The Woman Who Fell Off the Edge of the World

This is a work in progress.  It is my intention to post parts of this novel each week.  I hope to get reader feedback and I'd really appreciate constructive criticism.  I'm not adverse to destructive criticism if you're really clever and witty, but if not, see if you could be helpful to me.  Anybody who has alot of advice can email me at:  chickenandsponge@yahoo.com,  subject line: novel.  Thanks, everybody.

The Woman Who Fell Off The Edge of The World

It was the kind of night when I should have been reading Edgar Allen Poe, a dark, stark, and moody night.  Only a sliver of moon hung in the black night sky.  The Hellgate Winds rushed through the University of Montana campus, rattling the bare branches of the trees with its bitter cold, savage breath.  I was plagued with feelings of desperation.

Inside our dorm room on the sixth floor of Jesse Hall, my roommate Rebecca and I were finishing a pizza.  She was studying while she ate, my Violent Femmes cd playing in the background, reflecting my mood and doing nothing to soothe me.  We should have been at the Food Service.  It wasn’t far, but we’d dealt with that wind all day, four days in a row now, and I was in no mood for the wind or the loud, rambunctious bull-shit of my fellow students, the bland, tasteless food, or just about anything else.

Every time a gust of wind hit, the window rattled and I about jumped out of my skin.

“Stop,” Rebecca requested.

“What?” I asked half - belligerently .

“You jump.  You pace.  You run your hands through your hair and then you wring your hands anxiously.  You’re a wreak, Petra.  You need to do something about this situation because you’re eating yourself  alive.  He’s winning, you know.”

“You just said that to piss me off,” I said.  And it did piss me off .  Less because she said it , more because I knew she was right.

“Yes,” she agreed and went back to her book.  Without looking up she said, “I’m always here if you need to talk to someone, but maybe you should call home or an old friend or something.”

“There are no old friends,” I said, feeling a little sorry for myself, wallowing and expanding  my misery just a little.  But I picked up the phone and dialed anyway.

As the phone rang, I prayed that my little sister Kitten would answer and not anyone else.  Please don’t let  Mom pick up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Oh, thank God,” I sighed, feeling deeply relieved.

“Hey, Petra, what’s up?”

A moment of silence.  I called and now I didn’t know what to say.  I looked over at Rebecca, noticing that she kept glancing behind  our curtain  into the dark below. 

“I don’t know,” I finally replied.  “I guess I just felt the need to talk and I’m afraid of getting on my roommate’s nerves.  She didn’t come here to play Dear Abby.”

“What’s she like?”

“Great.  And I’m only saying that because she’s here listening.”  Rebecca smiled without looking up.  “God, Kitten,  I hate this dorm.  Why, oh why, did I have to end up in a freshmen dorm at my age?  If I’d had any idea that moving on campus after the Christmas break was going to land me in here, I’d have…I don’t know.  Guess there weren’t many choices.”

“Well, at least you’re away from that loser Bruce,” Kitten remarked referring to my ex-boyfriend.

“I wish,” I muttered.

“What do you mean?  Oh, Petra, don’t tell me you got back together with him!”

I barked a short bitter  laugh, not a pleasant sound.  “No way.  I got my reprieve after having tried to get away  from him for two years.  No.  It’s just that he has a new girlfriend and she  lives in this building.  Two floors above me.  So we find ourselves riding the elevator together quite often.”
            “Take the stairs,” Kitten said.  She was right.  That would be the smart thing to do and  it would do me a lot of good, but I was damned if Bruce and the new girlfriend were going to get the mistaken notion that they’d run me off.

“So is Bruce the Creep bugging you?”
            “Kitten, his very existence bugs me.”

“Does his girlfriend know who you are?”

“Oh, I think so, judging by the comments she makes about my body when we’re in the elevator or the oinking noises.”

            “Oh, Petey!”   I could imagine my drop-dead gorgeous, sixteen year-old sister crossing and uncrossing her impossibly long legs, fingers twisting the silky straight fall of naturally platinum hair.  I was sure that angelic face was frowning with concern.

“Oh, don’t worry about it.  I don’t.”  I was so weary of Bruce and his infantile antics.  Now he had a twin.

“What does she look like?  I bet she’s not voluptuous, and exotic-looking like you.”

“Kitten, you’re too kind.”  And I meant it.  “His girlfriend is not only plain gross, she’s just plain plain.”  I started to warm up to this subject, and  relished   trashing this girl after all the petty crap they’d been bombarding me with.                             

 “She’s about six inches taller than I am, but instead of being willowy and graceful like you and Julia, she’s one of those really awkward, big-boned girls with a wide ass, heavy thighs, small waist, small boobs, piss-poor posture, and the face of a cow, but lacking the spiritual beauty of a cow”.

“What’s her name?”

I blinked.  “I have no idea.”

“So, then,” Kitten used her cheerleader voice trying to rouse me up, “How’s your love life?”

I rolled my eyes and sighed.  “In the toilet.”

“What about that good-looking guy that you went out with a couple of weeks ago?  What happened with him?”

“He wasn’t that good-looking.”  Not my favorite topic.  In fact, this was my least favorite topic.  My palms began to itch with nerves.

“What was his name again?”

“Steven,” I replied.

“Well?  What happened?”

“He didn’t work out, Kitten.”  He definitely didn’t work out.  I was starting to feel fidgety.  Kitten hadn’t made a response, obviously waiting for me to expand.

“God, my love life is such an embarrassment!  OK.  Let’s see.  Steven Kane is outwardly, superficially very smooth and charming,  reasonably, traditionally attractive.  But that was a pretty thin exterior I was soon to discover.  Kitten, he’s a sociopath and I mean that.  He really is.  I’m not just being dramatic in order to tell a better story.  He’s a scary, scary guy.”

“What happened?”

I hesitated.  I didn’t want to tell her everything.  I didn’t want anyone, even Kitten bugging me to go get counseling.  I person shouldn’t be able to pop into your life for two weeks and turn your life upside down to such an extent that counseling be required.  I just wanted to ‘get over it’ on my own.  “We had a couple of fun dates, but then weird stuff started to happen.  He became disturbingly possessive and paranoid about people looking at me.  Crazy stuff.   One day we were out driving when he got pulled over by the cops.  Steven immediately jumped out of the car to talk to the cops and everyone  knows that’s a big no-no.  You always wait for them to approach the car.  He’s lucky he didn’t get shot because the cop drew his gun.”

“Why did he get out of the car?”

“I’m getting to that.  It was just plain weird.  Before he jumped out he took his license out of his bill fold and placed it under the seat.  Obviously he was hoping that I wouldn’t be able to hear what was being said, but I could.  He gave his father’s name and social security number as his own after he’d fumbled around in his bill fold supposedly looking for his license.  Anyway, he’d been pulled over for no break lights.  He ended up being cited for not having his license on him.  Or I guess his dad did in this case.  So after all this b.s. and Steven acting all phony and polite, the cop wanted me to drive the car.  So I did.”  I took a deep breath.  “Steven insisted that I pull in at this cowboy bar and proceeded to get pig drunk.  Then he got argumentative with me and when this guy a couple of stools down suggested that he lay off of me, Steven walked over and beat the shit out of him.  Beat him unconscious.  The bartender was calling the cops when Steven grabbed my arm and twisted it up behind my back and pushed me out the door.  Then he insisted on driving and I thought he was going to kill us.  And he kept threatening to do so.   It was pretty awful.  I haven’t seen him since then,” I lied.  I hadn’t gone out with him again, and in  a couple of different phone calls I’d told him to stay away.  But I kept seeing him everywhere, behind trees, in doorways.  He had been following me everywhere.

“Has he tried to contact you?”
            “Well, yeah…”
            “Then get a restraining order.”

I sighed.  “I’m trying to avoid that.  And please don’t say anything to Mom or Richard.  They’d insist on one and they’d tell Grandpa.  And even though he’s retired as the District Attorney, he’d contact all his old cronies and pull strings and whether I wanted a restraining order or not, there’d be one and that old fart would be running my life for me.”

There was a long silence.

“Kitten?”

“I’m thinking!  I don’t like this, not one bit.  And don’t think for a minute that I think you’ve told me everything because I highly doubt it.  Maybe you should come home for awhile.”

“Ugh.  No.  I just can’t do it.  Kitten, I was a junior in high school when we moved there.  It’s never felt like my home and I’ve never fit in.”

“How’s school?”

“The one topic I was hoping to avoid altogether.  Don’t know why I called when I don’t like discussing this crap.  Outwardly, school is going just fine.  Not sure what I’m doing or why I’m here, but my grades are good and I’m working steadily toward goals I don’t believe in and graduation is just around the corner.”

“Don’t you want to be a lawyer anymore?  You’ll make a great lawyer!”

“You know, Grandpa is considered a great lawyer.  He really is.  But he’s such a manipulative, cut-throat, immoral prick that I don’t want to have anything to do with him or anything that reminds me of him.”

“You could be a public defender.”

“Maybe.  I doubt it.  I’m probably more like that old bastard than I care to admit.  Anyway, don’t you dare say anything until I get my mess situated myself.  I’ll figure something out.  And if worse comes to worse I’ll come out to the Ranch and make everyone miserable with my misery.  There’s an incentive to get myself in order.  God, anything but the Ranch.”

“Call me in a couple days and update me.  Or I’ll tell  them everything,” Kitten threatened.

“All right, all right.  At the end of the week.”

“I love you, Petra.”

“I love you, too.  Take care.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

I hung up and sighed.  Oh, God, I was starting to sound like my mother, the Queen of Sighs.

Rebecca sat watching me.  “You’re still agitated, but less so.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, settling back into the pile of pillows on my bed, “Kitten’s a really neat person.  Amazing that my mother’s neuroses hasn’t rubbed off on her.  As for me, I hate indecisiveness.  I’m driving myself crazy and I know it.”

“Well, I hate to increase your agitation, but he’s out there again.”

I felt chilled to the core.  I didn’t have to ask her who she meant.  This was an on-going problem.

“Turn out the light,” I said.

            “No!  He might think we were leaving and try to come up.”

            “Right.  But I want to see him.  Where’s he at?”

            “Petra, I don’t think you should.  He might see you.  It just seems risky to me.”

In my brain was a chorus of cursing and self-recrimination, but I only said, “Crap.”

“Right,” Rebecca agreed.  “I’m going  to call the front desk and request that they call Security.”

I looked at my roommate.  She had long, dark hair and pretty, round features, and a no-nonsense look of great intelligence stamped on her face.  Thank God I didn’t have one of the eighteen year-old twits for a roommate.  I’d never have survived.

“Right,” I agreed. “Excuse me for awhile.  I’m going to go throw up and then brush my teeth and shower.”
            Rebecca smiled sympathetically.  “You do that.  I’ll call and monitor the situation.”

I grabbed my towel and shower caddy and escaped before fear and panic could paralyze me.

A silent monologue filled my head as I adjusted the water temperature and stepped into the steaming shower.  I had been such a promising child and was still fairly promising as a high school student, so where had everything gone so wrong?

I slumped to the floor of the shower and let the water just pour over me.  A few short years ago I had felt like I could be or do anything.  Now I felt like I couldn’t do anything.  Why?  Why?

Because, a little voice in my head answered, it all started in high school and it all revolves around boys, now men.  Whether I liked to admit it or not, Bruce had done a number on my self-esteem with his constant put-downs.  He’d been a high school drop-out and was a bitter person because of it.  He delighted in telling me that I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was.  He delighted even more in criticizing my appearance.  Kitten or Julia wouldn’t have given him the time of day, and in fact, absolutely despised him at their first meeting.  But Kitten and Julia had always had boyfriends.  And I hadn’t.  And I guess I really wanted one.

My mother hadn’t helped the situation.  She’d put on the pressure by telling me, repeatedly, about how popular she’d been in school—president of this, secretary of that, cheer leader, good grades, and always asked out by the most popular boys.  And look at Julia.  And look at Kitten.  Kitten had always had the boyfriend of her choosing since kindergarten.  Why couldn’t I be more social and out-going like my sisters?  Could I please try to be a little less prickly and moody and argumentative?

Well, no I couldn’t.  I couldn’t help it.  I wasn’t unattractive, I just didn’t want to pretend to be unintelligent.  High school just wasn’t my time.  I used to hate it at assemblies when the principal would try to convince us that high school was the best time of our lives.  It better not be, I’d think.

One good thing about Bruce, though.  After two years with him, I decided that I’d prefer to be alone and lonely than to have to put up with an asshole like him.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to recognize the next asshole.  Asshole was too mild a label for Steven Kane, though.  I was pissed at myself for being so vulnerable and needy when he appeared on the scene.  Rebecca and I had gone out to a seedy little bar out by the tracks and Steven had seen me from across the room and made a beeline for me.  He bought my drinks until I couldn’t see straight and had walked me to my dorm.

He courted me for a week with flowers, candy, and romantic little notes.  I was giddy.  The sex was passionate and desperate and wherever and whenever we could find a secluded corner---a deserted hallway or stairwell or behind a bush or under an old tree at midnight.  I felt so alive.

Then Steven’s veneer began to crack, and as it fell away I caught a glimpse of something very ugly that lived just beneath the surface.

I hadn’t told Kitten what had happened after he’d dragged me  away from that bar and tried to commit vehicular homicide/ suicide.  He had come to a screeching halt at the side of the road miles up the hill.  It was so dark—the only light provided by a quarter moon and stars, only occasionally peeking through the thick fog that drifted down and lingered on the road, weaving through the trees.

He forced himself into me brutally, and while he pumped his hands squeezed around my neck.  He kept whispering in my ear, “You don’t know who I really am and I can’t take the chance that you’ll figure  it out.  You don’t understand who I really am.  I can’t take the chance.  I loved you, Petra, but you blew it.”

When he pulled out of me, he smirked while he did up his pants.  I threw open the door and ran like hell straight into the woods.

The woods didn’t scare me.  There was nothing in the woods more dangerous than Steven Kane.

I am comfortable in the forest. I’d camped every summer weekend when I was a kid.   And although I didn’t enjoy the whole ranch lifestyle, I loved the forest surrounding the ranch.

So I ran through the thick brush in the dark, lucky in my footing.  I could hear Steven behind me, cursing, taunting me, his voice trailing me as he stumbled in pursuit.  I continued to scramble, feeling my way over logs and roots and rocks, not daring to stop or try to hide.  I began to angle my way downhill, knowing that eventually I’d hit the highway.

I heard Steven’s car a couple of times.  He’d get out and call to me.  He used his placating, little boy voice and it left me cold.

It took me until almost dawn to walk out of the woods to a service station along the highway.  I used the pay phone and called for a cab, then hid again until it finally pulled up.  Though I felt triumphant in my escape, I felt emotionally defeated.  I was doomed to a life of solitude or perhaps no life at all.  Steven Kane would not go away.           

I finished my shower and ignored the younger girls in the bathroom as I left.  They probably thought I was strange and unfriendly, and of course, I was.  I couldn’t relate and I hadn’t the time.

The dorm room was in darkness when I returned and I was afraid that Rebecca had left.  I turned on the light.

“Off!  Hurry!”  Rebecca was in front of the window.  I quickly shut off the light.

“What?  What’s happening?”

“Security just got here and is talking to him.  He glanced up here, after I turned off the light and my desk lamp.”

I pulled on my thermal underwear and joined Rebecca at the window.  Steven’s eyes, while the guard talked to him, kept flicking up at the windows, then over to the  main door way of the dorm. 

“You know,”  Rebecca said, “Steven’s charm is quite frightening.  And amazing.  He can actually turn it on and off at will.  He’d been looking really intense and broody and obsessive until the moment the security van pulled up and then his face and posture transformed before my eyes.  God!  He looked surprised and a little confused.  I could tell he asked a few questions—smiled, made a remark and shrugged his shoulders and the worst of it is, the security guy started to look a little confused and kind of shook his head.  I don’t know, Petra, but that guy is really dangerous, a master manipulator.  He reminds me of Ted Bundy.”

I shivered, remembering the horrible whispering in my ear that night.  “Me, too,” I replied as we continued to watch.  “You know, this is taking an awfully long time for them to get him to leave.”

“Too damned long,” Rebecca agreed.  She moved toward the phone.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Reminding them why I called.”

I sat on the heat register and listened to Rebecca on the phone.

“Hi, this is Becca in #605.  The man that has been stalking my roommate is still outside in the parking lot… yes, I know you called Security.  They seem to be having a nice, chummy little chat.  You need to go out there to remind Security about why they were called…   I can hear Alison right next to you so don’t try to feed me that line—you can too leave your post…Well, let me remind you of something.  Petra’s grandfather was the District Attorney for over 40 years and still has considerable pull. So go get rid of that .creep one way or another…Yes, I am threatening you because that man, Steven Kane, has been extremely threatening to Petra, threatened her life, so I won’t hesitate to threaten you.  He doesn’t belong on this campus.  OK.  So follow up on it…OK. Right… Bye.”

I had cringed when Rebecca used my grandfather’s position to get results.  I usually tried to pretend that I wasn’t related to George Frost.  Looking down into the parking lot at Steven I didn’t really care what it took to get rid of him.  “You’re a wonder,” I said to Rebecca.

“Don’t flatter me, Petra.  You need to go to the cops and tell them everything that’s happened and get a restraining order.  From what you’ve told me, I bet you wouldn’t even have to do that.  I think he must be wanted for other crimes.”

I groaned.  “God!  I don’t know.  He probably is, but he’s a really slippery character.  If they didn’t manage to put him in custody or if he got out on bail, he’d come after me.  And if he isn’t actually wanted on warrants or something, he’d be so furious that I think he would kill me.  And maybe my family.   You don’t understand the ramifications of putting something like this in motion.”

“I’m more worried about the ramifications of you doing nothing.”

We watched the R.A. from the front desk walk over to Steven and the security guys.  He pulled one of the security guys aside and while they were engaged in conversation, Steven looked directly up at out darkened window and pointed his finger at us, nodding his head.  His anger and hatred shone briefly, but intensely in that subtle gesture.

I shivered.  “Oh, crap.”