by Ryan Harding
Too late now.
It was stupid to play “what if.” They were all going to die, like his parents.
“Over here,” Gin said. She led him to the edge of the road where a stone balustrade had partially collapsed. A rushing creek passed beneath the road. They’d paid it little mind the first time with the siren, and on the way back, Patrick shook his head at Gin as if it wasn’t safe to go down there—a sentiment Adam agreed with. This would be an ideal place for a trap as the first source of water by the motel.
“It may not be safe,” he warned.
The mossy stone wing walls were in remarkably good shape, but the years hadn’t been kind to the trees at the shorelines. Several trees crisscrossed the stream where they had fallen, their root systems undermined by erosion. If this wasn’t a good place to run into a trap, it would be a great place to find a snake.
“I’ll be careful. Watch for him.”
“Gin.”
“Good thing I’m wearing pants,” she said as she waded through the weeds.
Adam looked back but he couldn’t see around the bend to the stretch of road with Nathan and Lawrence. If he showed up, Agent Orange would be on top of them by the time Gin climbed back to the road.
This is not good…really not good.
Adam jumped at a snap, crack, and a loud whoosh. By the time he spun his head back to Gin, the spiked log had begun an upward arc toward her and neither he nor she had time to form a scream. Gin ducked and she got a half turn before the devastating impact threw splinters, bark, dirt, and vegetative debris through the air. Wood shrapnel pocked the flora and a chunk bounced off Adam’s forehead.
“Holy shit,” Gin said. The spiked log had buried itself in the side of a nearly uprooted tree which now leaned into the path of the trap. The twin ropes still vibrated as twigs and leaves shook from where it had been affixed in the boughs overhead. “Patrick’s right again.”
Nine
“We’ll get out of this, write a memoir…it’ll be a bestseller and we’ll be set for life,” Eliza said as she jogged. “Just you watch.”
It was a cool, fair-weather day with temps in the low seventies but Annette felt like she’d taken a deep pull of Patrick’s napalm concoction and chased it with a lit match. Breathing the cool air brought a short-lived relief until her lungs turned it to volcanic steam that scorched her mouth on the way out. This was only the latest hardship to overcome. Dizziness, nausea, body aches, eye twitches, trembling, cramps, fatigue, forgetfulness, and even traces of the dread malady that had started her problems so many long years ago—anxiety. This was like one extended stay in purgatory with all of her sins relentlessly dogging her in a loop of pain-shock-terror-pain.
“We should run. He’ll come for us next,” Eliza said, because this stuff came easy for her.
Annette looked at her arms, surprised they weren’t beet red. Along with the interior conflagration came a drenching perspiration. All she needed was dehydration on top of all this. Where could she get water? Water…water…she remembered the lake and imagined being immersed in the placid waters, gentle ripples erupting across the surface and she remembered her last visit to a lake, a visit where she’d refrained from swimming because she hadn’t thought to pack a flattering swimsuit and oh what she wouldn’t give to have it to do all over again.
“Fine, we’ll head this way.” Eliza again, snapping Annette back from a happier place.
Annette looked around, but it was only her and Eliza. Oh shit, Eliza had been talking to her again. Why couldn’t Annette pay attention? She’d probably missed something important. Deadly important. Someone was chasing them. Or maybe someone was chasing Eliza, but if this were the case Annette wasn’t sure why she should care. Was Eliza important? She wasn’t dressed like someone of any consequence. How embarrassing to forget such important details. Annette could be so scatter-brained. Sometimes she got lost inside her own head and didn’t pay attention and it caused her no end of humiliation later. WHY CAN’T YOU JUST PAY ATTENTION?
Cracked asphalt road surrounded by an encroaching forest. Various small branches and twigs littered the pavement. The tableaux had a familiarity and she vaguely remembered coming through here yesterday (?), only she’d been traveling the other direction. They were at a fork in the road and the right-hand branch had a sign pointing to Morgan.
Morgan. You don’t want to be there. You don’t want to be here.
With a low, desperate hum she tried to imagine herself back at the lake where she’d decide to wear a swimsuit and her life would take a different direction…a trajectory that would prevent her from ever ending up here in the first place.
Eliza said, “Definitely want to head away from town.”
Flustered by an inability to immerse herself in a fantasy of the lake, Annette focused on the moment at hand. In so doing she remembered the lodge with a nauseating shudder. This path would lead them back to the roach motel, a horrid place with a musty, mildew scent, vintage décor with an unkempt landscape replete with heads on stakes. And those horrible, snarky African Americans were there along with the grossly obese, stuttering pervert.
She clasped her head in her hands. The pressure within her skull grew by the second, an added discomfort when coupled with the inferno raging beneath her skin. She reached for the buttons of her pantsuit but they were already undone and she was exposed to her navel and couldn’t even feel so much as a breeze against her skin. Why was she so hot? Why the hell couldn’t she cool down?
Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn—
“Shhhhh,” Eliza warned. “You’re getting too loud again. Agent Orange, remember?”
Annette tried to remember. Too much hair on the back of her neck. She swept her hands to the back of her head to gather her hair and wrap it into a pony tail, but she didn’t have enough hair to gather. She laughed absently. Yes, yes, of course, she’d cut her hair short years ago. Eliza’s long hair must have confused her. God, wasn’t she toasting under all that hair? Annette wanted to rip it off her head. Just seeing it made her own scalp bubble.
As Annette reached to snatch a hold of Eliza’s head, she felt a burst of panic and froze with the sudden awareness she was doing something that wouldn’t be in her best interest.
So she looked away from Eliza. Down. Around. Back. Up.
Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn—
The sky above glittered through the canopy of trees. It positively sparkled. Tilting her head back seemed to work for the pain so she kept looking up, up, up.
“Oh God, this is the way we came! Don’t…don’t look.”
Annette saw the lumps in the road ahead, trails of crimson leading away from the burst bags of skin.
“Damn, it’s too late to go back…we might run into him if we double back now. That screaming had to be Marcus and Suzanne. We’re next in line. The others got a bigger head start. Come on. Just don’t look.”
It was Eliza who shouldn’t have looked. She bent over and gagged. Dry heaves. The worst kind.
Nathan and Lawrence stared at them from the side of the road.
The throbbing in Annette’s head had subsided along with the intense heat. She remembered the fork in the road where Eliza chose the left branch. She looked back but couldn’t see where the fateful decision was made. How had they covered so much ground in so little time?
Annette patted Eliza’s back, thankful her own pain and discomfort were behind her. This was the best she’d felt all day, as if Eliza were pulling some kind of Christ-thing and taking on Annette’s suffering.
“There, there,” Annette said, leaving her hand atop Eliza’s back just in case Eliza could drain Annette of her pain. “It’ll pass.” And it almost felt like the transference were real.
If she got out of this alive she could write a hell of a memoir; it would be a bestseller and she would be set for life. Weird, she’d had that thought before, hadn’t she? The déjà vu passed. Encountering Agent Orange twice hadn’t been the worst part of her ordeal. The cessation of so many different medication
s cold turkey was a roller coaster of emotional and biological activity the likes of which she hoped to never endure again. Worse, it had taken her years, fucking years, to get the balance of different meds right. It began with a two year struggle with anxiety and the various meds prescribed to her, all with their own side effects. Obviously the psychiatrists guessed about drugs and dosages so she did her own research and found new ones to offset the side effects of her official prescriptions. Depending on how long she was off her regimen here in this godforsaken place, her body would develop a resistance to their reintroduction. She may never get the balance right again. She sure wished she knew who’d screwed this up for her. Agent Orange was just a mindless automaton who only knew killing, it was nothing personal with him. The people who put her here? Now those were the bitches and bastards she would go after. And Ed would be right on board with her—he seemed to know a lot about law from what she remembered. He might be a lawyer. She abruptly remembered him cornered in the basement and realized Ed’s legal advice was a thing of the past. Oh well, if she got out of here, she had connections. Probably better lawyers than Ed, anyway.
Annette looked at her hands. Rotated them. Took in the light breeze. Whoa! She felt…remarkably good! No headache, no burning, her joints didn’t hurt and her internal cramping had subsided as well. She was through the withdrawal!
Thanks Eliza! You sucked the bad juju right out of me! Holy shit!
“Good for you,” Eliza croaked.
Thank God it was over and she’d come out the other side. Other than an empty stomach she felt pretty damned good. In all actuality, the best she’d felt in years! She had such clarity of thought, too. Everything came back to her and, yeah, the situation kind of sucked, that couldn’t be helped, but she felt so good it was hard to feel down.
Eliza moaned. “Ohthishurtssobad.” Still, she managed to stand upright and take a couple of steps. The worst, it seemed, was over. Ah, she was much younger than Annette, she could handle it better.
The wind shifted and the smell of blood wafted their way. Eliza doubled over again.
Like a beacon, the smell drew Annette’s attention to Lawrence’s headless—and legless—body. There was a slight angle to the cuts of his stumps with one side visibly longer than the other, but the smoothness of the stubs was striking. Unlike Annette, who had foolishly used several types of saws to cut Bill English’s body into manageable pieces for disposal, Agent Orange clearly knew his trade. Clean cuts. The amount of blood was the same, though. While she’d remembered to use plastic to keep the blood from soaking into the carpet, she punctured it several times with the saws. She carefully dismounted the liner with fresh booties in an effort to prevent bloody footprints only to find blood had seeped through the punctures and absolutely ruined the luxurious Fabrica carpet in her living room. What a nightmare that had been.
Out, damned spot, out, she remembered from reading the role of Lady Macbeth when Bill went out for Macbeth (and failed miserably, was lucky to be cast as “A Porter”). None of the damned spots came out of the Fabrica.
Bill, Bill, Bill, you poor stupid bastard.
Annette’s eyes snapped to her hands again. The sight and smell of the blood triggered another déjà vu moment, so strong she expected to see her hands drenched with ex-lover.
It’s me or your husband, your choice, but be forewarned—I don’t play the part of the jilted lover very well.
As a third-rate actor, Bill hadn’t played any parts particularly well, but he was pure method when it came to playing a corpse. Ambien put him down and a knife angled beneath the sternum into his heart kept him there. Sure, it took five or six insertions to get it right, but she eventually did and she hadn’t Arias-ed the whole thing by leaving evidence that would lead back to her. She got away with what society would have called murder (to her it was self-defense; after all, Bill was going to totally jack up her life). Her marriage didn’t last six months after Bill’s “disappearance,” but she sure didn’t want the satisfaction of Reynolds finding out about an affair so he could justify his decision to cut ties—or get greedy during the arbitration.
“Help…help me…b-b-bitchlicks.”
Annette glared at Lawrence. She pulled the bodice of her pantsuit together and buttoned it to deny the pervert his view of her brassiere.
“Let’s go,” Eliza whispered, her legs pumping as if she intended to outrun the next bout of vomiting.
“I’m with you, girl.”
“Please! Just pull my legs and torso over here. Please!” Lawrence begged.
After verifying Eliza couldn’t see her, Annette gave Lawrence the finger. He’d called her Barbara from Night of the Living Dead.
Ha! Maybe the ass-kicker from the remake, Porky! I don’t see you among the living!
“I hope you’re next, you cunt-stuffer! Sack-sucker! Fuck! Hmmmmmm.”
Annette laughed. What the hell was he even saying?
Eliza looked at Annette and smiled. “Yeah, I kind of lost it there. Feels like I’ve been kicked in the chest.”
“You’ll be next!” Lawrence screamed over and over until they were out of earshot. It got boring giving him the finger so Annette decided to ignore him, but his mantra felt like an incantation and she wondered if he actually could have some power over her fate. He was, after all, already dead—did that give him some sway over matters of mortality? Was he able to communicate directly with Agent Orange? Could he guide the Agent to her? Doubtful he would bother listening to Lawrence, but the seed of worry was planted and Annette knew how that little seed would germinate and blossom and… Shit.
No, no, no, you’re fine. Nothing is wrong at all. Just keep your chin up, girl.
“Huh?” Eliza smiled. “Thanks, maybe I should try to stay positive.”
Can you hear what I’m thinking?
Eliza laughed. “When you tell me.”
Annette put a hand against her lips and tried to keep them still.
Can you hear me now?
Her lips hadn’t moved, which was confirmed by her thoughts going unnoticed by Eliza.
With a sudden movement that startled Annette, Eliza began waving and pointing frantically. In a low, excited voice she said, “Look, the others. Someone’s with them.”
There were four people and it took Annette a few seconds of hard focus and concentration to figure out which one did not belong because she couldn’t remember their names or faces. She relaxed a moment and they came to her: Patrick, Gin, and Adam. The fourth guy was a little hazy when viewed from this distance but he obviously didn’t originate with their group because he wore a white shirt that looked like it had been soaked in bleach. Patrick was probably trying to get the guy to go shirtless.
Adam and Gin broke away from Patrick and the new guy.
“Oh, now they acknowledge us. They weren’t too concerned when they left us in the basement,” Annette said.
“We did the same thing to Ed and Pamela. Ah shit, Adam will ask about his parents. We can’t tell him.”
Why not? The little shit left his parents because he had the hots for Gin—that’s what they called “yellow fever” and his case would be terminal. Tokyo Rose was smart enough to know a human shield when she saw one. As if it mattered. Annette remembered the way Agent Orange looked at Gin; it was the look of lust Lawrence got when he passed the dessert section at a buffet.
Pies and cakes and puh-puh-pussy-puh-puddings and tortes and cookies, I’ll be buh-buh-buh-back for all of you, bitchlicks!
It lent credence to all the tales of Agent Orange as a Vietnam veteran; it was like the mere sight of her took him back to Pork Chop Hill and Guadalcanal. Hell, he might pack up and go home if he found Gin dead. Only problem being, this was his home. Shit on that little factoid there.
Adam looked out of sorts, alternately seeing and ignoring Annette and Eliza. Gin appeared desperate so this wasn’t a warm welcome back to the group. No matter. Annette figured it was time to take her hand off her mouth and let her thoughts flow freely. The
shit-asses ran off and left Annette in the basement hoping her death would buy them time. She hadn’t been her best at those moments; she’d been hallucinating a little and if not for Eliza, she’d be dead.
“Annette!”
Annette somehow shocked everyone. Hand off the mouth and witness the magic. Oh well. Felt good. Felt great!
Adam and Gin power-walked out of the parking lot. Annette laughed at how silly they looked, but no sound came out.
“You shouldn’t have said that,” Eliza whispered.
“Why not? It’s the truth.” Or she assumed. Technically didn’t remember.
“Where are they going? You don’t think they’re going to Morgan, do you?”
“They’ll run into him before they get to the fork. Bet Agent Orange passes on that little Asian tart and shoves an arrow up the little douchebag’s ass.”
“That’s dark, Annette. What the hell’s gotten into you?”
Damn it, the cramps were returning. Out of nowhere it felt like she was passing a brick through her intestines. It was the dawn of a new bout with nausea, too. In the heat of the moment she let herself get too worked up and threw her biological equilibrium out of whack.
She grabbed Eliza’s arm, but this pain didn’t drain into the waiting vessel.
“Maybe the new guy knows something. Maybe there’s a reason they came back here,” Eliza said.
Annette didn’t feel like talking—or thinking—she just nodded. If she leaned forward in an approximate one hundred and fifty degree angle it seemed to ease the pain in her bowels. Eliza gave her a look she didn’t like, the insufferable “what the hell is this bitch doing now?” look that made Annette want to smack her across the face. Before this whole thing was over Annette would definitely smack the silly out of this girl. She had some facial swattage reserved for Gin, Adam, and know-it-all Patrick, too. And she’d like to knock Lawrence’s head off the stake. Her to-do list in this accursed place grew by the minute. She’d trade it all for her pill box, though.