Free Silly Girl by Brandon Berntson Page A

feel the air, tell whether it was warm or cold. She couldn’t see her body. Her soul was a lacy ribbon shooting through space like a comet. Death, apparently, had stars and planets.
    That’s kind of cool, she thought.
    As she moved through space, Amanda constructed a plan, something final, eternal for her salvation. In death, she’d show no mercy. She’d raise her salutary finger for the universe, for death, even mommy. Especially mommy.
    “See my finger, mummy,” she’d say.
    Mommy had always been brutal, at least verbally. Boyfriends had been physical. Mother had been verbal. It was a miracle she’d made it to twenty-eight. Mommy did not represent ‘goodness.’ Goodness never came with mommy. She’d never found ‘goodness’ with Manny, Jon the Doctor, or Shelby, either. Goodness came with what you loved, Amanda knew. She’d sail into death and create beauty, goodness, mold it into shape as if she were sitting at the potter’s wheel.
    No more of this constant laboring, she thought, these nightmares before my eyes, this thing pummeling my vision with stars and clouds, crags blanketed by snow and thin air. From dust life is made, and back to dust, I’ll take it.
    She’d drop everything from above the clouds to the rocky crags below, because in death, she was able to soar.
    Happiness is in the rocks below, Amanda thought.Of course, she had to imagine the rocks because this was death, and all she saw were stars and space. You are something special, Amanda Dear. You are not for their amusement, a meaningless, unemotional toy for them to manipulate and take advantage of. You’re not a punching bag, a crippled dog defeated by its master. They can do you harm no longer!
    They’d put her through endless pain and abuse: Manny, Shelby, Jon the Doctor, even Mommy. Amanda knew hell. She’d seen it first hand. She and hell were regular pals.
    The August heat had been merciless that day in the alley. She remembered dying, too, left for dead—her bleeding, damaged crotch sending bolts of pain throughout her abdomen. Similar to what she’d do to Manny.
    Claws dug between her legs, tearing her crotch asunder. Rocks, pebbles, and broken glass clung to her bleeding lips. Her face bled, too, eyes swelled shut. Did Manny think Amanda Dear would forget?
    Manny had been too dramatic anyway. Everything was always a problem for him. She’d paid for it then.
    Amanda did everything she could, everything Manny had told her, and it was never enough—one of those relationships. The sonofabitch actually had the balls to say he deserved more.
    Balls? she thought. How ironic!
    She gave more of herself than necessary. She couldn’t remember why she’d been lying in the alley. She wanted to make amends despite the cost. Something originally brought her and Manny together, hadn’t it, the ride on the merry-go-round, the cotton candy that day? It had been for real then, right? Amanda Dear, even then, had been determined to make this relationship work!
    In death, though, nothing made sense, a rhapsody of past images and flashes as she flew through space, what life had been before, what death was going to be like now…
    So far, it wasn’t very noteworthy…
    Something nudged her in the ribs…
    Quit wasting time in bad memories! —a voice said.
    Amanda Dear tapped her feet impatiently. Well, she imagined feet. She just wanted to keep moving through the clouds and stars of space. She would do everything she could. Death wasn’t a re-enactment of life, the torn, ill-treated events she recalled. This was Amanda’s time. Her hands would do damage now! Since she hadn’t seen proof of God’s existence, she’d build Heaven from the potter’s wheel.
    Only twenty-eight when she died—a bleeding rape victim left for dead in the heat of the city—Amanda was still going through challenges. Something endeavored to break her even here, to punish her further, accept her inevitable defeat. Life, or death, was more challenging now.
    Still, the