The Voxe: Number One

She still didn't untie me just after it was over...at least I'm pretty sure not. Just like Lisa-Anne had a gift for doing, Maria knocked me out like a light with her inexhaustible loving. Slowly, very slowly, the room stopped spinning, and I was finally allowed to drop. And as was the case so many times in the aftermath of a mindsplitting Voxegasm, I don't remember a thing that happened next.

*****

At some time during my post-cum slumber, I thought I heard distorted voices, something in the manner of a verbal struggle. I thought it was a particularly vivid dream, until I felt myself being shaken awake.

"Velette!..." something echoed around my ears. "Velette, wake up!...Oh my God, baby, come on, wake up!!"

I came to. My eyeballs refused to focus for several moments, but at least I got them open to make out objects. It took similarly long to find my bearings, and realize that I had been untied, covered with a comforter, and that Maria was no longer in the bed. I looked up to eventually blink Lisa-Anne Brockton's face into view.

When she saw I'd awakened, she seemed still panicked, but relieved. She promptly leaned down and hugged me.

"Oh dear fucking GOD!" she exclaimed, almost crying in her tizzy. "Oh, Velette, baby, thank God you're okay!"

I tried to lean up, but without much headway.

"Wh-what?" I asked weakly.

Lisa-Anne lowered onto her knees beside the bed.

"...Did I speak too soon??" she feared, worriedly holding me by the arms. "Are you okay?? Are you all right, baby??"

Strangely, I wasn't sure how to answer. I was still disoriented. Finally, I mustered the stamina to sit up. Seeming to notice for the first time I wasn't tied anymore, I looked at my hands, as if they were a new body accessory I'd never had. Then, I rubbed my eyes.

"I'm...I-I'm not sure..." I gave my head a shake, feeling loopy. Inevitably, it all finally came back.

Once things cleared, I looked up and around. A few things were different—mainly, that Maria and I were no longer the only two people in the room, but that she was still here. She stood in the middle, being held onto by two police officers.

I registered the presence of the cops, and my eyes widened. "Oh, God..." I remembered.

Lisa-Anne saw that I was "back," as it were. And so she laid her panic aside, swapping it out for apparent fury, which she was probably filled with when she got back to the room.

"Yeah, I'll say, 'Oh, God'..." she snarled, getting up and turning around. I watched her march towards the now powerless Maria, filling in any remaining blanks for me.

"Well, isn't this just peachy fucking keen!" Lisa-Anne hollered at the birthday girl. "I go away for one night for a meeting. ONE goddamn night! And just look what I find waiting for me when I get back!"

Maria only stared, wordlessly and expressionlessly. Her face held zero emotion. Lisa-Anne slumped down to look her eye to eye.

"Tell me something, you sick little psychopath," she demanded. "What's your game here??...Huh? What's your M.O.? What, you derive some sort of twisted pleasure from stalking celebrities?! HUH?! Making their lives and those around them a living fucking hell?!!"

Oh, God...something felt wrong inside me. I sat up further from the bed, holding the blanket over myself.

"W-wait," I called. "I'm...I'm not sure I...uh...I-I think I missed something."

Lisa-Anne and the officers exchanged glances from me to Maria.

"Oh, what, did you drug her too?!" Lisa-Anne erupted at the girl. "Try to make it all look like a self-inflicted episode before you just slipped off and got away with it??" She shook her head. "Well, guess what! It doesn't work that way when you mess with her, or with me."

She whirled on me.

"She raped you, Velette! Were you even aware of that?! She tried to get rid of the evidence, but I caught her. I called the cops, and sure enough, when they checked, they found traces of she-jaculate all over the bed. And guess fucking what else: it's yours."

Slowly but surely, it all came back to me. I dropped my head, hands over my temples, trying to sort all this out, to focus and latch onto one concrete thought that made sense.

I only looked up a moment later to see Lisa-Anne return to Maria, glare at her with scalding, piercing eyes...and slap her across the face.

"You're garbage."

I took a chill at these physical and verbal slights, almost as if she'd dealt them to me. And the next thing I knew, something did strike me.

Lisa-Anne thumbed in the direction of the door. "A'right, boys, get her the hell outta here."

The officers started leading Maria away. I just barely saw her toss a glance back to me with a moist glimmer in her eye.

I suddenly realized I couldn't let this happen. I stood up.

"Wait!" I said. "Stop. You can't take her away."

All four faces abruptly turned back on me.

"What?" Lisa-Anne wished to know. She took a few steps back towards me.

"I beg your fucking pardon??...Did you hear what I just said, Velette?"

"Yeah. I did." I turned to address the policemen next.

"But I refuse to press charges."

The cops wordlessly looked at one another. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lisa-Anne's mouth project open like a cash register.

"Are you kidding me RIGHT now," she shouted, in the form of a statement. "Did this little psycho troll literally fuck your brains out?! Do I have to smack you too?!"

"No, I'm not, no, she didn't, and no, you don't," I assured her. "Calm down. I wanna talk to her a minute."

I let Lisa-Anne carry on with her outbursts of disbelief, holding the comforter around me, taking a few steps nearer my number one fan.

"Maria..." I addressed her calm and gentle, "I know there're a million things going through your mind right now, and I know it can't be easy to sort out. I also know how much I mean to you. The kind of attachments we form to our idols can make us do, think and say things we'd normally never even consider, especially if we get the chance to be close to them. I know, Maria, trust me, I understand. Emotions get in the way, all over the place. When you love someone that much, you want them to know it, and you want them to remember it. Believe me, Maria, honest to God, I get that. I do.

"But this is the part that's gonna be hard for you to hear. We can't always control or realize our love for someone—as a fan, a friend, a lover, whatever. Again, it blurs our judgment and makes us do strange or unconscionable things. But, honey...there are boundaries we have to respect. We have to have the accountability to recognize when we've gone too far. And Maria, tonight...you went too far."

Maria blinked numerous times, tearing up and looking to the floor.

"I know you can see that now, and I know you'd go back and do things differently if you could. You're not garbage, Maria. You just need some help. You need serious help. And there are places where people can give you that kind of help. So that being said, I wanna make a deal with you. If I can convince the cops to let you do this, I want you to commit yourself to a mental ward. I want you to stay there, and let the people there work with you. They'll care about you, and about your issues. And they'll help you understand why you're acting and thinking the way you are. Officers?...If I don't press charges, can she commit herself?"

I didn't know how Lisa-Anne was reacting to all this behind me, and I didn't want to turn around and find out. I kept my eyes on the cops, who seemed to have a whole conversation with each other just by exchanging looks. Finally, they turned back to me.

"If that's your decision, Miss Voxe, we'll take her to the psych ward and see that she's admitted right away."

I nodded. "Thank you. And Maria, one more thing. Everything else aside, you know I really do care about my fans. So if you're allowed to at the ward, I want you to write to me now and then, and let me know how you're doing. And I'll write back to you if my schedule permits, but as you know, it can get a little hectic. But I'll always read your letters, even if you don't hear back from me. Believe it or not, I do care about you, Maria. So if you promise me all those three things—that you'll go to the psych ward, that you'll stay at the psych ward, and that you'll write to me if they let you—I won't press charges."

Sniffle.

"I promise," the girl wept.

"Thank you so much, Maria. I'll look forward to hearing from you."

*****

Dear Velette,

Hi. Well, it's been a couple weeks, now it's near the end of January. I feel like I should be thanking you for not having me arrested, but now that I've had some time to think about it and work on myself here, I kind of feel like I should've been. I'm glad I'm here instead, I don't want to be in jail, but I feel terrible about that night. Now that I've been able to think about it in my right mind, I'm sorry, Velette. I'm so sorry. And not just because I got caught. If I did that to myself, I don't know if I'd be able to forgive myself. I think it's going to be a while before I can forgive myself as it is, but I'm working at it.

Now that I got that out there, I'll tell you about how it's going. It's not really bad here at all. The staff treats us nicely, and they're easy working with us. You were right about them. They validate us and really care about our problems. Some of the other patients make me a little scared and uneasy, but for all I know I could have the same effect on them. The conditions and the food are okay, we have our own little rooms and the same bedtime. Then we have groups, TV time, rec time, family visiting time, but, well, I don't get any visitors. And if we behave, we get a half hour of internet time every day. It's monitored, so as long as we don't abuse it or try to go to any bad sites, that's a privilege they give us. So I wrote out this letter by hand last night, and I'm typing it and E-mailing it to you now.

I'm really glad your web site's not on the "naughty" list. Because if I told people around here that I, well, met you, and you wanted me to write to you, I think they'd laugh at me. When anyone asks me why I'm here, I tell them I was stalking a celebrity, and leave it at that. Lucky for us, they respect our privacy, and our right to not reveal too much about ourselves. But I still love you. I'm still keeping up with the news about you when it's my turn online, and sometimes I get to hear you, like at mealtime, or recreation, they let us listen to the radio. I wish I had my iPod so I could listen to you all the time, but I know all your songs by heart, so I can just sing them to myself.

I know after your manager called me garbage you said I wasn't, but I still feel like a bad person. Sometimes at night, I just sit or lie in my room and cry. Not because I'm here, because I feel guilty. I've been beating myself up over it a lot. I know I apologized already, but I really am so sorry, Velette. I don't feel like I can emphasize it enough. I almost starting crying writing this down last night, and now I'm almost crying typing it. I mentioned before that no one visits me, but that's because I'm not from around here. My family doesn't know where I am, and after all this time I'm still trying to figure out how to tell them. I know I should reach out to them, and now that I'm writing this to you I do kind of want to, but I'm scared. I'm still processing what an epic screw-up I made that night, and I don't know how anyone would react. If you've mentioned it in an interview or something, I know this is super-selfish of me, but I hope you kinda didn't mention my name. I'm just trying to cope with the fact that I did it, I can't take it back, and I have to just move on.

Anyway, I guess we'll see what happens. I thought I'd write to you probably about once a week or so to keep you updated. Thanks for making me promise to. It does help to get all this out. Oh, and I just realized my half hour's almost up, so I have to go now. I love you.

Your number one fan,

Maria