The Ninth Step Read Online Free PDF Page B

Mitzi out into the fenced backyard, then stumbled into the kitchen, flipped on the television (she needed other voices to compete with the ugly ones in her head), and put coffee on to brew. She opened the refrigerator and grabbed a liter bottle of water. She drank it down and tossed the empty in the trash.
    Helen let Mitzi back in, thanking God that Pumpkin Head had at least done a good job housetraining her, then made her way to the bathroom and sat for a long time until she finally urinated. She looked at her output, a dark malodorous yellow, before flushing it away. She was dehydrated. But that was normal. The water would be working its way though her body momentarily. Followed soon after by the cure. Helen stood staring at the commode for no real reason, and once the reservoir tank had refilled itself, the water cut off and she could once again hear the bright cheery voices of the morning news anchors nattering on in the kitchen. Helen glanced at herself in the mirror, notwanting to see her own hollow eyes, but her breast hurt and she needed to look. She lifted her T-shirt and saw a bite mark. She felt shame. Teeth marks on her breast. Disturbing, indeed, but she had awoken to worse. She could almost remember. Something about dancing. Something about that damn fog machine. Mr. Slick-Back. She remembered him. But enough with the reminiscing. Her entire body hurt. It ached. Not wanting to, Helen disrobed completely and examined herself.
    The self-inspection did not reveal additional damage. Externally, Helen was still quite attractive—her breasts sagged only a little; her ass, while bigger than in the past, had not succumbed to gravity and was plump in a pleasingly feminine way; and the broken capillaries that formed a haphazard Etch A Sketch across her nose and cheeks were easily concealed with modest amounts of makeup. The shell, the façade, was fine. Unfortunately, she was rotting from the inside out. Like the shiny apple that concealed the corruption of the worm deep inside. It occurred to her hungover mind that she was the perfect hybrid of Doctor Dolittle and Dorian Gray.
    Her body emitted certain odors at inopportune times. On occasion, her liver was swollen and tender when palpated, but this faded and flared seemingly without relation to her current intake. She sometimes spit up a thin, watery, bile-like liquid streaked with blood. The blood was particularly worrisome, and she attributed it to either a stomach ulcer or an inflamed esophagus—both conditions attributable to chronic alcohol abuse. She knew that it was not uncommon for profound alcoholics to die of esophageal hemorrhage, and she thought of thiswhenever she spit up the smeary red liquid. Her legs were often sore and stiff. It was hard to even cross them at times. She suspected it was incipient nerve damage. The beginnings of alcoholic neuropathy.
    Quitting, however, was not an option. It was not even a remote thought. A cloud on the horizon. She would live or die on her own terms. Why torture yourself with an unwinnable internal struggle? She didn’t necessarily
embrace
who she was, but she certainly accepted it. Sometimes, in the right frame of mind (drunk), she even took pride in it. In fact, Helen had her own personal version of the old U.S. Army recruitment slogan: she drank more before nine a.m. than most people drank all day. Speaking of which, her hands were starting to twitch. Tremor. She needed the cure.
    Molly and Agnes, tails like masts, zigged and zagged across the kitchen floor when they heard her popping the metal food cans open. Helen looked at Mitzi. “Will Nine Lives work for you?”
    The morning news rattled on. Video footage of a smashed white Toyota Camry being hooked up to a tow truck caught her attention. “—did not survive the accident. Police are asking that anyone with knowledge of the hit-and-run collision to contact them.”
    A piece of last night flashed through Helen’s mind. Just a shard of memory. Of laughter.