Jolene

♫Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene ♫

♫I’m begging of you please don’t take my man. ♫

“Jolene, Jolene, Jolene…. Jolene!!!!!!!!!”

He screamed at her while pounding a fist against her bone thin chest. One dull thud after another found no response from the small girl. Her eyes were open, pupils appearing to be nothing more than a dot of black left by the tip of the finest felt pen. Soft lips were parted ever so slightly while streams of saliva escaped along the defined lines of her chin. She was not dead, not yet. He could tell by the shallow breaths she stole, but she was damn close, and he wanted nothing to do with the cleanup.

“I’m out, you stupid bitch.” He said as he stumbled to his bare feet, stepping over a couple empty syringes to a stained mattress and sitting down awkwardly. Reaching down he grabbed one worn boot at a time, shoving them on his feet, then standing and running his filthy fingers through greasy hair. His eyes darted about the place as he looked for anything worth taking but he saw nothing. Moving back to the girl, he kneeled and roughly slapped the pockets of the dingy jeans hugged tightly to her thin legs. He found only her cheap cell phone, digging that out, he stood and made his way out of the cheap motel without so much as a passing glance towards the woman. Slowly, the door slid closed behind him before it touched the trim with hardly a sound, then as if from a final judgment, clicked shut, locked from the inside.

The silence within that room seemed palpable, aside from her weak exhales. She laid half naked in the dark, the only light offered by a bulb in the far corner of the room belonging to a lamp without a shade. Her breaths came and went, at times so dispersed that one would believe she had passed, until they would accelerate to a marathon speed, as her body waged war against the dope attempting to murder her. Small, bare breast rising shallowly with each attempt at life while her thin arms laid lifelessly along her side, delicate hands resting beside her black jeans. But the blackest thing in the room cascaded about her hollow, angelic face. Her hair was as dark as the abyss.

♫Your beauty is beyond compare. ♫

“You’re so beautiful..” Lies. “God you’re gorgeous…” Fuck you. “Such a pretty girl…” Go away.

Let me die.

“You could be a model…” Stop. “What a waste, seriously…” Leave me alone. “Other women would kill to be as beautiful as you...” I don’t care. “The things I would do to you…” I don’t want to know. “How much to take you home?” Dope. “Get the fuck in the car…” Help. “Such a pretty little girl…” Please go away.

Let me die.

+

Beauty, as they say, is only skin deep. But what lies beneath Jolene were the chaotic results of how God, or genetics, ordained her flesh to be. Women of allure are glamorized in life, sought after by both men and women. The latter attempting excruciating rituals and routines to obtain such perfection, and men would throw vast amounts of money, effort and heart ache towards those beings. But woe be to the beautiful if they are born in a broken home. They were crude targets without defenses and Jolene learned that from a very, very early age.

She survived, as humans are designed to do and as many whom faced her trials, her coping techniques escalated from heat, to knives, to drugs. Every aspect of her choices would be tried, judged and convicted by even those that hurt her the most. She had grown to loath the very thing that most envied about her. Just beneath her beautiful skin, she truly believed she was repulsive, and her life decisions reflected such thoughts in a most condemning way.

She had nothing, she had no one.

That is until she became conscious in the hospital bed and a nurse told her she was with child.

Let me live.