Alice

She had the blue eyes of Jesus and what a girl she was. Young, energetic, perfect hair, perfect body, and those eyes… Her smile was a bit off though. There was this gap between her two front teeth. It made her smile strange. It was a sin to see such an imperfect grin gaping out from under such perfect eyes. She had the kind of eyes that could bore right through a person. Her name was Alice.

When her sixteenth birthday rolled around I decided to get with the neighbors and throw a little party for her. Not much you understand, just something to say hey. Well, the neighborhood was not keen on that thought. That’s when the stories started coming in.

It turns out her father’s an alcoholic, which is why that gap came about. He punched her once. Alice was a troublemaker at school too, got kicked out. Her mother was dead. I didn’t know that either, thought they’d just divorced or something. You know how things are now. But she was dead. Big mystery they say. And the sister, hardly a word from her. Alice had an older sister in college who came back to visit sometimes. She had become strange and quiet since her mother passed.

Well I didn’t care. Strange family or not, God put her here just as sure as anybody else. Besides, on her birthday and all, you just gotta do something nice. Especially on the sixteenth, to do otherwise just wouldn’t be right.

So, I baked her a cake and got her a present. Shoes, I think it was. Just before her prom the year before she came over asking to borrow a pair of red shoes to go with the dress she’d bought. (I don’t want to know where the money for that came from.) We’ve got the same shoe size, Alice and I, so I said sure, she could borrow a pair. She returned them the next morning.

Alligator tears. She cried alligator tears when I gave her those shoes for her birthday. She teared all over the cake even. She said that in al her sixteen years nobody had ever said happy birthday to her. She’d never had any presents before. But what she was most upset about was that she had to leave school next week and go to one of those places for bad girls. Reform Schools — I don’t know what they call them. She never told me why. Well, she cried and cried. They don’t let them wear nice things in places like that.

So it was a while before I saw Alice again. About a year I guess. When she came back things were a little better for her. Her father got along with her better. I don’t know maybe he missed her or something. The school taught her to work so she had money enough to get her own nice things. Some people just glow in new clothes. Alice was like that. She could have been a model with new clothes for every day. It would have happened if somebody had ever taken the time to fix that gap in her teeth. I didn’t notice it so much until after she came home again. She smiled more, never smiled much before.

Well, it turns out that the cops started following her right after her release from reform school. She was really a prostitute now. That’s what the school taught her. She had a pimp and everything: drugs and money. There was one cop that hunted girls like that, I guess you could say. He tied them up in his basement. Well, that cop tied her up in his basement and she didn’t take it. Nobody ever hits Alice, not since her dad did that to her face. So the cop got real scared like, and kept her in the basement for weeks even. When she finally got out, Lord only knows how, she turned him in.

The report was followed through. Even the courts would think you couldn’t treat a whore like that. They have rights too. She was such a pretty girl. I was sure she would win the case, which was pending. There were other witnesses, other prostitutes. I’m sure of it, but all of them were afraid. The cop threatened to kill them if they testified. When he threatened to kill Alice she didn’t care.

But her pimp cared. He got to her with his ideas that the cop knew Alice didn’t really care if he killed her, but the cop could hurt her friends. Especially the pimp you see. That got to her. Besides, she really did care, in there somewhere, if she lived or died. So she asked her pimp to help her hide out until the whole thing blew over. He naturally agreed.

They made this plan, the pimp and Alice. There was crack and whatever else that needed to be sold and well, Alice was a prostitute. So, they’d find a customer that night and she’d be well hidden by the morning. The money would buy a bus ticket to San Francisco where another pimp would buy some kind of fake I.D. or something.

Alice found a man with a crack habit, used him and came back to the pimp. But she didn’t have enough money. So he told her to go back to him and get more. She did. She told the man she would give him more sex if he paid her more money. He told her, he didn’t have any more money.

Alice went back to the pimp, upset like you can only be when you’re taking whatever kinds of drugs she was on. Sure, she was happy for a while but nothing was pretty when the fix wore off. I never saw her like that but I can imagine. Alice and the pimp decided that they had to get more money from this man. The pimp was already quite upset with the guy, who was a repeat offender to his business. So they found him a third time. He still didn’t have enough money. So they tied him up and beat him up and then dropped him by the side of the road. He lay there by the side of the road for two weeks. And when they found him he had only been dead for a week so you can imagine how long he lay there on some back road, moaning, if he could still speak then.

This is where there’s a big gap in the middle of my story. You see I moved away from the neighborhood. I didn’t like it there anymore. Nobody really looked out for each other or cared much for anybody the way real neighbors should. So I moved, but before I left I talked to Alice’s sister. I hadn’t seen Alice in a while and I was worried. “I don’t even want to say,” she said, but then she told me everything you just heard about the pimp and all. Alice disappeared after that, to hide from the cop and her new crime I guess. But the cops wanted to find her for that same reasons she was gone, because she was the only witness testifying about the whole basement affair. What’s more, the cops wanted her because her pimp had been suspected for killing that man. There was a warrant for Alice’s arrest and a subpoena.

Well that was the last I heard of Alice, her family, her pimp or that man. Until one day I was packing some china with the Sunday paper to send to my mother-in-law. I saw a picture in the paper that was that smile. It was her smile. I know it. Like the way a skull grins… And those eyes, you can’t mistake the eyes like Christ.

Well, the paper said that an unidentified body had been found, badly decomposed, between the ages of 16 and 21 with blue eyes. I thought it could be her but what really got me was the part when they mentioned the distinguishing feature, that damned gap between her teeth. I knew it was her. They couldn’t identify her because she was all rotted. No dental record matches either, because her father had never even taken her to any doctor before. She never even had any shots. Well, she had those shots but..

Because she’s still wanted for that case, and connection with the murder a mug of her is at the courthouse. Same eyes, same teeth but the cops didn’t know. And I didn’t tell them. I have enough problems in my life. I don’t want to get involved.

Comments

About Author

Dylan

Pleased to meet you! I'm Dylan Kinnett, your friendly neighborhood writer.