But then, just like that, they were all looking.
I was a bit late to look, and maybe that’s what saved my life.
Suddenly, Mister “Sixty-Three”—likely trying to make up for his fuckup—was coming at me like a bullet.
No…
Not like a bullet. I suppose it was the bullet that was coming at me like a bullet. The bullet was faster. Of course. Cop could’ve been an Olympic runner—could’ve been running sixty-three miles-per-hour—and he still would’ve been too damn slow. But the sight of all that uniformed authority barreling at me gave me a start; nearly knocked me right on my ass without laying a hand on me. And that was how a shot that should have built a lovely little retirement home right in my heart was, instead, forced to settle in the meat of my shoulder a few inches off.
“T-BUILT SENDS HIS CONDOLENCES, PRESLEY,” the shooter had cried out at me as he was dragged away towards a flashing Cruiser. “THE CROWS IS DEAD! LEARN IT, KNOW IT! THE CROWS IS DEAD, PRESLEY, DEAD! THE CROWS… IS… DEAD!”
Turning away from my would-be murderer, I watched the “meat wagon” holding everything I’d known as my life pull out and begin to put distance between us.
“The Crows is dead…”
“The Crows is dead…”
“The Crows is…”
The Meat Wagon’s brake lights burned, it rolled to a lazy stop at the end of the road. There, seeming to tease me, it lingered—it’s right blinker winking knowingly at me—and it finally turned and vanished into the night.
There, at the end of the road, standing where the “meat wagon” had been waiting a moment earlier to wink at me, her ghost stood.
She stared back at me.
She held her round belly in one hand, supporting its great weight and all the potential it represented.
She waved—a casual, lazy gesture aimed more towards the home we’d built and everything we could have had than at me.
She stared back at me… but she did not smile.
There’d be time enough to smile at me from the end of the road in the years to follow. But nobody smiled on the night that they died.
Nobody.
“The Crows is dead…”
“The Crows is dead…”
“The Crows is…”
****
I woke up to the sounds of shouting. I fell out of the old cot and groaned in pain, the effects of the beating I’d taken earlier had only amplified in my nap. The screams were getting louder and I rushed out, seeing both Danny and Mia staring in horror towards the closet where we’d tied Bill up at.
“He made me do it, I swear!” Bill screamed, his voice a mixture of terror and insanity.
I couldn’t see what he was talking about, but I knew whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.
Suddenly, I could hear the sound of ticking and froze.
Fuck!
FUCK!
I rushed forward, slamming Bill against the wall and narrowed my eyes at him. At the same time, Danny followed after and I glanced over, seeing exactly where the ticking was coming from. The fucker had somehow smuggled a bomb in here with him!
“It’s not my fault! He made me do it! I swear! It’s not my fault!” Bill said, tears beginning to stream down his face. “Please! Don’t hurt me!”
“How much time do we have?” I asked, trying to remain calm.
“Forty-five seconds,” Danny said, his face pale.
“We need to evacuate!” Mia said. “And quick!”
We all nodded and as I turned to leave, Bill’s hand shot out and stopped me. Danny had rushed out, hitting the fire alarm to alert everyone inside to get out as he began to bellow across the room.
“Three days’ time. Come alone,” he said as he slid a small piece of paper in my palm.
“This isn’t getting you off the hook, asshole!” I said, slamming him back into the room with the bomb and locking it from the outside.
I didn’t have much time to consider what he’d meant and slid the paper into my pocket. I had a feeling it was the last piece of the puzzle, the last part of the game, that Papa Raven was playing. I glanced around as I made sure that the others were finished evacuating. I know I didn’t have much time left and I forced my muscles to move as fast as they could as I shot through the side entrance of the building, joining the growing crowd that had formed. Mia, Candy, and Danny stood at the front, their faces look relieved as they saw me come towards them.
“Is everyone one?” I asked, trying to catch my breath as I caught up.
“We went through everywhere so yeah, I think so,” Danny said, rubbing the back of his neck. “But I can’t be sure, y’know.”
I nodded and turned as the loud explosion came and I watched, with the others, as the place I’d grown up with my father turned to fire and ash. I could see the look of pain and sadness on the others and I realized that I’d begun to cry as well.
Papa Raven would regret this.
I’d make sure of it.
PART 3
Carrion = Death
FOURTEEN
~MIA~
I’d been here before.
I wasn’t sure how or where—I thought I would remember being trapped in a hell like this!—but it was too familiar to not be the first time. Not that it being familiar made it any better. In fact, it made it much, much worse.
I was trapped. It was dark, uncomfortably warm, and there was a smell. The smell, like me, was trapped. It hung somewhere between sweet and sour; reminding me all at once of thawing meat, fresh mulch under a hot sun, and something earthy, ancient. A deep part of my brain chanted that it was the oldest smell in existence, and another part, deeper still, assured me that I’d one day come to contribute to it.
I knew that smell. I knew it the same way I knew I was on the first step of a twelve-step staircase that led down into deeper darkness; the same way I knew that the surface my hands pounded against was a door that should lead to freedom. And I knew that that door—that freedom—was closed and that it would never be opened; that freedom had been stolen from me. And my brother, Mack—though he was only Malcolm in that moment—was the thief.
I knew all of these things with such a startling certainty that I also knew I must have been here before. But, for the life of me, I didn’t know how that was possible.
Trapped. I was trapped in a dark, horrible, smelly place.
Whimpering, knowing what awaited me down in those warm, smelly depths but also knowing it was all my life amounted to, I turned away from the door and started down the steps.
One…
Two…
Three…
Four…
Five…
Six…
Only halfway down the stairs to my new world and the voice had gone and summed it all up perfectly. A horrible, nearly precognitive fear took hold of me and I had to take hold of the rough, splintery railing to keep from toppling down the rest of the steps.
Seven…
Eight…
My hand traveled along the railing. As the eighth step became the ninth, it went from rough and splintery to smooth and tacky. It was unnerving, and while my eyes had come to adjust enough for me to investigate the spot where my hand lay I knew not to. Keeping my gaze trained on the darkness ahead, I removed my hand from the surface. I knew it would be better to fall the rest of the way into that black abyss than to let my hand spend one more second on that railing a moment longer.
I thought of my father’s paint cans. I thought of old Band-Aids. And then I thought I might turn around and try for the door again; thought that maybe Malcolm had let go and I might escape from this (life) place he’d trapped me inside.
Then something at the bottom of the stairs, something waiting in the darkness, said, “You a whore or not?”
And suddenly, just like I knew everything else, I knew there was no turning back. There was no escape from this (life) place.
I cursed Malcolm’s name—curiously calling him “Mack”—and continued down the stairs.
/>
Nine…
Ten…
Eleven…
The hot, reeking stench seemed to reach out like a living thing and grab me as my foot fell on the second-to-last step.
Getting it, I took another step—Twelve—and finally dared to take another step into the darkness, away from the stairs.
Here it was dark. Here I had to look with my hands. My mouth was filled with the taste of latex. My vagina and my anus hurt. I was crying. And, all the while, I searched on with my hands, looking for something or somebody that might help me get out of this (life) place.
“You got me?” the voice called out, seeming to offer itself to me.
And then my hands fell upon the soft, stinking mass of a long forgotten corpse. Gasping at the fresh wave of rot that assaulted my nostrils, I blinked at a sudden wave of clarity—light!—that illuminated my freshly discovered treasure.
And there, before me, I saw myself. I stared back, naked and dead and rotting—my legs splayed and my body showing signs of recent use—and I held my arms open as a lover might when awaiting an embrace.
“You got me,” Dead-Mia moaned up at me, triumphant and elated.
“You a whore or not?” the other voice called out from an unseen corner.
Then, seeming ecstatic to answer the question, Dead-Mia leapt at me, grinning wide and exposing a length of latex still occupying the corner of her mouth. “I said ‘you got me?’, Mia!” she bellowed, taking hold of me and pulling me into her.
I cried, whimpering, and clenched my eyes against the hot, acid-like tears that gushed forward.
Darkness…
Everything was dark. Everything had always been dark. Everything would always be…
“AREN’T YOU LISTENING TO ME, MIA,” the corpse howled as it pulled me into her.
Literally—LITERALLY!—into her! I could feel the grotesque moisture of her cold, dead skin as it clung to mine; sucked all of me into all of her—making us…
Her hands fought to clasp me tighter, but they were now…
My hands…
No…
Covered…
NO!
My eyes snapped open, feeling some ungodly shift in something that was painfully—dreadfully—familiar, and suddenly I was gone from the cellar, gone from the grasp of an undead doppelganger, gone from everything but…
A crimson stain forever etched on my skin…
I glance down the dark corridor, immediately recognizing where I am. I’d only been here once before, yet it feels like I’ve been here all my life; like I’ve never left.
I don’t want to relive this.
I don’t want to be here.
I don’t want to…
But “want” has never been a dictating factor of my life.
Since when did what Mia Chobavich wanted make any difference?
I can feel my brain screaming at me to turn around even as my body moves forward.
Always moving forward.
I take a deep breath as I continue down the dark hallway, seeming more to follow the motions—my instincts knowing the way the same way my lungs know how to breathe—than actually following any sense of direction. My breaths have grown heavy with fear and my entire body seems to boil under a sheen of sweat. Dread swims around my stomach like a hungry piranha, biting at whatever it can get a hold of.
I hate this so much.
Where is Jace?
I want—Damn! There’s that word again!—him here with me so badly.
But… want.
I’d laugh if I could summon breath enough to do so.
I can hear the sound of breathing up ahead and I continue forward, once again seeming to be called to this place.
To the night where my nightmares, my new nightmare, began.
Just me, my brother, and a gun…
A cramped room that replaces an old basement.
One dead body, this one much, much fresher, replaces another, old and abandoned.
Two deaths, sure, but the newest one a death by my own hands.
And—damn me!—I couldn’t bring myself to mourn or to even feel regret or guilt.
Was it really my fault though?
It wasn’t as if I hadn’t planned to kill him, right? Even so, the death still has an effect on me. I continue down the hall, wondering just how long this hall goes. A part of me wonders if I was actually thinking that now or then. But aren’t the two one in the same right now? Right? Confusion intertwines with my fear and creates an all new breed of chaos in my mind as I continue down the last few steps before I face a whole new sense of fear.
Laughter.
My brother’s laughter.
Mack.
His face, twisted in fear and hatred as he stares at me. No, not just me. I watch as Jace and Mack move in what seems to be a never-ending struggle for control. They move in slow-motion in front of me, playing a part that will have the same outcome no matter what happens. I watch, waiting for my part in this twisted play.
The gun appears in my hands and once again my body is moving.
I try to stop it. I don’t want this.
I don’t want to have this on my hands.
My first kill.
I can’t stand this.
My mind screams to stop, screams that this won’t end well for us.
But… this has already happened, hasn’t it?
There’s no changing the past.
Or present.
Or whatever this is.
I watch in horror as my finger pulls the trigger and my brother’s head suddenly becomes a Picasso painting—all grays and reds and nonsense. I stare in horror, wanting this all to end.
I won’t freak out.
I can’t freak out, right?
That’s now how it’s supposed to happen; not how you’re supposed to kill someone.
It’s supposed to be certain, confident—solid.
But then why does everything feel so shaky?
Something grows cold inside me and I glance down, seeing my hands covered in blood, the gun no longer occupying my grip.
But how?
I shot him, right?
How did I get his blood on my hands like this?
I glance back to his body, seeing it disappear and suddenly a heavy weight is in my hands. I glance back down at my hands, seeing that I was suddenly holding my brother’s head—bloodied and missing a large portion of skull, but still him; he’s there, alive, looking back at me with what’s left of his face—his lecherous stare made all the worse by all the blood and missing parts.
I stare in horror, begging my mind to let me drop his head. To not force me to stare at him any longer. I can’t stand this! I need to be free. I try and close my eyes, but as I’ve seen, my mind and body are no longer one in the same. And so I stare. I stare into my brother’s dead eyes. And, as dead as he is, I still feel the accusation, the hatred, burning from those cold depths.
Suddenly everything feels so cold…
So cold.
I’m cold.
I watch as my brother’s head disappears, and I wait for the relief to come.
It doesn’t.
The disembodied head of my recently murdered brother blinks up at me, smacks his lips, testing them for the moment, and says, “Can’t wait to see you get ‘mommy tits!’ Think there’s a chance I can get in on that?” He laughs then at his own joke, chokes up a wad of cold, black blood, and then asks, “What’cha gonna name it? ‘Malcolm’ ain’t bad, right?”
The room disappears around me and I’m left inside a dark abyss, a nothingness that seems to want to swallow me whole. A black dread fills me and I scream for help. I scream until my lungs ache, begging for help. Begging for…
Mint chocolate-chip ice cream… and pickles?
****
I shot up in bed and glanced over, reaching for Jace…
Only for my grasping hand to be met with nothing; my stretching fingers finding nothing but emptiness beside me. I squeezed my eyes shut, remembering through
a sleep-haze a wavering memory of Jace leaning over me earlier, his lips on my forehead only slightly waking me, and telling me that he had to leave to meet with Danny.
That nightmare…
Shit!
The one recurring nightmare was bad enough, always had been, but the more recent one—not yet old enough to compare in sheer volume to the first, but still a horrible and ongoing horror that now waited for me in my dreams—had decided to—what?—join in, connect, fuse?
How could that even work?
Stupid, I thought. Dreams don’t need to “work;” they’re dreams!
But those strange, subtle differences…
My mind was still reeling from both the nightmare and everything that had happened the night before. The sight of the explosion, of Jace on his knees roaring with rage, the faces of all those Crow Gang members—distraught and lost. Danny’s face was one I wouldn’t forget for some time, however. His face was filled with a rage I didn’t realize he even possessed. I remembered that he had been working with Jace’s father, had even had a thing for him, and realized that his response wasn’t as surprising as I’d thought.
Jace had left to meet with Danny to work on fixing up the shop, to work on nearly restarting the entire gang’s original system of operations. Papa Raven had certainly left his mark with this one, and I couldn’t imagine what more he could have planned. The thought terrified me and I worked to clear my mind as I slid out of bed and plodded on still sleep-goofy legs to the bathroom. As I sat down to relieve my aching bladder, I caught my drifting eyes wavering before finally coming to land at the small cabinet beneath the bathroom sink. It was an odd thing to focus on, I thought, especially since the only time I ever really called upon that cabinet was when I got my period. After moving in with Jace, that had become the area where I stored my tampons, feeling it was discreet and out-of-the-way enough to not be out in the open. Considering this—still staring at the closed cabinet door—my mind began to wander towards the box of tampons and the last time I’d gone to retrieve something from it.
I’d been out the last time I’d gone to check, finding the box empty. I remembered this clearly because, with my period already starting, I’d been left in the uncomfortable position of asking Jace if he could pick me up a new box. This request, I remembered, had been met with a warm, understanding smile, a reassuring kiss, and a prompt gone-and-back-again visit to the corner store.
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