by Ryan Schow
He hands me the key and I feel my stomach drop. Christ, I have to go back inside?!
“I can go,” Damien says.
“No.”
I jump out of the Rover, willing myself forward, not wanting to go back in there, but not wanting to deviate from the plan, either. I hop the fence, pushing one of my splinters in deeper, then head through the garage into the house and find his keys on the counter where I left them. The cat is sitting beside them, his milk bowl empty. He’s licking himself, cleaning his leg, or his butthole, or whatever. Maybe all of it. The important thing is I don’t see Gerhard. Quickly, in case he’s still on high alert, I slide the key back on the key ring and get out as fast as possible.
Back in the car, relieved, I say, “I’m the best criminal ever.”
“Except for the fact that you’re peeing your pants right now,” Brayden says.
“Yeah, there’s that.”
Damien says, “You did great.”
The way my heart is still pounding, how maybe I soaked my panties a little, the two of them have no freaking idea.
Lunchbox-Sized Fists
1
Back at school, Brayden says, “Four-two-seven-eight-seven.” Damien presses the hacked employee code into the school’s outside gate and to our relief, we’re back on campus, safe and sound.
By three o’clock that morning the new key is molded and dry, the hard edges polished smooth. Damien passes out about an hour after we get back so me and Brayden cross campus together, decked out in black with black hoodies he bought specifically for this night. The key doesn’t work right away, but with some praying and some jiggling, the lock finally turns and we’re inside. And thank God, because for a minute there I was thinking I took the wrong key.
“No alarm pad,” he says, after taking a quick walk around. “Good.”
Since there are no windows in the place, I flip on the lights and we head into Gerhard’s office. Brayden pulls the chair I sit in when I’m getting my shot. It’s directly under the smoke detector on the ceiling. He balances himself while installing the new smoke alarm nanny cam. It’s almost impressive. You don’t expect geeks like Brayden to be coordinated. Unless they’re video game geeks, which he isn’t.
When he’s done, he goes over to the bookcase and starts looking around. He pulls back books, checks behind a few statues, tries to make something give.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Looking for the secret button. Or a lever. Some kind of panel maybe.”
“That’s what the camera’s for.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t hurt to try. I mean, we’re here, aren’t we?”
“You looked. Fine, now let’s go.”
Disappointed, he skulks past me into the waiting room and flicks off the lights. “Hey,” I whisper, “I can’t see.”
“Hurry up,” he says. This is Brayden brooding.
2
I walk into the dorms around four A.M., so tired I’m afraid maybe I’m sleepwalking, or about to. I reach into my purse, searching for my keys. I see the gun and it stops me. The gravity of what has happened, everything I’ve just done—it hits me all at once. Something more powerful than one single emotion penetrates me, turning reality inside out.
“What the hell am I doing?” I mutter to myself.
I slide the key into the door and enter the darkness of my dorm room, not even thinking about getting ready for bed. I don’t care if I sleep with my makeup on, or my bra. I pull off my pants, pull back the covers, then stop. What the hell is that?
Breathing?
My heart powers to a fast start. If I was sleepwalking seconds ago, now I’m fully awake. I flip on the light and scream. The scab eater is at the door, locking it.
“Get out of my room!” I growl.
He turns to me, eyes like hell, hands clenched into lunchbox-sized fists. He says, “Told you to stop with the questions. You didn’t listen. Did you? No.”
I’m in my underwear, trying to keep my eyes on him—terrified to look anywhere else—and at the same time strategizing on how to get to my purse. I tell myself to just go for it. No hesitation.
I launch out of bed going for my purse, which is halfway between me and him. He just looks at me. When he sees me digging inside, he rushes me. I get my hand on the gun just as he clamps one meaty hand around my thigh and one hand like a vice on my arm. He hoists me up and hurls me through the air into the large glass window behind my bed. The innermost panel spiderwebs with a sharp crack! and the air is knocked out of me.
I try to breathe, but my throat is stuck. Panic consumes me. Wide-eyed, struggling to survive, the beast approaches me, patient, murder all over his face.
I scramble away from him, knocking the lamp over, changing the angle of the light. Shadows fill the room, casting my attacker’s face into the kind of harsh hues that make him look like the Devil himself. A scream rips through me with such force I cannot stop. My whole body is involved. I grab a tea cup off my nightstand and throw it at him. It catches the upper corner of his forehead, splitting the skin. He only notices when the blood begins to trickle. A hellish grin cuts his face in two. He paws at the red trail, runs the blood over his tongue then touches himself down there.
A whimper escapes me. I look for something else to throw—I need a distraction to get to the door—when I realize I still have the gun in my hand. A knock on the door startles us both.
“Savannah?” a voice asks. “Are you okay?”
Crap.
The giant stomps to the door, rips it open, grabs the skinny blonde haired girl from next door by the throat and drags her inside. He slams the door behind him. They girl’s eyes bulge with horror. She’s turning red, the veins in her face swelling with pressure. He watches as she fights for her life, amused.
I lift the gun, aim it center mass like Brayden taught me and squeeze the trigger. The gun kicks and at the same time a flop of my attacker’s hair kicks out and the bullet buries itself into the door jam behind him. He slams the girl twice into the wall, violently, her head thumping against it, leaving behind craters. He drops her like a sack of garbage, then puts his finger to the spot on his head. He pulls it away, examines it, his face looking like he bit into fresh garlic.
Rumbling, he throws himself at me. I dive out of the way, scramble over the bed and fall off the other side right onto the lamp. The bulb smashes beneath my weight, throwing the room into darkness. The pain is instantaneous. Whatever fear I was feeling a moment ago now more than doubles.
I clamp my hand over my mouth to stifle my terror. I try to listen. I don’t hear anything. Wait a minute…okay, I hear him breathing…
….on the other side of the bed.
Neither of us move.
“I can hear you sobbing, you stupid little baby.” I guess I’m sobbing now.
Damn.
His voice is gritty, the texture of it coarse with hatred. Like he dragged every word up from the deepest, most evil parts of himself to spit them directly at me.
I cower in a tiny ball in the pieces of my bedside lamp, smashing my hand harder across my mouth because inside I’m so scared I can’t hardly control my emotions.
“I’m going to cut you open,” he growls. “I’m going to gut you, you little pig. Then I’m going to drink you. And I’m going to eat you. I’m going to fill my belly with you until I’m full, full, full.”
“You’re a freaking abomination!” I cry. I sound weak, desperate. I sound like Kaitlyn’s father; those were his words.
“Just like you.”
I start to move, inching my way off the broken lamp toward the door, pushing myself sideways across the hardwood floor. The sounds of movement flitter across the surface of the floor, my noises echoing loudly.
I stop, listen. Then nothing. He’s so close I can feel him. This is a game, his game, and I hate it so bad I ache to scream! My hands are shaking so badly. Oh my God—I don’t have the gun! I reach out to where I was, sliding my hand across the polished surface of
the floor, feeling for it, really stretching for it. That’s when he moves, his mammoth feet tromping toward me in a cacophony of sound. Where’s the gun?
Holy shit, shit, shit, where’s my gun?!
His hand grabs my shirt; his other hand grabs me by the hair, lifting me up. I feel myself flying through the air, crashing into something hard, dropping like deadweight to the floor. Pain spikes, sending electricity shooting through my back and shoulders, but this is nothing compared to my treatments.
Another hand reaches out for me.
Fingers wiggle across my face, trying to palm it. I grab the giant’s nearest finger as fast as I can and shove it into my mouth. The baby finger. I bite down on it with the force of a pit bull. The giant grunts, tries to pull away. My teeth break the flesh, catch the weak spot between the joints. A fist slams into my side, my ribcage rattling so badly I actually lose bowel control. Still, I have the finger. With one final, concentrated effort, my bite pops the finger loose inside my mouth.
Satisfied, I spit it out as he grunts more than once. He’s reeling backwards. I move as fast as I can across the blackened room toward the gun, my hand finding it seconds later.
“You skinny little—”
Just then the door opens up and four girls are standing there in nightshirts and underwear trying to see inside. The man is illuminated enough for me to see him. Knowing my aim sucked the first time around, I aim for his belly, pull the trigger and hit him in the upper chest, near his left shoulder.
The sound of gunfire sends the girls screaming and running. He sort of rocks back and forth on his feet, glaring at me, panting with his bloody hand cradled in his good hand. A dark blossom is forming on his shirt. Apparently I didn’t hit anything vital.
Shame on me.
“You can leave and I won’t kill you,” I snarl, “but if you don’t leave now, or if I ever see you again, I will kill you. And then I’ll kill Gerhard. I’ll shoot you both, right in your motherfreaking faces.” Except I don’t say motherfreaking. What I do is drop the f-bomb.
It seems appropriate, all things considered.
The bony girl the giant knocked out is stirring, moaning.
“When you least expect it,” he seethes, and I can hear the pain in his voice, “you will hear a cracking noise. That will be me snapping your little chicken neck.”
He walks slowly to the door, kicking the downed girl as he makes his way past her. The minute the light from the hallway hits him, I see he’s sucking the stump that used to be his pinkie finger. He’s sucking it the way a child sucks his thumb. The way infants suck on their mother’s breast. He ducks his head as he walks out my door, then turns and heads for the building’s exit.
Holy cow, he’s a monster!—gigantic!
I race for the door, slam it shut, throw the deadbolt. The girl on my floor is unconscious, which doesn’t mean squat right now because I’m tasting the guy’s blood in my mouth. Recalling the feel of my teeth cutting through tendons and cartilage between the bones of his baby finger. I get to the toilet, yank up the lid and shove my face in the bowl. My stomach convulses.
The memory of his pinkie finger coming off in my mouth, how I had to roll it once to spit it out, this is what puts me over the edge.
Dinner powers out of me in a rush, the bile scorching my throat and nose, the convulsions in my stomach more vehement than menstrual cramps.
When I finish puking, I rock back on my knees, exhausted. I don’t even realize that I’m crying until the girl comes in the room, wobbling and holding the back of her head. She looks at me with damp eyes and I look at her and she just comes down and sits by me. I pull her into my arms and we cry together.
“Who was that?” she finally asks.
“Ex-boyfriend. He’s upset that I’m here, that I left him.”
She reaches for the toilet paper roll, tears off a strip, then dabs her eyes. “Probably more so now that you’re so much better looking. I can’t believe he even recognized you.”
Everyone around me seems to have no problem stating the obvious. No one has any tact anymore. I stand up, blow my nose then rinse out my mouth. “Thanks for trying to help. I hope you’re okay.”
“Nothing a dozen aspirin and a few days rest won’t cure,” she says, holding her sore ribs where the giant kicked her. “What about you? You look horrible.”
“I’m going to call the cops.”
Okay, so I’m not going to call the cops. What would I say? How would I explain any of this?
“The other girls,” I say. “Tell them not to worry. Tell them I’m sorry.”
She thinks this over, then says, “Did I hear gunfire, or was I imagining things?”
“That was me,” I say, “I took his gun. You probably have a concussion, though. You need to see a doctor.”
“I hope you at least hit the bastard,” she says.
“Twice.”
3
I call Damien and tell him I was just attacked by what I’m sure was Gerhard’s goon. He’s asking all kinds of questions and I just keep telling him I’m fine. Banged up is all. There’s a knock on the door, a voice saying, “Security, Miss Van Duyn. Are you alright? Is there anyone with you in there?”
“I gotta go. Security’s here.”
I open the door and I must look a mess because there’s a security man in a wheelchair and he’s holding a gun that is blacker, newer and bigger than mine. He can’t seem to find his voice. Is it because I’m attractive, or because I’m beat up pretty good that he can’t speak? It could also be he’s in a freaking wheelchair. Okay…
“Miss Van Duyn?”
“I’m okay,” I say.
“One of your friends called and said there was gunfire, and a man in your room.”
I’m still reliving the memory, still trying not to go to pieces. “An ex-boyfriend,” I say, sticking to the original lie. “He plays football. The steroids…they make him…they turn him into…he gets mean.”
“Is he still here?” I shake my head. “What about the gun? We have reports of gunfire.”
“I managed to get it from him, but he only had two bullets. I fired two warning shots and he left. He got the gun back, though.”
With a notepad and pen in hand, he says, “Were you at hurt at all in a…sexual manner?” I shake my head. “Are you seriously injured anywhere right now?” Again, I shake my head, no. It goes on like this for about a half an hour, and the whole time I’m waiting for him to search my room and find the gun. Or the bitten-off finger. That would be so bad. I’m waiting, praying he doesn’t conduct a search because when I get the chance, I’m pretty sure I’m going to use the gun on Dr. Gerhard.
The man who introduced himself as John Black, Head of Security, he finally leaves, but by the time I crawl into bed, I’m going to get a little less than an hour of sleep. That’s about the time the pain hits my liver, and my heart. I take four pills and a hot shower, then I get ready for the day. After that I steady myself enough to reach under the bed and pick up the spit-out tip of the giant’s finger. Gathering it up in a wad of tissue, I stick it in my pocket, and try not to vomit again.
4
Rumors of my crazed ex-boyfriend circulate through school with such speed and hysteria the story becomes more exaggerated by the hour. Two teachers ask if I’m okay and I say Head of Security John Black is involved, that I have complete confidence in him despite the wheelchair. Both teachers look like they want to ask about the changes in me, but—to my utter relief—both restrain themselves. They keep asking if I’m okay. I keep saying I am.
I head over to Gerhard’s office after school and tell Nurse Arabelle I’ve been attacked and will not be coming to see the doctor today. I’m about to hand her the chewed-off finger to give to Dr. Gerhard when he steps out of his office and says, “I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation, did you get into another fight?”
“You know what happened,” I say, my voice accusatory.
He motions me back to his office, then disappears from the
doorway. I should leave, but the way Nurse Arabelle is looking at me, how I’m pissed off enough to speak my mind, I realize I can’t leave. That I don’t want to leave. Back in Gerhard’s office, I plop down in the chair. He picks up the needle with the pink serum and I say, “No. No more serum.”
“It’ll help with your injuries.”
“Tell me about Kaitlyn Whitaker.” His face grows dark; he stands up, walks to the door and slams it shut, then turns to me in a terrifying rage and says, “Why do you care so much about that girl?”
“Because I do.”
“You came to me an ugly child. I gave you beauty! I gave you grace and health and this is how you repay me? To harass me like this?”
“I’m not harassing you,” I say, my anger rising. “If I were harassing you I would put you on the spot with more pointed questions. I’d demand to know your real name, because it sure as hell isn’t Wolfgang Gerhard. I’d ask why you took on Kaitlyn as a patient for this procedure and didn’t charge her family a dime when you’re charging mine twenty-five million. I’d ask if you feel bad for making my three best friends look identical when they were once so clearly not. If I was harassing you I’d demand to know what you did with Kaitlyn. What your pet gorilla did to her. But I’m not asking. Not yet.”
“It’s cute how you ask your questions without actually asking them. That’s so ingenious. So clever.” His face is irritation. It’s unbridled rage.
I stand, reach into my purse, my fingers meeting the cold steel of my pistol. Beside it is the tissue paper. Pulling this out, I lay in on Gerhard’s desk and unwrap it. “A little something for your pet gorilla.” Gerhard gawks at the fingertip in horror. “Do you know he eats his own scabs? That he has some sort of sick blood fetish? Nice company you keep.”
When I boldly make for the door, I expect him to grab me or try to stop me. Thankfully he doesn’t.
5