Wild Alabama

by Everly Hansen

Felix shook his head slightly. "He passed."

  "I'm sorry."

  He shrugged a shoulder and touched my knee. "Thanks."

  "Anyone want a drink?" I asked.

  "I've already had two," Felix said.

  "No thanks," Shazo said.

  "Suit yourselves." I headed into the kitchen and got a glass of wine, then wandered upstairs to the porch. I pulled out my phone and listened to the breeze from the forest while I unwound from the day.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The morning of Halloween I woke up with a pit in my stomach. My favorite holiday, surrounded by a haunted forest, and I had no plans. There was no candy to hand out, no party to go to. I would be working, keeping the forest safe from local hoodlums. Back home, my mom would have skeletons in the yard and the house, bats on the garage door, stairs covered in cobwebs, and she would make Halloween supper in an actual cauldron. We would eat chunky beef stew and hand out candy, then around ten when most of the kids were home counting their loot, I would head out to a party with Mel. Those were the days. When I got downstairs I frowned with the severe lack of decorations. The candles in the living room didn't count.

  "Hey," Shazo greeted from the living room window. "I think things are starting early this year. I just watched three teenagers sneak into the forest. From here, too. They didn't even have the decency to sneak in from a side somewhere."

  "Are we spending all day and night out there?"

  "Nah. We usually go in around dusk and stay most of the night. Take the day off. It'll be a long night."

  "What happens if or when we find people? Ask them to leave? Call the cops?"

  "Tell them to leave, that they're trespassing. If they're dicks about it, call the cops. We always have a couple officers on standby."

  "Sounds good." I headed down the hall to the kitchen and smiled when I saw Felix. "Hey," I greeted.

  He returned my smile and gave me a quick, gentle kiss. "Hey yourself."

  "What are you making?" I asked with a look into the microwave.

  "It was supposed to be a mug cake, but it exploded."

  I shook my head at him, grabbed a bagel and popped it in the toaster. When it was done I smothered it close to death in cream cheese and took it outside. I sat in the grass and took a bite. It was cloudy and there was a big chance for rain later. It was also finally cool outside. It was quite pleasant, actually. The humidity was practically gone and the breeze through the trees felt really nice. The best Alabama weather so far, for sure.

  "Two more in the woods," Shazo called out.

  I went inside and peered out the window with him.

  "They come earlier every year," I heard Felix groan.

  "I'm going to go call my mom, see how things are there. This is usually our favorite holiday." I went and sat on my bedroom floor in hopes of a long conversation, but the call didn't last long. My mom was busy with last minute party plans. Apparently she'd invited all her book club friends over for a costume party. I ached for home at that moment.

  I skipped lunch and stayed in my room to wallow in self-pity. When the sun started to set, I grabbed a small bottle of tequila from the hall closet (Felix's stash he had recently showed me) to put in my bag for the night and headed downstairs. Felix and Shazo were in the living room, Shazo with a hockey mask in his hand and Felix with a top hat in his. I looked at them curiously.

  "We know you love Halloween, and we felt bad that we don't do anything for it. We thought we could at least dress up for the night," Shazo said. He tossed me a red cape. "Red Riding Hood for you."

  I smiled at the cape. "Wow. Really? Thank you."

  "Our pleasure. We hope it kind of helps for the shit we're about to go through," he said.

  I was a little more eager to see what the night held now.

  "Well, we shouldn't stall any longer. I put extra batteries and flashlights in everyone's bags. We'll split up, okay? Cover more ground. Use the walkies a lot. Let each other know when we're good and when we run into stuff." He slid the hockey mask onto his face and grabbed his bag. Felix handed mine to me and we headed out the door.

  "Who are you?" I asked Felix. I tied a light sweater around my waist and slid the cape on.

  Felix put his hat on and modeled for a second. "I'm Lincoln."

  "Good choice," I applauded.

  Once we were through the gate, Shazo took off into the forest somewhat enthusiastically.

  "I think he secretly likes doing this," Felix said. "It's basically the most human interaction we get all year."

  "It must get lonely out here," I said. I could see how years of little company and ghosts could eat away at you. No one should be alone all the time.

  He shot me a look. "I guess."

  "So I guess I'll walkie you in a bit."

  He grabbed my elbow after a few steps.

  "Stay with me," he said.

  "But Shazo said-"

  "Shazo isn't our boss and Halloween can get crazy out here. Stay with me," he insisted.

  I pretended to think about it for a moment because duh yes of course I was staying with him. "Yeah, okay."

  The next couple hours were actually pretty intense. We came across several couples and groups of friends. Some of the guys were already plastered and Felix had thrown four punches. We had called the cops twice. We had put out three campfires. Many, many people had mouthed off to us using language that would even make my mom cringe. It was tense and exhausting and I was really glad I wasn't alone.

  "How are you holding up?" Felix asked around midnight.

  "You guys weren't kidding, Halloween is crazy here," I said.

  "Everyone loves a haunted forest."

  "How much longer do we have to stay out here?"

  Felix checked his phone. "Few hours maybe? Once we stop running into people so often."

  I adjusted my bag and shivered. Even with a sweater on under the cape, I was cold. It had been a long night and I was about ready for it to be over.

  "Why don't you take the cape off? It's getting filthy."

  Felix ditched his hat an hour ago. It kept getting caught in branches and slowing us down. But I refused to take the cape off even with the bottom three inches being soaked in mud and leaves.

  "I like it," I said. "But why Red Riding Hood?"

  Felix smiled a little.

  "What?" I asked.

  Laughter in the distance made us stop. I groaned internally. I saw Felix stifle a yawn and we made our way towards the laughter. It was five teenagers with a tent and a small fire. They were roasting marshmallows and talking about the forest. The least harmful group we had found all night. I stepped forward to go talk to them, but Felix pulled me behind a nearby tree. We stood there, me leaned against the tree with his hands on either side of me.

  "Are we going to break that up?" I asked.

  He pressed a finger to his lips and shook his head. "They're harmless."

  Maybe this meant we could go back to the house.

  "The cape?" he said quietly. His fingers trailed down the cape until his hands rested on my hips.

  "Yeah?"

  "It's because you're everything the Big Bad Wolf could want."

  I raised an eyebrow. "I have big teeth?"

  Felix smirked. He ran his thumb over my bottom lip and pulled it down. "No. They're perfect. But your eyes? Your lips? They drive me mad." His voice was hot on my cheek and I squirmed against the tree. He pressed his lips to my neck, my jaw, my cheek. When his lips finally met mine I pulled him close and he pressed me hard against the tree. The sounds of the teenagers' laughter disappeared and all I could hear was my heart pounding in my ears and Felix's breath. When he slipped his hand underneath my shirt I let out a quiet moan. His eyes shot to mine with a hunger I had never seen. He set his lips against my ear and whispered, "Upstairs. Now."

  How we got to the house so fast, I'll never know. His hand never left mine. His lips were on mine when we weren't climbing over logs. When the front door slammed behind us he pressed me against the wall an
d untied the cape. It dropped at the bottom of the stairs and he pulled me upstairs. I had never been in his room before, but I didn't have any time to look around. My quite inexperienced mind could barely handle all that happened next. Felix undressing me, pulling my pants slowly off my legs. His skin, hot against mine. The shiny blue condom wrapper tossed on the floor with no care. His lips on my inner thighs. My nails pressed firmly into his shoulders. His ragged breath in the crook of my neck when he finally came to a stop above me. Gideon Tanner and the sofa in his mom's basement had a lot to learn.

  Felix went to the bathroom to clean up, which gave me a few minutes to process

  what just happened because I was now once, twice, three times a lady. It also gave me the chance to explore his room. I wrapped a thin blanket around myself (I could not find my underwear anywhere) and walked around his room. It was like mine decor-wise, but his bed was definitely more comfortable. On the wall near his window there were dozens of newspaper clippings and ripped-out magazine pages. Headlines like 'Parent Killer Traps Victims in Lunchroom' and 'Single Gunman Kills 19 Before Shot to Death by Police' jumped out at me. They were all about his brother.

  I heard the bedroom door shut and I jumped a little. Felix looked at the clippings for a moment, his back against the bedroom door. He was still shirtless, so at first I didn't realize that maybe I shouldn't have looked around. "Sorry," I said. I sat on the bed and scanned the floor for my clothes. "I'm a terribly nosy person."

  He knelt near the foot of the bed and then set my rumpled clothes next to me. "No, it's okay." He sat next to me and kissed my temple. "I just haven't had anyone in here in a long time. No one really sees those."

  I picked my shirt up and pulled it over my head.

  "You looked better in the blanket," he commented.

  I hesitated. Did he want me to stay? Putting the clothes by me seemed like a nice way of saying 'get out, it's almost dawn and I'm tired.'

  "Oh, I thought...you gave me my clothes, so I thought I should go."

  "You don't have to," he said. "I just saw you looking for them."

  "Oh."

  We sat in awkward silence for a minute.

  "Please stay," he finally said. I sighed with relief and smiled at him. His eyes widened slightly when I dropped my shirt back on the floor and got under the covers. He shut the light off and then joined me, his arm draped gently over my hips.

  "What was he like?" I asked quietly.

  "My brother?"

  I nodded.

  "Before all the bullshit, you mean?"

  "Yeah."

  "He was always a little off, but I remember my childhood being fairly normal. As normal as it could be growing up in a crematorium, that is. We camped in the backyard together a lot in the summers. We fished. We learned some Morse code so we could talk to each other at the dinner table without my parents catching on. He was pretty funny, always telling bad jokes. Obsessed with plaid. Before the teenage years, things were pretty great. Then it was like someone flipped a switch and it was hard to remember any good times."

  I lay there for a moment, thinking. The oddest thought popped into my mind, but then I wondered if it was odd, all things considered.

  "Felix?"

  "Hmm?"

  "Do you have a picture of him?"

  "Um, yeah, somewhere. Probably in the desk. Why?"

  "I just wondered if I could see what he looked like."

  Felix sat up, so I rolled onto my back to look up at him. He looked down at me cautiously.

  "Why?" he asked again.

  I hesitated.

  "Pippa."

  "Fin is wearing plaid," I said.

  Felix shut his eyes for a second. "A while ago when we were in the woods, I thought I saw him, my brother. But it couldn't have been." He shook his head. "No."

  "I just wanted-"

  "What's Fin wearing? Specifically."

  "Black shirt with a long-sleeve red plaid shirt over it. Dark pants. Converse."

  Felix made his way around me and out of the bed. He flipped the light on and I propped myself up on my elbows and watched him. He opened desk drawers and looked around his bookshelf. He picked up a large book with a Fleur De Lis on the front and opened it up. It was hollow inside, and full of pictures. He walked back to the bed and sat on the edge. Carefully he removed a single photo from the book and hesitantly offered it to me.

  "That's Sam," he said.

  I sat all the way up and grabbed the picture anxiously. The breath I was holding caught in the back of my throat. The smirk, the eyes, the hair. They were all familiar.

  "Well?" Felix asked.

  "I-I can't be sure, but they look a lot alike."

  Felix shook his head again. "Fin can't be Sam. There's no way."

  "Why not?"

  "Because it wouldn't make any sense." He stood up and started to pace. I watched him, not sure what to do or say. "What do you remember about your brother?" he asked me.

  I blinked. "Huh?"

  "Something unique," he said. "Anything."

  I thought about my brother. His goofy grin, the Mickey Mouse gloves he liked to wear everywhere, the way he called me Plipper when he was a baby. "He always ate his pancakes with peanut butter instead of syrup. He liked to sleep in his socks. Somehow he always smelled like freshly sharpened pencils."

  Felix smiled. "You liked that, right? Those little unique things that made him different from anyone else you knew?"

  I half-shrugged. "Yeah?"

  "My brother used to try to push me down flights of stairs and once, when we were in middle school he held a knife to my throat. He also used to do the dishes when it was my turn because he knew I hated it. And when he shoplifted, he always got me a candy bar."

  I opened my mouth, but then closed it.

  "What I'm saying is that no matter what he did, he was still my brother who, on some level, always thought of me."

  "He was thinking of you when he murdered your parents and classmates?" I asked.

  "As much as I hate him for what he did, for what he took from me, I also, in a weird way, have him to thank for a lot of things. Without him, I wouldn't have met Shazo, I wouldn't have gotten this job, and I wouldn't have met you."

  "I don't really understand what you're getting at," I said.

  "The connection, Pippa. If my brother was out there, I'd know. I know he's not out there."

  I crossed my legs and set the picture down. "You looked for him? After?"

  Felix walked back to the bed and sat next to me. "After everything happened, after he was dead, I looked for him. For months, I looked everywhere. He was nowhere. Not at school, not at our house, not on the streets. Everywhere I could think to check, I did. That's all I did. All I wanted to do was to talk to him, get answers. But he never showed up. When I got here, to the forest, part of me got obsessed with the thought that he was in there. I was up early, out late. For over a year I was in the forest more than the house. But eventually, I just gave up. And I got so angry with him, not just for what he did when he was alive, but for not being around when he was dead. It felt like he was avoiding me, but then I thought maybe what happens to the others didn't happen to him. He wasn't a good person. He wouldn't cross over like good people would, you know? He'd be-"

  "In Hell," I finished.

  Felix nodded slowly. "What he did just sits here. On fire." He set a hand on his chest. "How could he still be here, wandering, if he went straight to Hell?"

  "Maybe you're right. Some things are really similar, but there's a lot that's not. Fin probably isn't Sam," I agreed.

  Felix exhaled and rubbed his temples.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "I shouldn't have said anything. It's just the things he remembers reminded me of things you said about your brother. I had to be sure, I guess."

  "Well, maybe they're the same, but different."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Forget home invasions and car accidents. We should be looking at events like shootings or hostage situations. Think b
ig, think chaos." He got up suddenly and snapped the book of pictures shut. He shoved it in a drawer, shut the light off and got back in bed.

  "Can we please not talk about this anymore tonight?" he asked.

  "Of course. I'm sorry."

  He pulled me close to him again, but his body was tense against mine until he finally fell asleep.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Waking up next to Felix had definitely been a highlight of my time in Alabama. It was also the best night's sleep I had gotten since arriving.

  "You snore," Felix whispered once my eyes were fully open.

  "You kick," I replied.

  He smiled and pulled me close, burying his lips in my neck. "I'm sorry things got so heavy last night. It kind of took away from the main event." He leaned away from me and his eyes searched mine. "Which was amazing, by the way."

  I felt my cheeks redden, which made his smile grow. "Yes, it was," I said. I was sore and hungry, so I kissed him one last time and then gathered my clothes. After I showered and changed, I met Felix downstairs where he was flipping pancakes.

  Shazo walked into the kitchen, put his hands on his hips and stared at us. "So," he said.

  "Yeah?" Felix asked.

  "Mysteriously at midnight the two of you turned into pumpkins and couldn't be reached on the walkies. I was worried about both of you until I walked in here and saw that nasty sex cape on the stairs."

  My cheeks grew hot. We had completely forgotten about Shazo.

  "Did you need help?" Felix asked.

  "No, but I could have and I wouldn't have been able to get any," Shazo said.

  Felix glanced at him. "I'm sorry."

  "Me, too," I said.

  "You couldn't have just taken a walkie with you in case?" Shazo asked.

  "Do you really want the details of getting upstairs?" Felix asked him.

  "Absolutely not. Could you just be a little more aware of stuff next time? A number of things could have happened out there."

  "You're right. I'm sorry, man. I won't let something like that happen again," Felix promised.

  "Thank you." Shazo walked out of the kitchen, but then popped his head back in and pointed at us. "And I'm loving this, by the way."