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Judy Poovey was disturbingly numb. The objects around her in her room didn’t seem real, neither did the halls of Hampden. People passed through her, laughing and smelling of marijuana, seemingly not seeing her crawling around the corners wishing she could join them but unable to bear being around anyone else; Hell, even drugs didn’t seem to do the trick anymore. She willed her eyes to focus on the little details of the world: the battered books a brunette girl struggled to keep between her arms, the pack of Chesterfield hanging from the pocket of denim jeans, the clicks and the tings from a typewriter down the hall. Nothing seemed to be in the same realm as her, her hand would surely go through her sewing machine if she attempted to touch it.
She felt like a ghost, observing the carnal dimension around her like she didn’t belong to it, not anymore. Maybe she would find her dry purple corpse four months from now, discussing the best types of brocade for Juliet’s costume with the vermin who nipped at her cheeks. Judy reckoned it could well just be the existential crisis of her twenties knocking on the door, asking to come in to hide from the cold outside. Tomorrow, she would be back to Earth. Nevertheless, she needed to feel something, she needed to get away from that apathetic purgatory someone decided she would be a part of ever so suddenly.
So, unable to sleep, that was how she found herself upstate, shivering in the wretched New England pre-snowfall wind and hoping a miserable bottle of cheap whiskey would keep her from dying of hypothermia. It wouldn't even be tragically comical, to find a 20-something-year-old frozen to death beside the car she unknowingly borrowed from a colleague, cigarette half-smoked between her cold fingers, donning chipped burgundy nail polish. If she was going to die, it would be either gracefully, like a self-sacrificial suicide for the nation, or from being asphyxiated in a great molasses flood. Not something as ordinary as not having enough sweaters like the typical Californian.
For what seemed like some good minutes—how many? she couldn’t place, bless the divine fruit of the holy alcohol tree—, she debated whether walking into the neighboring woods would look like a plea to end her suffering when she really just wished to heat up her tingling legs. Fuck it, she wasn't so fucked up she wouldn't remember her way back now, was she? Off to the woods Little Red Riding Hood went!
The twigs breaking under her feet sounded like music to her semi-drunken ear, as she stepped and jumped all over the rotting leaves like a child. She had forgotten the sounds of a dead forest, in the middle of the night, only foliage and the moonlight in between the naked branches to hang around with her. Looking up at the moon revolutionized her thoughts as if she had never seen such a magnificent and curiously bright object up in the sky. She forgot her earlier trance, feeling alive in the middle of the woodland. Perhaps the forest was in the same dimension as she was, and by entering it she had finally felt like she belonged where her feet were stepping.
She could hear a stream somewhere, delicious gurgling water hitting rounded rocks, coolly flowing in between them, and taking debris elsewhere. How odd, she expected the banks of rivers to be laden with white ice by that time in the month, as she felt as if her hands were beginning to form little icy stalactites. Judy followed the creek's ballad, willing it to sing louder and louder, until she found a watercourse and tagged along its path, running against the flow.
After a few minutes, she heard something shuffling in the middle of the trees, fast feet treading along the leaves. She halted in her place, focusing on the sound of the creature galloping through the forest. It had light and nimble footsteps, gradually becoming slower and slower until they stopped. Judy materialized a beautiful deer in her mind, imagining its delicate legs stepping closer to the river and bending down to drink the water of the mountains. She began walking again to observe such a subtle living form.
The closer she got to the sounds of it, the more it seemed to run away, until she was sprinting after the poor thing and she didn't even know where her feet were taking her, drawn to an invisible concept. At last, they reached a clearing illuminated by moonbeams, where the stream met a small cascade surrounded by somber boulders.
Judy saw the shadow of a figure, strolling in the middle of the clearing. She squinted her eyes. It wasn't a deer. It was a girl.
She couldn't see her face. The girl walked sloppily, raising her arms to the moon, twisting like a child, and talking to herself. Eventually, she seemed to regain consciousness and resumed sprinting, until she looked back and realized no one was following her, still completely unaware of Judy's presence at the end of the clearing. The girl sat at one of the rocks in the stream, drenching the long, white dress she was wearing.
Something at the back of Judy's head told her not to approach the maddened girl, surely someone who spends their Thursday night running through a forest barefoot in a dress mid-winter should be admitted to a psych ward immediately, no questions asked. But then again, Judy was also walking around in the same woods slightly drunk, so perhaps she had only stumbled upon the meeting place of somewhat unhinged women via a primal call within her, leading her there. A mysterious familiarity summoned Judy to the girl, as if they both belonged.
The girl didn't notice Judy until she stood almost beside her, startling the lunatic in a white dress when she kicked a pebble. Judy couldn't have noticed from afar, but close to the girl she could see her hair dirtied up in what looked like clogged blood, dark stains running over her shivering arms and hands, while the cloth around her small body remained purely pale, like a little lonely ghost, a soul lost in between worlds. After all, for one moment, the notion that they were both spirits trapped in an invisible realm didn’t seem all that hysterical then.
When she looked up, her eyes widened, truly as a deer caught in the headlights, she opened a creepily wide grin and got on her knees, raising her bloodied arms to the sky.
"Kiklískô Diónyson ærívromon, evastíra, prôtógonon, diphií, trígonon, vakheion ánakta," she whispered happily, "klýthi, mákar phônís, idýs d' æpípnefson æniís, evmænǽs ítor ǽkhôn, sýn evzóhnisi tithínais!"
With every word spoken, Judy considered stepping back and running away as fast as she could, leaving the horrifying figure to be creepy on its own, but she couldn't move her legs, her feet were stuck to the frozen ground as if the girl had bewitched her in her chants, paralyzing Judy in order to eat her flesh afterwards.
After a while, Judy realized why the girl hadn’t seemed all that strange, why she felt like she had seen that delicate face before. That was, indeed, Camilla, the odd Classics student she wished to avoid at all costs, the one everyone was obsessed with, as if her virginal face and unattainable attention had a specific charm men loved to long for and sleep with, mark it off on their mental fuck list, the number one trophy of hard-level fucks.
Judy felt a new emotion, anger, rise to her neck and heat up her psyche. Finally, something to focus on.
She didn't know what the fuck was Camilla doing in the middle of nowhere and she least of all cared if the girl were to fall dead the next morning, all she wanted was to get away from that scene, never look into that face again. But her body was unwilling to, her mind saying she couldn't possibly leave the wretch to rot here, drugged out of her mind and already freezing to death. Never had Judy hated herself so much as that moment.
"Camilla? Are you alright?" She touched her bare shoulder.
Camilla's smile fell. Her face contorted in confusion, looking around as if she had woken up. She glanced up at Judy again with frightened eyes. Her lips were blue, chapped, and trembling in the wind.
"For fuck's sake," Judy said under her breath as she went through a mental 'fuck it' while reaching under Camilla's arm to lift her. "Come on, you idiot."
Judy took off her jacket and placed it over Camilla, who only disassociated with a blank face. Hoisting the slender girl and hooking her arm around her shoulder, they walked alongside the stream. Judy cursed herself mentally as the base of Camilla's freezing wet dress clammed around her ankles. She could smell the alcohol and the blood emanating from her. After some time, when she could already feel the whiskey withdrawing out of her mind, she found the headlights of her car through the trees, illuminating the path ever so politely for her.
She placed Camilla on the passenger seat, unenthusiastic about having to clean all of the mess afterwards. Driving back to Hampden, her eyes would occasionally drift to the sleeping girl, angelic face comically surrounded by blood and filth. How such a prim and pretentious person could have ended up in this situation was beyond Judy, but she wasn't about to question what in the living Hell was she doing there covered in blood. At least it didn't seem like the blood was Camilla's. If it was someone else's, she definitely did not want to know.
Upon arriving at the dorms, Judy dragged Camilla down the hall to the communal bathroom, the one she had a key stolen from the front desk for whenever she fancied a private bubble bath while high.
She fought a bit with the ragged piece of cloth the girl was wearing until she realized it was a bed sheet, an expensive silk one that was poorly pinned at the shoulder, finally grasping that her attire was supposed to be an ancient Greek chiton. She removed the poor excuse of a costume from the little shivering body, filling up the bathtub halfway with the warmest setting of water available. In this she pitied Camilla, she was sure they were going to be out of almost all the hot water by that hour since the heater was turned off by midnight.
Still, it turned out to be pleasantly okay, so Judy took Camilla's hand and guided her to the edge of the tub. The girl subconsciously recognized the motion and got in without removing her scared eyes from the floor. She bunched up in a little trembling ball, hugging her legs and setting her head on her knees. Judy stopped gathering her shower products from the basket she'd brought to look at her. So pathetic and measly, just sitting there, spine miserably showing through her thin skin. Judy didn't know what urged her to take care of that unhappy little creature, but it seemed like the only possible thing left for her to do at that very moment. The only thing that was making her feel something.
She was simply focused on Camilla. Nothing at stake, no images to put up, as naked and destroyed as the girl in front of her. Either willingly or unwillingly, she had shown herself without any pretension, opening something up so Judy could help her, to get her out of that catalepsy she desperately ran away from in the forest. She was as transparent as the water that ran from the stream under moonlight. Judy concentrated only on the essential, assuring the girl's soul would be healed, mended pieces back to a whole. The rest of her presumptuous decorum Camilla could recover by herself.
Judy started by removing any leftover debris stuck on her foot, the most damaged part of all. Thorns were sticking out from her ankles, and even small leaves and twigs nestled in between her toes. She then filled a bucket with water and began cleaning all of the little cuts and wounds, softly pressing a towel to the rusted blood around the slits. After her legs were wiped off of grime, Judy took her arms into her hands, scrubbing gently the stubborn blood that refused to wash off. The blood in Camilla's hand looked exactly like she had been picking blackberries. Her hands could still manage to have the air of being pristine and fragile even when it looked like she stabbed someone to death and then buried them with her own fingers. Her short nails were dark and caked with dirt, while pinkish water dripped from her wrist to her elbows, tracing the path of her purple veins. Judy held each skeletal finger as though they were fine vintage porcelain, removing every spot of antique dust from them.
During that time, Camilla had remained silent, watching Judy's hands run across her body and rid her of that tarnished earth. Then, Judy began washing her hair, pouring out water from the bucket onto her head, and brushing her fingers through the tangled locks. She shampooed and shampooed, almost fearing she'd waste her entire special curls formula that she only found very far away from white-infested Hampden. Eventually, Camilla's hair was back to its dark blonde, smelling of delightfully charming green apple and aloe. Judy dried her off, hearing the water drops from her hair hit the ground like a metronome.
She gave Camilla the fluffy pajamas she didn't wear anymore, as she fell asleep in her clothes most of the time. Judy settled Camilla in her bed. She wasn't really going to sleep that night after all, even as physically tired as she was, her insomnia still frolicked freely inside her head. Yet, she could feel her insomnia, she could feel the cool water on the edge of her dampened sleeves, she could smell the soap on Camilla’s skin, she could hear her soft and troubled breathing. Dawn was near, and the nocturnal spell trapping her somewhere far from here was gone. They were real.
She felt she would be able to kill for the slightest amount of weed at that moment, and maybe she understood a few of Camilla's motivations after all if she had indeed killed someone. Looking at her alarm clock, she noticed breakfast would be served soon, despite the sky still being dark indigo. She could do with some pancakes after a very fucked up night, at the very least.
* * *
A first memory flooded Camilla's head, as she opened her eyes due to a strong and yellow light pointed directly at her dilated pupils. She didn't recognize her position in a foreign bed, the configuration of the room was completely different from what she was used to seeing after waking up. That wasn't her room, nor was it Henry's, nor Francis', nor anywhere she recalled.
Before she could assimilate anymore of her surroundings, a splitting headache crawled over her skull, making her involuntarily detangle her arms from the blanket and cover her eyes from the radiant lamp. As soon as the throbbing faded slightly, she looked around again, recognising a girl sitting on a desk, sewing what seemed like a very glittery and flashy ball gown.
"Hey, sleeping beauty is finally awake." Judy, she now realized, said without removing her eyes from her fast-stitching hands.
Camilla didn't say anything. She didn't think she could anyway, as she felt her throat dreadfully dry as if shards of glass were casually lodged in her pharynx. She looked over to the digital alarm clock, flashing red numbers like the eyes of a beast in a dark corner. Six p.m.! How odd.
She tried to recall her last recollection of the night before, and all that would come to her were flashes of incomplete paintings, faded brushstrokes of deers sprinting in the wild, the acrid smell of fresh flesh in the cold air, and a woman. Judy. Taking her by her arms. Washing her dirty body.
Judy began moving, lifting Camilla until her head was upright and she could press the tip of a hot mug to her lips, tilting it so the soothing liquid went down Camilla's raw throat. After the third sip, she batted Judy's tea away.
"C'est bien, arrête !" She whispered. Judy frowned.
"Camilla, what the fuck are you saying?"
"Je sais pas !" And she truly did not know why the hell she suddenly began speaking French. In a heartbeat, the warm chamomile tea and her waning consciousness and heavy eyelids allowed her to collapse to the sound of Judy's perplexed voice.
When she woke up again, Judy was in her underwear, with the shower in her bathroom drilling holes in the tiles out of the sheer pressure of those badly adjusted dormitory heads, while she shooed someone away from opening her door, shoving them out violently through the thin slit that was ajar. Camilla waited for Judy to finish her shower, resolving to sit up and explore the stuffed shelves above her bed.
When Judy was back in her room, hair dripping wet and towel tied around her glistening body, Camilla finally spoke, in English.
"Alright, what do you want in return?"
"What? I don't want anything from you."
"Why did you help me then? We're not exactly friends."
Judy wished she could answer Camilla. Answer herself. She didn't know why she had so delicately bathed her and taken care of all of her injuries, given her warm tea and let her sleep in her bed.
"I may not like you and your little cult friends, but I wasn't going to leave you there in the cold half-conscious to die." Judy was bemused. In the long run, it wasn't like she had done all of that to ask for something, or to get in her good graces or anything. She just did it, hoping, in that moment, that they would both be saved and back to normal the next day.
Camilla didn't respond for a few minutes. She stood still, observing the flowery bedding.
She remembered the night before, the unquenchable and voracious ambition to achieve oblivion clouding their judgment, the fear in her core when she felt she was being hunted by them, the disgust at their murder. She felt like she had been killed at that moment, wishing her consciousness would cease to exist altogether, to not live half-alive from then on. So she ran, as far away as she could.
Until Judy found her and took care of her, making sure she was away from everything that was trapping her, until she was comfortable and safe in someone else’s bed.
"Thank you, Judy. For cleaning me. Purely."
Camilla lightly brushed Judy's lips.
Judy continued kissing her, until they were laying down, caressing each other's hair, the water from Judy's body trickling down Camilla's neck. If Judy's towel came undone they didn't know nor care, if Camilla's wounds hurt with all the pressure, if the blinds were left open or if the bangs on the door got louder.
Judy took her time, to deafen herself to everything but Camilla, to trace her cuts and mauve veins with her lips, to press melting kisses to her collarbones, to touch her ribs and feel her palpitating heart underneath her chest. She would weave music out of her throat, with bruising wet embraces and silken lips.
Camilla was given her own bacchanal at the will of Judy’s fingertips, comfortable and warm and harmless. Here was someone Camilla had the shallowest idea about, but she let her pour herself across her body and bathe her in warmth as old lovers, hands tying around her arms like the snakes of Eden, the ardour of pines bursting into flames atop her skin.
After a while, they were lying on Judy's comically small pillow, face to face, heart to heart. Camilla's head was as empty as it could be, until a thought crossed her mind and she was able to remember one thing.
"You know, in the middle of the woods, I thought you were Dionysus. But you didn't respond to my prayer so then I thought that you must be Aphrodite, that even Dionysus couldn't show himself in such a beautiful form."
"You thought I was Aphrodite?"
"Yes."
"I'll take Aphrodite."
Camilla looked at the clock. It was almost ten. She hadn't the slightest idea of where they were, let alone what they had done to the man and to themselves. She couldn't let herself remain there, as much as she wished to fall back and linger in maidenly oblivion. Free, lost and tied to reality by mellow arms.
"I need to get back."
"Back where?"
"It doesn't matter, I'll be going now. Thanks again, Judy."
"Thank you, Camilla." She smiled.