When you pass out and come to, there's this feeling of loss. Like time has passed you by and you've somehow been cheated out of a part of your life. When I found my sister, Jessica, dead, I passed out and when I woke up, her body was gone. The blood was gone. She was gone. There was this piece missing from my mental jigsaw puzzle. A family portrait with a missing head. When I woke up on the beach that day, it was nothing like that. It wasn't like I had missed a part of my life. It was as if it had never been.
I sat up, salty and wet, coated in a fine layer of sand and pebbles and bits of dried kelp and tried to remember how I had gotten there. The ashes, the cliff, falling like Alice down the rabbit hole. I rubbed my temples in tight circles. Blood, blood, blood. Every significant moment in my life was covered in it, drenched, soaked, consumed by it. The sea still held its quiet menace, the air still hung in gray sheets, but something was different and it wasn't the scenery.
“What is wrong with me?”
As soon as the words left my throat, I could feel it. There was something different in my voice, my words, the way my tongue crept across my lips.
Table of Contents
Excerpt
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Enjoyed This?
More Books By
About the Author
C.M. Stunich
Sarian Royal
She Lies Twisted
Copyright © C.M. Stunich
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
For information address Sarian Royal Indie Publishing, 1863 Pioneer Pkwy. E Ste. 203, Springfield, OR 97477-3907.
www.sarianroyal.com
ISBN-10: 1938623037 (Kindle)
ISBN-13: 978-1-938623-03-5 (Kindle)
Cover art and design © Amanda Carroll and Sarian Royal
Optimus Princeps font © Manfred Klein
Stock images © Shutterstock.com
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, businesses, or locales is coincidental and is not intended by the author.
to the real Goth girls, who don't go for the popular boys at school but for dead ones on the beach with stitches in their faces
The day that my best friend killed himself, I was tucked into a chair in the kitchen trying to finish a book I'd started over a year ago. It wasn't like I'd meant to ignore it for so long; it had somehow gotten wedged between my headboard and the wall. As soon as I'd moved the bed out, in a desperate search for my other shoe, I had seen it and been struck with the urge to finish it. I glanced at the clock. I had less than twenty minutes to get to school. I focused my gaze back on my reading. School could wait. The printed words had my attention, and the ones scribbled in the margins had my soul. My brother, Abe, had penned things like, “The world is full of possibilities!” and “Love is the oil to the engine of the world.” I wished I believed those things. If he weren't already dead, I would've asked him about them.
I finished the book with ten minutes to go and snapped it shut, savoring the satisfaction that only comes with finishing a task you've set for yourself. My phone chirped at me. I grabbed it on the first ring.
“Are you picking me up?” I asked.
“Can't,” Boyd replied, voice muffled by the wind against the receiver. “The Orangutan took my truck.” I rolled my eyes and tried to send some negative psychic energy at Boyd's dad. Not that I believed in that either but it couldn't hurt to try.
“Fine,” I said, grabbing my bag and heading for the front door. I paused in the hallway and went back to retrieve the book. Maybe it would serve as a good luck charm of sorts. I hadn't had a good first day since the sixth grade.
The walk to school was short enough that I didn't have to hurry. As soon as I turned out of the front yard, I could see the old brick building standing guard over the neighboring cemetery. I dug around in my sweater pocket for a cigarette and wished that Boyd had been able to pick me up. The old ladies that ruled my neighborhood were just starting their daily routines. They stood in their yards with pink gardening gloves and gave me once-overs that said, “I already know what I want to think about you and it isn't going to be good.” I ignored them and started across the street.
In the middle of the road was a dead body.
It wasn't unusual, really. I attracted death like honey attracted flies. I wasn't happy about it, but it was fact. I paused on the curb and watched the cars run past, waiting for an opportunity. When the traffic died down, I stepped out into the road and knelt down. The crow couldn't have been dead more than fifteen minutes. Its body will still be warm. I wrinkled my nose. It wasn't ideal, but I needed a new specimen. Taxidermy wasn't an easy hobby. I couldn't exactly run down to the craft store and pick up extra Popsicle sticks. No, my craft was death. Well, halting it anyway, putting a pause on a sequence as old as time. I sighed and dropped my backpack to the pavement. Cars kicked up dirt and gravel, the wind from their passing crinkling the plastic bag and snapping it against my skin like a glove.
I examined the bird for a moment before wrapping it up and stuffing it into the front pocket of my bag next to my brother's book. I was going to have be careful to keep it hidden. Having a dead bird fall out of my bag on the first day of school was probably a pretty bad idea. I was already known as, “That Fucked Up Bitch With the Dead Parents.” I didn't really need to add more fuel to the fire. It was already stoked and raging. That much was obvious as soon as I walked in the front doors.
Necrophiliac was scrawled across my locker in red lipstick.
I stuck the end of my sweatshirt sleeve into my mouth and sucked on it. I ignored the stares and the giggles and rubbed at the big, looping letters with little hearts dotting the i's.
“They hit you already, huh?” asked Boyd as he shuffled up behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and smiled at my best friend.
“The necrophobes are out in force today,” I told him as I stuffed my textbooks into the dirty locker next to a fossilized sandwich and a stack of Tarot cards left over from last year. The card for death was staring at me in reverse. It wasn't an omen or anything. I had put it there because I liked looking at it.
“It's the attack of the living.” Boyd paused and smoothed his hand down his curly, red beard. “So much more evil than the dead.”
“Thank you,” I said, slamming the locker door and throwing up my left hand for emphasis. “At least someone gets me.” We exchanged a pair of lopsided smiles. Boyd and Neil, best friends, self-admitted ailurophiles, and to the wolf pack that was our school's student body, omegas. But ones that liked to fight back. Boyd patted my back reassuringly and escorted me to the door of my first period class.
“Hasta la vista,” he said with a crooked toothed grin. Only it sounded more like pasta la bistro. Whatever. Boyd was a Deutsch boy, not an hombre.
“Later,” I said, tucking some blonde hair back into its place inside my gray sweatshirt. No sense in reminding everyone of what they us
ed to call me in junior high. I actually preferred 'Fucked Up Bitch' to 'Dead Barbie.'
I chose a seat in the front and pulled out my book, carefully pushing the plastic bag to the bottom of my backpack before zipping it back up.
“Hola, Señorita Tatum,” Señor Rivera chimed as he sashayed down the center aisle and deposited a stack of workbooks on his desk. “Cómo está?” I paused before answering his question, pushing away sun drenched cobwebs and afternoons of swimming in the creek behind Boyd's trailer. Words failed me.
“Okay, I guess,” I replied, sinking away from his fluttering hand as he tried to push back the hood of my sweatshirt.
“No, no, no,” he said, ignoring student teacher boundaries and pushing it back anyway. “Español, por favor.” I rolled my eyes and slumped casually to the side, trying to appear both bored and unconcerned when really, I was looking for a particular shade of red lipstick. If I let them get me on the first day of my junior year, then I might as well roll over and piss myself. I had to bite back. My eyes scanned the room, mirroring the incoming students in jaded pools of blue. I narrowed them slowly as I caught sight of her.
Margaret Cedar, leaning against the door of the classroom like an honor guard, was wearing a familiar shade of red on her whisker-thin lips. When she caught me looking at her, she flipped me off.
“Target locked on,” I whispered as she smacked her gum at me and glared. With the dual demons of fear and hatred burning in her swampy eyed gaze, it was certainly hard to believe we used to play Barbies together. Well, she used to play Barbies next to me. I used to cut off their hair and hang them from trees and melt their strange plastic breasts with stolen lighters until they sagged. Anything to make them more real. Anything to take those fake smiles away and make them into real people with worries and fears. I think it was when Mrs. Cedar found one of her daughter's dolls decapitated and half-melted that she stopped inviting me over, stopped pitying the little orphan girl with a lot of money but no parents.
I smiled and she turned away with a sigh and a roll of her eyes.
“Your time will come,” I chuckled to myself, feeling lame without Boyd by my side. Señor Rivera glanced over the tops of his glasses at me. “Ah, tu momento llegará.” He nodded appreciatively then clapped his hands as the bell rang.
The class passed by with little incident and I soon found myself parked in front of a less than appetizing tray of split pea soup and a carton of warm milk.
“I don't know why you like that stuff so much,” Boyd mumbled as bits of my pastrami and wheat sandwich crumpled to join the Oreo cookie crumbs in his beard. I smiled and scooped a huge spoonful of the green mush into my mouth, hiding my shudders behind a loud, 'delicioso!' I didn't really like it, but I couldn't let Boyd know that or else he'd stop trading lunches with me. Thing was, I had money and Boyd didn't. I was tired of seeing him spend half his days starving and the other half on TV dinners and ramen. He deserved more but was too proud to take it. This was my solution.
“You are so missing out,” I said as I pointed at the red tray. “For a buck fifty, this shit is awesome.” I opened the milk and chugged. It was the watery, fat free stuff. I almost gagged. “Okay, so I was thinking about what we talked about yesterday,” I sputtered, trying to force the liquid down my throat with words. Boyd raised his shaggy brows but kept on eating. I wiped my hands down the front of my sweatshirt and spun so that I was straddling the bench, facing him. “So basically, I was looking at this stuff online and I'm eligible for some scholarships for like orphans or whatever.” I tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear. I hated that that it was so bright and cheerful and straight. I was tempted to dye it black, but it felt so cliché that I ended up just leaving it Barbie blonde.
“That's sweet,” Boyd mumbled around another bite of sandwich. “But I'm still not taking your money, Neil.” I ground my teeth together. Stop being so stubborn, you stupid oaf. I studied my best friend's massive form, hunched over the brown paper bag like a starving wolf, shaved head glinting in the fluorescent lights of the cafeteria. I would've rather gone out for lunch, but our stupid school had decided to install gates last year. And metal detectors. And security guards. It was too screwed up for words.
“I'm not saying that you take my money, per se,” I schmoozed, reverting back to the same tactic I'd used yesterday. The one that hadn't worked. “I'm just saying that with your financial aid and your chess scholarships, I will finance the rest of your tuition and living expenses and that when I come and mooch off you and sleep in your bed and force you onto the couch – ” I was babbling. I paused and took a breath. “You can pay me back as soon as you graduate.” He had finished his food and was crumpling up the garbage, slamming one ratty combat boot on the over waxed floor next to him.
“No.”
“With interest,” I whined, chasing after him. One of the lunch ladies was yelling at me to clean up my tray. I ignored her. “And then you won't get stuck in this shitty town at a shitty job and – ” He was storming across the cafeteria, students scrambling out of his way in fear. Boyd was scary when he was mad. “Boyd!” I screamed. Faces turned and for a moment, silence reigned over my section of the cafeteria. I threw up my hood and followed him into the hallway.
“Just stop it, Tatum,” he said, using my real name. I pursed my lips. “Besides, your grandma has control over that money until you turn eighteen, not you.”
“My grandma can barely remember her own name, Boyd, let alone that I exist. I'm sure we can figure out a way to get the money.” I wanted Boyd to go to college. Not just for him. I wasn't that selfless but for me, too. He was my other half. My friend. My partner in crime. I loved him more than I loved the bones in my own body. He marched over to the one place that he thought I wouldn't follow, the boy's bathroom.
“Neil,” he said as he gestured at the dirty urinal. “Please?” I turned away and focused on the mirror over the vanity, digging out some eyeliner and smearing it across my eyelids as the sound of liquid hitting porcelain echoed in the silence. I didn't stop until I looked like a raccoon. Just the way I liked it. At the sound of a zipper being drawn, I turned back to my friend.
“Why are you doing this to me?” I asked him, knowing that I sounded stupid and selfish and ignorant.
“Neil,” Boyd said in that soft voice of his, the one where his eyes got all deep and dark and his lips went bloodless. I think he was in love with me, but I never asked; it was kind of this unspoken thing between us. “Don't do this to yourself.”
“Me?” I asked as he washed his hands as quickly as was humanly possible and pushed past me. “What are you talking about? I'm not the one aspiring to be a dishwasher at Applebee's!” Boyd paused and turned back around to face me, putting one meaty hand on my left shoulder, his short black nails digging into the fabric.
“Don't torture yourself with dreams that will never happen.” And then he walked away, and I let him go.
That was the biggest mistake of my life.
I cut the rest of my classes and wedged myself between the blue and green dumpsters in the back of the school, fishing out a box of cigarettes that Boyd had taped underneath the blue one for 'emergencies' on the last day of school last year. I stuffed my earbuds in and blasted I Am Ghost loud enough that my ears rang. They were my favorite Goth-rock band. Boyd called them post-emocore. I disagreed. I smiled as I flipped through my playlist. You should call him and apologize. More flies with honey and all that. I tugged the earbud out of my left ear and dialed Boyd's number from heart. I didn't keep contacts in my phone. I just didn't. I'd read some article about people and memory loss because technology remembered everything for us. All of my memories were precious. When reality sucked, memories kept me alive. Just for practice's sake, I tried to pull up an image of my mother's face and frowned when it appeared wavy and fragmented.
“Damn it,” I cursed as the cigarette tumbled out of my mouth and burned me right through a hole in my patchy jeans. I hit dial as I smacked at my singed flesh with my oth
er hand.
“Hey Neil, leave a message, love Boyd.” It was his voice mail.
“You asshole,” I said, trying to project a smile into my voice. I was the only one that ever called him and vice versa. We liked it that way. “Are you in class? Did you ditch? Call me back.” I ended the call and sent him a text that pretty much said the same thing minus the asshole comment. I picked the cigarette up off of the ground and finished it before replacing the box and melding into the mass of students pouring out the doors.
I waited at the edge of the new gate that surrounded the school grounds, back pressed up against a tree and read snippets of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
I waited for two hours.
When I finally realized that Boyd was absolutely, definitely not going to show, I packed up ship and started the dull and uninspiring walk home. White and yellow and beige colonials cast their shadows over the crumbling sidewalk, their yards wide and green and filled with trees whose lineage could be traced back further than the little, fluffy dogs that the old ladies paraded up and down the drives on their way to bridge practice. I ignored them all and they returned the courtesy. While the students called me That Fucked Up Bitch, the adults had their own name. That Mentally Disturbed Orphan Child Who Will Probably In Some Point In The Future Become An Axe Murderer. Yeah, okay, it was long winded, but when your little dog's name is Sir Wilbert Von Frances, the Third, you don't really care about that kind of thing.
When I reached her house (and by her I mean my Grandma Willa), I paused at the end of the walk and tried to pretend the pretentious mansion with the blue walls and the fine china and the gardener didn't bother me a bit. I plastered on a smile, more for the gardener than my grandma since she didn't even really seem to remember my name anymore, and trudged up to the front door.
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