She stops, halfway through hopping into a pair of pink athletic shorts. “You had a bowl cut? In high school?”
“Well, not exactly a bowl cut, but—okay, yeah, a bowl cut. Hey, I went to Christian school! I’d get in enough trouble as it was if I shaved it all off, so we went for the ugly but passably sexless option. It was terrible though, and it took forever to grow out. When I graduated, it still only came down to my chin.”
She snickers. I throw my hands up theatrically and flop onto my stomach, faking a pout.
I feel the bed dip as Kate comes back. She traces patterns on my spine until I shudder, plants a kiss where my kidney is—I whimper. She presses her tits into my back, scratches me to make me clutch at the pillows, turning me into a quivering, whining mess even before she works two fingers into my soaking pussy. I’m glowing with warmth and comfort with tears trickling from my eyes. I never want this to end—belatedly, with Kate’s other hand petting my hair, I realize I’m falling asleep.
“Hey, are you into anal?” I mumble.
“Giving, or receiving?”
“Giving, at the moment.”
“You want me to...?” She rubs the pad of her thumb over my asshole.
“Yes, please.”
“I can’t find the lube—”
“Just spit is fine.”
When she pushes in, it’s that familiar, yet always-foreign feeling, one that sends chills up my spine if I think about it too much. My brain fights itself, wanting to relax and open up, but also wanting to clench on the burn. I whimper, arching my back. With two fingers in my pussy and her thumb in my ass, she kind of rubs her fingers against one another inside me, massaging that spot that makes me come harder than anything. The pleasure laps at me like waves on the beach; I sink into the mattress as though it’s warm sand, my eyes rolling back.
“You seem tired, Harry,” Kate murmurs. “You have bags under your eyes, and you eat like the only time you eat is when you see me.”
“’S not the only time,” I mumble, pressing my face into the pillow.
“And last night, at my place—did you even sleep? I appreciate that you left me both a text and a note for when I woke up, and I get it, work emergencies are a bitch, but—have you slept at all since then?”
I try to get up on my elbows. “It’s complicated, there’s a lot going on—”
“Shhh, its alright.” Kate shushes me, gently pushing me back down with kisses on my spine and her fingers deep in my holes. My arms shake as I sink back into the bed, moaning. “I know you’re dealing with something, and obviously you don’t want to tell me about it.”
“K-Kate—” If I don’t focus, my mouth doesn’t move the way I want, and the sounds that spill out of my throat are embarrassingly incoherent.
“And you don’t have to tell me. Not yet, anyway. I really want this to be going somewhere.”
“I do too…”
“But I’m okay with taking it slow. I don’t want to have false expectations and jump in when you’re obviously holding back.”
I crack one eye open. “…Your thumb is in my asshole, I don’t think I’m holding back much.”
Muffled giggling that she quickly tamps down. “See, you’re doing it again. Point is, you don’t have to bare your soul to me right now. But I do want to know you better before we get to be a thing. So just, let me know when you’re ready to talk. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Good girl.”
Oh, fuck, dammit, she found my kryptonite. I don’t even need to come, it just feels so, so good, these slow, rolling waves of sensation, no need to disturb the peace with an orgasm.
Kate runs her free hand over my shoulder. “Can I see it? Your scar?”
“Which one?”
“The one on your neck.”
“Yeah, sure.” I turn over halfway, leisurely, and tilt my head toward the pillows to expose the right side of my throat. Kate touches the raised, dead tissue with her free hand, gently tracing.
“Does it hurt?”
“It itches, sometimes. Like there’s too much skin, and it can’t breathe. But nah, right now I can barely feel you.”
“It kind of looks like a handprint.”
My eyes pop open. “What? No, no it doesn’t. It’s just a blob.”
“Look, see?” She splays her hand over my neck, placing her fingertips one at a time, then pressing her palm onto the start of my collarbone. “A handprint, like this.”
I hold her wrist and pull her hand out of me, quickly enough that I wince. “Hey, uh, I’m gonna go to the bathroom. Be right back.”
She seems confused; I hear her faint “Okay,” as I get up, trying not to seem too hasty. My head hurts. The backs of my eye sockets are pulsing. I’m trying to breathe, trying to soothe myself. There’s these little whispers in my head—I can’t tell if they’re in my own voice, or someone else’s.
When I check the mirror, my scar hasn’t changed… much. It’s like some parts of it have shifted just—a millimeter up, a millimeter to the left, a slight rotation of that furrow—and if I squint, look at it as a whole, it really does look like a handprint.
I go back to Kate, shaking. “Aww, you’re cold,” Kate coos. “Here, get under the blankets.” She squeals when my frozen skin touches hers, but I cling to her, because I have nothing else to cling to, and I’m spiraling again, losing my grip.
I lie awake, staring, unfocused, at loose strands of Kate’s hair. I could keep my mouth shut. I could just be the mess that I am. But I’ve been trying to be better. I’m not the angry me, and I’m not the messy me either. I’m trying to be something new, even if that something doesn’t really have a future.
“Hey… Hey Kate? Are you awake?”
“Hmmm?”
“Can we talk about something right now? It’s important.”
“Oh, yeah, sure.” She rolls over, blinking blearily, but has her attention on me. She must have wiped off her makeup when I wasn’t looking; her eyes are somehow even bigger without mascara, with a slightly goldfish-like quality caused by thinner eyelashes. Even more freckles are scattered across her sandy brown skin. Gods, she’s beautiful.
“Remember when you asked me… if I did any drugs?”
She’s suddenly wide awake. “Yes?”
“Well, I…” I don’t know how to say it, so I lean over to get my pill bottle out of the bedside drawer. I hand it to her, and she inspects it delicately.
“Johanna, my teacher, she… she died. Well, she was murdered. And I found the body.”
Kate’s eyes widen, and her hand curls around the pill bottle. I wave hastily.
“—but that’s not the part of the story that I need to explain. After that, I had nightmares. Bad ones, like… bad enough that I started taking something to keep me awake.”
Kate gingerly puts the bottle down on the mattress. “I don’t recognize this brand,” she says, quietly.
“It’s not a brand, it’s just what people call it. ‘Vigil,’ like standing vigil. I’d call it a sort of caffeine pill, but, well—it takes a Hell of a lot more caffeine to kill you.”
Kate’s head whips around in alarm.
“—Supposedly. Just, in theory.”
She doesn’t look comforted. Hastily, I keep talking.
“I took these when I had nightmares, and it strung me out so much that I drank to cope with that, and I was a fucking mess. The only reason I stopped was because the nightmares stopped. I threw away the pills and the alcohol—well, most of the alcohol—and made something out of myself that I’m actually really proud of. But I started having nightmares again, a few days ago. Right before I met you.”
Kate’s face falls, just as I dreaded. “And… you’re taking the pills again.”
“Yeah. I have a limited supply now, I’m pacing myself, and I’m not drinking with them either… but still. I lied to you about it. I’m sorry. I shoul
d have told you earlier.” I want to say—but I thought this wouldn’t go any further. But I did want this to go further, I do want this to go further. I want to say—but I thought it wouldn’t be a problem. Bullshit, of course it’d be a problem. I’m not so naive as to think a relationship works when it’s built on the conditions of a lie. A red flag is a red flag, even if I’m the one waving it. I have all these excuses and justifications building up on my tongue, and I swallow them all, opting for naked honesty instead.
“I’m not… not okay. And I just, I have to tell you that, because—I feel like I’ve been using you. Everything we’ve had—it’s been real, it’s been amazingly real, but—at the same time, you’ve been my life vest. That’s been a part of this. And I don’t want to not let you know about that.”
Kate rolls onto her back, blanket up to her armpits, her hands folded over her stomach. She looks up at the ceiling. “…I lied, too.”
“About what?”
“About being an only child. I had a brother. Kenneth… Ken. He… had a lot of pressure on him. He was my parents’ prince, which meant they never, ever left him alone.” She closes her eyes. Part of her upper lip twists, just briefly. “When he finally got to college, he let loose. Not even bad stuff, just, smoking weed, getting drunk and getting tattoos, shit like that. It should’ve been fine, but—my parents freaked. Cut him off. Right when he was getting into oxy.”
“Oh…”
Either she doesn’t hear me, or she ignores me. “I tried to take care of him how I could. I was just a teenager, but I was calling his friends, trying to juggle couches for him to sleep on, screaming at my parents to put him in rehab. But there’s only so much a sixteen-year-old can do. He died in his sleep, on a friend’s floor.”
There’s a dead weight in the pit of my stomach. “I’m…”
“Don’t say you’re sorry.” Her voice wavers, but doesn’t die. “Please, just listen. It’s not even the pills, specifically, not really. I didn’t ask to be my brother’s keeper. And I don’t want to be yours, either.”
“You don’t have to be. I’m sorry I put you in this position.”
She rubs her eyes, angrily, exhaustedly. “Just… give me time to think, okay? I don’t know how much time, but—I have the gallery opening tomorrow, I’ll be working for days, just—don’t contact me. I’ll call you. Or text, or something.”
She gets up, picks up her purse, and goes to the bathroom. When she comes out, she changes out of my clothes and back into hers. I put on a tank top and shorts, just to be polite as I walk her to the door. She kisses me on the cheek as she zips up her jacket.
“Bye,” she says, quietly. Not rudely, but with only an echo of warmth. I want to think of something to say, anything to lessen the hurt—but she closes the door gently behind her.
I go back to bed, wishing I could throw a tantrum, cry myself to sleep, but I can’t. Somehow I’m not in the mood to drink, either. I wish I could black out. Wish I were fucking someone. Wish I weren’t such a fuck-up. But it’s coming back a little—that sense of loss. The hollow ache. Not the anger, that’s long gone. But that sense of lightness, of having less to lose… it numbs each step forward, spurs me on.
I dump the pills Gael gave me out onto the floor, letting them scatter and roll under my bed. Then I lie on my back, my arms crossed over my chest, coffin-posed.
And I dream.
***
Johanna’s body. This is not Johanna’s body. This is just someone I stole from the morgue—I feel bad, but not that bad. They were going to be cremated, no one will know. It’s a cadaver, and the world will never stop producing those. At least I’ll make sure this one is not wasted.
The waxy outside of the skin belies the warmth I feel when I cut it open, the hot wet that spills out of the stomach, heart and diaphragm still pumping like they’re alive. This does not bother me. This is normal, I think.
It’s warm, and I am cold. So I push my arm in further, feel the surprisingly heavy resistance of flesh and the squelch of slippery guts, a sensory bonanza, a return to the womb. I don’t want to tear anything, so when I feel the resistance of a slippery balloon-like sac I switch directions—the way I fingerfuck, feeling out the terrain and entering the path of least resistance and sliding my knuckles against spongy, hot flesh.
“H-Harry—”
The slurry words jolt me out of my reverie. Slippery lungs heave against my wrist.
“Harry—Harry it hurts—” Kate’s big eyes water as they stare helplessly down at me, her fingers fluttering at my waist.
“I’m so sorry—” I gasp, “I can’t, I can’t pull my hand out—” She starts seizing, choking. “Kate—!”
Teeth sink into my wrist. I scream hoarsely, and now it’s Chloe’s face crying up at me, her lips trying to form silent words as her diaphragm jumps, as she chokes. The thing inside her is snapping through my radius and ulna, sinking claws into my tendons to pull me in—it doesn’t hurt, somehow it doesn’t hurt but I still can’t move, can’t escape—I’m gripping the edge of the table with my other hand but my face is yanked so close to the open viscera that I feel the heat of them on my forehead, and my sweat drips into the bloody cavity ringed with teeth—
It swallows me.
I breathe in the smoke of a smashed car as I tear into the meat in front of me. My world is echoed in a million screens surrounding me, each showing a slightly altered perspective. My food is still warm and limp and I rip one limb off at a time, each bite a varying mixture of bitter and salt and oozing black-red.
I am not hungry. But I am still eating.
A last, surviving human with white bone showing outside of its thigh is crawling away, leaving a smearing trail of dry-wet-bitter-salt in its wake. I chase it down with a shuffling gait, pinning it with a foot like a thick, calloused hand, crushing the back of its throat before I tear into that one too.
I do not stop eating. I do not stop growing.
The sun beats down on me. It makes me damp, uncomfortable. Holding my prey in my mouth, I move toward the structure that looms tall in front of me. A shelter, where I can consume the rest of what I have hunted.
I am not hungry.
I cannot stop growing.
I am still eating.
***
I wake up breathing hard, the stench of blood and bitter guts still in my throat. A sign, I saw a big sign above the building entrance—I stumble out of bed for a pen and paper, finding an old receipt and flattening it out on my desk. I scribble the words I saw, grasping at them before they fade—Welcome to Havenbrook Mall. Havenbrook Mall, Havenbrook Mall—I look it up on my laptop.
Havenbrook Mall: dead, abandoned, just off the I-87.
I know where he is.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Cold Comfort
I have a U-haul van I’ve rented parked in front of the building; the back is already filled with most of my tools, including a duffle bag and a heavy plastic tub. So. I have a location. I have my weapons. All I have to do is get up, and go.
But I can’t bring myself to. I feel weighed down, like I did in that hospital room where Addy—Chloe died. Like it would be easier to sit here on my living room floor and starve to death than move.
I pick up my phone and scroll through my contacts. I think about calling Luce. My finger hovers over the button, but never quite makes contact. I scroll through the other names. Miriam? Brian? I already made a clean break with Kate. Brian needs to be with his kid and his wife. Bautista is out of reach. Miriam has a family to take care of.
My finger hovers over “Joy.” I look at the last text she sent me: a photo of her, firetruck red hair falling over her eyes, grinning her gap-toothed grin, my wallet in one hand and a sewing needle in the other. I want to remember her like that, frozen in mischief, a child of fairies now and forevermore. Surrounded by them, joking even as she died, bloodless and starved in the back of a cellar storage room.
&
nbsp; I put the phone down. Then I pick it back up again. I try to text Luce, but… there’s nothing I can think to say. “I love you” sounds too suspiciously like a suicide note, given my history. If I told her what was happening, she’d try to stop me, and then she’d be involved—and that means she’d be at risk, against a demon so strong he drove Bautista out of the city. And if I died… she’d just have to mourn me twice.
She’ll hear about what happens anyway, no matter how it ends. Or would she? Surprisingly, I’ve heard nothing about the massacre at the hospital on the regular news—I can’t tell if that’s from the cover-up efforts of the Council, Beelzebub, the government, or all of the above. If Beelzebub killed me, would his people cover it up? Do I want them to cover it up? If he kills me and that’s it, the end, revenge complete, he has no reason to come after the people I love, any more than he normally would while conducting his evil business. It’s still a win, as much as dying at the hands of your worst enemy can be a win.
No one is responsible for this but me. No one.
I sit there, crying, and Junhyun comes to sit cross-legged in front of me. I put my hand on the floor where his is, feel the unearthly chill of it. I shiver, and feel less alone.
Why are you crying? he asks. I wipe my face on the back of my hand. The words seem to stick in my throat when I try to answer in English, so I use Korean instead.
“Junhyun-ah. I think I’m going to die.”
He seems startled; his form shifts, as though briefly blown away by a breeze. He asks—
Why?
“I said I was going to kill a demon.” I press my palms into my eyes. “I don’t think I can do it. I think I’m gonna die.”
Junhyun presses both his hands onto the floor where mine is.
You’re not going to die. All the time, you come back fine.
I shake my head. I could explain more, but I’m too tired. “Junhyun-ah. Is it scary? Dying?”
He pauses. …No. But, didn’t know it would happen. Surprised me.
“Yeah, but how did it feel?”
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