Pulp Friction I

“Morning, Anya,” Blue hardly paused as she jumped from the last stair and came face-to-face with her mother and the maid. Marian sat proudly at the end of the table, a plate of fruit half-massacred in front of her, breast implants bursting from the front of her electric blue cocktail dress. Anya hovered nervously. The dining table had been pushed back to the center of the room. The decorative furniture moved back to the basement. No remnants remained from the previous night—aside from the dull throb of her groin and the fingerprint bruising to her thighs she had no choice but to wear jeans to hide.

Summer thus far had been kind. The days were bright but cold. She spent the mornings in bed relishing the fact she’d never again go to school if she so desired. She’d thrown out the pleated skirt uniform the day she’d graduated, deciding never again to appeal so unwillingly to the male gaze. Loved the fact she could wear whatever she wanted.

Clad in a half see-through brown blouse with her bra peeking through, her mother’s disapproving glare gratified her in ways her approval could never. Sinking to her seat eagerly, faced with a plate full of bagels so golden she found herself all but drooling over the tablecloth, she succeeded in banishing last night's rendezvous from her thoughts—if only for a moment.

She’d felt the lips of the stranger trailing up and down her neck as she tossed and turned in her mussed sheets. His hands engulfing her so greedily. His scent wrapping around her—ejaculate and a crisp, earthy cologne. And she’d be lying through her teeth if she said she hadn’t imagined being tucked into his chest as she dozed off quietly. Blue reached for a bagel.

Just as quickly, her mother snapped, “Don’t eat too much, we’re expecting Richard and your father any minute now,” and Blue had never wished that she’d stayed in bed more in her life. Losing her appetite rather quickly, she returned her breakfast to its serving plate. It was the first time she’d done what she was told in quite some time.

She’d been reminded of her nightmare about Richard from that night.

Anya, the maid, had been her mother. She and her father were on speaking terms again, something that hadn’t been the case since she was thirteen and begging for someone to stand up to Marian. Richard had locked them all away in some house she hadn’t recognized as her own. Slowly, he murdered them all. When Blue awoke, she somehow preferred the fever dream to thoughts of being ravished on the balcony. Her stomach began to turn.

“Today is the perfect time to thank Richard for your present—he bought you the loveliest watch,” staring back at her mother, she couldn’t believe—out of everything totally implausible—that the woman had the audacity to open her gifts for her. Somehow, it trumped even the fact that she was forcing a fully grown man on their barely legal only child.

Blue gave her mother a desperate and deep stare, eyebrows furrowed, lips in a delicate frown. It was the "look at me, I'm Blue, pat me" stare of begging that could soften all hearts but one—her mother’s. “Mom, you can't force Robert on me, there's no chemistry,"

"Richard, and you’re not getting any younger, Blue—Richard is about to come into a lot of money we’re lucky he’s taken such an interest in you,” The woman paused the butchering of her grapefruit breakfast to finally meet the warm blue gaze of her daughter. Somehow, her stare yet hardened. “Don’t give me that look, it’s time for you to grow up.” Not even the juice from her knife dripping onto the hem of her mother’s dress could bring a smile to the teenager’s face as she sat, slowly accepting such a dreadful fate.

In the span of mere seconds, Marian flew from her seat in a huff, threw her napkin to the table, and began to stomp upstairs. Though Blue was far too lost in her own thoughts to take any pleasure in the sight.

“Anya?” The girl hung her head solemnly in her hands.

“Miss Pierce,” suddenly, the woman bustled to her side. Thoughts of her dream still lingering, she wondered if she’d have degraded herself to a complete stranger as she had on the balcony had Anya been her mother. But dismissed the thought immediately. Anya had raised her, after all.

“Can I get some coffee, please? Maybe a bit of whiskey in it?” The larger woman watched the teen rub her eyes wearily, hair settling in tangles around her shoulders, and did her best to ignore the blossoming purple bruise below her ear just as she had the soiled underwear she was sure had been stained by semen that morning. And though she wanted to object and confront the girl who so clearly had seen better days, Anya simply wrung her hands, dark hair slipping slightly from its restraints, and disappeared into the kitchen.

Blue did little more than stare at her own reflection in the empty plate in front of her.

Only when Anya re-emerged with a teacup of coffee—sans milk—and Marian took the very same seat at the end of the table did she finally look up. This time, the woman wore a plum-colored dress, far more modest on the chest, her hair secured in a neat bun. And as Blue glanced towards the woman, she couldn’t help but feel she was staring straight into a mirror, gazing upon the horrid, twisted future she faced. She stared straight back into her plate.

"I knew the pair of you would still be eating," Quickly, Blue came to realize one thing was worse than facing Marian before twelve; Bradley Pierce.

The name was often misleading. It was the name of a party-boy or the thirty-eight-year-old leader of a college fraternity with time spent so often getting wasted he was balls deep in student debt from all the times he'd had to repeat the course. It was strange, never had Blue met a man who was such a perfect image of Toby Flenderson in all regards.

"We're only still eating because Blue spends half of her life in bed and only emerges for meals—late, may I add," For once in her life, Blue hadn’t a disrespectful quip to hurl at her mother. Instead, she stared into her own lap, head in her hands, and willed away the touch that had pinned her against the railing and lingered so dreadfully.

When the chair beside her slid out and a man spared a glance towards the woman out of the corner of his eye, she resolved to burp in what she could only assume was Richard’s face, yet somehow managed not to. Unbuttoning the single button of his blazer, elbow brushing her shoulder and knee bumping hers, Blue sank further and further into the self-hatred she’d become rather familiar with.

“And who are you? I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure…” stiffly, Marian extended an arm across the table. Finally, Blue’s interest was piqued.

Reluctantly, she looked up, meeting the eyes of Richard who offered a firm, greeting smile from across the table. Quickly, she glanced to her side—and wished she hadn’t.

“Vincent,”