by Ellery Fenn
“Yep.” And the one that brought you here. Murderer.
My throat was tight, but the slip was tighter. “Please. What do you want from me?”
“A confession.”
There was splashing in the creek. Something was crossing toward me. Footsteps drew closer. Something pushed through the underbrush and walked around to stand in front of me.
The horses in me raced relentlessly. I pulled at the blindfold, scratching my skin to get my fingers under the cloth. I hooked them under the edge of the fabric. It pulled tighter, trapping my fingers to my head. I couldn’t get my hand free. My other arm stayed useless against my chest.
A hand closed around my ankle. It stayed there, unmoving and strong, like a manacle.
Every muscle clenched. I couldn’t breathe. The hand was stronger than me. Just one hand. I began to cry. How? How could something like this happen? Just a girl. She was just a girl and she stabbed me and trapped me and I couldn’t move and I wasn’t strong enough.
I hadn’t cried since I was a kid, since Dad last got the belt out. Warmth pooled in my groin. I pissed myself.
“Please.” My voice cracked. “Please. Stop.”
“Stop?” the voice behind me said. “You didn’t stop when Lisa asked you to.”
Death in my mouth. Death in my nose. Silk in my eyes. Hand on my leg. Belt on my bare skin. And pain. Awful, awful, blinding pain.
“I’m sorry!” I cried. “Just don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me.”
The hand moved, crawled up my leg like a spider, up to my waistband. It unzipped my fly.
My heart stopped. “No. What are you doing? Don’t do that.”
“Oh, we won’t. We’re not monsters.”
The one in front of me laughed, the same horrible voice that called my name from a distance.
“Well,” the girl behind me said. “Maybe just a little. But you made us that way. Don’t you know what we are?”
I could barely move my head to shake it. The silk was going to crush my skull.
“What do you think?” It took me a second to realize she wasn’t talking to me. “Should we show him?” There was a pause. “You’re right. You’ll have to wait, Doug. Good things come to those who wait. And we’ve waited a long time for this moment, for revenge. Like Rose.”
A sob tore through my throat. I was dizzy, numb from lack of oxygen, numb from fear, numb from pain. “Let me go!”
“We might. That’s up to you.”
I swallowed. “What do I have to do?”
“Easy. Confess. Tell us what happened Homecoming night, and we won’t kill you.”
Dread twisted in my gut. Kill me. They were going to kill me.
“You already know what happened,” I said.
A finger pressed against my arm, drawing a scream from me. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Roots of pain spread from the wound into every part of my body, deep and jagged and burning.
“Humor me. I want to hear it from you.”
“It hurts!”
“Let him speak.”
They let go of my arm. Air rushed from my lungs.
I shook, struggling to get a breath in, struggling to speak past my pain and my tears. “I- I… We went to the dance.”
“After that, idiot. After you parked the car.”
My voice trembled. “We- we, what was I supposed to do? We were going to have sex, but she fought me. Dates always end in sex.”
“You’re so fucking stupid.”
My nose ran, but neither of my hands were available to wipe it. Instead, they stayed where they were. Fingers lost circulation in the hand on my head, and the arm. The arm was the center of all pain on earth.
“Let’s skip to the end of the fight. You hit her with a rock. She died. And you left her there.”
“I- I didn’t mean to kill her. I just wanted…”
“I know. You just wanted a blowjob.” The hand pulled my pants down, then my boxers. Cold air stung me. They wiped me clean with my underwear.
I was Doug Allan. Baseball star. Scholarship. If my friends could see me now, if Dad could see me now.
I squirmed, but the hands gripping my hips held me firmly in place. The touch was cold, almost colder than the air, and impossibly strong. “No! I don’t want, not now. I don’t want that now.”
“Lisa didn’t want it either.”
My legs shook. “Please don’t do this. Please don’t do this.”
One of the hands freed itself and traced a sharp claw around my crotch. The touch raised goosebumps down both legs. I shrunk back.
“Don’t play with your food, dear.”
The horrible voice laughed.
“Food?!”
The claws wrapped around my genitals so tight they had to have drawn blood. I strained to get away, but the hand on my hip held me firmly to the hard ground.
“Please!” I gasped.
“If you confess, we won’t kill you.”
“I already did! Just let me go! Please.”
“You didn’t say the words. Say what you did. Say what you did to all those other girls, say what you did to Lisa.”
I’d do anything to get the cold hands off me, anything to get away from the overpowering stench of death.
I pulled in a trembling breath and retched silently. “Please.”
“Say it!” The hand tightened. Pain slid up my hips, churned in my stomach.
“I killed her!” I screamed, writhing in agony. “I killed Lisa.”
“Very good. And what about the others?”
“I raped them.”
“Good boy. Thank you for telling the truth.”
“Let me go now.”
“Why would we do that?”
“You said you would!”
“No, I said we wouldn’t kill you. You still deserve a punishment.”
The hand returned to my hip. I sighed in relief.
“What punishment?” I asked.
“We’re going to make sure you can never do it again.”
A mouth closed around the tip. I gasped. “No. I don’t want this. Please.” It moved slowly downward, soft but cold, never faltering no matter how much I thrashed. “Please!” The lips parted. Teeth touched the tender skin. I reached down with my free arm and pushed weakly at the cold head. “No! Not like that. Don’t.” The teeth scraped down to the base. Pain rippled through my pelvis, in my stomach, down my legs. The mouth opened wider and scooped all of it in. The teeth touched down around the base, the lips flush with skin.
“No!” I pulled away, but any motion brought me into closer contact with teeth. My limp arm rose and fell with my shaky breaths. “Please don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
Time slowed. The pounding pain of horses racing circled through me. Every tiny twitch, every breath, agony. I couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything. I was at the mercy of a couple of psychos. “Bite,” I whispered.
She sighed. “Well, I guess you asked nicely, so we’d better do it. What do you think?”
The mouth that held me moved slowly side to side.
“Please.”
“Oh, that’s right. Lisa asked nicely, and you didn’t stop. So why should we?”
Tears soaked into the silk. My voice cracked. “Please.”
“Why don’t I show you your lover? Wouldn’t you like to see her?”
“No!”
“Grab his hands.”
My hips were released. The blindfold fell off. My good hand fell down directly into the cold grasp of the one in front of me, and she grabbed the other for good measure. Nothing could add the hurricane of pain.
I didn’t open my eyes. “No.”
“Look at her, Georgie Porgie. Look what you made.”
Curiosity got the better of me. It took my eyes a moment to adjust.
A monster was crouched over me, member in mouth, holding my wrists. It was covered in blood, open wounds, open bone. The skin was pale gray, lifeless.
Whatever it was wasn’t human. It was a th
ing, some gross, dead thing, like the floor of a butcher’s shop like grandpa in a casket like a piece of meat like mold in the fridge like pus like dirt like death. The horses raced.
The thing was perfectly still, like it had never moved, and never would again.
I lay on the cold, hard ground with cold, hard teeth around my soft, warm skin. And I wasn’t strong. And I wasn’t Doug Allan. That trembling boy in the dirt wasn’t Doug Allan. Not anymore. He wasn’t anything but a loser about to get his dick bit off.
Bright silver flashed behind the monster. Lisa. The ghost I’d seen in the rear-view mirror. She held a Walkman in her hands.
“Now what were you saying?”
Chapter Forty
Corrie
I dragged the sobbing, screaming man behind me. Finally. Finally, he knew the pain that racked my body every moment. He felt the agony that coursed through every cell. He burned like I had. For the first time in my death, I didn’t feel any pain.
Lisa led the way to his wrecked car, examining the device in her hands.
“It got the whole thing.” I could barely hear her over Doug’s whimpering.
“Good.”
“Yeah.” She gave me a smile. “Perfect confession. The cops are going to love this.”
I struggled up a hill. He had to weigh two-hundred pounds. Lisa held a branch aside for me.
“I just…” She sighed. “Was it okay? Was it right?”
“Doug bad.”
He cried out.
“Yeah, I know. But what we did… was it moral?”
“Don’t care.”
She chewed on the end of her sleeve. “We sunk to his level.”
I dragged him out of the woods and laid him beside his car. He curled into the fetal position, moaning, hands tight between his legs.
“Monsters!” he spit.
I knelt beside him, face to face. His eyes were wide, red and bruised. Terrified.
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t. Please.”
“Burn. In. Hell.” I pressed my thumb into the weeping wound in his arm. His body went taught with pain, every vein showing on his skin. Then he fell loose. Unconscious.
“Good riddance.” Lisa placed the Walkman beside him. “Let’s go home.”
I pressed a kiss to her cheek. We walked arm in arm back into green paradise.
She nuzzled her head against my shoulder. We went in silence, taking in the sights and sounds of Tryon Creek. The fluffy greenery crammed in every spot, the towering trees, the rolling hills, the endless green as far as the eye could see, it was heaven more than heaven could ever be.
We walked past the bloody spot our old slip lay. Her fingers intertwined with mine.
“I guess I just feel like maybe we went too far. Stabbing him was one thing, but this? I mean, of course he deserved it. I don’t care about him. I care about us. Should we have done it?”
“I don’t feel bad.” I stepped through the creek.
“Yeah, me neither. I feel like I should though. That we should’ve just gotten his confession and left it at that.”
I stroked her cheek, shimmering faintly in the dark, the only light to guide our way. Almost home. “Justice.”
She held my hand, lowered it from her face. “That wasn’t justice. That was revenge.”
“That’s what we wanted.”
A smile crept up her face. “We did it.”
“Yes.”
“You did amazing.”
“You too.”
She cradled my face in her hands and kissed me. She moved against me like silk, like water, her lips molding to mine and mine molding to hers, cool and soft and everything I ever wanted. It soothed away any pain and discomfort that stubbornly clung to me and washed away the past. Her eyes met mine as she broke away. She tucked her hair behind her ear. “We’ve got company.”
I glanced behind me. We were closer to home than I thought, standing right beside our clearing. Our friends watched us in shock.
Clarisse shook a stunned Pat by the shoulders. “Woo-hoo!” she screamed into the night.
I laughed and wrapped my arms around the only person that mattered in the whole world.
Chapter Forty-one
Lisa
I gazed up at Corrie as she watched Clarisse play her guitar. Starlight illuminated her features, the open wounds I unstitched for her, the thick eyelashes, the sparkling eyes. Her expression was soft and open. She looked like the moon. I tangled my fingers with hers.
Clarisse started a new song. In Power We Entrust the Love Advocated.
“This is my favorite song,” I murmured to Corrie.
“Why?”
“It’s not a regular song. Me and Clarisse once spent hours arguing over the lyrics. I thought it was about growing up. She thought it was about getting back with an ex.” I pressed the loose skin on her forehead back in place. “Now I think we were both wrong. It’s about being lost, and love guiding you out of that storm. That once there was love, and love is what will save you.” I traced my finger over her bony arm. “What saves us.”
She watched me without comment. Clarisse’s soft voice stumbled over lyrics and laughed, ringing out into the night.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe it sounds silly, but I almost feel like it’s talking about us. That once there was love and we lost it, but now it’s returned forever.”
“And ever.” She hummed along, her low voice a perfect contrast to Clarisse’s.
The old familiar tingle returned to my stomach, and this time it was welcome. How did I get so lucky? Doug would end up in jail. My two best friends were beside me. And Corrie. What a perfect death.
Sitting beneath the moon, each of us perfectly content to be where we were, I felt as though this was eternity. Right here, in this moment, no matter what happened, no matter what would come.
Pat laid his hand atop Clarisse’s guitar and sang quietly along. I couldn’t help but smile. I hadn’t been sure of him at first, especially since Clarisse changed so much after meeting him. His taste of music, his way of dressing, all of it rubbed off on her, made her a new person, but still my best friend. It was after they met that she started singing. That she became herself.
For a moment I could see them sixty years from now, as much in love as ever, living the best life they possibly could, with white makeup caked over their wrinkles.
The last note rang through the night. We watched it fade into silence. It vanished as though it were never there, and all we could hear was the running water of the creek and the chirping of crickets.
Clarisse shivered. “It’s cold.”
I completely forgot they needed heat.
I sat up. “We should start a fire.”
Pat yawned and checked his watch. “It’s almost morning. My parents are going to kill me if I’m not home when they get up.”
Clarisse groaned. “We could stay just a little longer. They’ll never know.”
He bit his lip, barely patchy gray with all the lipstick worn off. “I have a presentation tomorrow.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh shit. I completely forgot about that. I haven’t even started.”
“Maybe you can convince Mrs. Davidson to let you go Friday.”
“Fat chance.” She stood and stretched. “Pat’s right, we got to get going.”
My stomach sunk. “I don’t want you to go.”
She ran to us and scooped both Corrie and I into a warm hug. “I love you guys so much.”
My eyes prickled with tears. “I love you too.”
“Me too,” Corrie mumbled against Clarisse’s leather jacket.
Clarisse pulled away with a sigh. The smile faded from her face.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I just got the worst feeling. Like I’d never see you again.”
Guilt stabbed at my chest.
Pat slung his arm over her shoulder. “I guess we’ll see you guys later.”
Corrie answered for me. “Later.”
/> They strolled off, arm in arm, into the night.
Chapter Forty-two
Corrie
A coyote howled in the distance.
Lisa stared after our friends with a pained expression. “I think she was right.”
I knew what she meant before I asked. “What you mean?”
“We’re never going to see them again.”
My chest felt hollow. “Tonight?”
“Tonight.”
I’d wanted this for so long, wanted to lie down and let nature take me. I gripped Lisa’s hand. Now I had something to stay for, and I didn’t want to go.
She squeezed my hand and gazed at the dense, dark forest. Relentless, thriving, wild and alive, so alive. A cathedral, a cacophony of green. It matched the thoughts swirling in her mind, in my mind.
“What you thinking?”
“Everything,” she said, stroking a moss-covered rock. “This isn’t just the end of this life, but the end of all our lives. And I barely remember the others.”
The memory of all I’d ever felt flickered through my mind. Through my body. “This is all our lives.” She glanced back at me, and I could see recognition in her eyes.
Our entire existence and this one life were reflections.
“No need to worry about the rest,” she said. “This is them.”
Moonlight reflected from every particle of her body, sending fractal rainbows shooting through the night. Her fingertips drifted along my cheek, over the skin, into the open wounds, over the edge of bone that peeked through muscles, slowly touching until her fingers reached my lips. Her light reflected on my skin.
She searched my face before lowering her mouth to mine.
The touch of her skin on mine was like a body so close to yours you can feel it even though it isn’t touching you. It was soft as a rose petal, as sunlight on my skin. Like static electricity, inviting me to move. And I moved.
I ran my fingers through her hair and molded my body to hers. The edges of our beings blurred, where I ended and she began, where our eternities met, was all lost in our touch. She kissed deeper and bent me toward her as I bent her toward me.
My heart soared with delight and familiarity. There was no wonder of the new and exciting, only the soothing caress of what always has been.