Machete

by Nicole Thorn

  Years of having my father ordering me to keep my scars a secret had my mouth clamping shut before I could even recall his request that I didn’t speak. I looked down at my feet, not saying a word. The officers started asking me questions, one after the other, without waiting for me to respond. Like they hoped to break my back with the sheer volume of inquiries.

  I stopped listening. My mind wandered to a better place. A dark place, where the moon shined down on me and Manny. My pen left marks across her skin in smooth lines, and every now and then, I’d look up to find her eyes closed, her head tilted back, an utterly peaceful look on her face. Her eyes moved behind her lids but if she dreamed, they were private, quiet dreams that were hers and hers alone.

  The peaceful setting broke apart when I heard someone shouting out in the hall. “Sir! You can’t go in there! Sir!?”

  Then the door to the office flew open, and my father came into the room. He looked agitated and worried. With no regard to the policemen, he came right for me, pulling me to my feet in one hard yank. I didn’t stumble until he put his arms around me. I could not recall the last time my father had hugged me. “Becket? Everything all right?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Good,” Dad said. He stepped back, clasped his hands on my cheeks, and stared at me for a few seconds. I watched his expression. Still filled with concern but there was something underneath that concern. Something dark and bitter. Something angry that had my chest feeling too tight.

  I called him for help. He will fix everything.

  “Sir? Mr. Anders?” Scott asked, rising to his feet. My father turned around, and the movement was too abrupt. I nearly fell into my chair but managed to catch myself before I could ruin his moment.

  “Why are you questioning my son?” Dad asked them. I could hear the quiet fury in his voice.

  “Have you seen these, Dr. Anders?” Mendez asked, handing over the pictures. My father took them, studying each one like it would tell him something new. We all stood in silence while he did. My father’s jaw worked but he didn’t say anything while flipping through them.

  “Who took these?”

  “We believe a girl named Helena did,” Mr. Wilcox said. “She will be punished for putting them up around the school, I assure you.” The principal stared at my father with quiet anger. I could see it etched around his features.

  “Do you know who hurt your son?” Scott asked.

  “Yes,” my father said. “His mother left when he was a little boy. I had a steady girlfriend for a while but she was never very kind to Becket. When I found out about this...” he lifted up the papers, “... I broke up with her.”

  They didn’t believe him, and I couldn’t blame them.

  “Then you won’t mind if your son takes off his shirt, to show us that he doesn’t have any new scars?” Mendez asked.

  “I do mind,” Dad said. “Haven’t you done enough for one day? Come back with a warrant, and maybe I won’t fight it.” He handed the papers back to the officers. “Becket? Let’s leave before they decide you deserve to be arrested for some reason.”

  My father walked out. Both the officers stared at me but I didn’t know what to say, or how to act. I left, following my father back to his car. I would text Manny when I got home, so that she would know that everything was all right. That my father took care of it for me.

  The second the car pulled away from the school, Dad turned to me. “Where did those pictures come from?”

  “A girl I spent time with over a year ago,” I said. “I didn’t realize that she had been taking pictures of me. I’m sorry.”

  His hands tightened on the wheel, until I could see all his fingers turning white. He didn’t say anything the rest of the ride home. We parked in the driveway, and I watched him storm into the house. My heart tripped painfully against my chest. I tried to convince myself to get out of the car. It took a couple of moments.

  Whatever punishment awaited me; I knew that I had earned it.

  My father stood in the middle of the kitchen, his hands braced against the counter, his eyes stared at nothing. I stopped a few feet from him, waiting for his attention to swing back on me. “Okay, you saw a girl, and didn’t tell me about her. Why?”

  “I didn’t think you would like her,” I said.

  “Clearly you were right, if she’s the kind to do this sort of childish prank. What provoked her? If she’s had these photos for over a year, what made her decide now was the perfect time to pass them around like candy?”

  Now I had to look away.

  “Becket?” my father demanded. He stepped closer to me, and I had to look at him or risk making him angry. He would punish me already, and I didn’t want him to hurt me too badly. Manny would be so upset when I had to tell her everything that happened. She would want to hurt my father.

  With a deep breath, I told the truth. “Hel, Julian, and their friends are the ones that I had attacked that day at school. They don’t like me or Manny. I didn’t want to have sex with any of the girls, and Manny refused the guys. I think they wanted to hurt us because they could.”

  My father’s expression went through so many changes, I couldn’t keep up. I remained quiet, hoping that he wouldn’t get more upset than he already was. He paced away from me, dragging his hands down his face. After a deep, deep breath, he turned back to me.

  “All this happened because you started spending time with Manny?”

  I didn’t say anything because it felt like a betrayal to confirm but like a lie to deny. If I stayed quiet, maybe he would move on. Wishful thinking, and I knew that the second the hope popped up. I couldn’t squash it, though because that was the peskiest thing about hope. It never died easily when it should.

  “Becket, do you realize how serious this is? They could arrest me, thinking that I’ve been trying to kill you. Or they could put you in a mental hospital and drug you up. I won’t be there to give you the right things, either. You’ll be a zombie, and you’ll never get better.”

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” I said.

  My father put his hands on my shoulder, forcing me to turn my attention back to him. “I can fix this but we can’t risk something like this happening again. Do you realize how close to losing everything we are? I can’t let that happen, not after everything I’ve worked so hard for. You’re almost better, Becket. I’m so close to having you the way you’re meant to be.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I repeated.

  “No, I am the one that is sorry. I let you down. I didn’t take good enough care of you, and now I have to hurt you even worse.”

  I dropped my eyes.

  “You have to stop seeing Manny,” Dad said.

  My gaze shot back up to him. “Or?” I asked.

  “There is no ‘or’ in this one, Becket. I try not to give you hard orders but this the only option. Manny caused all this, no matter how indirectly it came about. You have to stop seeing her. I won’t go to prison for this, so if you don’t stop seeing her...” Dad shrugged. “I’ll make sure that you do.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll check you into the hospital myself, and I’ll make sure that you don’t have any visitors. It would kill me to do that, Becket but I won’t let you see her. If the hospital doesn’t work...” he trailed off.

  “What?” I asked but my voice sounded distant. My heart thudded against my chest, and blood rushed through my ears. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Not see Manny again? Not have her around. Not have her there to hold, to talk with. To sit quietly with.

  Manny, who seemed to understand me when my words shouldn’t make sense. Manny, who sat with me when no one else would. Manny, who liked my drawings and wanted to keep them forever.

  A weird, hollowed out feeling started to creep into my body as I pictured life without the one person I loved most. A life where I walked from room to room, empty as a house without furniture.

  I couldn’t let that happen.

  “If I can’t keep the two of you apart through
normal means,” Dad said. “I’ll make sure that she won’t ever be around to bother you again.”

  All that pressure in my head snapped, and I stared at my father. He wanted to take Manny from me. He would take Manny from me. He would hurt her because she would be hurt if she was all alone. I couldn’t let her be all alone.

  My heart thundered in my chest, and my blood boiled. Adrenaline rushed through my body, making my head tingle. He was going to take her away because of what Hel did. He was going to take away my love. I could see Manny’s green eyes sparkling in my mind, and then burning with protective fire. I could see her so clearly... And I would not lose her.

  I reached forward, feeling for all my father’s blood moving through his veins. I whispered to that blood, called to it. Each drop turned into a tiny needle, and I forced it through the underside of his skin. Millions of miniscule spears broke out all over his body, making him look like a red porcupine. There was a moment, one brief moment, where his eyes widened in shock.

  His body pitched forward, and he fell to the ground. All those blood spears I had turned his body into shattered and started to leak across the floor.

  The adrenaline faded, and I stared at my father...my dead father...

  What did I do?

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Water and Stone

  Manny

  Silence was not something I’d ever hated. Not until now, where I waited for my phone to ring in my pocket. Hours. It had been hours, and I was not well.

  I took every single one of those pictures, and I burned them. I had to leave the school when I was sure Becket wasn’t coming back because I didn’t at all trust myself not to kill Hel and the rest of her band of bitches. Truly, I’d never felt such pure hate in my heart. I wanted them dead, and the feeling did not fade.

  My parents and Lane were not at home when I got back. I had the house to myself but I did nothing at all but sit on my bed, staring at the picture Becket gave me. I had his ink on my skin, and it wasn’t enough. Not when he was gone, and I didn’t know what was happening to him. I had seen the police cars and assumed the worst. Yet, it didn’t do anything for me. I was still helpless.

  I wanted nothing more than to call Becket and find out what was going on but I was afraid. If his father was there, and angry, a reminder that I existed would have only hurt in the end. There wasn’t a thing I could do, and that was just so very much like me.

  When I looked at my phone, checking for a miracle, I realized I’d lost more time than I thought. I’d sat there unmoving for over three hours. Letting terrible thoughts roam around in my head, putting on horror movies of what my love may have been going through. I hoped to god that real life was not as bad as my imagination.

  Then I realized my hands were shaking. My phone fell from one, and when I reached for it and couldn’t get my fingers around the shape, I saw it. I heard my own breaths; how uneven they were. My heart tripped in my chest as fear consumed me.

  I inhaled deeply, ignoring how I wasn’t really getting air. I took one second to pretend nothing in the world existed. Just the one. Then, for once, the universe was on my side.

  The phone rang, and I couldn’t have hit the TALK button fast enough. Since I couldn’t really hold the phone, I put it on speaker, trying my best to say Becket’s name.

  “Manny,” he said back, sounding... wrong. Anyone else in the world probably wouldn’t have noticed a difference in his voice because it was always kind of flat. Well, not to me. I could pick out the subtle inflections, and even the lightness, when it was there. But no one was smart enough to want to get to know him, so those harder to see things were lost on the general population. This... this was so hollow. Becket was not hollow.

  “What happened?” I asked because I knew something had happened.

  That bitter silence stung my ears before he spoke again. “I killed my father,” he stated plainly. Before I could say anything, he said, “I don’t know what to do now. I don’t know...”

  I was already moving. The shaking stopped the very second I was needed, and I got on my feet. I didn’t even know what I was going to do but that didn’t matter for the next ten minutes.

  “What happened?” I asked as I hurried to my door. “Are you okay?”

  Becket ignored the last question. “He threatened to hurt you. He said that I couldn’t see you anymore, and he would do what he needed to do to keep us apart. I couldn’t... I couldn’t let that happen.”

  Several things flashed in my head all at once, and each one of them made me feel like a monster. One, that bastard was dead. Good. Fucking good that he wasn’t breathing, and he would never lay a hand on Becket ever again. I would have been utterly gleeful if this was not crushing the boy I loved.

  But it did, and I was still glad that the man was dead, and that made me something crueler than I thought I could be.

  Second, that man threatened me. Threatened my life if Becket didn’t stop seeing me. The doctor was dead now, and I should have not wasted a moment being angry that he decided my life would be lost if Becket didn’t make a choice that would hurt him. His father must have blamed me for the pictures. Again, it shouldn’t have mattered because he was dead. Still, terrified thoughts of losing Becket clouded my thinking.

  And then there was the third thing that flashed, and it scared me. I was thinking of ways to dispose of a body.

  “It’s okay,” I told Becket as I flew out of my house. “I’m on my way, and I’m going to fix everything. You’re not hurt?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll be there in a few minutes. Stay on the phone with me while I walk. Talk to me.”

  “About what?”

  Shit. I didn’t know what would be a good way to distract him. He was in the same house as the corpse of his father, and I doubted that even I could make him feel better. Still, I would try.

  “Okay, I’ll talk,” I said. “Close your eyes, sweetie.”

  He told me he did.

  I went on. “Picture you and me,” I said as I walked down my street so fast that my calves burned. “We’re outside, and it’s midnight. In that special spot in the woods. I brought a blanket, and we’re laying on it, looking up at the stars. Can you see it?”

  A brief pause, and then, “I can.”

  “Good. Your eyes are still closed?”

  “Yes.”

  “While we’re lying there, I take your hand and lay my head on your chest.” I was a couple blocks away, I needed him distracted for a few more minutes. I hoped to god this was working. “Can you feel my hand in yours?”

  “I can,” he responded.

  A few more houses, and I would be at his. I still didn’t know what I would do but that could be figured out later. My real worry was how long his father had been dead before Becket called. Either way, we had time, and I would decide on what to do. Becket was the first priority, and I needed to keep him calm.

  “I’m at the door, sweetie,” I said. “I’m coming in. Where are you?”

  “The kitchen,” he said as I opened up the front door.

  I hurried through the house, calling to Becket once I hung up my phone. I didn’t realize the body was in the kitchen, too. Maybe I should have because I knew Becket too well.

  The boy sat with his knees at his chest, his back to the wall, staring at the dead man on the floor. I had no clue what exactly killed him but his body was a mess of blood. It could have been holes all over his skin but I didn’t stare long enough to really break it down. The blood coated him, and he laid in a puddle of it, surrounding the area. Becket was clean, and I was grateful for that.

  I dropped down beside Becket, taking one of his hands and pulling his face to me with the other. “Are you okay?” I asked again.

  His stare was a blank one. “My father is dead.”

  I nodded. “I know, sweetheart. How long ago did this happen?”

  Becket blinked. “Right after I got home. He took me away from the police, and then here.”

  So, it had bee
n hours. Hours that Becket was sitting in the kitchen with a body. The body of a man he loved, despite what I thought of him. I was sorry for how Becket hurt but I was not sorry that the doctor was dead. I couldn’t be.

  “The police?” I asked. “What happened with them?”

  “They questioned me about the scars. They accused my father, and then everything blew up. We got home, and he told me I wasn’t allowed to see you anymore. That he would send me away, or do something to you. I wouldn’t have let that happen.”

  “Shh, I know.” I pressed my lips to his forehead for a moment or two. “I know, Becket.”

  “I had to stop him.”

  I nodded. “It’s okay because I’m going to fix this.” Taking a few seconds to think, I said, “I need you to go upstairs and bring me all the spare sheets in the house. Can you do that?”

  He agreed, and rose with me from the floor. I didn’t want to separate from him for a moment but I wanted him away from the body he’d spent too much time with already. I hoped a few minutes away would help.

  Then I was there, alone with a corpse that I had to get rid of... and I didn’t shatter. I should have. I should have collapsed onto the ground, panicked and sobbing. But Becket needed me to be better than that, so I would be.

  One more second. I gave myself one to breathe, and think, and gasp with. Then it was over, and I had work to do.

  We were in fucking trouble, weren’t we? With the police onto Dr. Anders about abusing Becket, there would be questioning. Probably a case opened, and people coming by to speak with the man himself. Well, he was fucking dead, and that left us in a tricky spot. Maybe we would get lucky, and they would assume he fled town when people caught on that he hurt his child. They wouldn’t blame Becket, surely. Or, like everyone else, they would get suspicious because he was a blood worker. It didn’t matter that he was sweet, and quiet, and kept to himself. We could do something scary, so we were born monsters.