“And don’t you start barking,” she warned Cerberus.
Without argument, he curled up at her feet and went to sleep.
“Seems you’re just as tired as I am,” she whispered. Sleep overcame her before she had time to feel discomfort from the lumpy ground.
* * *
A bat flapped madly at Camilla’s face, stuck in her hair. She made no attempt to remove it. The nightmares hit her again and again altering her reality. She became so many women. A new face was added, one who had endured far more suffering than the others, one who hated deeper than the others. In this one’s perspective, she called on God again and again, only to be ignored, forsaken.
Hidden in a cloud of bats she continued her journey, the wolves white shadows at her side, ghost hounds of her eternal night. The multitude of bats sending out sonar chirps made sight strange to Camilla’s eyeless vision. The world looked like a black and white picture without the finer details, all things illuminated shapes in dark space.
Every few minutes the visions flooded her being. Every few minutes she endured horrendous torture. But, rather than follow the acid green cord to its source, she ran away. Rather than wanting to feed from the woman responsible for her nightmares, she felt repulsed. She sensed that something terrible would happen if she got too close.
She felt drawn in a different direction, maybe toward town; she didn’t care so long as it was far away from what followed. She tried to run, to flee the horrors behind her, hoping that if she created enough distance between herself and the monster woman, she might outrun the alternating deaths plaguing her. Her stiff legs hindered her.
She glanced behind her, sure she’d see the green-eyed beast just over her shoulder. Her feet slapped tarmac. Before she had time to register the growl of an engine hurtling toward her, the truck slammed into her. It sent her flying.
* * *
Two days. Tears coursed a clean track down Bill’s grimy face as he gripped his steering wheel with his pudgy hands.
“That two-timing bitch,” he cried. “That slut!” Dirt caked his fingers and clothes. “Why did she make me do this? Why? What did I ever do to that stupid fucking whore?” The venomous words ate at his mind.
Two days. She was gone. No more lies. No more late nights. No more phone calls… dead air… click. No more slut.
His headlights cut twin halos through the dark as he sped uphill toward his house. The road twisted. He maneuvered his vehicle along the curves, vision blurred from hate-induced tears. He came up and around a sharp corner. Just as Bill sniffed and focused on the road, he saw a naked and bloody woman sprint in front of his car and stop.
He hit her. Her eyeless and torn face smashed against the glass, leaving smears of blood. Bats hit the windshield making starred cracks. Then she was gone, up and over the top of his truck.
He slammed on the brakes.
“What the fuck!” he screamed as his truck screeched to a halt. Heart pounding, he swallowed hard, mouth dry, and got out.
* * *
From the road, Camilla watched the shadowed truck stop in front of her. The door opened. The silhouetted man fell out.
“Oh no, oh God,” the man whined. “What have I done? Shit.” He got back into the truck. The engine started again, and the vehicle disappeared into the black.
His hand hit her face. She laughed.
“You are so weak, Bill. You can’t even hit me right.”
“Fuck you!” he yelled and punched her, smashing her cheekbone.
Pain exploded in her face. Blood dripped from her chin. From the floor, she held her cheek and began to laugh again. “Come on, pussy-man. Is that the best you can do?”
“Shut up!” He came at her again, hands raised, grasping for her throat.
Blocking him, she said, “You know what? While he fucked me, every time he fucked me, I thought about how small your prick is, thought about how good it felt to have a real man inside me. You’re nothing but a pussy-man.”
“Shut up!” He lunged again. She pushed him away. He flew backwards and landed on their bed. She jumped on top of him and pinned him down, blond hair hanging in her face.
“You feel this?” She ground her crotch against his. “Feel these?” She put his hands on her breasts. “He loved to squeeze these, loved to feel this over his manly dick. You couldn’t compare to him.”
“Why?” Bill cried.
“Because you’re a pussy-man. No, wait. I’m wrong. Sorry, Bill. You’re a pussy-boy. I can’t even call you a man. A real man wouldn’t let his wife screw around behind his back.”
“How long?” he managed through tears. “How long have you been seeing him?”
“You mean how long has he been fucking me? Since before we were married, pussy-boy.”
“You bitch!” he yelled and hurled her across the room.
Laughing, she pulled herself into a sitting position only able to see out of one eye. The side with the broken cheekbone had swelled shut. He came at her too fast for her to catch him, though. His hands were around her throat before she could fend him off.
“I’m going to do to you what I should’ve done a long time ago, Tracy.”
“Try,” she croaked. “You… don’t… have… the… balls.” She thrashed around, hitting his arms, kicking his thighs from the outside. And then it hit her. She’d lost. Anger surged through her from the depths of her being. He was actually going to kill her. The pussy-boy had some balls after all.
She grinned and spat in his face.
His hands clenched harder over her throat, cutting off her air, her ability to talk. Blood filled her head, making her eyes bulge and ache. Her tongue felt too big for her mouth. A loud ringing filled her ears as the world turned gray around the edges.
He screamed in her face, but she couldn’t hear him. From what she could see, it looked like he was saying how much he loved her. His tears hit her cheeks. God, she wanted to beat the shit out of him, show him how it should be done. As she died she managed one last smile, just to show him how little he meant to her, how much he couldn’t hurt her.
Camilla grinned. She’d make the bastard pay. The green cord curled around her side and extended from her back as if it were a part of her. Another cord, yellow, extended in the direction the white-silhouetted man had driven. Steam curled from the yellow cord as it pulsed with hatred. Nothing near as powerful as her green cord but she would be satisfied.
With some effort, she stood again. Her head rested on her shoulder, neck popped out at a strange angle. The rest of her body seemed fine however. Though her neck was broken, she could still move as normal. She shuffled along, dragging her left leg, bats hiding her in their cloud. Again the vision hit. She became the fighting woman full of hate. How dare he violate her, rape her mind in this way. He would pay.
The breath, what she needed was in the breath. Life would flow through her again. Her hunger, her need, her addiction drove her forward.
Chapter Eleven
Camilla pursued her prey by way of the yellow cord, seething with anger. Something nudged for her attention, something she couldn’t place, but she brushed it aside, intent on stealing her prey’s breath. The pasty shadow of his house loomed before her but oddly, her sight changed in angle and color.
A mouse followed the man as he walked up the cobbled sidewalk. She saw everything but now from the view of the mouse. She didn’t understand how this was possible but her site was filtering through animals that were close to her, connected somehow.
The man’s giant feet seemed about to crush her. His body extended above his feet, enormous, too big for what she had to do.
“It’s only a matter of perspective,” she whispered to herself.
The bushes hedged on the side provided ample coverage as she waited for an opportunity to get inside. A snoring sound interrupted her focus. She glanced up for a moment but decided to ignore it and focus on what she had come to do.
When she passed through the wall she entered familiar territory. Her body
catching up to the mouse, whose eyes were now her window to this world. It stopped on occasion to gain some distance from their victim but didn’t stray too far from the back of his feet.
The pungent reek of sweaty flesh and a disturbance of airflow alerted her to the man’s presence. He must have walked within inches of her location. She followed him by scent.
Her vision changed again. She saw the man from several angles, his body a rainbow, his head and chest red, his arms yellow, hands and feet green. The lamp next to his bed glowed orange. She marveled at the immense amount of color ricocheting off the patterned lampshade.
As he walked into his bathroom and turned on the shower, her vision became obscured from the immense heat coming from the water. She hid in his closet thinking, waiting.
Fear would make his soul taste sweeter. She needed to scare him, but how could she accomplish this if he couldn’t see her? Snakes wriggled over her toes and up her legs. She wondered where they’d come from but decided it didn’t matter. She must focus on her task at hand.
One large snake slithered up her body and settled around her neck. She clenched and unclenched her fists. The breath was in the shower. She would have it. She knew she would. With a heavy sigh to steady her mind, she left the closet, a grin on her face, and walked into his bathroom. She swung the door shut, testing the hinges, not wanting to be detected just yet. Once it was latched, she crouched in the corner next to the door, across from his sink.
Her new friends covered her naked body and the bathroom floor with their writhing forms. She waited, legs drawn up, head on her knees, her continuous flow of blood pooling around her.
* * *
In the shower, trying to wash it all away, Bill remembered the sound of the woman’s skull hitting his windshield as he’d slammed into her. He was sure she was dead. No one could be hit like that and survive. He tried not to think about it. It was a back road. She wouldn’t be found for a while. And by then, no one could connect the accident to him.
And after his wife, after their fight, after… what he’d done, the last thing he needed was to have someone asking questions about Tracy, about where she was, and oh, did you know she was having an affair? He couldn’t stop thinking about it. The last two days had seen him at his worst. He’d done some serious shit and he hoped that life was going to let him forget them.
And why was that woman in the road naked? That, more than anything else, bothered him. His mind insisted on the certainty of her death. And if he hadn’t hit her, she would’ve died anyway, most likely. Naked, in the cold, already bloody. What could he have done to help her without drawing attention to himself? He hadn’t meant to hit her but it was for the best. All for the best.
He turned off the water and opened the shower curtain. His heart stopped beating when he caught sight of the thing in front of him.
The smell of soapy citrus still hung in the steam. Rivulets of water tickled his neck and arms, making him shiver. His skin puckered with goose-bumps as he gaped at the woman in the corner of his bathroom, the woman he had thought dead when he hit her.
Her sitting body blocked the door, thin arms curled around her shins, short black hair matted, bloody head on her knees, naked feet crossed over one another. She looked filmy, patches of brown and gray grime covering her head and arms. Thick, reddish-black matter caked over her fingertips like glove tips.
The sharp stench of rot and something else, something metallic, permeated the mist about him. He crinkled his nose. Her shoulders rose and fell with heavy sobs. Snakes hung from her arms, coiled and slithered on the floor by her feet. One slithered out of her hair and over her knees, then to the floor, toward him. Her sniffles were wet, and when she swallowed hard, it sounded like she was gulping her favorite drink. His stomach clenched. Acid burned his throat as he suppressed a gag with one hairy hand cupped over his mouth. The smell was thick, something he could taste, like putrid meat and sour milk.
“Who are you?” His voice came out in a trembling whisper, though he wanted to demand, to shout, to show authority and make her move out of the way. The faucet dripped in the clogged bathtub. Harsh gasps stuttered from her body.
As if on a rusted hinge, she lifted her head. The slowness of the ascent, the way her neck seemed to get stuck, unnerved him. When she fixed him with what should have been her gaze, he screamed, his throat tight, the sound barely escaping. Where her eyes should’ve been were gory holes. The flesh around the sockets was torn; flaps of skin lay open, revealing bits of bone. Blood covered her face. As her spine creaked straight, he could see bite marks and bruises through the red drying over her breasts.
His feet splashed in the water and his hands squeaked on the blue tiles as he tried to back away. His body turned though his head remained facing her, features stretched in a silent scream as he tried to claw through the wall. He recognized the woman he’d hit and knew Tracy had sent her revenge.
“I’m sorry,” he cried.
He slipped and fell backwards, sloshing water over the floor. He chomped through his tongue, pain flooding his mouth with the warm taste of pennies. His head connected with the faucet.
The last sound he heard before the world vanished was an open palm slapping the side of the tub and soft giggles chasing him into the nothingness. Her stinking mouth sealed over his. She inhaled. And then he saw his wife, became his wife, felt her hatred as he choked her over and over again.
* * *
Camilla shivered as she drew the delicious breath into her body. Again, she was alive and warm and free. She could fly. So much better with fear. Fear was the spice that made everything nice. She stood, a red string of spit connecting her mouth to his before it broke and turned into a runnel on his chin. When she left, the snakes followed.
Only one thought coursed through her mind. She lived for the breath and would have more of it, so long as it didn’t come from the woman at the end of the green cord.
* * *
“I’m sorry,” a man shrieked from behind the wall where Libitina slept. Laughter filled her head. Screams, splashing jangled her nerves, but the silence that followed made her mouth dry and her eyes water. She knew what those sounds meant. Seconds later Camilla affirmed her suspicions as she walked by without slowing or even glancing in her direction. Snakes and bats her entourage, she headed toward the road.
Libitina gathered her dog and backpack and ran in the opposite direction.
She needed to go home, needed to rest, to eat a healthy meal. No, what she really needed was to escape Camilla’s presence. Whatever she was, Libitina no longer wished to document the nightmare life of Jane Doe. She half-ran, half-stumbled in what she hoped to be the direction of town, already trying to convince herself that the last few days were nothing more than a dream.
A side street here and a side street there, she sought what she couldn’t find. After a while, she gave up attempting to navigate the unfamiliar territory in the dark. Hitchhiking seemed like the best solution in the moment. Whoever drove through here would surely know how to get to town. And she could rest while she waited. Aside from the exhaustion, she desperately wanted a shower. With a shallow sniff at her armpit she decided that she’d never smelled so bad in her life.
A motor rumbled in the distance after what must’ve been an hour. Moments later, a single headlight emerged. She stuck out her thumb and waited. The motorcycle slowed, then came to a stop just in front of her. The guy on the bike looked to be about her age. He didn’t wear a helmet and his blue hair was shaved on the sides and curly on top.
“Need a ride, sweet thing?” His broad grin showed all his teeth. They looked sharp, predatory. Maybe she didn’t want to go with him but it wasn’t like she was on a busy street with several other options. “Can I take my dog on that?” She thought he’d say no, figured it might be a way for her to say no. But he surprised her.
“Oh, I’ll take you, My Pretty… and your little dog, too,” he cackled with his hands in front of him, fingers hooked and wiggling like an eager wit
ch.
Libitina forced a smile, though she wasn’t sure she thought him funny. Not just yet. She swung her leg over the back, laced her arms around his torso, and squeezed her eyes shut as he sped away. She chanced a peek at the blurred scenery. The single light lit the trees in muted hues of green that looked more silver in the darkness. Life sped by. Her hair whipped her cheeks and neck. Cerberus shuddered in her backpack and she hoped he wouldn’t jump out again.
“Where you headed?” he asked, turning his chin just over his shoulder to make for easier conversation.
“Away from here,” she said. She’d heard that in a movie once and had always wanted to say it but now that she had, she found it frightening. “I don’t care. I’m just tired and hungry.” She shrugged. He smelled like dust and cigarettes. And something else she couldn’t quite place but that reminded her of Camilla for some reason.
“I can fix that. You mind if we go back to my place? I’ve got peanut butter and jelly and some bread.” He laughed. “And you can choose where you’d like to sleep. It can be in my bed with me or the floor. But I’m going to be in the bed no matter what. I don’t give up my comfort for anyone.”
She didn’t know what to say. The guy scared her. After all, they had just met and he was already propositioning her for sex. The jerk. She wanted off the bike but the lure of food and a comfortable place to sleep called to her. If things turned bad she figured she could take care of herself. Self-defense classes went a long way. She ignored her instincts and hoped he wasn’t as creepy as he seemed. After the last few days, seeing things no one should see, things she could only hope to forget, she was too tired, too hungry, too numb to care.
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