Scissor Link Georgette Kaplan (best self help books to read .TXT) 📖

She didn’t remember sitting back down at the couch, opening up the laptop again. She must’ve. There were the pictures of Wendy. Taunting her. Young and alive and unhurt.

She was beautiful, yes, but she’d been beautiful at the office. No, what drew Janet’s eye was her confidence. She was so collected, so composed, so brazen in her dykishness. The center of her was firmly rooted. She leaned over girls, eyed them, flirted with them, fucked them, not with the kind of poise Janet favored, but with her own slouching, cocky swagger.

Except for her eyes. Sometimes she looked a little lost. Maybe it was just late and dark and she was tired, drunk, wanted to go home. Maybe she just needed someone with a little bit more experience to take her hand and tell her it was all right and to take her away. Maybe, if Janet had been there in 2013, Wendy would’ve given herself over with the same unvoiced desperation she’d tried to show in the office.

Janet touched up her make up, using a pencil to make her eyes just a little darker, smokier, before she hid them behind her glasses. She sprayed her hair again, keeping each follicle in place. She reapplied her fragrance.

7 p.m. Primetime. Janet watched one show after another; no point in cluttering up the DVR when she was there anyway. A cop show, a doctor show, a lawyer show, then local news, then late night. Then it was twelve. She turned the TV off. She ate an apple, drank two glasses of water. She didn’t feel tired, but she didn’t feel like doing anything but sleeping, either. She brushed her teeth, she washed her face. She tried to sleep and not think of the hair growing out of control, the nails rebelling against their prescribed lengths, the food turning treacherously to fat inside her—all the pollution that would have to be cleaned off the statue of her come morning. And come the next day, and the next, and the next.

She couldn’t sleep. She could not sleep. The clock at her bedside taunted her with how she couldn’t sleep, sped up when she wasn’t looking and then screamed how long she’d been trying to sleep, how much time she’d wasted simply lying in bed, doing nothing, contributing nothing, being nothing. Her eyes grew heavy but never seemed to close.

Masturbation was frustrating. She used a Hitachi to stimulate herself—a simple, reliable tool to do a job. Generate a series of impulses within her, create a sensation, allow her to shed her stress and relax. But the tool wasn’t doing its job. It was like trying to resuscitate dead flesh, to carve a real woman out of a block of cold marble. The impulses vibrated between her legs, against parts of her anatomy that were in perfect working order, but the feeling didn’t spread. It thudded into a wall, stayed locked in her insensate flesh, never moving to where she was locked up or clenched or needed the flow of hot blood, life, her own sexuality.

She felt broken.

With a cry of anger that was eagerly sucked into the silent walls, Janet threw the vibrator aside.

Wendy caught it.

She was dressed in a plain white tee with black letters graffitied on the front, a light flannel jacket, an oversized army jacket over that. Her jeans were ragged, but skintight from mid-thigh to a pair of boots. Firm, well-muscled legs. If they wrapped around someone, it’d be just impossible to get away.

Janet sat up, holding her bedsheet to her chest. “How’d you get in here? What are you doing here?”

Wendy brushed at her hair. It wasn’t the neat, tidy ponytail it was at the office. It was free but cut short, shoulder length, tousled and windswept—freshly fucked. Locks of hair strayed like fingers down her skin, over her face. Like they had to touch her. “I’m here because you wanted me to be here. And I’m going to do what you want me to do.”

She walked to a chair in the corner. Her boots were loud on the hardwood floor. They thumped, one after another, with each spindly step. Surprisingly aggressive for such long, slender legs.

“Must’ve hit something by accident on my Facebook page. Liked a status that you shouldn’t have. Did you enjoy looking at those pictures? To think, I was always a little worried about my employer seeing them.” She smiled. Bee-stung lips sharper than the teeth behind them. “Now I don’t mind.”

“You can’t be in here,” Janet said. Her heart was racing. She could hear it in her ears. It dwarfed her own voice. “It’s not allowed.”

“I’m allowing it. Aren’t you? After all, you’re not calling the cops.” Wendy’s eyes swiped over Janet like a touch. Her irises were the brightest thing in the dark room. “Your phone’s right on the nightstand.”

“You could hurt me,” Janet protested. “I don’t want to provoke you.”

“Is that what you’re worried about? That I’ll hurt you?” Wendy sat down. Slouched, in fact. One leg spanning an armrest, kicky boot dangling in the air. Janet could see the toe describe little circles in the air. “Nice place for a chair, the bedroom. What, did you used to sit here and read Roberta bedtime stories? Or, no, maybe someone sat here and watched. Do you like to watch, Janet? Or do you like to be watched?”

Janet’s throat was dry. It was all she could think of; how dry it was. “I’d like some water, please,” she said, absurdly.

“Other side of the bed,” Wendy replied.

Janet turned over. There, on the floor beside her bed, was a glass of water. Ice cubes floated lazily at the top. The edges weren’t even rounded yet.

It was as she reached for it that Janet felt a finger of air run down her back, a burst from the air conditioning. Down her bare back.

She turned back over, careful to keep the sheet in place. It was all that separated her from Wendy.

“You