by J L Aarne
“Sure,” Isaac said. He turned and started that way.
“I’ll come with you,” Corey said. He grabbed a flashlight off the floor and hurried to catch up with him.
Molina
Keys to the Kingdom
The microphone lay on the floor near a spreading pool of blood outside of the circle where Jason Cobb was still crying over the body of his friend. Molina picked it up and stood holding it, watching Jason while behind her on the bleachers John and Angela started to scream and beg, stumbling their way down the steps ahead of Isaac and Corey. John threatened them with his father’s power, with the big Do You Know Who I Am? It seemed like a really stupid card for him to play at this late juncture, but John was not overburdened with intelligence.
Jason cursed Mark under his breath in between begging him to pick up the knife that was no longer there and Molina watched it with morbid fascination, wondering if Jason Cobb had lost his mind, wondering if that had been the point, and thinking that it was all really rather brilliant either way. There was no way they were all going to walk out of this gymnasium scot-free and every single one of them had to know it. Molina knew it. They weren’t going to all get away, but they might all get away with it.
Two months earlier, Molina had been invited with her friend Angela to John Rehbein’s eighteenth birthday party. She knew John, everyone knew John, but he had never paid much attention to her so she was a little surprised by the invitation. The party was going to be a big deal, huge, and it wasn’t like everyone was invited. Everyone wanted to be, but it seemed like John was only inviting his friends. And some girls they thought were hot, Angela was quick to tell her, laughing at her surprise over the invitation. John’s dad was taking his mom out of town for the weekend of the party, letting him have the house and surrounding property, and the rumor was there would be beer.
The Rehbeins lived in a large ranch style house they had added onto until it more closely resembled a mansion that would not have been out of place somewhere much more flashy, like Los Angeles or even Miami, but which stuck out in the middle of Iowa farm country like a flamingo in a chicken coop. The property was ten acres of what had once been farmland converted to a rolling carpet of green lawn on the outskirts of town. They had a pool and an honest-to-God pool house. Invitations to John’s birthday party were the local equivalent of Willy Wonka’s golden tickets. Of course Molina wanted to go.
What she didn’t know then—what she couldn’t have known—was that she was going to be Angela’s birthday gift to John.
Why did these things always seem to happen at parties?
Molina looked down at the microphone in her hand. There was blood on it and she remembered that it wouldn’t work anyway with the power out. She threw it back down on the floor.
There were no chairs for Angela and John. Isaac and Corey brought them to her and they stood facing her, frightened but not very surprised. They knew exactly why they were standing before her.
“I’m sorry, Lina,” Angela babbled. She was crying and wretched. The sight of her that way shouldn’t have filled Molina with such satisfaction. “I’m so sorry. So sorry. Please. Please, just let us go. Just don’t… don’t hurt me. Don’t kill us. I want to go home. I want to go home!”
Isaac shoved John another step forward as he tried to back up. “What do you want to do?” he asked.
“This is the last one. The last thing before we open the doors and let the cops in,” Mercy told her.
So make it count.
Molina nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I’m not going to tell everyone though, okay?”
“That’s fine. You don’t have to,” Mercy said.
“I’ll tell you,” Molina said. She looked around at them and smiled tiredly. “All of you. I don’t… I don’t mind. I mean, I do, but it’s different.”
They had been through some shit. That was what Patrick would have said. They had been, too. They had all been through some shit together today and that made all the difference. They were close now. They might not be so close once those doors opened and the world streamed in, but they were close now, drawn together by all the shit they had been through, intimate as family or as lovers.
“We won’t tell anyone,” Mercy promised.
The others shook their heads.
I love you all so much, Molina thought. She didn’t say it aloud because she knew that the feeling wouldn’t last.
Molina paced a little away from them, rubbing between her eyes as a headache threatened to begin with screaming intensity behind her left eyeball. They watched her and waited. Isaac finally got tired of pushing John forward as he backed up and hit the backs of his knees, making him collapse to the floor. He said her name with a pleading whine in his voice and beside him Angela wept, but Molina wasn’t listening.
“I’ve thought about it a lot,” Molina finally said. “I’m pretty sure it was Angela’s idea. I’m pretty sure she thought it would be some kind of threesome thing. That I’d be into it. I wasn’t and you’d think, fine, just let her go then. No big deal, right? Except that’s not what happened.”
“What happened?” Mercy asked.
“No,” Angela whispered. “Please, Lina. No. Please don’t.”
They all ignored her like she wasn’t even there. She was not important.
“I was a little drunk,” Molina said. “I don’t drink much and I’m, well, I don’t weight a lot or anything and it went to my head. Which is fine sometimes and I thought, of course, this time it was fine, too. I knew everyone there, I was with friends.”
“Stop it,” John said. He tried to make his voice sharp, his tone commanding, but he was kneeling on the floor with Isaac standing over him, his handsome features twisted with fear so intense it looked painful. The effect was ruined. “Stop it. Just shut up.”
Before Isaac or anyone could act, Mercy swung her arm back and hit him with her fist in a backhanded punch to the side of the face. “You want to stop that, Johnny,” she said evenly. “Go ahead, Lina.”
“She helped him hold me down on the bed,” Molina said, spitting it out like the words were poison. “My friend. And they laughed. It shouldn’t leave such a big huge hole inside, but it did. It’s over and I’m still me, right? Except everything’s fucked up now, especially me.”
“We thought you were into it,” Angela said through her tears. Her voice was hoarse from crying and thick with mucus. “Until after, we thought you were. It was like… part of it. The whole… the holding you thing. We didn’t…”
Molina marched over to her, drew her hand back and smacked Angela hard across the face. Her head snapped to one side, her hair flapping into her face and she took a stumbling step in retreat. She threw her hands up to ward Molina off, but Molina had already turned away.
When she turned back, she had Ezra’s knife. Without giving Angela a chance to see what was coming, she stepped into her, close enough to feel her body against her and the strumming beat of her frightened heart through her clothes, and drove the blade of the knife into her belly with one hard upward jerk. Angela’s eyes widened and her mouth fell open to scream, but nothing came out except a bloody pink bubble of spit. Rage was a cold wash of ice water soothing Molina’s mind like gentle fingers. It didn’t burn hot now like it had for so long; it was a cold flame. She shoved the knife in deeper and up, felt Angela’s body quiver, her chest heave as she grunted against the pain and the grunts became gasps for breath. Blood filled her mouth and ran down her chin and Molina only distantly heard the wail of horrified voices.
Somewhere out there, Angela Kent’s mother was waiting for her to come home. She was a single mother, she worked at the retirement center and she pulled a lot of double shifts, she had always been nice to Molina, but Molina wasn’t thinking about her as Angela’s blood dripped between her lips onto the floor at her feet. She was remembering how she had screamed that night until it felt like her vocal cords were fraying like twine. She was thinking about the cuts she kept hidden under the sleeves of he
r too big sweaters; lines like the ridges in a washboard. She stared into the face of the girl who had once been her friend, who had so completely betrayed her that it had altered her very nature, and watched the divine spark of her life gutter out like a candle.
Angela dropped dead on the floor at Molina’s feet. She stood there for a minute calmly breathing. The headache behind her eye seemed to be retreating with the flood, replaced by an uncommon sense of peace. She looked down at herself, found the front of her shirt and the thighs of her jeans soaked and shining with blood, and caught John’s eye.
The rage was gone, spent on Angela. She held the knife out to Ezra. Mercy took it instead, walked over to John, shoved his head down and slit his throat. She did it as casually as she might have cut open a fish, and with about the same amount of emotion. She threw him down on the floor to bleed out and die like he was a piece of garbage that wasn’t even very interesting anymore.
The phone in the coach’s office started to ring again. They let it ring.
“You take care of the bags?” Ezra asked Mercy.
“Stuffed them in a couple of lockers left open and closed the padlocks,” Mercy said. She cupped his face in her hands and pulled him in to kiss him, streaking his cheek with the blood on her fingers. “They won’t know for sure for a while. You’ve got to be damn quick though.”
“What’s going on now?” Molina asked.
Mercy looked at her over her shoulder and smiled. “We’re going to open the doors in a minute,” she said. “We’re done here.”
“We’ll come back for you,” Ezra promised Mercy as he let her go.
“I know,” Mercy said.
Ezra took the clip out of the AR-15 and tossed it and the gun down, then pulled his handgun and did the same with it. He gestured at Isaac, who tossed his knife aside and pulled the clip on his gun, too.
Molina frowned at them. “Wait, what hell are you guys d—?”
Mercy fired three shots into the ceiling. She tossed something that jangled to Corey and they split up, flanking the people huddled together on the bleachers. They fired into the ceiling again over their heads and they ducked down as low as they could and screamed.
“We’re not going to shoot you!” Mercy shouted. “We’re letting you go!”
She held up a key pinched between her first two fingers and shook it so it would chime, then tossed it to Mr. Stills. It landed on the floor at his feet and he just stared at it blankly for a while. When he realized what it was, he snatched it off the floor and ushered his daughter ahead of him toward the locked doors.
“Go! You fucking idiots, go! Mr. Stills has the key!” Corey shouted, gesturing at them with his gun as he started up the steps. He had a key to one of the locks, too and threw it toward the crowd that was gathering around the door.
A couple of girls hopped up and ran down the stairs toward Mr. Stills and the doors. When they weren’t shot, more followed and soon the rest rushed for the exit. Ezra and Isaac disappeared into the crowd, which didn’t even seem to notice them in their panic and joy at the possibility of freedom and rescue. The crowd would conceal them long enough to slip away.
Jesse Gleason was toward the back of the crowd. He had been sitting back there, first with Wayne, then alone, and he moved toward the flow of people in a daze. Corey stepped in front of him, blocking his way and Jesse seemed to not even see him. Then he raised his gun and pointed it at Jesse’s chest and something clicked.
“No! No, no, no, no!” Jesse screamed. He backed up a step, tripped backward over one of the risers and fell, landing on his ass on the floor with his legs sprawled over the seat in front of him. “Don’t! Don’t kill me! I’m sorry! I’m sorry, Corey, come on, please. Please, man. You know me. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
Corey leaned over him, holding the gun in both hands in front of him. “Fuck you, Jesse!” he screamed. His voice broke. “It’s not my fault, you know.”
“What isn’t?” Jesse said. He took calming breaths and made himself stop shouting, but he couldn’t manage to force himself to sit up. He didn’t quite dare. “What’s not your fault?”
“You!” Corey snapped. He turned the gun in his hand like he was trying to decide the best place to shoot Jesse. The head? Maybe the heart? “What you wanted from me. You could have had it, but it’s not my fault. And fuck you!”
Tears sprang to Jesse’s eyes and he looked around for someone to rescue him. Everyone else was busy trying to save themselves. Everyone except Molina.
“Corey, don’t,” Molina said.
She started up the steps toward them. Jesse sent her a grateful, pleading look. It disgusted her. She wasn’t doing this for him. The police were going to come through those doors any moment and if they saw Corey standing over an unarmed kid with a gun, they would shoot him dead.
“Corey, you don’t want to kill him,” she said. If he had truly wanted to kill Jesse, he would have done it before this. “Please don’t. Mr. Stills is unlocking the doors right now. They’ll kill you.”
“Corey!” Mercy called. She was standing at the foot of the stairs looking up at them. She started to come up, but Molina held a hand up for her to stay and she did.
Corey had tears in his eyes and his jaw was so tight a muscle along his cheek jumped. “It’s your fault,” he said fiercely. “This is your goddamn fault!”
“I’m sorry!” Jesse wailed. “I’m sorry! Please! I’m sorry!”
“Why?!” Corey demanded. “What are you sorry for?!”
Jesse wiped at his eyes and sniffed, sucking snot back up his nose. He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Yeah, you do,” Corey said. “You didn’t have to want me back, you asshole. You didn’t have to love me. You just had to not try to fucking kill me.”
“I know. I know. I’m sorry, man,” Jesse said quickly. “I did it, it’s my fault and I’m sorry. I just… I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t fucking stand it and you… I’m sorry, okay? Please don’t kill me!”
One of the locks hit the floor with a resounding clang.
“Corey, come on, please,” Molina said.
Corey pushed the gun into Jesse’s face and Jesse squeezed his eyes closed, breathing harshly, pushing himself back against the riser behind him like he could push himself through it and escape. Corey pulled the trigger. It made a dry click and he cried, “BANG!”
Jesse screamed and shuddered in tense expectation.
Corey stared down at him wondering how he could have ever thought he wanted anything to do with him. Molina wondered that herself; Jesse was pathetic. Corey stood up and threw the gun aside.
The doors crashed open and people flooded out, screaming for their mothers and fathers, screaming for help, just screaming and crying, blindly rushing out of the gym and pushing their way through. Molina put a hand on Corey’s shoulder as they walked down to the floor together. As they reached Mercy, police in SWAT gear came through the door, sidling around the last of the fleeing hostages.
“FREEZE!”
They didn’t move. Mercy looked between Molina and her brother and smiled.
“PUT DOWN THE GUN AND PUT YOUR HANDS ABOVE YOUR HEADS!”
Mercy still had her gun in her right hand, though it was empty. The clip and the bullet from the chamber were laying on the bottom step. She threw the gun down and put her hands up and Corey and Molina followed suit.
Mercy docilely submitted to being cuffed. Once she was secured, they cuffed Corey and Molina, too. They had guns trained on them the entire time, but none of them even considered trying to run. There was no point.
As they were being led out, Molina heard a man trying to coax Jason Cobb away from Mark Tavish’s body. Another one muttered that it was a hell of a fucking mess under his breath as he shoved Corey ahead of him. Outside, there were news vans and camera flashes and staring, probing, fascinated eyes, voices screaming hate and demanding answers.
This was only the beginning.
Molina caught Mercy’s eye and smiled
, then let her gaze slip away from her to the blue midday sky. She was at peace with the world for the first time in months. She was covered in so much blood that it made her clothes stick to her skin and she smelled like the gutters in a slaughterhouse.
She had blackened her soul to the core for revenge, but she felt dove white and clean.
Mercy
Turn Out the Lights
Grace had stopped taking notes awhile ago and was chewing on the end of her pen as she listened. Mercy had talked for two hours according to the clock on the wall and Grace had finished two cups of Adam’s coffee. Adam had brought Mercy water and she stopped speaking to drink it.
Grace took the pen from her mouth. “Then what happened?” she asked.
It came out sounding so childishly eager that Mercy smiled.
“Then a lot of things happened, but it was over, so none of them were very important,” Mercy said.
“That can’t be true,” Grace said.
“Then there were trials and deals were made and everything worked out pretty much as it should,” Mercy said with a sigh. “Eventually the cops found the backpacks I hid in the lockers with fingerprints all over everything. Most of the weapons were registered to Don, but the two that belonged to Ezra and Isaac were untraceable. They knew it was them though pretty early on. People talk, and even though most of those people didn’t make a lot of sense, some of what they said made just enough sense, and then they looked into it and discovered that Ezra and Isaac Banks are in fact the children of Lou Sallis and his wife, Lilia. Though what the hell they were doing in Bumfuck, Iowa, I don’t think they ever figured that out. Not that it matters. Marital problems because Daddy’s a whore, but that’s too simple. Lou made the wife and kids disappear because he does that sort of thing for a living and the cops tried to offer me a deal if I could give them evidence that Lou had something to do with it.”
“Like what?” Grace asked.