Read part one of Violent Times here
The first bus of the morning would arrive in half an hour. Violet, who usually felt comfortable in solitude, found herself both craving it and deeply fearful. Even the bloodied man, who she’d come to think of as a strange friend, was nowhere to be seen. She felt an unpleasant stir in the base of her belly and wondered if this too would pass, or if she’d hang on to it for ever. She hugged her knees to her chest and wished she could turn into a boulder, a massive, inconvenient boulder that people could touch but never get to the centre, the core of her. No matter how strong a chisel they had.
The sun rose with a cheeriness that seemed at odds with her current situation, and slowly the bus stop gathered more people. An old man with a beige flat cap and waistcoat, despite the heat, the newspaper tucked under his arm. Two women in uncomfortable looking business suits, nodding and murmuring at each other over steaming thermos cups. A middle-aged woman in expensive sweats and trainers that were impressively white. The bus was running late; tension was snaking through the little group as they waited. Violet, who had been craving company just a half hour ago now felt suffocated by all the eyes present to watch her fall apart. She felt dread build in her chest as her mind, undisciplined, wandered back to his hands on her body, the before, the during, the after. She began to sob. At first small, quick intakes of breath into her arm, trying not to draw attention to herself. But she was choking on it, and soon the sobs were embarrassingly loud, guttural and gasping. Uncharacteristically for her, Violet was wailing, sounding an alarm. A small part of her revelled in the release, and she wondered if she had no room left for swallowing darkness, if it was all going to vomit back out onto the hot pavement to overwhelm her.
As she lamented, everyone looked at her and then at each other in evident discomfort. Eventually the woman with the lustrous trainers walked over to her and tapped her shoulder. The sensation shocked her out of what was most likely her first, perhaps her only, metamorphosis. Violet, still on the curb, squinted up at her, her chest heaving. In the distance, the bus had finally made its appearance and was now trundling up towards them. It was barely seven, but the air already had a scorched feeling to it. The woman bent down to meet her.
“Listen here, honey,” the woman said in a low, curt voice. “Let me give you some advice.”
Violet found herself unable to look at her directly in the eye, so she focused instead on the gleam of the sun caught in one of those trainers. She couldn’t help but wonder how the woman kept them so pristine; whether she washed them every evening or worried about smudges. How do you wear a stain that won’t dissolve?
“Whatever it is you’re crying about,” the woman was saying, “you’re too loud. You’re bothering the rest of us.” The woman’s head flicked up to check on the bus, oscillating in the heatwaves rising off the tarmac.
“People can only handle small bites of misery at a time. You’re pouring it all out like that and it’s making everyone uncomfortable. I suggest you learn to control yourself…be selective about what you cry about. Hold most of it in if you can, it’s better for you. Trust me.” She briefly patted Violet’s shoulder and stepped smartly away from her as the bus pulled up and hot patrol fumes hit Violet in the face, making her cough.
Violet watched the woman’s shoes all the way to the front steps of the bus. She remained alone on the curb as it pulled away. On the opposite side of the road, the bloodied man stood again, watching, ghostly in the summer sun. He waved at her. It looked like he was smiling. Violet turned her body and vomited frantically onto the pavement.
“Be selective with what you cry about,” she repeated like a mantra over and over in the next few days which were blurry and indistinguishable. “Darkness is a thing best kept swallowed.”
And that was largely how Violet made her way through her early twenties, repressing the hurricane twisting in the base of her stomach. She imagined herself choking down cotton wool once a day, to keep the emotions stuck and suffocated underneath them, and resigned herself to the river she was floating down, as if her life was a current completely out of her control. Her primary goal had been to work in a bookstore and eventually own one. She envisioned it filled with sunlight and comfortable armchairs, with multiple floors, with a café at the bottom and a silent floor at the top, for reading. It was a goal that her frustrated parents felt was too mediocre for a girl with her potential. But there is a big difference between purpose and potential, and she remained unwavering. And sure enough, the day after graduation, Violet was reorganising the shelves in her local favourite, making quiet plans and feeling largely at ease with her perceived mediocrity. There was no way she could let anyone down further, she posited, if she was already such a disappointment to begin with.
The next time a man did something in the bedroom that she wasn’t sure she wanted, Violet felt herself recoil, turn inwards. She thought of the man from the car crash, how he’d ensured such a violent destruction. She thought of her mother, crying into vegetables at the dinner table, how much she’d cry if she knew. She thought of the middle-aged woman, the brightness of those tennis shoes the first thing she saw when she closed her eyes, and she figured that nausea was just the feeling she’d always have. Just another thing. You know, to swallow.
Later that day though. Later that day. Standing in line at a bookstore, one unfamiliar to her, Violet pulled out her wallet to pay and found her hands closing around her old library card, her namesake. By now it was years out of date. She saw her misspelt name like a stain, and that woman’s crisp white shoes from so long ago swam to the surface of her mind. There were still four people in front of her in the queue. It was an unbearably hot afternoon, and she was irritated by the disorganisation of the shop and the delay it was causing. Violet been working in bookshops for four years now, and she had an almost incontrollable urge to march behind the counter, push the slow woman at the till out of the way and start ringing up the orders herself. She imagined her body expanding and bulging, until her mouth could stretch wide enough to swallow the entire shop. She wanted to possess it, make it hers and throw everyone out, lock the door and reorganise every single bookshelf until her head stopped buzzing.
How do you wear a stain that won’t dissolve? Violet found herself thinking, as sweat rolled down between her breasts. In one smooth motion - almost as if she’d been intending to do it all along - she turned and stepped out of the line, tucked the two books she held under her arm, and walked out the door without looking back. No one cried out or stopped her. She and the bloodied man strode purposefully down the street until there were several blocks between her and that shop. Ignoring him she sat on the curb and placed the books next to her, drawing her knees up to her chest. She was going to sit here and make herself cry until she’d dissolved all the cotton wool in her throat. And if anyone tried to interfere, she was going to hit them. She almost hoped it would come to that. Her stolen books would become weapons.
Violet sat there and took a deep breath. Her fingers were yearning to curl around the books and hit someone around the face with them as hard as she could. She felt her eyes start to sting and her vision start to blur, and smiled. The bloodied man sat down too, resting his hand next to her.
Violet reached out and placed her hand over his own. To her immense satisfaction, a tear splashed down onto the hot asphalt between them, forming a delicious, perfect dark circle. Like a blood splatter.