Red Eye | Season 3 | Episode 3

by Riley, Claire C.

  “I said, you’re gonna pay for what you did,” Jackson repeated, spittle flecking from his swollen mouth. “Ain’t nothing saving you now, bitch.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.” Even to my ears, my voice had gone raspy, animalistic…inhuman.

  “Jackson, now boy, I’d step on away from her.” Stash’s voice of reason was a dull thud at the back of my brain. The monster inside paid him little attention. He wasn’t the threat.

  The threat was in front of me.

  With its bruised face, and fists raised, and breath coming in excited, adrenaline-fueled gasps.

  “I’m gonna kill you. Fuck you. And feed you to the goddamn zombies. In that order, you bitch.” Jackson’s face warped, pleasure and rage dancing together in a sickening waltz.

  But he hadn’t realized yet…

  I wasn’t alone.

  “Fuck me after I’m dead? Is that because no living woman will have you, Jackson?” I taunted him, and a tiny voice inside told me that I’d only make my situation worse. But the monster? She reveled in it. She wanted Jackson’s anger. Wanted his violence. Wanted to taste his blood upon her lips so she could sate the thirst—the thirst that I’d been denying, trying to keep her under control.

  The time to keep her in check was over, though. I was becoming something else, something I could no longer deny. Something that, if I were being honest, I didn’t want to deny anymore. And Jackson was about to feel the full weight of my changing.

  Jackson rushed forward, pushing me hard against the bathroom door. His face came so close to mine that his lips brushed my cheek when his mouth moved.

  “Say that again,” he threatened, his hands going to my hair and his fingers gripping the strands at the scalp so he could control my head and knock it back against the door.

  “Do. You. Fuck. Corpses. Because. A. Real. Live. Woman. Won’t. Touch. You.” I punctuated each word, sinking venom into my tone like a threatened rattlesnake.

  Jackson slammed my head hard, and for a moment, I saw stars.

  “Jackson, seriously. You don’t want to do this.” Stash again, trying to stop what was coming.

  This time, I did look past my assaulter. My gaze found the older man’s. We stared at one another for a moment. And his eyes narrowed, and he knew that there was no putting me back in the cage. There was no saving the man who’d hurt me not once, but twice now.

  Stash shook his head, mouthing something in defeat. And then he moved out of my sight.

  Jackson slammed my head again and I grunted in pain.

  Gripping his shoulders, I pushed him. Hard. With every ounce of my strength.

  Which was greater now that the monster was at my beck and call.

  Jackson struggled to keep hold of my hair and my head was jerked forward.

  I punched him then, one fisted hand aiming for his chest over where his black, busted heart should have been. His eyes widened. I punched again.

  Jackson staggered back, finally releasing my hair.

  He should have kept holding on.

  Now he was giving me room to move, room to work my beastly, bloody desires.

  “Fucking die, bitch.” Jackson reached behind his back, beneath his shirt, and when his hand came back into view, he was holding a sleek handgun. Stained wood at the handles. Menacing, thick barrel. Long, heavy. The kind of gun a guy carries when he’s got nothing but air between his goddamn legs.

  I fell to the left as he pulled the trigger, outstretching my palms to catch me against the cold floor. And then I shifted to my side, rolling quickly toward Jackson. I came to a stop at his feet and I reached upwards to dig my fingernails into his thighs, ripping downward and drawing blood. He kicked out, catching me in the stomach. Pain rocketed through me and I groaned, rolling once more away from him. He still had the gun. I couldn’t stop.

  I sat up quickly and found myself staring down the barrel of the large firearm.

  Without thinking, I shoved forward, slamming my entire weight into his legs. His knees buckled and his upper body rocked forward. The gun escaped his grip and slid across the floor toward the bathroom door. I lifted off the ground and his legs raised with me, arching his body toward the unforgiving floor and thrusting him off of me. He grunted and struggled. But I didn’t give him a chance to stand back up.

  I pounced atop his body, legs straddling his back, and it was my turn to grasp his hair cruelly. I did so with both hands, fingernails scraping against his scalp. I pulled, with all of my might, and Jackson shouted, fear and anger making him frantic. Those noises spurred me onward, stoking the adrenaline of the monster inside me. She loved this. Wanted this.

  It wasn’t enough to satisfy her.

  I struggled to a standing position, continuing to yank on his hair, and I pressed one foot into his back to keep him against the ground. My body was powerful now, strength rushing through my veins to make me more than I’d ever been before. These legs were not only made for dancing and vaulting through the air. They were made for fighting. For surviving.

  Arching my back, I ripped at Jackson’s hair. He screamed and screamed, feral and pathetic. A thrill ran through me when I heard a tearing, squelching sound. The scalp was coming away from his head and rivers of blood were escaping the newly made wound. The red dripped down his forehead, into his eyes, past his nose, into his mouth.

  I reveled in it. Or the monster inside did.

  The distinction didn’t matter, not anymore.

  We were one, she and I. Monster and woman, combined to make something even more inhuman than the dead that lived outside these walls.

  I glared down at him, nostrils flaring in satisfaction.

  Soon, only stringy bits of flesh stood in the way of my prize.

  My foot sunk deeper into Jackson’s spine, and I heaved one last time, giving it my all.

  The last of the scalp’s resolve to stay in place atop Jackson’s head dissolved. And I held in my hand a flapping expanse of bloody flesh and hair.

  Jackson was whimpering on the floor in the fetal position, his body curling in a half circle while his fingers hovered around his head, not wanting to touch the gaping wound, but also wanting to touch and feel the exposed flesh.

  My rosy gaze searched around the room, looking for something to deal the killing blow.

  A shovel leaned against the wall between two shelves. There was an axe. A hoe. A sledgehammer.

  I let my beast choose, and I grinned maniacally when my fingers curled around the sledgehammer’s handle. I walked back slowly to Jackson’s pitiful, writhing form on the floor. I moved to stand with one leg on either side of him, and then I raised the sledgehammer over my head.

  It whooshed downwards as I let it drop, using its own weight as all the pressure I needed.

  The circular, flat end slammed against Jackson’s exposed head, chunking through his skull and squishing into the brain matter beneath. When I pulled the tool out, bits of gray spaghetti clung to the metal. I lifted it up to my mouth and licked the end slowly, enjoying the tang of fresh brain. It sent chills down my spine.

  I groaned, my body shuddering with satisfaction as the tenderized brain matter slid down my throat and into my hungry belly.

  Yes, she called. Yes!

  “All right now, Sam. He’s dead.” Stash, who I’d all but forgotten in the delightful killing fog, spoke slowly, like an FBI agent trying to reason with a killer holding his family hostage. “You can put down the sledgehammer.”

  Blinking, I focused on the direction of the voice, but it only took me seconds to find him. He was standing in front of the bathroom door. I should have noticed him move there, but I was too arrested by the violence, too enamored with the taste of Jackson’s brain in my mouth.

  “No harm done, girl. I’ll tell everyone that he attacked you first. Barrett won’t let no one else hurt you.” Stash was the voice of reason. His kindly older face looked at me with no animosity.

  I almost set the sledgehammer down, almost gave up my weapon.

 
Until I looked down at his hands, expecting them to be empty and harmless at his sides.

  But he was holding Jackson’s gun.

  “You want to hurt me too?” I snarled.

  “I don’t want to hurt nobody, Sam. I just want you to calm down so we can both get through this alive.”

  “Why do you have Jackson’s gun then, Stash?” I lifted the sledgehammer to grip it with both hands. “Jackson hurt me. Jackson fucking deserved what he got.”

  Stash held up one hand, palm toward me, and waved it gently. “Now, I know that. Barrett knows that. Nobody’s gonna blame you for killing this sorry son of a bitch.”

  “Then put the gun down.” My voice was low, almost a whisper now.

  The monster was still above the surface, treading water and waiting to see if the waves would turn to blood.

  “Can’t do that, Sam.” Stash shook his head, his expression still calm.

  “Because you’re scared of me?” I cocked my head, like a predator assessing its prey.

  “Well, now. I just saw you rip a man’s scalp clean from his head. Bound to be a little fear.” He shrugged, so sure of himself, so fearless with the gun while I only held the sledgehammer.

  My mouth stretched once again into an insane smile.

  Stash studied me.

  And we seemed to be at an impasse.

  Until I saw a flash of decision cross the old man’s face, an expression that I alone might not have understood. But the beast did. She knew.

  Stash had weighed the worth of me alive against the safety of me dead.

  His arm moved quickly, flashing upward with the gun already aiming. I side-stepped, racing toward him. He repositioned, taking aim. But I was too fast. I was already past his outstretched arm, dropping the sledgehammer, knowing it was hard to wield at close range. My own hands lifted, my fingers wrapping around the middle of his head, palms against his ears. And then I twisted as hard as I could.

  The snap of his neck was like canon fire within the enclosed storage building.

  Jackson’s gun fell to the floor with a sharp metallic clank.

  And I slumped down next to the body, my hands digging into the pulpy mess of murder. The monster sank beneath the waves, but still tickled the surface to let me know she was there, ready to help me should danger arise.

  *

  “Fuck me sideways.”

  I batted my eyes, staring at Barrett, who’d just entered the storage building, seen the situation, then turned quickly to throw the deadbolts into place.

  “What in the ever-loving fuck, Sam?” He ran his fingers through his long hair, eyes wide. I’d shaken the unshakable Barrett. Even his deeply tanned face was ashen. “I was gone for…” He seemed to struggle for a time, finally giving up. “I wasn’t gone that long. Goddammit, what happened?”

  Laughter bubbled in my chest, and for a moment I thought about how I must look to him.

  Like the owner of a slaughterhouse, who liked killing the pigs a little too much for their own sanity.

  “Jackson”—I hiccupped on his name, fighting back the hysterics—“attacked me. Stash wasn’t going to help me. He just stood there.”

  “Jackson I fucking understand. But what in the hell happened with Stash?” Barrett looked down at Stash’s lifeless body, skin going paler at the way the older man’s head was lolled forward, his neck obviously snapped in two.

  “He was going to shoot me.” I tried to keep my voice under control. But dammit, all I wanted to do was laugh. Just open my mouth and laugh and laugh until I couldn’t anymore. The monster inside wanted me to lose control. I could feel her urging me on.

  “Fuck. Fuck.” Barrett cursed over and over again.

  “What can I say,” I sing-songed, almost to my breaking point, “beastie wanted brains.”

  And then the dam broke, and I could not contain the hysterics.

  I cackled, loudly and uncontrollably, while Barrett looked at me like he was finally realizing that the creature inside of me was more than he had ever bargained for.

  “Looks like we need two more tickets to paradise.” Barrett moved toward me, his body language tense. “And Smiley’s arena is the goddamn train station.”

  Chapter Four.

  Rose

  The door unlocked and Elias and a guy I hadn’t seen before stood waiting. Elias gave nothing away though. Nothing to let me think that this was all going to be okay. That he wasn’t letting me down. That he wasn’t going to throw me to the wolves. No, he kept his cool, his indifferent façade never slipping as he jerked his head for me to leave the room.

  I took a last look around the room, glad to be leaving it but also terrified that this would be the last place I’d ever be. What happened after here would either be salvation or a very painful death. And I really, really didn’t want it to be the latter.

  I didn’t want to die, obviously, but I also didn’t want Nathan to have the satisfaction of killing me. If anything, for the first time in my life, I wanted to kill someone. Or at least hurt them an awful lot. Nathan was evil through and through—this whole place was. It was where good went to die and evil bred evil. This whole place needed to burn to the ground.

  Elias’s little buddy shoved me forwards and I stumbled a step, not realizing that I’d slowed to almost a snail’s pace. I mean, you couldn’t blame me; I wasn’t in any hurry to go to my death.

  As we got closer to the arena, I heard the familiar chant coming from within. It sounded like a mix between a school cafeteria and a Greek champion’s arena. Cafeteria because everyone was chanting “fight, fight, fight,” and Greek arena because the chants were so bloody and death-hungry that I almost peed a little.

  “Wait here,” Elias’s friend said, pushing me up against the wall while he pulled out a key and began to unlock the door.

  I looked over to Elias, a silent plea to not do this. To not go back on our deal. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking behind him, towards the shadows. The screech of metal on metal as the hinges cried out for any kind of lubrication brought my attention back to the other man.

  “All right, here we go,” he said, his words on a sigh like this was no big deal. Like maybe I was actually inconveniencing him by having to fight for my life today.

  I stared in horror, a silent plea on my lips to help me, but the words never came. There was no point. I could see from the second man’s face that he’d already made up his mind, and his mind was that I wasn’t his problem. And Elias seemed to agree.

  There was no hope.

  And yet I still wanted to plead for my life.

  It didn’t matter though, because as he gripped the top of my arm and started to pull me towards the entrance, Elias took a knife to his throat and slid it across the delicate skin and I let out a sob of relief.

  “I thought you’d tricked me,” I gasped while Elias grabbed the ankles of the man and started pulling him into the shadows behind us. “I thought you were going to let me die.”

  I was shaking, trembling from head to toe as the relief finally hit me, my adrenaline pumping through my body like a shot of cocaine.

  The man was still clutching at his throat, blood pumping between his fingers as he choked and coughed, spluttering blood over his own face and chest. I should have felt something. I should have felt anything. But I didn’t. There was nothing inside of me for this man, no emotion I could muster. Nothing for the life he’d lived or wanted. Just a blissful hollowness that he’d died and I hadn’t.

  Was this it now?

  Was this who I was?

  Who I’d had to become to survive?

  I squeezed my eyes closed and looked away.

  “Didn’t want him realizing before we got here,” Elias said, throwing a dusty sheet over the slowly dying man. Oh my god, why wasn’t he dead yet? In the movies it was one quick slit and they died seconds later, but this was taking forever. I could still hear him choking, blood filling his mouth as he gasped for breath.

  “Can we go now? Can we leave?” I as
ked, fear making my voice sound strange.

  “Yeah, just need to pick up your man and our gear on the way. Come on,” he grunted, and started to lead the way. He glanced back over his shoulder at me. “If anyone sees you, put your head down and don’t talk. Let me handle it.”

  I nodded okay, following in his footsteps as he led us through the maze of corridors until he stopped and unlocked another door and Nolan stepped out. I threw myself at him, not even caring that I probably just hurt him all over again, and he hugged me back, holding me like I was someone and something. Like maybe I was the most important person in the world.

  “Time to go, we have a schedule to keep,” Elias grunted as he stepped inside Nolan’s holding cell. He came back out with three rucksacks, and I was grateful when he handed me the smaller one. Though it was still heavy and bulky, I could see that it wasn’t anywhere near as heavy as theirs were.

  Nolan gripped my hand in his, tighter than a vise as we started to walk slowly but determinedly, like we had a right to be there and no one should ask us what for. Elias pushed open the door as we reached the end of the rat maze. Bright daylight burned in at us, taunting us on how visible we would be out there, and I stopped in my tracks, too terrified to move.

  “Everyone should be at the arena,” Nolan said to calm me. “Need you to be brave, Rose.”

  My gaze met his, and though his face was several shades of purple and black I could see in his eyes that he was still strong underneath and would fight to the death for both of us if need be.

  “Need you to find that fierce lion that came out when you saved me from death yesterday, you hear me?” he said, turning his whole body to face mine. His hand went around to the back of my neck, clutching it tightly so I couldn’t look away. I nodded and he pressed his forehead to mine. “I won’t let anything happen to you,” he promised, pressing a hard kiss to my skin.

  “Need to go,” Elias said, interrupting us.

  I turned to look at him as Nolan released me. The fear must have still been on my face though, because Elias sighed.

  “In your bag,” he said. “Your axe is in there. Didn’t really want you to get it out until we were at the gate, but if you need it…”