by Laird Barron
“You aren’t kidding.”
“I am not.”
Even through the blood streaking it, Maureen could see how sharp the blade’s teeth were. She looked at Frank, who was watching her and Louise’s exchange with an expression of terror. Her lips dry, Maureen said, “If I do?”
“Then Frank will be released.”
“What happens to me?”
“This isn’t about what happens to you; it’s a test of your feelings for your beloved. Who knows, though? If you open your veins, I might decide this town has suffered enough.”
“And if I don’t accept your offer?”
Malice lit Louise’s features. “Perhaps I’ll let you live.”
“You will? Why?”
“For this to be a true test of your commitment to Frank, your possible fate cannot be a factor. You might obey my request simply to spare yourself further suffering. Let’s remove that from consideration.”
“What about revenge? What about your standing in your community?”
“I trust the condition of this town has not escaped you. I know the condition of my husband has not.” Louise smiled without humor. “Anyone who learns of either of these acts will be reminded that I am not to be trifled with. As for vengeance, if you understood anything of it, you would realize that the choice I am offering you is a far superior version of it than ripping the flesh from your bones.”
Louise was right. If Maureen took the knife to her throat, Frank would have to watch her. Presumably, Louise would keep him alive until she had bled out, or was in the same half-life as he. That would be the sight he would take with him into death, the last of days of abuses. Maureen would have committed herself to who could say what? Nothing good, that much was certain. On the other hand, if she walked out the door, crossed the street, got into her car, and drove away, Frank would be abandoned by the woman for whom he had abandoned his wife, a betrayal he would take with him as the ocean carried him into its salty depths. Nor could Maureen expect to escape the consequences of such a decision, the guilt that would empty her as thoroughly as a coroner at an autopsy. She could practically see the empty Stoli bottles, the containers of sedatives spilled on her kitchen counter, Glock out on the coffee table, a round in the chamber.
“Well?” Louise said.
Surely, there was a third option, an avenue she had overlooked in the insanity of events. Was she close enough, fast enough for a lunge at Louise? Would—could it succeed? The leaking hole in Louise’s forehead strongly suggested it could not. Was the attempt worth it anyway, as a last gesture of defiance? Where would that leave Frank, though? She glanced at him, at his savaged body. He was trying to tell her something, his swollen and bloody lips mouthing a silent syllable. Go? She wasn’t sure.
“You can’t prolong this forever,” Louise said.
“This is part of the revenge, isn’t it? The trying to decide.”
“You’re learning.”
“You’re a bitch.”
“You’re out of time. Make your choice.”
On legs stiff from crouching beside Frank, Maureen stood. The carving knife was heavy in her hand. Her muscles tensed at what was to come next. Louise watched her with her blank, pitiless eyes.
For Fiona
FOR OUR SKIN, A DAUGHTER
by Kristi DeMeester
When they were twelve and almost twelve, Constance and Haritha covered their faces, their breath pulling the fabric against their lips, small puffs of moist, heated air trapped inside those thin, fabricated veils. They waited for darkness, but Constance wasn’t sure it ever came.
Three days later, Haritha didn’t come to school, and their teacher tried to explain what had happened, but all Constance could think to do was scream. Eventually, Mrs. Fowler came, her face drawn and mouth pinched, gathered Constance and her things, and quietly led her out of the classroom.
“You were her friend?” Mrs. Fowler had brought Constance to her office, closed the door, and set a box of tissues next to her elbow.
“Yes.”
“I’m so very sorry. It’s a terrible, terrible thing. I’m sure it’s hard to understand why she would do something like that. A tragedy,” Mrs. Fowler said, and Constance felt the word roll off of her. Tra-gaa-dee. Such a delicate, fragile way to describe what had happened. This word that would linger in place of Haritha. Bleach out her memory until there was only a scrubbed reminder of the girl who’d been Constance’s best friend.
“I can call your mom. Maybe she can come and pick you up?”
Constance didn’t nod. Didn’t shake her head or say yes or say no, and Mrs. Fowler sighed, the phone already pressed to her ear.
Curling her fingers against the bottom of the chair, Constance thought of the weight of Haritha’s hair in her fingers, how it slid against her skin like something oiled before she brought the scissors against it.
“Put it away,” Haritha had whispered, and Constance had curled those long strands around her hand and kissed them. After, her lips had tasted of honeysuckle and orange, and she couldn’t rid herself of the weight of what they had done. What they were about to do.
“You’re going to not believe it for a while. That’s normal.” Mrs. Fowler was looking at Constance now, her head cocked like an idiot bird that didn’t quite know what it was looking at. Like Constance was some foreign creature she’d never seen before.
“You’ll be angry for awhile, too. But it’s important to remember it isn’t your fault. What happened.” Mrs. Fowler’s voice was robotic, the memorized and rehearsed lines pouring out of her like water. Things to say in a time of crisis. Easy things that were supposed to comfort.
Still, Constance didn’t speak but picked at her cuticles, remembering how Haritha had whispered in her ear. “I know how to make us the same,” she’d said, and then pressed her hands against Constance’s arms. She could still feel that same pressure now, and her skin went cold.
“Your mom said she was on her way. Do you want to lie down in the clinic until then?” Mrs. Fowler nodded, willing Constance to say yes, to leave her office. Another item checked off the list. Another pat on the back for helping some poor, struggling student.
Stumbling, she rose and pulled her backpack against her stomach as if it could make the roaring, emptied feeling stop, and let Mrs. Fowler lead her to the clinic. Another student lay on one of the cots, his back curved outward, his legs tucked under his chin. Fetal position. For a moment, Constance wanted to go to him, to curl her own body against his and match her breathing to the rise and fall of his chest. Maybe if they shared the terrible thing hiding inside each of them, it would make them feel better.
Instead, she sat on her own cot as far from the boy as she could, and Mrs. Fowler squeezed her shoulder and left without another word.
Her mother would come and pick her up and ask Constance questions, her eyes gone starry with tears she didn’t really have the right to. She would smooth rough hands over Constance’s face, her hair, and ask her only daughter if she was okay. If she would be okay.
There would be her scratchy black dress, and a pair of woolen tights, and her black Mary Janes, and her hair pulled back so it ached. Last year, her grandfather had died—heart attack in his tiny kitchen—and she’d gone to the funeral, but his death had not been the same as this. Nothing had ever been the same as this.
Across the room, the boy shifted, his jacket whispering around him, and Constance shivered. When she got home, she’d look in the mirror. Stare at every inch of her face to see if it had started to change yet. If it would be the way Haritha had promised, or if her skin would go corpse cold, her hair limp and straggling down her back. That thread Haritha had magicked between them a sudden, decayed thing.
She pressed her fingers against her arms and cheeks, sneaked a hand under her sweater to touch her belly, but her skin was still warm. Still alive. Wherever Haritha had gone, it would be cold. The thought made her want to scream again, but she bit down on her tongue until she thought it would bleed. Co
nstance had always been the one who didn’t do things; the one who hid in the corners and hoped to disappear into the shadows.
Constance didn’t hear when her mother stole into the room, but suddenly she was there, her lips pressed to Constance’s hair. “Let’s go home,” she said, and Constance sat up, her bones feeling too heavy for her skin. The boy had already gone. It made her lonely to think he’d left without her noticing.
“I’m so sorry, Constance,” her mother said once they were in the car, seatbelts on and doors locked and the road humming beneath them. Constance turned away and let her forehead rest against the window.
“But you’re not. You never liked her,” she said, and her mother went silent except for a periodic sniffling. The sound made Constance want to slap her, but she kept her hands primly folded in her lap.
When they pulled into the driveway, Constance opened the door before her mother could cut the engine. Her feet slipped against the gravel, but she ran, her fingers grasping at the key she kept zipped in her jacket pocket. “In case of emergencies,” her mother told Constance when she handed it over, the silver glinting in the light.
“Constance.” Her mother called after her, but it was soft. Weak. There was no intention behind it, and Constance kept moving until she was in her bedroom, the door closed and locked behind her. The discordant sounds of her mother coming inside drifted through the closed door: a kitchen cabinet opening, the sound of a coffee mug against the counter top, the tap running full force as her mother started a pot of coffee.
She’d half expected her bedroom to be altered somehow, as if somehow this thing that had happened to Haritha—she would not say it yet, would not say dead—would have made everything seem off somehow. Like a dream she couldn’t wake up from.
But everything was exactly the same. Her ratty sleep shirt with David Bowie’s leering face across the front still thrown across her bed, the sheets tangled as if she’d slept fitfully, her breath stained with nightmares. Had she dreamt the night before? She couldn’t remember.
Her bed and posters and dresser and collection of old perfume bottles were still where she’d left them. Her closet door still thrown open to reveal the pile of unwashed clothes she’d promised her mother she’d sort last weekend. Everything the same and yet, somehow, not.
“Are you here?” Constance waited for Haritha’s whisper. Squinted her eyes and then opened them as wide as she could so she could watch for the faintest movement. A falling book or a shirt swaying as if someone had touched it, but other than the sounds of her mother making coffee, the room was silent. Was still. Constance let all of her breath out at once, and it felt as if she might not ever breathe again.
“You said it wasn’t supposed to happen this way.” Her voice was tight in her chest, and she brought her fist to the knot forming under her breastbone and pushed. Under her touch, her heart still beat.
What would it have been like if it had been her instead? To fall asleep the night before, her pillow folded in half and tucked under her neck, only to have never woken up. To have opened up her own veins, the warmth flowing over her wrists, her hands.
Inside her closet, Constance thought she saw something shift. A dark streak that was there and gone before her blood could go cold.
“Is this the way it’s supposed to be? Why didn’t you tell me?” she said, but there was nothing there to answer her.
The mirror over her dresser revealed only her own face. Her hair bobbing at her shoulders and a sprinkle of freckles over her nose.
Locked away inside her bedroom, Constance smiled and waited for it to get dark. She’d spend the rest of her life waiting if she had to.
~
“Blood sisters,” Haritha said, and her lips twisted upward into something that was almost a smile.
Constance’s stomach flipped, and she shivered. “I don’t like needles.”
“I’ll do it for you. It’ll be done and over in two seconds. Like this.” Haritha inhaled a sharp, quick breath, and then the needle descended. She hissed and held out her finger toward Constance. Two jeweled drops of blood oozed from Haritha’s finger, and Constance had the sudden desire to draw the girl’s finger into her mouth and suckle at the warm liquid.
She shook her head no, but she felt the softness in it. Haritha spoke more slowly, her head dipping so that her forehead pressed against Constance’s. Her skin was feverish, but Constance didn’t pull away. “We’ll always be together after this. Inside,” Haritha said, and Constance felt herself nodding, felt herself lifting her hand like some obscene offering, and then it was done, and Haritha was pressing their fingers together, the blood mingling and dripping into their palms, and Haritha drew her tongue over their wrists like a cat. Constance didn’t pull away, and it made her stomach queasy to know she hadn’t.
“There’s something else, too.” Haritha scrambled backward. “I heard a story once about two girls. They spent every second together, but their parents hated each other and tried to keep them apart. At night, the girls would sit by their windows and sing to the moon. All of their sadness filled up the sky until the stars couldn’t stand it anymore and begged the moon to help the girls.”
Constance chewed on her lip. They were way too old for fairy tales now, but Haritha’s eyes had gone bright, and Constance didn’t want to interrupt.
“So the moon came up with a plan that would make it so the two girls would never be apart. He whispered to them, and they cried because they were so happy. Finally, they could be together without their parents being angry.
“He wove two veils out of moonlight. Light, airy things that looked like something you’d wear on your wedding day, and he laid them outside their windows and told them to wait until there was no moon to wrap the veils over their faces. ‘Wait for the darkness,’ he told them, ‘and you’ll be the mirrored half of the other. You’ll never walk this earth alone again.’”
Haritha traced a heart against the interior of Constance’s palm. “We never get to see each other anymore. Not like we used to. It sucks.”
Constance’s tongue went heavy as a stone. There were too many things she didn’t have the words to explain. Her mother’s growing hesitation whenever she’d ask to stay over at Haritha’s house. The flicker of worry that passed over her face whenever Constance told her stories about the things she and Haritha would do or how much she wished she and Haritha didn’t ever have to leave each other. Once, she’d told her mother she loved Haritha, and her mother had slapped her and then gone soundlessly away. Her jaw had ached for two days after that, and her mother didn’t speak for five days.
“Yeah,” Constance said, and Haritha scooted forward and leaned her head into Constance’s neck. The weight of her like something that could root Constance to this place.
“Sometimes, I have a dream that I’m wearing you. That it’s me inside, peeking out, but I know I’m inside, and you’re keeping me safe,” Haritha said.
“That’s kind of creepy.”
“I guess. It’s kind of nice, too, though. Don’t you think? To have found someone who’s so much like you that it’s like being inside of her?” Haritha paused, lifted her head, and pressed her lips to Constance’s ear. “I know how to make us the same.”
~
In the morning, there was no sun. Only a cold, dim light that seemed to come from somewhere beyond the sky. Constance rolled over onto her belly so she could see into her closet. Throughout the night, she’d waited, her eyes burning, but there’d been no other movement. No small sounds that would have broken the world open.
Her mirror showed only her face, her eyes gone bloodshot from lack of sleep.
“Sweetie?” Her mother knocked against the door. “Do you want some breakfast? Toast or yogurt or anything?”
Constance didn’t respond, but watched her closet.
“The funeral’s tomorrow. I can drive you,” her mother said, and Constance let herself slip off her bed and onto the floor.
“She won’t be there. It won’t b
e her,” Constance said. Outside, she heard her mother shift, the indecision of what to do with this girl locked away behind the door thick in her muscles, and then the slight shuffling as her mother went away. Her mother would still feel the same way about Haritha that she always had. The sympathy would bleed out of her after they put Haritha in the dirt, and her mother could begin the quick process of forgetting her daughter had ever had a best friend with long, dark hair and even darker skin.
Constance traced patterns against the worn carpet. Hearts. The shape of Haritha’s eyes. Her mouth.
“Come out. Don’t be afraid.” Her voice was thin. An imitation of the girl she’d spent her entire life pretending to be.
But, of course, if it was Haritha, she wouldn’t come out now. Not into the light. It wasn’t how it was supposed to be. And her body would be so new, it would hurt to be under even a sun gone dim. The mirrored half of her barely covered in skin rubbed raw and pink.
“Why didn’t you tell me you had to die first? That wasn’t in the story,” she said, and she thought she felt something shift around her. A resettling of energy that made her blood heavy and slow. Beneath that sudden weight, her heart slowed, and again she looked in the mirror.
Green eyes. Hair the color of dark honey. A thin, waifish face gone blotchy. “Why aren’t I changing?” Constance said, and she heard her mother creep past her door again.
Curling into herself, she forced her eyes closed.
Tomorrow, they would bury whatever emptiness lay inside Haritha’s skin. Constance would not be there to see it.
~
“Straight across. Like yours,” Haritha said, and Constance drew the scissors over Haritha’s hair. Her hands trembled. “So it will recognize the two of us as the same. When it comes.”
“When what comes?”
Haritha only shook her head, and Constance went silent.