by Bryan Smith
Bridget Flanagan was on her side in Jordan’s bed, her head propped in the upturned palm of her right hand. Her other hand aimed the remote control at Jordan’s television. A white comforter was pulled up over her breasts. Her bare shoulders made it clear she was nude beneath the comforter. Jordan gaped at her a moment before her gaze went to the small pile of clothing at the foot of the bed—Bridget’s skirt, blouse, and panties.
Jordan cursed herself for being so stupid. The door to her apartment had been unlocked when she came home. She’d been too tired to notice. Probably she’d left it unlocked this morning, too.
Bridget dropped the remote and sat up in the bed, holding the comforter up over her breasts. “There you are! I was hoping you weren’t at work today.”
Jordan felt numb as she said, “I was. I got fired. What are you doing in my bed, Bridget? What are you doing in my apartment at all?”
Bridget pouted. “I’m here to see you, silly.” Her eyes crinkled at the corners as she tried to fake emotion. “I feel real bad about last night. I don’t know what got into me.”
“Bullshit. Put your clothes on and get out of here.”
Bridget pouted some more. “I was just afraid. Please don’t be mad at me, Jordan. You made me think about a part of myself, my sexuality, that I just wasn’t ready to deal with.”
Jordan smirked. “And now you are?”
Bridget nodded. “Yes. I…I want you, Jordan.”
Jordan couldn’t believe it. There was just no end to this chick’s head games. She hated that she’d been so blind to Brid-get’s true nature for so long. She was a user. A manipulator. An emotional sadist. “You make me sick, Bridget. Get out of here before I throw you out.”
Bridget smiled. “You don’t want to do that…” She let the comforter fall away, exposing her breasts. “Do you?”
Jordan knew she should say something. Keep focused. But she stared at Bridget’s full, firm breasts and imagined touching them. Her mouth hung open. Her eyes fluttered. Christ, she was too tired to think straight. She imagined how she must look to Bridget and felt a fresh surge of anger, directed both at herself and the evil bitch in her bed. “Get out!”
Bridget laughed. She threw the comforter back and stretched out on Jordan’s bed, her long, lean body aglow in the morning sunlight slanting in through the window blinds. She lifted her legs off the bed, stretched her feet to their fullest extent, and wiggled her toes. She lightly trailed the fingertips of one hand over her smooth, concave belly, the glint of pink nail polish a sensual contrast to tanned flesh. She met Jordan’s gaze and winked.
“I don’t feel like leaving just now, Jordan.” She pinched one of her nipples. “Why don’t you come over here and put your mouth on this?”
Jordan wavered for just a moment. She saw herself caving in, submitting to this degradation. Although it would be the fulfillment of a fantasy, it would absolutely be a degradation. And knowing this strengthened her resolve.
She went to the bed and Bridget sat up, puckering her lips, anticipating a kiss. She yelped when Jordan grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her out of the bed. Bridget shrieked and struggled until Jordan drove a fist hard into her stomach, and then she was gasping for air. Still holding her by the wrist, Jordan scooped up Bridget’s clothes and pulled her former friend out of the bedroom.
“What are you doing, you bitch!?”
Jordan dragged the struggling girl down the hallway. “Throwing out the trash.”
Bridget tried to twist out of Jordan’s grip, but to no avail. They arrived at the front door moments later. Jordan pulled it open and shoved Bridget through it. Then she threw the skimpy, silky clothes—which felt so nice to the touch—out after her. She threw the door shut, turned the lock, and leaned against it. Bridget screamed and pounded her fists against the door.
“You’ll pay for this, you fucking whore!” came the muffled voice from outside. “I’ll kill you! You’re gonna die, Jordan! Die!”
Jordan closed her eyes and tuned out the rest of it.
So she didn’t realize that Bridget’s screams had turned to cruel laughter.
CHAPTER TEN
Jake stopped at a convenience store on the way back to Washington Heights. He picked up a copy of the Rockville Times and got in line behind a woman who reminded him a little too much of his mother. Bottle-blonde hair. A skimpy white tank top. Tattoo depicting a coiled snake visible on her left shoulder blade. Denim cutoffs that clung like a second skin to her shapely ass. She caught him looking at her and winked.
Jake’s stomach clenched.
It was as if his mom had caught him leering at her. He was mortified. The woman’s face had that haggard quality common to middle-aged women from the Zone. Too many years of hard drinking and hard living. She could’ve been anywhere from thirty-five to fifty.
She smiled at him. “I know you, sweetie?”
His face flushed. “Ah…no. You look like somebody I know.”
Her red-rimmed eyes almost twinkled. “Well, want to get to know me better?”
Jake forced a laugh. “Yeah, I’m flattered, but I’m…married.”
He tried to conceal his lack of a ring by shifting his grip on the newspaper, but the lady had an eagle eye and didn’t miss the lame attempt at subterfuge.
Her smile vanished. “Oh, fuck off.”
She turned away from him and set her twelve-pack of Old Milwaukee on the counter. Embarrassed, Jake wandered to the rear of the store, where he grabbed a six-pack of Heineken from the beer cooler. The flirtatious woman hurled a final curse his way as she banged the door open on her way out. Jake paid the clerk and left the store. Back in the car, he pried the top off a Heineken, wedged the bottle between his legs, and wheeled out of the parking lot.
The Heineken was empty by the time he pulled into Stu’s driveway. His hand moved to toss the empty into the Camry’s backseat, but he stopped and frowned at the bottle.
He sighed. “You’re on a slippery slope here, man.”
But fuck it, it was done.
He chucked the empty into the back and got out of the car. He went around the side of the house and let himself in through the back door, then stepped into the kitchen and hit the light switch. The overhead fluorescent lights flickered for a bit before coming all the way on. He put the rest of the Heineken in the fridge and poured Coca-Cola into an ice-filled glass from a two-liter bottle. Then he grabbed his paper and headed to the living room.
He was in an old leather recliner and looking at the newspaper before he noticed the girl. She was curled up asleep on the blue sofa on the other side of the coffee table. She was small, with a pale face and straight, lustrous black hair tucked behind her ears. She wore a dark gray hoodie, ratty blue jeans, and striped orange-and-black socks with holes in the toes.
Jake had no idea who she was.
Stu hadn’t mentioned anything about a girlfriend or a roommate. It bothered him. She didn’t look like a criminal. But that didn’t mean much. She could be an intruder, what did he know? He thought about calling Stu. Maybe even the cops. But he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. What kind of criminal breaks into a place just to sack out on the sofa?
But hell, he knew the answer to that.
The mentally unbalanced kind.
Then Jake saw the small handbag and the key ring on the coffee table. An idea occurred to him. It was an invasion of privacy, but the idea’s allure was strong. Oh, the hell with it. He folded the paper and set it aside, then got up and moved cautiously to the other side of the coffee table. The hardwood floor creaked beneath his hiking boots. He searched the girl’s face for any indication of imminent wakefulness. She kept on snoring. Jake reached into the handbag, rooted through a jumble of lipsticks, pill bottles, and other ephemera, and finally extracted a lime green wallet. He undid the snap and looked at the girl’s plastic-encased driver’s license.
His eyes widened. “I’ll be damned.”
Kristen Walker woke with a yawn, startling Jake. The wallet jump
ed out of his hand and landed with a thump on the coffee table. She smiled and said, “Hello, Jake.” She glanced at her wallet and smirked. “You know, if you’re hard up for cash, you’re robbing the wrong girl.”
Jake covered his embarrassment with a laugh. “Sorry, I’m not robbing you. I just had no idea who you were, and my curiosity overwhelmed my good sense.”
She regarded him with a cool gaze, an expression conveying both reproach and amusement. “I assume you’ve figured out who I am, then?”
“I have the vaguest memory of Stu having an older sister, a fact that I forgot until now. Do you live here with Stu? I thought he was alone here.”
Kristen sat up and perched herself on the edge of the sofa. “He is. But he lets me stay here when I need to. Like now.”
Something in her tone put Jake on edge. Her words revealed little about her real situation, but there was an undertone of distress. Maybe she was in an abusive relationship and stayed at Stu’s place after especially bad domestic episodes. A surreptitious glance at her left hand failed to reveal a wedding band. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t involved with some creep who liked to settle domestic disputes with his fists.
He kept his tone neutral as he said, “So what brings you here this time?”
Her expression turned sour. “My boyfriend kicked me out.”
Jake frowned. “Oh. Well. Um…”
He had no idea what to say.
Kristen seemed to sense this and the corners of her eyes crinkled. “He was justified in kicking me out, Jake. I made some promises I couldn’t keep. He found out I was a lying bitch, so he gave me my walking papers.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”
She laughed. “You’re not. I volunteered my sad tale. But I’m done talking about it for now.”
Jake shrugged. He felt awkward standing there, so he sat down at the far side of the sofa. He felt a little tremor of excitement as Kristen turned to face him. “Hey, wait. How did you know who I am? Stu’s been gone all day.”
Kristen stared at him a moment. “There’s this new gizmo that’s been catching on lately. Cell phones. Maybe you’ve heard of them. Anyway, I called my brother’s cell this morning to tell him I’d need to stay here a while. He told me you might be here. But I would’ve recognized you anyway.”
Jake cocked an eyebrow at her. “Um…how?”
“There was a story in the Rockville Times when Blood Circus came out. Then another when House of the Damned was released.”
Jake frowned. “Huh.”
“Something wrong?”
“No.” He shook his head slowly. “I guess not. It’s just the last time I knew of my name being in that rag was in the weekly crime report years ago.”
“You mean nobody sent you clippings?”
Jake shook his head. “Who the fuck would do that? Me and Rockville, we’ve kept our distance.”
“So why are you back?”
He told her about Trey’s situation. She listened to him attentively through the whole tale, never breaking eye contact. She was so earnest it was unsettling. Her rapt gaze gave the impression that nothing else existed for her while he was talking.
When he was done telling her about Trey, she bit her lower lip and cast her gaze downward. He figured she was thinking the situation over and would soon volunteer some insights.
But what she actually said was, “Whenever I meet someone new, I have a test. It’s not an especially complicated test, as far as tests go. It’s more subjective than most, and there’s just one question. I ask you to tell me one true thing about life and existence, one thing close to your heart, one thing you believe says everything there is to say about you as a person.”
Jake blinked. “Um…”
Her speech unsettled him. It came from out of nowhere, for one thing. And it was already evident that Kristen was a little strange. But he tried to squelch his unease. He liked her. He couldn’t pinpoint precisely why, but he did. It wasn’t just that she was pretty. It was a combination of the way she talked, the way she looked at him, and her relaxed physicality, the way she was so at ease being this intimate with a virtual stranger. It was all that and probably a host of more obscure things, too.
He liked being close to her.
What that might mean beyond this moment, he didn’t know, but there you go.
He coughed. “Okay. Sure. But you go first…”
She drew in a lungful of air, then let it out slowly. “People like to say they’re not afraid to die.” She peered at him with an intensity that made Jake squirm a little—it was as if she were trying to see through his eyes and into his brain, probing for his secrets. “Of old age, I mean. Hell, everybody’s afraid of sudden death. A killer sneaking into your room in the middle of the night. A crack addict with a gun mugging you on a city street. A heart attack that strikes you down in the prime of life. But most people, if you ask them, will say they won’t fear death as the natural end to a long, well-lived life. If you get to be ninety years old, or a hundred, or whatever, the supposition is that you’ll be so tired of dealing with your infirmities that you’ll gladly surrender to the darkness.”
Jake laughed. “Surrender to the darkness?”
Her smile was a shy one. “I’m trying to be a horror writer, too.”
“No way. Are you shitting me?”
“Seriously.”
Jake sat up straighter. “Huh. Well, that’s cool.”
A subtle hint of redness touched her cheeks. “Yes. But back to the subject at hand. Here’s the thing, Jake. I’m afraid to die. Whether it happens today, tomorrow, or fifty years from now, it doesn’t matter—I’m afraid. I think about it every day. I can be just sitting at my desk at work and suddenly I’ll think about it. I’ll fast-forward to my last moments so clearly it makes me want to scream. I see myself in a hospital bed. Impossibly old and feeble. Hooked up to machines. Laboring for breath. Clinging to life. Most people, if they imagine something so morbid for themselves, they’d say death would be a welcome relief. But not me, Jake.” She leaned forward and touched his hand, making him shudder. “Even then, I’d be consumed with terror. Dreading what comes next, because I know what comes next. Nothing. A void. Nonexistence.” Her voice drifted to a lower register, became almost a whisper. “I don’t believe there’s anything after this life. And I don’t want to ever die, Jake. I don’t want to stop being. Which just isn’t possible.” The shy smile returned. “It’s quite the conundrum.”
Jake drew her hand into both of his. “I think I’m going to drink myself to death.” He swallowed hard. It astounded him that he was saying this. It frightened him, too. “I’m an alcoholic. I ended a year of sobriety yesterday. The stress of being back in Rockville had a little to do with it, but mostly it’s because, deep down, I never really wanted to stop drinking. And I don’t think I’ll ever stop again. I mean that. That’s not a poor-pitiful-me statement. That’s the way it’s going to be because that’s the way I want it to be. I don’t like the way the world really is. I don’t like the way I feel sober. I need the edge off. I need reality blunted. It’s going to kill me. But I consider it an equal exchange. Am I crazy?”
“You’re not crazy.” She laid her other hand on top of his. “And congratulations. You passed the test.”
Jake felt a sudden tightness in his chest. He replayed his words in his head, marveling at them. The sentiments expressed ran counter to every sensible thing he’d learned over the past year, but he realized that he truly did not care. His speech to Kristen marked the first time he’d ever laid bare this unvarnished truth.
Her gaze turned solemn. “Jake…are you feeling this like I am? Please tell me you are.”
Jake hesitated. Then he sighed. “Yeah. Yeah. Holy shit, I think so.”
She smiled. “Cool.”
Jake shook his head. “But it’s crazy. Isn’t it? I’ve known you, what…twenty minutes?”
She laughed. “I know. And it is crazy. It really is. But I don’t think I care.”<
br />
They inched closer to each other.
And Kristen said, “Kiss me.”
So he kissed her.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The cafeteria at Rockville High came alive shortly after the noon lunch bell. Students poured in through the wide-open double doors at either end of the spacious room, filling the previously silent void with chatter and laughter. Jocks told dirty jokes, their buddies barked sycophantic laughter, and their pretty blonde girlfriends giggled and rolled their eyes. Students snagged prime table spots while their friends got in line to get food. Plates and cutlery clanked, students jockeyed for position as the tables filled, and a hip-hop beat began to emanate from the wall-mounted speakers. The small crowd around the jukebox dispersed after a few minutes, because by then it was already programmed through the lunch hour. By the time the last student cleared the lunch counter, there were precious few empty seats remaining at the overflowing tables.
There was, however, one notable exception.
A lone table with just two occupants, a big white island in the middle of a human sea.
Kelsey Hargrove and Will Mackeson sat opposite each other at one end of a jam-packed table. The tables were arranged in four long rows on each side of the cafeteria with a wide-open space in the middle. The boys normally liked to position themselves at the edge of the open space. It was a good spot for scoping out hot chicks. But today they weren’t at their normal table. Today they were sitting one table over from that lone white island, conducting long-overdue reconnaissance work.
Kelsey shot a quick glance at the island, then snapped his eyes in another direction. “Fuck, man. She saw me looking at her.”
Will grimaced. “Christ, don’t look at them.”
Kelsey stared with distaste at the untouched lasagna on his plate. He was too sick with worry to muster an appetite. He prodded it with his fork for a moment before setting it down. “There is something seriously fucking wrong with that chick. And I don’t mean wrong like she’s psycho or something. She’s evil, dude, like a spawn of Satan or something.”