Reception

by Kenzie Jennings

  Delia gently urges me forward towards my sister. I step up to wipe her tears from her face and the strands of hair from her face. Shay has never been lovelier as she is in this moment. Her vitality, it’s electric. Blood, life, pumping through her. I can hear her heartbeat. I can feel it underneath my fingertips, that energy pulsating.

  Maybe it’s the anticipation of something great. I’ve no idea, but I’m more than willing here and now to learn more, and both Delia and Charlie are beside me, hands over mine, stroking warm, bare skin, easing Shay into submission until she’s silently weeping. Her body shudders when our hands skim over smooth torso, her nipples, her slender neck, teasing with feather light touches. Charlie’s hands then close over mine, cupping them in his. He puts his lips to my ear, the heat of him sending a shiver coursing through me.

  “A good bite of her light, Ansley,” he says. “That purest morsel will release you. Try it.”

  My sister, my love, she could do no wrong to anyone. I want that, too.

  I lean in close to gently kiss an eye before my teeth clamp down over it, and it pops, its gelatinous, spongy goo flooding my mouth with its brine. Spots of light dance in front of my own line of sight as I tear into her face, from the base of her eye socket, to her jawline, ripping away the tender flesh and eating it whole, gorging on it. There’s white noise, scratchy static in the room, but I can’t hear well at any rate for the wretched, grating sound of her screaming around the gag. Half of her beautiful face is in red, weeping ribbons, her eye socket now filled with blood.

  The pain I’d felt for so long, my old friend, my worst enemy, it’s gone. In its place, absolute clarity and what I think may be the apex of nirvana.

  How did I not know of this? How was I not aware?

  When I turn to Charlie, he’s still there beside me, smiling at me. But everyone else…

  When did they all leave? Delia and Rex, too, they’re gone. I must have been so consumed by my hunger, by my need, I didn’t even notice them go. Not like I could hear anything in the moment.

  There are only a few of us in the room, a room that has since grown foggy with a smoky haze, remnants of a fire that had never been lit to begin with. While its scent is redolent with that burning sage and the tang of blood, my lungs have never been clearer. My headache is finally gone.

  I’ve never felt better. Who would’ve thought?

  Shay has passed out from the pain. When she comes to, perhaps I’ll eat the rest.

  Charlie sucks the blood and goo from Shay’s eye socket like it's a seashell. The sound of it is lewd and raw. I should be nauseated by it. Instead though, I feel nothing. Not a sense of emptiness, or even a sense of hollow sadness. I just feel nothing. Sheer apathy, perhaps.

  The shadowy shape to the other side of Shay, a wavery figure in the haze, grows into a recognizable form. He offers me a little wave in recognition. Warm, friendly, open face. Pride brimming in his eyes. He’s wearing that stupid arcade tee shirt, that ugly corded jacket with the patched elbows, the worn jeans, and Nikes.

  I can’t move; my feet are failing me. My mind is playing games. How is this even happening?

  “Leon? What are you—?”

  “Remember what I said the other day?” Leon suddenly says, abruptly cutting me off. He’s not even paying the slightest bit of attention to the meal we’ve made of my sister. His focus is entirely on me, and he’s choosing his words carefully.

  Charlie laps and chews at the raw layers of meat exposed on my sister’s face.

  And my breath, it’s suddenly ripped from me. I’m gasping for air.

  Leon turns my head so that I’m looking at him instead, and I’m trying to reach deep within me, to get myself to breathe. His smile curls into a thoughtful frown.

  “When you’re feeling like everything is sucking all the air from you, you find something solid,” he says.

  Something solid. I don’t know if I even have—

  Wait a minute. There is something. I don’t even know if it’s still there. I feel along the side of my breast, and it’s still trapped there in my bra. Ridiculous. I reach down inside and pull it out. The key has probably left an angry indentation, but right now, if it’s my way out—

  I look up at Leon, knowing the rest of the words by heart, but even still, I want to hear it from him, the source of it.

  He beams at me and says, “Look at it. Hold it. Use its solidity.”

  The key feels heavy and just right in the palm of my hand.

  “It’ll remind you what is here. What is now. It will bring you back to where you need to be.” He nods in the direction of wooden door number two, to the right of my ruined sister, my first ever homegrown meal.

  I make my way slowly around Charlie, keeping a wary eye on him as I walk past. He doesn’t even look up from his grazing, doesn’t even seem to care. As soon as I’m at the door, I glance back at Leon. He motions for me to keep going.

  “You will be released from the lie that’s keeping you bound, little sister,” Leon says right as I use the key to unlock the door.

  TWENTY-ONE

  At first, there’s only the light, and it’s blinding.

  It’s not what you think, that cliché of the end of the tunnel.

  Right when everything starts to come into focus, all the grating colors and cacophony forming into something tangible, something comprehensible, the light is just a powerful beam aimed directly at my face, and I can’t seem to move. A deer caught in headlights. Now that’s the right cliché.

  I’ve been caught, but I can’t seem to grasp what’s here, what I’ve been caught doing. I’m sitting crossed-legged on a carpeted floor. Its texture is strangely sticky, pliant, under my hands.

  My hands. They’re gloved in blood. This is not what gives me pause. This is not what makes me question everything until now.

  The sound that had been a high-pitched drone in my head strikes me hard first. The shrill screams come from several women and men all at once, and I hear the first whole series of words, a solid line of inquiry, straight to the point.

  It’s the voice of my mother, screaming, “What did you do to her, Ansley? What did you do?”

  How is my mother here? It’s a logical question, considering she’d been last seen roasting on a spit not too long ago. The smell of her cooking made me hungry. I remember that.

  Memories can be tricky devils though. Sometimes, they’re simply what you think you remember, but in fact, somebody else has recalled it for you. What you recall is, in fact, completely fabricated, fooled by your mind, crafted by your own suffering. You know that sort of suffering very well.

  Someone pulls me up on my feet from underneath my arms, and I don’t want to go. I can’t go. I need answers. Here in the bridal suite (the bridal suite?), it’s crowded with people in dresses and suits, people in blue and white uniforms.

  One of the blue uniforms, I instantly recognize her with her short hair and tiny features. But she’s dead. She offers a comforting hand on my shoulder as her partner (eater) has my hands behind my back and locks the handcuffs on. The policewoman is having me focus on her and nothing else, her line of sight drawing me to her. But she’s dead.

  When I shake loose my thoughts looping circles, around and around, I realize she’s been speaking to me. For how long though, I’ve no idea. Her actual voice is soothing, like a soft, welcoming blanket. It’s certainly practiced. “Miss Boone, are you here with us? Do you need me to repeat your rights?”

  She’d recited my Miranda rights. I know what this entails now. The handcuffs are tight. My arms are strained and aching. I’ve no idea what I’ve done, even still. My mother is kneeling there on the floor, rocking and weeping, my father behind her, attempting to pull her away from the sight of Shay lying there, sprawled out, still in her wedding gown. Its bodice and sleeves, while perfectly intact, are splattered in blood.

  There’s a flash-pop of a lightbulb as a photo’s been snapped. The brief burst of light reveals Shay’s ravaged face. Her remaining eye star
es up at the ceiling, as if the answer to everything about what has happened to her exists somewhere in the void.

  My headache lingers, a buzz of an afterthought, a reminder.

  How could this be possible? I mean, everyone is alive and whole. Nathan has crouched beside Mom and is holding her now, his wet, red glare directed up at me. Dad is screaming something, but I can’t understand him, can’t comprehend or make any sense of what he’s saying. Rex and a groomsman pull him away from the gathering around Shay’s body. He’s pointing and flailing, trying to grab for me. It takes another police officer to keep him barricaded from reaching me.

  There’s something else in his eyes, underneath the hot rage. Bafflement? Sadness? Horror? Shock? Pity? I won’t be able to find out anytime soon what any of this means, what exactly happened, but then again, as my thoughts come together in a jumbled collection of images and I’m led out of the room, out into the courtyard of the resort, heading for that police motorcade and ambulance, nothing about this makes any sense in the end. You must realize this, right? Even by now?

  That Delirium.

  That Derealization.

  Hallucinations, auditory and visual.

  Stop.

  That. Right there.

  Play it back.

  Leon had warned me about it again and again and had softly passed on that information on to my mother. I had been there. She knew, so I can’t be solely to blame.

  And hallucinations, like memories, they shift and change, morphing into something else entirely, disappearing altogether, and then becoming something I will definitely need to see for myself because none of this was ever meant to be.

  Still, perhaps a nice, long stint in a cell will be a much more effective detox program. And, well, hey, my insurance won’t be affected either. Have to look on the bright side of things.

  Right after I wash the bitter taste of my sister out of my mouth.

  THE END

  Acknowledgements

  Many heartfelt thanks to the following people:

  My family and friends, who always encouraged me to persist, persist, persist, even when it all went sour.

  Jeff Strand, for his ever-patient mentorship and friendship. I only hope, one day, to be able to pass it on to someone else.

  Johanna Kopp, Cori Endicott Large, Renee Laurent, and Rebecka Ramos, who were there when I first put this insanity to paper and whose feedback was invaluable.

  Jarod Barbee and Patrick Harrison III, for giving a new girl a chance to make some waves in a genre we love.

  Lynne Hansen, for the amazing cover to this baby, and Tiffany Messerschmidt, for the encouragement and the inspiration behind the cover concept.

  William Tucker, for bringing me back to the writing life.

  Finally, J. Frank James, wherever he may be, who took a chance long ago on a kid who wanted to write something.

  Kenzie Jennings is an English professor currently residing and sweltering in the humid tourist hub of central Florida. She has written pieces for a handful of news and entertainment publications and literary magazines throughout the years. Back when she was young and impetuous, she had two screenplays optioned by a couple of production companies, but her screenwriting career ended there, and she hasn’t looked back since. Reception is her debut novel.

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