Put in a bunch of pills and close the lids real tight.”

      “Is this instant replay?” Faith persisted with complaint.

      “I told you that I ain’t finished,” Lacy Dawn continued.

      “Okay, but today is Tuesday and daddy’s friends come over on Saturday nights,” Faith said. “You know what that means.”

      “We’ll be ready by then,” Lacy Dawn said. “Go home. I’ve got stuff to figure out.”

      Faith obeyed – conditioned by systems that had trained her to avoid disobedience.

      Lacy Dawn schemed. Nobody else in the hollow knew about the android that lived in a cave up her path. He was programmed to not harm humans, so getting him to help out in a murder conspiracy might have been tricky, but was accomplished with a flash of her butt.

      She had spent countless hours for over three years in the space ship and plugged into educational tutorials. “What’s one more info set about chainsaw injuries?” she challenged.

      Lacy Dawn’s training was delivered through a port that had been placed in her upper spine behind her long, stringy, brown hair – no model aspirations from the hollow, she was realistic. The android was on Earth to train and recruit her to save the universe. She didn’t know what that meant yet, but she knew that he owed her something, maybe everything. She was powerful enough to sense his desperation.

      “Ain’t nothing free in this world, Lacy Dawn,” the android said.

      “This is the exact same plan you told me to try the last time that we tried to kill Faith’s daddy - save up stale beer and put in a bunch pills,” Lacy Dawn said to the android.

      Faith said the same thing as she slid on her butt down the muddy slope to the road and hour later. “My daddy liked the pills then, and it sure didn’t kill him. He said it was really good beer.” Faith stomped and splashed a mud hole for emphasis. She trudged up the dirt road to her house.

      “We’ll get him good this time. I’ve got a Consultant,” Lacy Dawn yelled. “I ain’t finished. Come back in an hour.”

      “You’ve got a what? Oh, I know, it's a person that helps you think - like my therapist. Tell him to help you make me pretty,” Faith screamed back. “I‘ll get more help from daddy’s buddies if I’m pretty! They always laugh when I ask for help, no matter what I tell them I’ll do.”

      “I’m working on it. I figure by the time I’m eleven…,” Lacy Dawn, afraid to yell, said directly into the outhouse’s stink hole.

      “Some savior you are – too slow,” Faith said to the mud, and looked back to make sure that Lacy Dawn had not heard the comment.

      “If you stab him like you want to, it’s bound to be a bad scene – all that blood to clean up and stuff! Lacy Dawn yelled, knowing that her mother might hear, but not intervene. She’d had first looked around to make sure that nobody else was around, but knew that all powers that truly mattered had heard her frustration.

      Lacy Dawn’s mother had experienced a childhood of horror. Such did not make her a champion of survivors – only an ignorer of best laid plans.

      After washing breakfast dishes the next day, to avoid a switching by her daddy, Lacy Dawn went up the path to visit the android again. His ship was always the cleanest place that she’d ever been, but she’d gotten used to it even though it was not natural.

      “C’mon, dude. I know that this ain’t got nothing to do with saving the universe, but I’ve got to do something to help Faith before tonight,” Lacy Dawn argued. “Her father invited those guys over again – you know - the ones who never take a bath and always want to mess with her. If you ain’t gonna help me now, I ain’t gonna help you later.”

      “What’s a bath?” the android teased and plugged her into an algebra tutorial.

      Lacy Dawn yanked the cable out of her spine and chanted her way home.

      “Yes,” the android sent his reply a few minutes later, by networked email to Lacy Dawn.

      Faith and Lacy Dawn met again in the outhouse three hours before the weekend party. Since nobody had phones in the hollow, the visit was unannounced, but timed perfectly.

      “Here,” Lacy Dawn said, and handed Faith a diagram of a chainsaw. It had an arrow that pointed to the bar’s lock-down screw. “Go home. I’ve got to work on it more,” Lacy Dawn said. “I’ve got to convince my boyfriend to help me kill a human. He ain’t one.”

      “Boyfriend? You’ve got one?” Faith again whined.

      “Not really, just go home and come back in an hour.”

      Faith left and Lacy Dawn first looked at her panties, decided no, and walked, not glided, up the path toward the spaceship. “What’s a good way to kill a man?” she asked the walnut tree.

      “With a saw,” the tree answered and Lacy Dawn nodded agreement. “I’ve heard that somewhere before.”

      “It’s me,” she said at the cave entrance and entered the android’s ship. He sat in front of his monitors. Without looking up, he started a calculus lesson. She plugged herself into the cable. “I want to learn everything there is about chainsaw injuries that humans experience and real quick.”

      He switched lesson plans. The consequence of noncompliance with her wishes had been the subject of a management directive. Androids are typically compliant, especially in relationship to the most powerful – like Lacy Dawn.

      He had been sent to Earth to train her. Lacy Dawn carried a genetic implant that had been placed and tracked by the universal management structure for many generations. It enhanced her propensity for the development of savior attributes. This version of Lacy Dawn, the project’s official title, was regarded by management as highly promising. The android was assigned to begin the final assessment and training of the project. Other matters, such as the survival of Faith or Earth, were regarded as inconsequential.

      The economic foundation of the universe was in imminent danger. Lacy Dawn was the only probable contributor to the solution after thousands of years of failed strategies. Under the circumstances, and despite the prime directive implanted in all androids, management had afforded broad latitude for him to carry out the mission. The android was free to educate her on any topic. Within ten minutes, Lacy Dawn had absorbed all the information available about chainsaws, and the prospective accidents caused by their use, and that had been published by anybody and everybody on her tiny planet, and the several others whose language she had studied.

      Following a two minute discussion, the android handed her a small laser.

      “I’ll see you after I wash dinner dishes, unless it’s Mommy’s turn. I forget. Are you sure this tool works?” Lacy Dawn asked and unplugged herself from the computer cable in her spine.

      “Yes. An application will disable the lock-down bolt on the chainsaw bar by reducing its diameter 95 percent. A slight pressure will cause the chain to disengage. Other than that, I cannot predict the consequences,” the android said.

      “It’s a done deal,” Lacy Dawn said five minutes later to the walnut tree on her way home down the dirt path. She exposed the miniature laser. “I don’t need to even find a screwdriver.”

      “Humans often get tense when they screw,” the tree agreed. “Your boyfriend is smart.”

      “He ain’t my boyfriend!” Lacy Dawn almost cussed.

      An hour later, the girls met for the final time in the outhouse. They then went to Faith’s house where Lacy Dawn’s butt was fondled by Faith’s drunken father. Faith found the chainsaw leaned against the kitchen stove and took it to the back yard. After using the android’s tool to mess up the chainsaw’s lock-down bolt, Lacy Dawn gave Faith a hug and went home after a second grope by a couple of the guys that had arrived early with twelve packs.

      “Daddy, since your friends are coming over, how about a barbecue – at least a hot dog roast?” Faith asked. “But we ain’t got no firewood.”

      “Cool idea,” Faith’s father said.

      A few minutes later, he staggered up the hill with the chainsaw. On the way down, he squirted blood from the arm that used to be connected and dripped spray from above his eyebrows. He collapsed on the back porch. Family members and friends gathered to discuss the situation.

      “Mommy, you said that you would help me kill him,” Faith complained as the tourniquet was tied.

      “I fell in love with him when we were in junior high. He was a football star. No matter what he does to you, I have to save my reputation,” Faith’s mother said. “Besides, if he hadn’t busted your butt, somebody else would have, and it wouldn’t have even been in the family like it’s supposed to – grow up.”

      “Where’s the rest of my arm?” Faith’s father asked after he regained consciousness.

      They -- all the daughters -- he didn’t father no boys - picked him up and pushed him into the bed of the pickup. The oldest girl was sixteen going on twenty-five. She pop-started the truck and checked the gas gauge.

      “That brown dog carried your arm up into the woods. Do you want us to look for it or take you to a telephone to call an ambulance, butthole?” Faith asked him and climbed into the bed.

      Her assertiveness was learned through mental health treatment, but was weak in application. She squeezed the arm to curb her father’s blood flow. She was wearing her best jeans that became soaked. Blood dripped from the truck’s bed to the ground as they climbed the dirt road out of the hollow.

      It drew dogs away from their farm assignments. The dogs followed the truck up the hollow road, licking blood from rock tops every few yards. Twenty minutes later, to the disappointment of all family members except his wife who had no reasonable option except being alone, Faith’s father was still alive. She gave up one quarter to put in the payphone and complained when it required a second. Faith gave up the quarter. A husband is only worth so much.

      “Are you sure that you want us to hurry?” the 911 dispatcher asked. He was one of Faith’s sexual abusers before getting saved last Sunday at church.

      The family waited and the ambulance arrived. The dogs followed them home. Two weeks later, the family visited the hospital. “I can have a lot of fun with this,” Faith’s father said, and demonstrated his stainless-steel pinchers. Faith winced. The other family members grinned. Faith cupped her crotch.

      “We’re sending him to the VA Hospital for final fitting and testing,“ a doctor bragged. “His prosthetic arm will be covered with flesh-like plastic. Surgeons attached his severed nerves to healthy ones in his chest. Brain impulses are picked up by a transmitter, which are sent through the arm and to the hand. When his brain tells his arm what to do, it’s done in seconds, and he has pseudo feeling through the bionics,” the doctor continued to report medical progress to the family members.

      “But, that’s been the problem all along. Daddy has brain damage,” Faith said, relieved that the cold stainless steel would be insulated instead of ongoing bare intrusion.

Robert Eggleton is the creator of Lacy Dawn Adventures, the exploits of a victim empowered to save the universe, and a project which raises funds to prevent child abuse.  His debut novel, Rarity from Hollow, was published in July, 2006 and was listed by columnist Howard-Johnson as one of the best releases of that year.  He works as a therapist in a children's mental health program. 

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