Rainbow's Inferno

Rainbow Dash’s head rolled from side to side listlessly on the desk. The teacher’s voice became nought but distant echoes as her mind wandered far from the large classroom. She stared out the window, a pair of birds were together dancing in the air, performing the complex ritual of animal courtship that was reenacted every spring. She watched the birds wings flapping to suspend their avian bodies aloft, diving in wild complex loops, intricate and focused, yet entirely wild and free at the same time. Rainbow Dash wondered how it would feel to be a bird, to fly, to have nothing pinning you down in life, to merely live and not worry about all the stupid requirements humans had made up for living.

Rainbow’s fantasy was rudely interrupted by the teacher’s voice.

“Ms. Dash, would you care to explain what causes these molecular bonds?”

Rainbow flicked her eyes at the overweight moustached chemistry teacher. She said nothing but propped her head up with one hand. She then shrugged and looked back out the window. The teacher let out a sigh of exhaustion and continued to explain what Rainbow had refused to.

One of the birds was dead, so it goes, snached up by a hawk.

***

Later, Rainbow Dash stood in the bathroom washing her hands. She threw up her hands and let the cool droplets splash across her face. She always felt too warm, the water helped to keep her from feeling as if her head was about to ignite. She looked up at herself in the mirror. A Small bony face, an athletic, if unflattering, figure covered by a baggy blue jacket and jeans. Thin strands of hair that were dyed an array of colors. She picked a limp strand between her thumb and fore finger and let it drop back to her head lethargically.

The lavatory doors swung open to chorus of giggles and scattered conversation echoed in.

“No! You have to ask him!”

“You’re crazy! I couldn’t!”

A gaggle of girls walked in, laughing and talking over each other. Like a flock of little birds. The popular kids, the ones elected riches, prettiest and most confident. The ones who everyone knew was going to succeed. Rainbow shook the remaining droplets of water from her hands and turned to exit the small rest room. She managed to walk several paces behind the girls before one turned and noticed her.

“HEY, look who it is!”

Rainbow tensed but continued moving out of the room.

“Wait!”

Rainbow froze with her hand on the door. She turned slowly to face the crowd of girls. Each of them had nice clothes, short shorts and low cut dresses to show off as much skin as they could. Beautiful and Ugly. It had been the center one, the leader of the little pack, who had called to Rainbow. Rainbow knew her name, as did everyone in the school, but she had little reason to recall it often enough to remember.

She strutted over to Rainbow Dash and put her hand on her shoulder.

“How have you been Ranny?”

“Fine,” She replied without any emotion shrugging off the girl’s hand.

“You sure?” The girl stuck out her lips in a pouty expression. It was both disgusting and wonderful.

“We were just talking about who we were going to go with to the Spring Fling next week. Are you going with someone?”

“Oh, Abby! You know she’s not like that,” a second member of the pack replied.

Abby turned with an expression of mock surprise on her face.

“Why do you say that?”

“She’s not interested in guys,” the second girl said smirking.

The girls all started laughing. Laughing at her. Like a chattering flock of sparrows.

“So who’s the lucky lady you’re inviting?”

“Are you going to wear a dress or a tux?”

“Make sure to show her a good time afterwards!”

They laughed, they laughed, they laughed. They laughed, they laughed, they laughed. They laughed, they laughed, they laughed. They laughed, they laughed, they laughed.

Suddenly Rainbow was taken to another time, or was it just another place? She heard more laughing, but these voices weren't laughing at her, they weren’t laughing at someone else's pain, but simply because they were happy. The memory, if it was a memory popped like a bubble and she was forced back into the dank bathroom.

Rainbow Dash swooped down and slammed the first girl’s face into the sink, she screamed with fright and dashed behind her friends clutching her broken bleeding nose.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, fagot?”

Rainbow Dash walked out of bathroom. The hawk had swooped down on the little birds and silenced their cheeping.

***

Late in the day Rainbow walked up the stairs to her apartment, she lifted the doormat and pulled out the small key to the door, unlocked it and pushed it open. The room was dark, she was unsure if it was because no one was home, or if her father had forgotten to pay the electric bill. Either scenario was equally likely. She walked into the front room and looked around as best she could. No one. Good, she should be able to take a shower in peace.

She stripped off her old clothing and stepped into the shower. The water was ice cold on her skin, but it felt nice, she liked feeling cold. She looked down at her abdomen and pressed the small bruise on her side, yep, still sore. She looked down at her body as the water ran down her skinny figure her hips waist and legs were covered in many dark bruises. Reminders of things she’d rather forget.

She heard the front door swing open and slam shut. A man’s voice called out.

“DASH! DASH WHERE ARE YOU YOU PEACE OF CRAP?”

Rainbow pulled on a jacket and sweatpants that were laying on the bathroom counter and stepped out into the hall.

A huge man stood in front of her. Her stepfather had been out drinking again, she could tell by his flushed face and the stink on his breath. He clenched a half drunk bottle of whiskey in his right hand glaring at her.

“You call this place clean? What the hell kind of daughter are you that can’t even make the house look nice for your father?” He said in a angry slurred speech.

“I don’t see a father!” Rainbow retaliated. “You’ve never once acted like a father to me!”

He raised his hand and struck Rainbow across her face, shattering the bottle and leaving a gash across her cheek.

“Don’t you talk to me like that you ungrateful little bitch! I’m the one who pays for everything you have here! everything you have is because of me!”

Dash stood up covering her bleeding cheek with one hand and marched into her small room, ignoring her father’s cries for her to come back. She fell on the mattress on the floor that served as her bed and cried into the pillow, she cried for awhile before she felt good enough to rise. She slid her arm off the bed and pulled up a loose floorboard. Underneath were several important items, a small stuffed elephant, a wad of cash that she was saving up, a journal and a picture of her mother.

She pulled out the picture and the journal, she propped the picture up on the floor next to her face and looked at it. It showed a young woman holding a little blonde baby girl. The woman was smiling and holding the baby close to her chest, protecting it. Rainbow’s mother had died two years ago. She had just married Rainbow’s step father and they had gotten into an argument. Rainbow’s mother had threatened to leave and take Rainbow with her. Her stepfather had punched her in the chest, he mother had always had bad lungs and the punch had severely damaged them, she died in the hospital a few hours later.

Another memory of a memory came to her. She saw a winged horse laying down with a foal, they were sitting together on clouds and everything was still in that moment.

Just as quickly as the vision came it vanished. Storing itself in the back of Rainbow’s mind.

Rainbow put the picture back down into the hole and pulled up a pencil and began to write in the journal.

March 10th, Wednesday.

My life is a living hell! No matter where I go people hate me. Love seems to be a luxury my life can’t afford… theses girls taunted me today, they called me a fagot and said that I don’t like guys. I don’t know if I even like humans now, let alone guys. But these feelings that the other girls say that they have for guys, I don’t feel the same way they do!

We’re reading Dante’s Inferno in my English class, it’s a story about a man who goes through hell so that he can get his lost love back. Or at least I think it is, it still sounds like they didn’t translate it from Italian. My life sometimes… no, all the time... feels like that, like I’m going through Hell, only there’s no lost love waiting for me at the other end. Heh, Rainbow’s Inferno, what a stupid name for a book.

She tossed the journal into the hole and refit the board on top. Pulling up the covers, she closed her eyes. but almost as soon as she closed them the covers were ripped of her and a great weight sat down on her. She stiffened.

“Please,” she whispered in a pitiful voice so unlike her usual defiant self. “Can’t you let me sleep one night in peace?”

A course “Shhh,” was all she had in reply.

Rainbow tensed she was powerless now, she could do nothing to stop what was about to happen. All she could do was cry. Her step father lay over her and slowly pulled down her pants.

***

Rainbow sat quiet in the back of the class she pulled her hood up and leaned against the window. She hadn’t gotten much sleep last night, because she was too sore from… she didn’t want to think about it. Out of the window she saw a bird sitting alone in a tree the freezing wind battering it.

“I know how you feel,” she moaned.

The teacher snapped shut the attendance book.

“Now then we’ll get started, take out your books-”

“WAIT!” a voice called from the door.

The entire class turned and looked at the hunched over stranger in the doorway.

She was dressed well, but not fancily, in tight fitting levi jeans and a orange plaid shirt. She stood and shook a few locks of sandy blonde hair from her face and she placed an old fashioned cowboy hat on her head.

“I happy that you could join us,” the teacher said sarcastically. He turned to the class. “This young lady is A.J. she’ll be joining us for the rest of the year. Make her feel comfortable and all the rest.” The class in response burst into a frenzy of muttering.

“Why don’t you take that seat over next to Rainbow?” The teacher said lazily flicking his hand toward the  back of the room.

A.J. took the teacher’s advice and  walked to the back of the classroom. She plopped herself and her bag down and turned to the melancholy Rainbow.

“Nice to meetcha’,” she said warmly and offered her hand. Rainbow took it a silently shook hands. Her hand was strong and warm.

As she did, another of the strange thoughts stormed uninvited through her mind. A orange coated horse, a farm, a friend, a race, a good friend, apple cider, an honest friend.

Outside the window the bird was joined by another, who shielded him against the cold.

Later, Rainbow Dash sat alone in the echoing cafeteria chewing the dry meat that had been served to her, the thoughts of the memories dancing in her head. What were these thoughts that crept into her mind? They felt like dreams, but they were so real as well.

“Recon I can sit with ya’ll?” Said a slow southern drawl.

Rainbow looked up, there was A.J. just as she had looked framed in the doorway at her class. She quickly nodded and scooted over to make room for A.J.. She sat next to he and rainbow felt her face flush. She shook her head to clear it of any dangerous thoughts.

“Where are you from?” Rainbow asked to focus her mind on less controversial topics.

“Heh, I guess I don’t exactly blend in that well,” A.J. replied.

“That’s not what I meant-”

“S'alright no offence taken. Ma’ family is from South Carolina originally, but we moved on up here ‘cause ma’ brother is going to be helping with a local ranch.”

Rainbow smiled, as sad as it was this was the longest she had gone in a conversation without someone making fun of her... or beating her.

They talked for awhile about what it was like where she was from and what it was like here. Then Rainbow heard a stifled giggle and turned. The pack of girls who had bothered her in the bathroom the other day were looking at them. One of them raised her phone and took a picture. Rainbow stood up engulfed with rage.

“Y’alright?” asked A.J.

Rainbow dash looked down, she didn’t have the energy to be angry.

“You… might not want to talk to me anymore….” she said and sped off, notwaiting for a response from the girl. she ran, ran away from the one person who had ever treated her with kindness.

She stopped in an empty hall and leaned against a locker. She felt something we drip down her cheek. She furiously wiped at her face enraged at herself for submitting to such a base emotion.

“Hey Ranny!”

Shit.

The pack of girls swooped in like a flock of ravens to a corpse.

“Don’t run! We’re happy for you!”

“Yeah, you have a girlfriend now just like any boy your age should!”

A chorus of laughter erupted from the pack. Rainbow slumped against the locker, she didn’t have the will to fire back.

“Ya’ll leave her alone!”

The cruel laughter was silenced and Rainbow looked up. there stood not just a friend, but a angel savior. A.J. stomped into the group of girls and turned to block them from Rainbow.

“Ya’ll can just move along, you’ve had more than enough fun at Rainbow’s expense than anyone should.”

The group shot A.J. a dirty look but walked away, tossing a few ineffective insults at A.J. as they did, the sport had been ruined by the farm girl’s interruption. A.J. turned to the collapsed Rainbow and offered her a hand. it seemed to Rainbow Dash that a halo of light surrounded her savior. She took the hand in hers and pulled herself up.