She Lies Twisted

by C. M. Stunich

“You're so silly, Jarrod,” she said, reaching into the purse she had picked up from the forest floor and slung over her shoulder. It was white and cream with brown buckles and it definitely wasn't mine. “That's why I wanted to meet you here. I wanted to give you a second chance.” Jarrod scratched his head and glanced over his shoulder like he was looking for a way out. The fun was over, time to go home. Jessica reached up and turned his face towards hers. The glint in her eyes was hard as flint and it gave me the chills. “There is good in you, Jarrod,” she said through her teeth. “I can see it but you have to let it out. I love you, Jarrod. You have to accept that you are I meant to be together.” I blinked in shock at the same time Jarrod took a startled step backwards. It was like watching a scene from Fatal Attraction only instead of Glen Close, the stalker woman was played by my twin sister.

  “What the hell?” Jarrod mumbled as he backed up another step. Jessica was opening her purse slowly, the glint of metal inside raising the hairs on my arms. She was going to shoot him?

  Apparently, Jarrod thought so, too, because he turned around and started to run. I moved out from behind the bleachers.

  “Jessica!” I shouted. If she shot him, it was all over. For her, for me, for everybody because I would be immortal and I would be rotting in jail and somebody else would come for her and Boyd and James would go on protecting Sydney in a way he shouldn't have. She looked up at me but she didn't seem surprised. She was smiling. She pulled her hand from the purse. In it, was a flute.

  The harp pulsed at my hip, making me gasp.

  The weapon the harpies had mentioned. It wasn't a sword or an axe or a bow, it was another instrument. That scared the shit out of me. If my harp could wrap souls and transport them to another dimension, if it could make music with just one touch and open my throat and make me sing words I didn't know, what could hers do? Jessica put the metal to her lips.

  Jarrod was still running, he hadn't seen the flute, but when he heard the music, low and sweet, he paused and turned back around. His pasty face was red and his eyes rimmed with worry. I watched as that worry transformed back into arrogance. He hadn't seen me yet, just a girl with a flute who had told him she loved him.

  “I don't want to be with you, you fucking psycho,” he growled, using his fear as fuel for his insults. “You death obsessed creep. You were a fuck and nothing more, a nice piece of ass.” Jessica closed her eyes and I felt myself getting angry as I watched pain flash across her face. Did she kill herself because of him? I glared down at Jarrod and hoped not or next time, it might be me with a gun in my purse.

  I opened my mouth to say something, to draw his attention to me and let him see that a ghost had crawled from the grave. Try telling insults to a dead girl. A whirring noise stopped me from saying anything.

  A demon passed over the field in a blur of metallic and crystal. When it came back around, I saw that it was long and thin with eyes like a dragonfly and legs like a spider. Its gossamer wings cast prisms across the grass and turned in into a kaleidoscope.

  Jarrod screamed.

  Jessica pulled the flute away from her lips and gave Jarrod an ultimatum that chilled even my blood.

  “I'm warning you, Mr. Rhodes,” she said, stalking forward like a suicidal ghost and most definitely not like a fifteen year old, should've been sixteen year old, girl. “This is your last chance. You either choose to be with me or I will make you be with me. You have no other choice. I love you. I love you more than air, more than water, more than life.” Her voice cracked on the last syllable and brought tears to my eyes. She was crazy but she was also in love. It was ugly but beautiful. I watched the demon circle and found myself unable to move. I didn't know what I was supposed to do. You could send her on, I thought but one look at Jessica's face and I knew wasn't ready yet. We needed to talk first. I needed to know that she loved me and know that she believed, without a doubt, that I loved her.

  Jarrod wasn't listening. He wasn't even looking at her. He was crouching on the ground and shrieking in terror at the unfamiliar.

  I almost joined in when I felt a hand on my arm. I whirled around and came nose to nose with James. He was breathing hard and nibbling the stitches in his lower lip.

  “I followed you but don't be mad,” James blurted in a rush. “I was awake and I heard you leave. I heard your apology and I'm sorry, too.” He paused and took a deep breath, his eyes boring into my soul like nobody else's ever had. I took a nervous step back. “Let's help each other,” he whispered and turned his attention back to the field.

  I followed his gaze and saw that Jessica was now leaning over Jarrod and whispering. A knife glinted in her hand, reflecting the moonlight and the single purple earring. I turned to James with a question in my eyes.

  I love her and I don't know what to do.

  James took my hand and pulled me down the stone steps and onto the field.

  The dragonfly demon circled above us, diving occasionally as if it were testing the waters, but it never came within striking distance. Jessica was controlling it as Ehferea had said. The powers of the flute stunned me and I ended up stumbling. James pulled me to my feet and kept going.

  “She can't kill him,” was all he said as he dragged me and my indecision along for the ride.

  Jessica rose from her crouch and stepped back, replacing the knife in her purse. When she turned to face us, she was smiling again but it was tinged with sadness and regret and slashed with a bright red splatter of pain. She was hurting and it was twisting her in ways that it hadn't twisted me. It was scary.

  James and I paused, not wanting to get too close but unable to move away. Jarrod was a piece of shit but she couldn't kill him. Things wouldn't be right that way. It wouldn't make her right, it wouldn't take away the pain he'd caused her. It could and would only make things worse.

  “Jessica?” I ventured. She glanced away from me.

  “I loved him, Tate,” she said and her voice was soft. It gave me hope. Hope that, when she turned back around, was drowned by the look of desperation in her blue eyes. She would do anything for Jarrod, or to at least she'd do anything to have him. She probably couldn't tell the difference anymore. “I still love him. He's my soul mate and I can't go on without him.” She blinked back tears as James squeezed my hand for comfort. He tangled his fingers in mine and told me without words that he was there now. We were friends. Pain would bind us together tighter than any cord; death had made us equals, the harpies had made us partners, but pain, pain would make us friends forever.

  “I tried to study, Tate. I looked at the books and I saw myself for what I was. Useless. I saw Daddy and Jason and Mom and Abe and I...” She paused and her voice trailed off, drowned by the whirring of the dragonfly's wings. When she spoke again, her tone was firm and strong, like she was declaring a hard truth but a necessary one. “And I saw you. You were the only person that was ever there for me. You were the only person that loved me as me.” Tears burned my eyes and I tried to go to her. James held me back. I had to trust that he was right and stayed where I was. He wasn't thinking clearly with Sydney and I wasn't thinking clearly with Jessica. We needed each other's guidance.

  “I knew that when I found the flute, it was destiny. I could control spirits, demons, ghosts, souls. But you,” she paused again and glanced back at Jarrod. He was lying on the grass in a fetal position. I didn't see blood but he wasn't moving. I exchanged a look with James. “You didn't know I was there. I watched you move on without me, meet Boyd, love Boyd, and I wanted you but I couldn't take you away from that.” She shook her head and tears glittered for a brief moment in the air, like crystals, bits of pain that glimmered like stars. “It was like watching me and Jarrod.” I was shaking my head now, too. I loved Jessica but I loved Boyd just as much. She couldn't compare this to that. I would have never done these things to him.

  “I stayed with you and watched, fed off of your love. It was what kept me alive and safe but then when Boyd,” she cut off again and stared me down, hands shaking. She had
loved him, too. I could see it. She had shared moments with us that nobody else knew about. She had been a part of it all and she missed him, too. I buried my face in my hands and sobbed. James pulled me to his chest and let me cry. I barely knew anything about him but it felt good. He understood me, us, this. When Jessica spoke again, her voice was so quiet I could barely hear but her words were loud enough that they pierced me to the soul.

  “When Boyd died, I saw you were in pain. I just wanted to comfort you, to hold you again, and the only way I knew how to do that was to bring you over. Running scared, alone and tortur'd,/ Twist'd by demons, blood, misfortune.. I had to do it. It was written on the flute, Tate. It was about me, it was made for me,” she whispered fervently as my heart broke into pieces and refused to be put back together. “I had to follow my destiny, Tate. I had to kill you.”

  Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.

  I swallowed my heart and buried myself in James' sweatshirt. It was intimate, it was comforting, it should've made me happy but her words refused to leave my head.

  “I had to kill you.”

  Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.

  The mantra didn't help. The stones had hurt, they had killed me when she'd pushed me from the cliff but the words hurt, too. She didn't love me more than she loved herself. I knew that because I knew I loved her more and I knew I would've never done something like that. I sobbed and soaked James with my tears and my misery and my suffering.

  “I tried to kill a harpy, Tate. I tried for two years. One taste of a harpy's flesh and I could've been whole, I wouldn't have had to kill you. You could've seen me then!” I refused to look at her. She wasn't processing any real emotions and her voice was hollow and imperfect and disgusting to me. I didn't know how I would feel if I looked at her. “But it never happened and then you were so sad,” she took a shaking breath. James squeezed me more tightly and laid his chin on my head.

  They say that disasters bring people closer together, that people that go through hurricanes or floods or bombings, that they form bonds that make them seem as if they've known each other for years. That was happening to James and I in that moment. Four days was becoming four years. I will appreciate this later, I promised myself as my sister dug herself further and further into the hole of my heart.

  “But I've done it now,” she said, almost jubilantly. She was excited, excited about eating a piece of flesh, of beautiful Nethel's back. She hadn't shown me pain but what I'd seen was horrible, it had to hurt. “Jarrod can see me now and I can have him, too, and I'm sorry, Tate.” I could hear her taking steps towards us. James slid the pocketknife from the back pocket of my pants. I heard him flick it open. When Jessica spoke again, her words were testy and uncomfortable. “I never thought you'd get called by one of those devils. I thought you'd be a spirit and I'd play my flute and you'd come to me and we'd get Jarrod and we'd walk together and...” She paused in her rambling and I spun around to face her.

  “I loved you more than anything and you left me,” I said and I realized I was still crying. “You left me alone and then you took something that wasn't yours, Jessica. You took my life when I never really had one. Now, look at me!” I gestured at the stitches in my wrist. “I'm not me anymore, I'm something else and now I have to say goodbye to Boyd for the second time and I...” I brushed my fingers against the purse. It was time to let her go. I wasn't going to get the talk that I wanted. I wasn't going to be able to hold her and have a memory to light the dark nights and chase away the fog. She had lost it. She had lost it and she had lost me. I would still love her, I always would, but that didn't mean I had to like her.

  Movement to my right caught my eye.

  Jarrod was sprinting across the field, his shoes kicking up divots as he stumbled and tried desperately to get away from something that never should've been. Jessica frowned and the dragonfly demon reacted. I don't how it knew but somehow, it was responding to her wishes. It dove at Jarrod's head, its spindly legs outstretched, clawed tips coruscating with moonlight.

  “Stop it!” I screamed, unable to stop the demon but throwing myself at Jessica. I didn't know if it would help but it was all I could do. I could hear James moving behind me. I think he was headed towards the demon. I didn't get a chance to look because Jessica turned too quickly and I found myself on the ground. She flipped me over and straddled me while I struggled to get a hold of her hands. She had the knife. My sister, my twin sister, had a knife and I had no idea if she would use it on me.

  She was crying again, her eyeliner dripping down her face in wet clumps. Her hair was a mess, like a golden halo, fanning behind her head and blocking my view of the sky.

  “You know,” she said, gulping down more sadness and pain with each breath. “It was hard enough to kill you the first time but think about how I feel. I have to kill my own sister, twice.” She sat up, satisfied that with the wet earth that I was sinking into and the force of gravity, that she had the upper hand.

  “Why?” I asked her, finding no comfort in the fact that I couldn't die. The idea that she was even going to try to kill me, that I'd have a permanent reminder etched into my skin in black thread, was enough to smash my soul into bits. I gazed up at her, my arms straining against her shoulders as her eyes lost more and more of her focus and her sanity and wished that I were nothing but atoms. That I was just molecules and elements and space, that I had no soul and no feelings and no heart. It hurt, it all hurt so much.

  “Don't be sad, Neil,” Boyd had said. “Because when you're sad, it feels like there's nothing right in this world.”

  I watched her watch me and squeeze the hilt of the knife and I let everything I ever wanted to say drip from my eyes and soak into the neck of my sweater but she wasn't listening. I hiccuped and wished that the knife would kill me and then the harpies could send a summoner and I could go to the Library and stop being a part of this world that had wronged me and beaten me down at every opportunity.

  Jessica smiled a horrible smile that mocked my pain and twisted my soul.

  “Did you know,” she began, leaning down and with a start I realized that there was excitement in her voice. She wanted to kill me. She wanted me, not as me, but as something that would validate her own sense of self. “The only way to kill a summoner is with a knife, soaked in the blood of a loved one?” My eyes widened in shock. Summoners could be killed? But we're immortal, my brain screamed, suddenly afraid of the one thing it had always wanted most. Death.

  My body overrode my soul and fought. It fought like a caged animal that knows that when the gates open, the hunter will be standing there waiting, rifle in hand. I screamed with a fear I hadn't known I had. I don't think I'm ready to die yet, I realized as I opened my throat and spilled my terror into the night air. I haven't even had a chance to live.

  Jessica slid the knife across her wrists in a cruel imitation of how she'd ended her own life. Blood boiled from her skin and fell in fat drops, scalding me, burning me. I struggled harder but I couldn't get her to move. She sat atop my ribcage and squeezed her thighs, locking me in my place. I didn't know if it was supernatural strength or just belief in her own, confused conviction. She's stronger than you. You can't escape this. I closed my eyes as she lifted the knife. I didn't want to see it. Just make it quick, I thought as tears pushed their way past my eyelids. Just do it and play your flute and wrap me under your spell so I don't have time to think about how you betrayed me.

  Thunder rumbled in the distance and suddenly, there was a lightness on my chest. I could breathe. I opened my eyes and saw Jessica and James struggling in the grass. I sat up quickly and wiped the blood from my face. Jarrod was gone and so was the demon. It took a moment for me to get moving. My emotions were running wild, thoughts I'd never had were fighting for attention, and a sense of relief was washing over me, nearly drowning in its intensity. Finally, I forced my shaking legs to stand and joined in the fight.

  James and Jessica were
grappling over the knife. His hand was clamped around her wrist while she tried to force her way into his flesh. She was winning.

  I put my hand around hers and tried to peel her fingers away from the blade. When she looked up at me, I almost faltered. There was betrayal there, too, and hurt.

  “You're choosing him over me!” She screamed as the knife flew from her fingers and toppled end over end across the damp grass. James released her and stood up, brushing dirt from his pants. In his hand he held her purse, snatched right from her shoulder in the tussle. She'd made the mistake of paying attention only to the knife and had lost her most precious weapon. Without the flute, she wouldn't be able to stop me. I was going to send her on and I was going to do it now.

  “I love you, Jessica,” I said as I reached for my purse. “No matter what you've done to me.” I heard James gasp and turned to find him holding an empty bag. Sweet music poured from Jessica's lips and spread out across the field and into the trees. A crash resounded, scattering birds and shaking pine needles to the earth. Something big was coming. I exchanged a look with James. He didn't know about the harp but if he'd had, I was sure that he'd want me to use it. I flicked open the clasp and reached for it.

  No sooner had my hands brushed the silver wood than it was gone. My purse was flying across the field like a football and I was face down, an intense pressure on my back and neck. I could hear James screaming in the background as I was lifted up and slammed against the base of the goal post. Tentacles twisted around my belly and squeezed until I was blue in the face. My brain told me I was dying but I didn't black out. I couldn't. I was indefinite.

  “Why, Tate?” Jessica asked as she stepped over James body. He was lying unconscious at the fifteen yard line, blood seeping from the back of his neck. A blue demon circled him with hair like glass and the face of a baboon. I wanted to shriek at James to get up but I couldn't find the strength for breath. He'll be okay, he can't die. He's indefinite, too. “Why do you always do this to me?!” She screeched, doubling over and stumbling like it was too much for her to bear, like I had wronged her and the weight of it was driving her to her knees.