Head

My name is Brayley Cadence Sanderson and I am not going to die like this. My name is Brayley-girl and I am not going to die like this. I am absolutely not going to let this happen at the hands of some random fucking rapist wetback when all I was literally trying to do was get some fucking Subway and go to bed. I should have gone out with my friends instead of doing the responsible thing and deciding to stay in and study or whatever. Instead I’m in this literal walking stereotype’s truck, about to become a statistic. I mean, it’s a fucking Toyota Tacoma for fuck’s sake, complete with a leaf blower in the back and an actual rosary swinging from the rear view. 

This guy, I mean, look at him. He’s probably not even 5′8. I work out. If he didn’t have that fucking gun, I might have been able to fight him off. I definitely should have run. Instead he was all: “Geet the fuck in, miss,” and I did it. I got the fuck in his truck like a retard and now they’re going to find me in a barrel somewhere with my legs folded over my shoulders.

Brayley Sanderson’s brain chattered and spiraled as the man driving the small pickup grimaced and adjusted his finger against the trigger of his pistol. The gun was resting in his lap with the dangerous end pointed directly at the girl. She was done crying for the moment and was looking at her hands, folded in her own lap. He was surprised she had complied so quickly. He had been preparing himself for a struggle or at least a chase but this huerca had taken one look at his glock and slid right into the passenger side of his truck like they were dating.

Daniel Santiago Calaca didn’t quite know what kind of devil had gotten into him that Thursday night in late April but he did know that he was sick to death of seeing these untouchable women parade around carelessly on their daddy’s dimes while he had to bust his hump seven days a week washing dishes and blowing leaves around and going home to a one bedroom apartment he shared with two other men just like him. Well, not just like him. Ignacio, for example, was devout in his faith and sent a much greater portion of his paychecks back home than Daniel did. Nacho left little cards depicting the Blessed Virgin all over the apartment, even in the bathroom, which Daniel found bizarre and off-putting. The other man, Enrique, was a bit easier to relate to but he had an underlying hardness to him that neither Daniel nor Nacho could quite match. Privately, they agreed that Enrique was probably ex-cartel and was looking to get his life together. Neither man ever asked, however, and Enrique never brought it up.

Daniel wondered what Enrique would think of what he was currently doing. He didn’t wonder about Nacho, with his prayer cards and sad-eyed gringo-looking Jesus candles. Daniel was pretty sure Enrique had killed people somewhere in his past, possibly women, but Daniel had never done anything remotely like this before. He had, however, gone over this current scenario in his fantasies many times. It generally went like this: Pick one of the snotty-looking girls he always saw around the college campus where he did some of his landscaping work. Make her blonde. Make her wear those athletic shorts with a white stripe up the side. Force her into his pickup. Drive her out to some secluded area. Bruise her pretty face. Make her have sex with him at the point of the gun he bought in the parking lot of the indoor swap meet. The fantasies always ended around this point, however and Daniel wasn’t quite sure how he was going to resolve the real-life version of his secret plan. Actually, he was in a real pickle, the more he thought about it. He wasn’t even aroused any more and he wasn’t sure what to do about it. He glanced at the girl again.

She was as close to perfect then he had any right to wish for, missing only the white stripe on her tight shorts. Her long blonde hair was hanging in a curtain between them, obscuring her tear-stained face. Images came to him, one after another. The face of her mother, who he imagined as an older version of the girl, gray-haired but still hot. The face of his mother, soft and lined, telling him to never eat the first tortilla from the stack or he would become a gossip like a woman. Himself, in the tiny apartment bathroom, flipping a Virgin of Guadalupe card over so he could masturbate free of her placid consideration. Enrique, sipping beer on their apartment patio, making the tattoo of Santa Muerte at his throat jump with every swallow. The rosary swung from Daniel’s rear mirror like a pendulum, far away, then close enough to kiss. He removed his finger from the trigger and began to slow down the car. They were about ten miles out of the city. Yellow hills surrounded them and the moon hung in the sky like a fingernail. Brayley shifted in the seat.

Brayley, Brayley. My name. I love my stupid name. I love my stupid life. I don’t want to die. My name is Brayley. I’m not going to let this fucking beaner put his dick in me. I’m not going to be on the news. I am going to go home and go to bed and then get up and go to class. This is not happening. I fully deny it.

Brayley peered at Daniel through her hair. He still held the gun in his lap and it was still pointed at her but something was different. It took her a moment to realize what it was. When she did, her heart felt like it was going to explode. His finger was off the trigger. She shifted her gaze to the passenger side window without moving her head. She couldn’t see much but she knew they had to be in the hills somewhere, from the lack of light and the length of time they had been driving. When Daniel started to slow the truck down, she almost screamed but caught herself. She knew it was time to draw her last card from the deck.

She felt her legs, made sturdy by years of track and volleyball, tense up against the floorboard of the truck. Daniel Calaca turned to her and opened his mouth to say something as he took his foot from the gas. Brayley moved to face him and flung her full weight against his body with all of her strength. He shouted wordlessly as she grabbed the steering wheel with her right hand and arched it to the left as far as it would go. The small truck spun around into the other lane, completely facing the opposite direction, back toward the city. Daniel lost track of the gun and was focused on correcting the truck’s trajectory when Brayley bit him hard in the stomach. Daniel felt his mind detaching from reality as he watched Brayley’s hand jerk the steering wheel blindly as she attempted to bite through the small belly he was beginning to develop. His last sane act was to grab that golden blonde hair and rip the girl’s head from his midsection as the truck’s back tires fishtailed into a soft patch in the shoulder of the road and the entire vehicle began to flip.

When Brayley came to, she was lying on her back on the ceiling of the truck’s cab with her legs and most of her torso sticking out of the shattered passenger side window. She seemed to ache in a thousand places at once and her eyes were full of blood. She slowly raised her hand to her brow. Unbelievably, an entire section of her forehead seemed to be hanging from her skull in a flap. She screamed in pain as she tried to flatten the skin back into the shape it was supposed to be. She wasn’t quite sure where she was or what exactly happened. She began to figure that she had wrecked her car during some careless night out. But was this her car? There were only two seats. Brayley began to use her legs to slowly scoot out of the passenger side window. The pain was incredible but she made herself do it. She found she could only move inches at a time before having to rest, through the scent of gasoline was overwhelming and terrifying. The movement slowly pushed her hooded sweatshirt up toward her face and the cool night air raised goosebumps on her exposed stomach. As she moved, her right hand found an object. She fondled it mindlessly as she scooted, moving her fingers down its length and around the lip of a circular opening. Gun. She was touching the barrel of a gun. The situation she was in came back to her in a bolt that rocked her entire body. She sucked in air and used an almost inhuman burst of strength to flip over onto her belly. Daniel Santiago Calaca hung upside-down by his seat belt in front of her. His arms dangled limply on either side of his head and his hands rested on the ceiling of the truck, wrists loosely bent. His face was dripping with blood and blood pooled beneath him. As Brayley watched, Daniel’s eyes opened. They rolled white like the eyes of a whale before they settled on her. She swung the gun around her broken body and pointed it at him.

"Mamá,” Daniel said. ”Mamá, lo siento. Rompí el portón y los perros andan sueltos.”

“FUCK!” Brayley shrieked and squeezed the trigger with her eyes closed. The shot was deafening. When she opened her eyes again she saw that Daniel was still looking at her. He was smiling beatifically and his teeth were pink with blood.

”No te preocupes mamá. Dejaré la comida afuera. Ellos volverán,” he said and closed his eyes.

“FUCK FUCK FUCK!” Brayley unloaded the magazine of Daniel’s gun into the small space. Two of the bullets broke his face open and he died. Brayley passed out and did not wake up again until she was in the hospital.

It was like emerging from the deepest possible dream. Brayley Sanderson could sense the various pieces of her life spread out before her like a jigsaw puzzle just shaken from the box. She recognized the faces of her friends and family and she remembered certain life details but they didn’t seem connected. For example, she remembered that there was an important exam coming up but she had no idea where it was or what she was supposed to do about it. When she saw the face of her boyfriend, Brendan, she could only remember the last fight they had; a major blow-up that had lasted for hours and seemed to start from a comment about her style of driving. She seemed to remember being called a cunt. She scowled as he gently held her hand and said he would never leave her, that he was so so sorry. After he left she let her hand drift up to her face and felt the places where her jaw was broken and where they had sewn her forehead back together with huge Halloween stitches.

The police came to talk to her, of course. They sent a female detective first. She was at least ten years older than Brayley and wore tight khaki pants that strained against the force of her sturdy looking body. Her badge dangled from a black leather string looped around her thick neck. Its metal six-pointed star caught the hospital lighting and dazzled Brayley’s sensitive eyes. She tried to ask the detective if she was a lesbian but it came out garbled.

“What’s that honey? You want the light on? It is on, dear,” the lesbian detective said kindly. She pulled a chair up next to Brayley’s bed and scooted in. She smelled overwhelmingly of vanilla. “Now. My name is Detective Tara Koebel and I’m here to ask you some questions about what happened the other night. Do you think you’re up for that?” Brayley tried to think of what the detective could possibly be talking about. She didn’t remember saying yes or even nodding but the detective pressed on. “Did you know Mr. Calaca prior to your abduction? Had you seen him around?” Brayley suddenly remembered a rosary, swinging toward her face and then away. She pulled her dry lips apart and spoke clearly:

“No.”

“Is it accurate to say he forced you into the truck?”

“He...had a guh. A gun.”

“Did he speak to you while you were in the truck together?”

“Tol’ me to shut up.”

“Did he say where he was taking you?”

“Was gonna. Rape me.”

“Well, honey, we think so too, rape or worse. Mr Calaca had a couple of harassment complaints filed against him with the campus police. I guess it was only a matter of time.”

“Got real lucky,” Brayley said. The lesbian detective looked at her a long time, her deep set eyes fluttering over Brayley’s broken face.

“Sure, honey. So can you tell me about the crash? How did that happen? How did you end up with the gun?” Detective Tara Koebel scooted her chair even closer and used her left hand to surreptitiously remove her overly-tight trousers from the crack of her crotch. Brayley closed her eyes and thought of the head of Danial Calaca, hanging there in his ruined vehicle, blood running down his face, mouth stretching into an improbable smile. She remembered the heavy, greasy feeling of the gun in her hand and the sound of the first shot but she stopped herself from thinking of the ruined split of his head.

“Head,” said Brayley. “His head.” She found she could not open her eyes again for some time.