Broken Truths

(You did it, didn’t you!) The little voice kept screaming in her head. She couldn’t get it to shut up.

“I - I don’t know what your talking about, John.”

(Bitch!) “You know what you did, Veronica. Now admit it!” John grabbed her chin, forcing her to look up at him. “You slept with Dante!”

(You did, didn’t you Veronica? Listen to your Boyfriend Bud Johnny Boy. Yeah, you did it. Friday night, remember? No? What about the -)

John’s demanding dark undertone behind gritted teeth cut into her thoughts again. “You will tell me Veronica baby…won’t you?”

Tears were on the tips of Veronica’s mascara eyelashes; any minute little black creeks would trickle down her face. Shaking off John’s grip on her chin she squealed:

“I have to go!” awkwardly, taking her purse that was hanging by the strap on the hat stand and went bowling out of the front door, knocking over the plants that were pins on the sides of the big stone staircase with her feet in her rush.

Veronica swung the door back behind her, which slammed right into her boyfriend’s nose. She heard his cry of anguish as her legs rushed her out onto the bucketing pavement, away from the bellowing demon that had taken over her lover.

Taking her cell phone out of her black purse, Veronica quickly ran her fingers over the yellow cab company’s numbers. The fright of the dark night, save only the illuminated light of the lampposts that got smaller and smaller down the cobblestone street, ran to embrace her. She turned to look back up that stairway to hell.

(Bitch! Liar! Cow!) John only took a few seconds to recover from his surprise blow on his noggin, before banging the front door outwards again, hyperventilating with sweat coming down off his forehead in rivers. Or was it rain? Veronica couldn’t tell.

“I know what you did, Veronica! You hear me? I know!” Veronica knew her Boyfriend Johnny Boy couldn’t hurt her. He just stood there, on the top stair to his own filthy apartment, like the phantom of the opera, fists clenching and unclenching in time with his heavy asthmatic breathing.

Veronica simply looked back up at him, her big, round, cute brown eyes blinking from the rain rolling down her face, plastering the hair that wasn’t pulled back to her forehead. The little accusing voice, like the voice of an annoying little brother trying to scare you, came back from the gray matter.
(You’re scared of him, aren’t you? Veronica? Scared as all hell, aren’t you? Because you did it, didn’t you Veronica!)

“Don’t be stupid.” She whispered into the rain flatly, the little rain drops on her bottom lip leaping from her like fleeing deer from a gunshot in the woods. This seemed to silence the little brat in the back of her head.

Veronica put the mobile to her ear and arranged for a cab to be brought to 53rd street, Carrington. John stared at her defiance, stunned and bewildered. When she snapped up the cell phone and put it back in her soaking black purse, he yelled at her, leaning down at her from the stair, as if afraid to take another step.

“How can you! After all that – that – How can you!” His anger was taking over his speech, turning it into cracked little syllables jumping out of the back of his throat, eager to insult her. But his brain wouldn’t think anything remotely sensible to say.

John instead fell back and slid down the front door, crying, saliva bubbles forming on his lips. He cried, his little jumpy sobs echoing, as if to mean something to her, in the bucketing rain.

His broken sentences tried to pierce his loud sobs like a broken record with a jammed repeat button.

“We were meant - Why - I mean - I was - You were – How?”

The figure that was his girlfriend began to swim out of focus, as the tears took over his vision. He cried harder at this, losing his girlfriend to the ever-infinite emotion he had for her, being illustrated all over his face and in his shaking hands that lay limp on the stone stair.

The inevitable lights appeared in the dark abyss, slowly growing bigger and bigger. The cab. Veronica’s one ticket out of this hellhole. She wouldn’t miss this for the world. A hand dripping with rain waved lights down, which had now revealed to be headlights to a yellow car, with a triangle on the roof, reading TAXI each of the triangle’s sides visible, lighted a ghostly yellow in the fake mist created by the millions of raindrops echoing around her.

John saw the dark shape of a cab form through the haze of tears, and reached for it. This was his last moment he had to save Veronica. His hand faltered, then lowered back to its limp state next to his own sobbing, sopping wet, humiliated frame tangled up against the door. He had missed the moment. His cries broke out again into the pitch-black darkness, another miserable, high-pitched, choking octave higher.

Veronica stepped onto the cab, sitting in the leather gray seat, making a mess, water pillowing her bottom in the seat. The cab driver leaned around to her from the front driver’s seat.

“Where to ma’am?”

Her miserable cute brown eyes stared right back into his tired blue eyes.

“Anywhere but here.”

His smile faltered, in the same way as John’s hand reaching out for her.

“Uhm…all right. It’s going to cost you big though, ma’am.” The cab slowly backed out, before lumbering away from the sad scene. As the cab drew onwards, going nowhere in particular, the little voice came back to her from its slumber on one of her craniums. (Veronica, did you do it?) Her lips formed into a smile, as if to give it an answer. (Did you, Veronica?) The smile grew larger. (Did you? Hello? Veronica?)

The voice’s questions that would never be answered, although yelling now, could not be heard to her, both in her ears and her mind. (DID YOU?) Another voice suddenly appeared in her head, with no thought from her conscious mind. It said only two words, which would come to haunt Veronica to her grave.

(…Did she?)