Lacey listened to the background noise of the television set as she tried desperately to fall asleep. This motel had the kind of TV that used to fall over and crush children, and while the thermostat kept shutting itself off, her legs ached too much for her to keep getting up. The broken mechanism was determined to freeze her out. There was knock at the door.

Lacey dragged her bare feet across the filthy carpet, floor creaking beneath her gait. She unlatched the lock and Nathan entered, carrying a plastic bag of supplies. He was leaner than she remembered, his waist emaciated, his hair grown long and ragged.

He stared at the bruises under her eye and on her arms, the dirt dusting her skin and the scabby bite mark on her shoulder. "You look like shit," she said ironically.

"What happened to you?"

"Bar fight." She faltered and he caught her, but as his arms touched her ribcage, she recoiled. She headed into the bathroom and climbed over the edge of the tub with all her clothes on.

"Lacey?"

Her throbbing headache drowned him out. She could taste the Gatorade he was giving her. Her head cleared just seconds after drinking it.

"Did you bring the Tylenol?" she asked. He handed it to her and she swallowed four pills. She twisted out of her shirt, discarding it blindly. Her ribs were mottled with purple and Nathan was staring. After he helped her undress, she twisted the shower handle and felt a wet trickle by her toes. She twisted it further. The water was cold, but she didn't care. Dirt and blood pooled by the drain. As the water began to run clear, a cloud of steam rose up. Nathan reached in and plugged the drain. Gradually, the water rose to Lacey's neck, shrouding her in blissful warmth.

Nathan lathered up a washcloth with a sliver of hotel soap and rubbed suds over Lacey's arms and shoulders. She took over cleaning herself, splashing up water to rinse the soap out of her eyes. Nathan washed her hair with the shower head, lathering and rinsing as if it were made of tissue paper.

"Thanks for paying for the room. I'll get you back," she said.

"Don't worry about it." He shut off the water and hung the shower head back on its hook. He dipped a second washcloth into the tub and ran warm water over her. "So it's a star," he said.

"Hmm?"

"Your tattoo is a star," he clarified. Nathan folded the washcloth into a triangle and placed it on her forehead.

She'd forgotten that she'd never shown him the tattoo over her heart. "It's an inverted pentacle," she explained. "Flesh over soul. The horns of Satan upright, defiant against God. A big fuck you to Christians."

Nathan observed her scar beneath the ink. "Did you have surgery?"

"My dad did that." She leaned forward, revealing two long gashes of fibrous tissue going down her shoulder blades. "But these were self-inflicted."

Now he could see all of it, the whole story of her suffering. She felt a pang in her chest as his eyes softened and he ran a washcloth over her back. He didn't ask about these, so she went ahead and told him, "Body mutilation. It's supposed to look like fallen angel scars."

"What does it mean?"

"Just another fuck you," she said. She couldn't help but chuckle, but she had to stop when her ribcage throbbed in pain.

"I thought you were a pagan."

"Sure. I mean, I thought it was cool for a while. Hedonism and whatnot. But it's all bullshit," she said, dipping her hair back into the pool of water. She ran her fingers through the dark tendrils, combing them out. "I never actually bought into Satanism either. I just wanted people to know right away that I was a bad person."

"You're not a bad person."

"No? I don't care about anyone or anything."

"That's not true," he said. "You care about people..."

"I don't."

"Not Tom?" he asked. Lacey shook her head. "Not me?"

"I guess there's a part of me that does care about you. A part I thought I'd lost a long time ago."

"You seemed like you were happy with Tom."

"I enjoyed my time with him, but I never really let him in. I haven't let anybody in since... I don't know. Maybe never. Every person I've ever been with has let me down. I lost my virginity when I was thirteen. The news got around, and my dad found out. One day I came home from school and he punched me in the face. I told him I'd never even kissed a boy. 'Cross my heart, hope to die.' So my dad took me into the garage. He plugged in his soldering iron, let it get real hot and then he burned a cross over my heart, all the while asking, 'Cross your heart, hope to die?' it didn't take long for me to break down and tell him the truth. A boy convinced me to lay on his bed with him, and after that, I just couldn't say no."

Lacey dunked her face into the water and rubbed her eyes. She could feel her chest sparking with rage, but she smiled at the memory. "My dad burned every picture of me. Called me a slut. Said he was glad my mom was dead and would never have to know. I ran away after that. God. What were we even talking about? Do you want to fool around?"

"Are you serious?" he said, shaking his head. "You should be in a hospital."

"Come on," she whispered, biting the corner of her lip. "I'm offering."

Nathan averted his eyes. "Look. What happened before was—"

"It was fun."

"It was a one-time thing," he said, his tone firm.

"Right. You like innocent girls? I can be innocent."

"No. And I really don't want to start thinking about..."

"Alex?"

He turned away from her.

"Nathan," she said, placing her hand on his back. "You're already thinking about her."

"I don't like innocent girls. I loved Alex but I never wanted to be with her. And after Mahsa..."

"Who was that? Your girlfriend?"

"No. She was just this girl who worked at a bakery."

"You liked her?"

"No. I mean. I liked her in general. She was nice. My team would go to the bakery in the early mornings after our patrols. We went there a lot and over time, the family came to trust us. Mahsa was trying to learn English, and I taught her how to say everything that she was selling. Flat bread. Pastry. Sweet bread. The guys liked flirting with her. They thought it was funny to call her cream roll and liked to tease her father without him knowing, pretending to be haggling over an order of pastries for the guys back on base while they had this ongoing joke that they were haggling over the girl. And one night, we saw a vehicle out after curfew, pulled them over to ask what they were doing out. We recognized one of Mahsa's brothers in the back of the car. He rolled down his window and threw an ankle biter at Steiner. It missed him and hit our translator, took off his legs. The car drove away as the rest of us scrambled to save Omid. We had him evacuated but he didn't make it. It was a waste, such a god damn waste. Everybody was pissed about it. Omid didn't even carry a weapon. A few days later, before it got light outside, we went to the bakery to confront the dude's family. Mahsa was there alone. I don't remember whose idea it was, but as Steiner and I waited with the Humvee, the others came pulling her along by the arm. I watched her nightmare unfold. Now it's my nightmare every night." Nathan's voice trailed off as his left hand clenched into a fist.

"What happened?"

"It was a mess, Lacey. Just trust me on this. You don't want to know what happened to Mahsa."

"You hurt her?"

"I didn't. But I didn't stop them either. They gave me shit for not joining in, called me a dickless little cunt. I didn't the stomach for that kind of thing, but I still let them do it. And I helped cover it up. They wanted to leave her in front of the bakery for the family to find. They wanted them to have to honor kill her themselves. But Steiner said we should kill her or there would be an investigation. They cast a vote. I didn't say anything. But I helped bury her on the side of the road. We were all cursed after that. Few days later we hit the IED. All my friends died, either there or when they came back. And I lost my leg for keeping quiet... You know what's really crazy? We went to that bakery so many times after patrols, and now I can't for the life of me remember the name of it."

    Lacey touched his arm. Her pruned fingers dribbled suds down his wrists. She leaned out of the bath to hold him in an embrace as he went catatonic, staring at the bathroom tiles.

    "It's over now," she whispered, stroking his hair. "There's nothing you can do about it now."

"Yeah," he said.

Lacey grabbed a towel from the rack above the shower and wrapped it around herself. She wrung out her hair and Nathan helped her into the Pink Floyd T-shirt and flannel pants he'd brought.

He got her under the sheets in bed and set the plastic bag of supplies in her lap. It had all the painkillers, cigarettes and snacks she'd requested over the phone. Lacey took an apple from the bag, rubbed it clean on the sheets and starting eating. After two bites, she started feeling chilly again. She curled up into a ball, pulling the blankets over her shoulders.

"Fucking heat," she whispered. "Keeps turning off." Nathan got up and adjusted the thermostat. Lacey closed her eyes and listened as he fixed things around the hotel room, cleaning up garbage and finding more blankets in the closet. He draped them over her and touched her forehead with the back of his hand. He checked her temperature at her throat and face.

"You're on fire." There was still a distant sorrow in his eyes.

Lacey took his hand and pulled it close to her heart. "Let me see your scars."

She rolled up his sleeve and ran her fingers over the mangled flesh on his arm. She kissed every speckle and deep-set zigzag.

"Do you want to try DMT with me?" she asked him.

"Probably a bad idea."

"It might help you make sense of the world. I'll get it ready."

She removed a dime bag from her pants on the floor and prepared the crystals in a glass pipe. "You don't have to if you don't want," she said, offering him an out.

"No. I'll try it."

Lacey nodded. She held the glass to Nathan's lips as she ignited the bowl. "Breathe deep, my love. I'll see you at the end of your journey."

Nathan took the foul-tasting smoke into his body, breathing in until his brain felt like a lung expanding and transcending his reality.

__________
Music: Muse "City of Delusion"