Pain washes over me in a scalding wave as I choke and drop the empty pistol to the dirt. It suddenly feels like I can’t breathe, but I force my body to do it anyway and shudder with the effort. My hand grasps for the knife, fingers turning sticky with blood.
Kali wrenches the knife out as my mind explodes into splotches of white. I’ve never felt such pain before, but I can’t lose to her, this pathetic copycat. This nobody. She’s stolen from me for the last time; I will not let her have Aaron.
I will not let her win.
My bloody fingers wrap her wrist as she tries to stab me again. Not only do I have the advantage of gravity, but I’m also much, much stronger.
I’m also bleeding like fucking crazy.
But I can’t let things end this way.
I can’t let any of these sad, sorry, wretched people get to me.
Coraleigh was a bully with a narcissist complex. She was nothing; she died like nothing. Like a side character whose story was never all that interesting to begin with. Eric and his father were monsters, so they were put in the ground where they belong. The Thing … the beast responsible for taking away the most important person in my life, he was left to die alone in the dark.
I won’t let these people make me feel like shit, not anymore. As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
Well, guess what? I don’t consent to this shit, not anymore.
I manage to get the knife from Kali at about the same time that she shoves me off of her and into the blackberry bushes. I’m on my feet, quick. Too quick, maybe, because everything is spinning. When I look down, I see the pink dress is now almost entirely red. Crimson. Shrouded in death.
I look back up.
Kali swipes at her mouth with her hand, circling me. I keep her in my sights as she moves, her little mind working as those tiny, vicious eyes of hers narrow with spite. I briefly consider taking out my own knife, the one strapped to my thigh, but wielding a single blade is hard enough. Having two won’t help me.
“I wish I could describe the look of bliss on Aaron’s face when I sunk that big dick of his into me,” she says, and I grit my teeth, fingers tightening around the hilt of the knife. When I slit her throat, that second bloody smile that opens up on her neck will mirror my own grin of triumph.
I never thought I’d be the sort of person who revels in bloodshed and pain, but life gave me both of those things in spades. My choice was to return it quid pro quo or let it consume me. I’ve chosen the former.
“You only wish you’d been able to snag a man like Aaron Fadler,” I tell her, standing up straight. Blood drip, drip, drops onto the leaves near my bare feet. I ignore it. Might pay for that later, but I’m too wrapped up in my own finale to pay attention to my fragile mortality. “And yet, here I am with not one, not two, but five men at my beck and call.” I lift the knife up for inspection, pressing a finger to the tip until a drop of ruby red wells up.
Kali has a poor estimation of self-worth, one framed by men with greedy hands and hungry lips. She craves attention and affection, even if it’s all bullshit, even if it’s bought with a tight, wet pussy and a face that’s just a tad on the young side. She sidled up to a pedophile because she was so greedy and desperate. She’s tried—on more than one occasion—to wear my skin like a suit.
Tonight, she pays for pushing too hard.
Some things break when you put too much pressure on them, but those shards they break into can be twice as deadly.
“You think I’m jealous that you’ve made a whore out of yourself?” Kali asks, but I just look up and smile at her through moonlight and bullshit. I’m worried about Hael, but only in the way that someone who’s just freshly fallen in love might feel. Of course I’m worried about him, but I know he can handle his own shit.
And me, I can handle mine.
“You can slut-shame me all you want, Kali. That’s okay. You’re a mean girl, that’s your identity. You’re a fucked-up narcissist with a troubled past. But I don’t make allowances for past wrongs; you are what you’ve become. And that, my dear, is nothing short of monstrous.”
Kali laughs, harsh and raucous, coming to a stop beside a sapling. It’s as skinny as she is, and just as likely to suffocate down here in the shadows of the larger trees. Some of them are over a hundred years old, just barely managing to escape the logger’s axe. In the last few years, wildfires have ravaged this area, creeping closer and closer to town. They’ve escaped that, too, but only by the grace of some unforgiving god.
Once, when one of the fires got really, really bad, and the entire eastern half of Springfield was told to evacuate, I came out here and put my feet in the stream. The sky was orange, and the ash fell like snow. I could smell the charred remains of the forest, the remnants of broken, shattered lives.
And I was surprised to find that, despite the fact that I’d never been so close to a fire before, I recognized that smell. It’d been a near permanent fixture of my life for years.
“You are so fucking full of yourself!” Kali shouts at me, her voice breaking just a little. In the moonlight like this, her eighties-inspired makeup doesn’t seem quite so dark, quite so harsh. She looks less like a woman of the night and more like a fragile, lost, little girl.
Some strange part of me wishes I could help her.
The rest of me knows that sometimes people are wicked, through and through.
Kali is one of those people.
Coraleigh, on the other hand … she was merely pathetic. She hurt people because that was the only way she could ever feel powerful, the only way she could take control. She was never truly wicked; she wasn’t strong enough for that. She was just a blind sheep in a bad flock.
Kali is a whole different animal.
“Full of myself?” I echo as she steps toward me, her green party dress catching the light. It looks awful on her. It clings in all the wrong places, emphasizing the bony structure of her body. If she really is pregnant, then she isn’t showing.
“Standing out here like you’ve got some moral high ground, spouting crap at me that’s as bad as your poetry.” She pauses and tilts her head to one side. Maybe she thinks I don’t see her reach into her purse? But I do. “The thing is, Bernadette, you’re just as bad as all the boogeymen you think you’re fighting against. You’re a monster, too.”
“Maybe,” I say, turning the knife in my hand, holding it the way Callum showed me. I look up at Kali as she pulls a second knife from her purse, tossing the hideous, gold thing aside. Guess we’re going to duke this out, hand-to-hand.
Lots of blood and pain. Like it always should’ve been. A gunshot between the eyes would’ve been too easy, too clinical.
I let Kali rush me, ducking as she swings the knife in an arc at my face. The blade digs into the trunk of the big tree behind me, buying me enough time to swing around and come at her from the back. Unfortunately, she’s not as dumb as she looks. Kali ducks and avoids my blade, yanking her own knife from the bark of the tree as she spins around to meet a second thrust.
She knocks my knife aside, but I cut her anyway. Blood wells over her pale hands. Not surprising. Knife fights are never clean. I’ll probably end up with a partially severed finger before the night is out.
Because I know Kali all too-well, when she starts to swing frantically, pushing me backward into the blackberries, I smell a trap. Not a second too early, I drop down and throw my bodyweight into her belly, narrowly avoiding falling down a small ravine into the icy waters of Mill Creek.
We hit the ground, blades flashing. I see my own cut to the bone on her arm, a scream raking from her throat as she swings at my chest. The lace of my dress splits open, an angry slash of red appearing across my breasts. I don’t feel the pain, however, too intent on my mission.
End this.
Kill Kali.
Bernie, this isn’t you, I tell myself, but that’s the old me, pre-Penelope’s death. All I wanted was to be good, to drink black coffee and
write terrible poems. I wanted to be a poor artist in a studio with a leaky roof, and I wanted to create things. I wanted to plant an herb garden on the windowsill and squeal when I had enough basil to make spaghetti sauce with zucchini grated into it. Because that would mean I was creating things instead of destroying them.
That girl … she’s lived too long with people like Neil and Eric, Coraleigh and Kali. They have changed her, altered her irreparably.
The only way she’ll ever feel sane again, is to destroy them at their own game. It’s a thing she knows she can do, and do well. With Havoc by my side, I will rule this horrible town and all of the awful people in it.
Hell, I’m already well on my way. There have been delays. There have been metaphorical wildfires. But nothing is going to stop me. Nothing. Motherfucking nothing.
I stab the blade down as hard as I can, holding it with both hands, but Kali manages to turn her head at the last second. My knife severs the bun of green and black hair from her head, but that’s about it. She yowls at me like a frightened cat as she brandishes her own knife, slicing me across the shoulder.
With my knife buried in the dirt, I readjust my grip, until I’m holding onto Kali’s neck.
Just like Victor did to Kyler earlier, I lean forward with grim determination. Now that I’m in the same position, I can see why he did it. Why he knew he needed to do it. The dark will always play by its own rules. It’s all well and good to want a superhero, but it’s impossible to expect someone made of light to fight the shadows; they might disappear when there’s a ray of sunshine, but they’re not gone. They’ve just retreated. The night always returns, after all.
Kali drops her knife in her frenzy to get to my hands. That’s her mistake, losing that blade. Maybe, if she’d gotten lucky, she could’ve plunged it through my heart.
A gunshot echoes in the woods around me, a strange serenade mixed with the wicked metal music taking over the little ghost town. I barely hear it though. I’m too focused, too zoned-in. How could I not be, in that moment? A moment I’ve been waiting for, for what feels like forever.
Besides, there’s an intimacy to strangulation. I can see now why most murders carried out this way are between people who know one another. There’s a level of connection here that’s hard to explain.
My archenemy … her face, it turns red then blue. Her eyes bulge out of her skull, like two mean pits in the moonlight. She struggles fiercely and then starts to twitch.
I can’t do this.
The thought hits me so hard and so fast that I gasp like I’m the one being strangled.
I release Kali just as she begins to go still, and she pulls in this awful, choking breath. It’s wet and raspy, and it sounds like death incarnate. Shoving up to my feet, I stumble away and vomit into the bushes, bleeding everywhere and hating myself. You’re too weak, Bernadette, my mind hisses. You let Billie go, even though you shouldn’t have. And now, here, even knowing what she’s done to Aaron, you can’t finish it.
Am I too much the tortured, awful, self-righteous superhero? Are my morals tying my hands? Or is it something else?
I’ve talked a big game all night, to the boys, to myself … I promised and craved bloodshed. So why? Why? Fucking why?!
You’re better than Kali, that’s why, something inside of me says, and I stand up straight, turning to look at her. Kali is struggling to her feet, but I can’t let her get ahold of either knife so I move quickly back over and clock her in the face as hard as I can.
She falls to her ass in the bed of wet dirt and pine needles while I collect both knives from the forest floor.
“Where is Aaron?” I ask, standing above her and wishing she were smart enough to tell me. She won’t. I’ll have to keep her here; Havoc will show; she’ll die a horrible, gruesome death of her own orchestration. And I’ll let them do it because, as much as they’ve become my pets, I am truly and wholly theirs. “I will not ask you again.”
Kali laughs at me, turning over so that she’s on all fours. I allow her such an undignified fucking position. Her panties are showing. They’re red, a thong, crotchless. They don’t go with her dress at all. Not that lingerie needs to, but … it’s just a show of trying too hard. Desperation, that’s what they look like on her. A different girl could wear the same panties and look fierce. But not Kali.
“Aaron is dead, you moron,” she scoffs, each word like gravel as it slithers past her snake-like lips. “You really think I’d keep him around?” Kali uses a tree to get to her feet, still gasping and wheezing in such an awful way that I wish I’d just killed her when I had the chance. “A big-dicked pet? I raped him once and finished him—which is more than Neil ever did for Penelope, huh?”
Red flashes across my eyes, and I know that she’s just done it, pushed a button that can’t be undone. I’m going to kill her, and this time, I’m not going to stop. I go for Kali, but when she turns, she has a tube of lipstick that doesn’t look quite right.
Fuck my life, it’s a stun gun, isn’t it? They make those, you know, for women’s self-defense. They hurt, sure, but they’re not nearly as powerful as say, a TASER. I should be fine. Should, being the key word.
The air crackles with electricity as Kali shoves that gold tube into the stab wound on my side as hard as she can. My body revolts, my fingers tightening around the knife blades and then releasing. I end up on my back on the forest floor, biting my own tongue and convulsing.
The price for my pity.
Like I said, the universe doesn’t play fair deals. Villains are not killed with kindness.
And even a cheap stun gun hurts when it’s pressed into raw, bloody flesh.
“You stupid goddamn bitch,” Kali laughs, choking again as she stumbles over to me, looking down on her handiwork with an awful smile. It doesn’t quite fit her face, like it was designed for somebody else and plastered there against her will. She kneels down beside me as I struggle to pull myself together enough to stand up.
Jesus Christ, where the fuck was she hiding that?! Not in her teeny, tiny panties, that’s for fucking sure.
“Since this is the last time we’ll ever talk, I just want you to know that I didn’t hate you at first. You drove me to it. Bernadette, I loved you like a sister in the beginning.” Kali scoots a little closer to me, reaching out to brush some hair from my forehead. I try to slap her away, but my hands and arms are too twitchy, and I can’t seem to make my body do what I want it to.
Plus, I’m still bleeding. Bleeding and bleeding and bleeding.
Maybe I’ll always be bleeding, both physically and metaphorically. Maybe that’s the price of my fate.
“You think you’re so high and mighty, Bernie. I used to look up to you, but then I realized that you’re too deep inside your head to care about anyone but yourself.” Kali grabs my hair and jerks my head up, putting one of the abandoned knives to my throat. “And there’s only room for one queen in this city. Listen to me good, Bernie: it isn’t going to be you.”
My fingers dig into the dirt, and I manage to get myself together enough to fling it into Kali’s eyes. She cries out as I roll away, but I’m still stumbling and struggling to make my body work the way it’s supposed to.
So I do what I can, crawling into the blackberry bushes as Kali struggles to clear her eyes and locate me in the dark. It isn’t so easy to see out here. City assholes always gripe about the dark, but you haven’t seen shit until you’ve been out on a country night.
“Bernadette,” Kali calls sweetly, like we’re playing hide and seek, like she’s truly Neil Pence’s awful, little soul mate. “I always knew you didn’t have the ovaries to actually do it, to hurt me like that. You’re pathetic.” Kali moves away, back in the direction of the playground. Or … what I think is the playground. “Think about it,” she calls out, voice ringing in the dark. “You called Havoc for nothing. You’re out here bleeding alone in the dark.”
She laughs at me as I struggle to get my bearings. To be honest, I have no idea where we are an
ymore. Somehow, during the fight, we’ve moved.
I keep crawling, slow and quiet, still twitching, my heart racing like crazy. The next time Kali speaks, calling out my name like a summoning spell spilling from the mouth of a witch, I unstrap the blade from my thigh and clutch it as tightly as I can with spasming fingers.
As soon as I hit the edge of the bushes, I shove up to my feet and start to run. A gunshot hits the tree to my right as I make a sudden left and sprint toward the edge of the cemetery. Fuck, shit, son of a bitch. She found her gun.
Of course this is where it would end—just as it did for Neil—in the darkness of a moonlit graveyard.
The graves here are old and utilitarian, nothing like they were at Our Lady of Mercy. There’s not much to hide behind. So I don’t bother. I just turn and watch Kali stalking across the grass toward me, gun in hand.
“Look,” I say, dropping the knife and holding my hands up in mock surrender. She keeps coming, so I fall to my knees, knowing that she’ll enjoy that, the exchange of power. “If you’re really carrying Neil’s baby …”
“Of course I am,” she says, pausing about six feet away from me. Close enough to get a shot, but far enough away that she doesn’t think I can surprise her. My fingers dig into the grass as I drop them to my sides. There’s a piece of broken headstone that I cling to, careful to keep my movements quiet. The knife I just dropped is too obvious, shining silver about a foot in front of my knees; this is better. “Neil loved me, Bernadette. He loved me.” She pauses and adjusts her grip on the weapon, two-handed and very steady.
You very well could die here, you idiot. Because you’re still clinging to morals you have no right to.
“Do you want to know where he is?” I ask quietly, keeping my eyes averted. If I look her dead in the face, she’ll know I hate her too much to ever let this go and she’ll have to kill me right here and now. But Kali wants to talk because she’s always loved an audience. There’s no point to my dying without anyone around to see it.
Anarchy at Prescott High Page 7