It was a second chance. Everything. Montessa could become something, somebody, else. Somebody worthwhile. Maybe she could become the kind of woman Lu would want to live for.
Her shower turned salty, and she realized she was crying. It was like the ocean. A second baptism of salt. Salt water healed everything, yes?
She wept until she wept everything out. Her bitterness. Her hate. The feelings that she was ruined, used up. These feelings needed to go. Lu, her lovely, broken, crazy, and wonderful Nuclear Lulu had chosen her. Was willing to die for her, in order to free her. And that meant something. Meant she meant something, and she hadn’t meant something before. She was going to live up to it.
She stepped out of the shower feeling fresh and clean and new. A new Montessa. Full of energy and something that felt like hope.
She toweled off, dressed in a pair of Lu’s shorts and an old tee. Her clothes were torn and bloodied. They’d dispose of them later.
“I feel different,” she said to Lu, closing the bathroom door behind her. “Like things are magical somehow. Like there’s so much hope that I could just burst. Just burst from it, Lu!”
He spoke and it was almost reverent. Yes, reverent would be the word she would use.
“You’re Apocalyptic, Montessa. Apocalyptic Montessa.”
She smiled at him, and she could feel the radiance from it.
“And you’re my Nuclear Lulu. We’re meant to be, my love.”
He held out his hand. She walked over and took it. Sparks flew. Magic happened. Nuclear reactors melted down in joy. The world combusted.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
She spent the night in Lu’s bed because she didn’t want to be alone. It was a new thing to feel lips without fists and feel her hair pulled without hatred.
“Renan is going to come for me, you know,” she told him. She traced his ribs, found a couple that stuck out farther than they should have. Broken how many times? Maybe one day she’d ask. Most likely she wouldn’t get the chance.
“Think I’m scared of him?”
Lu had one hand under his head, the other around Montessa. He studied the ceiling, and it was beautiful. Beautiful plaster, beautiful lighting. Funny how he’d never noticed it before.
“I’m just telling you, Lu. He doesn’t like to lose things.”
“You’re not a thing.”
She sighed. Sat up and pulled his t-shirt on.
“You’re the only one who seems to think that.”
“Once you think it, everybody else will follow suit.”
She padded to the window and looked out. Highway. A gas station with a fast food joint inside. So unlovely.
She wanted to stay here forever.
“Tell me what the rest of our lives are going to be like,” she said, and traced her name on the glass with a finger.
“Short. Violent. Full of fear.”
“Is that all?”
“Full of love and beauty and adventure.”
“I have to ask you something.”
He heard the change in her voice, heard that she was being serious, and it made his lungs squeeze together. His fists did the same thing, and he breathed out slowly and tried to relax.
“What?”
She turned toward him, pulling his t-shirt down around her thighs and shuffled her feet nervously.
“You didn’t kill me.”
“Astute girl.”
“And you’re not going to.”
“Not unless you ask me to.”
“So do you…” She didn’t know how to ask it. What to say, really. “Are you still unsatisfied? Since you didn’t kill me, do you need to go out and find another girl?”
The words came out in a rush, too close together, cuffed around the wrists and ankles like Lu’s Other Girls had been. And she realized she felt a sick stab of jealousy for each one of them, for the pleasure and joy and release they had been able to give him. A sense of peace. A sense of peace that she couldn’t.
What kind of woman feels jealous of murdered girls?
Lu saw the conflict. Saw the emotions swing over her features like a bar light. And his heart, it hurt. His eyes, they burned with the heat behind them. His fingers longed to trace his knife over her vertebrae, but with tenderness and care, teasing the skin but not tearing it. Not at all.
I don’t want to slice you, he thought to her, and it was perhaps the most tender thought of his entire life.
“Come here,” he said, and held out his arms. She walked into them like it was the most normal of things, like they had done it a million times before the world was. Perhaps they had. Perhaps the god that she had always prayed to had really been Lu, and he should have been praying to her. Perhaps they fell, as gods and goddesses so often fell in myth, and only now were they allowed to find each other.
“I want you, okay? Just you. Only you.”
The words came so easily to his tongue. To his mouth. The truth shouldn’t be so accessible, but there it was.
There it was.
“But there are going to be more girls, aren’t there? More kills? I mean, you’re not going to be able to turn it off like a switch.”
She didn’t want to make trouble or borrow it, but it was something she needed to know, deep in her little-girl-turned-woman-turned-frightened-little-girl-again heart. Better to face it than wonder. Better to ask than to guess.
“I’ll still need to kill, yes.”
The air whooshed out of her as though she had been punched. She knew it. Expected it. Expectation didn’t make a difference, though. She was still rocked. Still trampled.
“I see,” she said. Her voice sounded stable and strong. It didn’t betray her at all.
“Don’t be like that, baby.”
“I know. I’m not trying to. I just feel…replaced.”
He laughed, flashing his teeth, and Montessa wondered how many of those lucky murdered girls he’d bitten.
“Baby. Montessa. I wish I was better with words, but I’m not. You can’t be replaced, do you understand? You’re the only thing I want. I don’t know how I lived without you.”
“But you still need to kill.”
“I do. I wish I didn’t. I can’t seem to help it.”
She knew. Nobody wakes up and says, “Why, I think today I will become a predator. A serial killer.” She wasn’t that naïve. There was a need there. A pull. What were the exact words he used?
“A calling,” she said aloud, and Lu nodded.
“A calling, sweetheart. Doing something holy. Taking the evil from the world.”
She frowned.
“Why me, Lu? Did you think I was evil somehow?”
He started.
“No. Not evil. Different. That’s all. You were different.”
“You watched me and were still going to kill me.”
He shrugged.
“Them’s the breaks, baby. But you know what I think?”
He took her by the hand. Kissed her fingers, her ruined wrists.
“What?”
“I think you were a gift from the universe.”
“You don’t believe in such things.”
“I do now.”
He kissed her, hard, and then stood up.
“Let’s shower and drop the supply off. Promise me you won’t run screaming from the truck as soon as I pull in. That’s why I kill the girls first.”
“I don’t want to get away, Lu.”
“All right then.”
It was like a first date. They held hands and talked about silly things. Light things. Things like bubbles and wind chimes, things they almost thought didn’t exist in their souls anymore. Lu dropped everything off and filled out his paperwork. Montessa lounged about in the cab and went for a walk around the grounds.
“Where to now?” she asked, and Lu grinned at her.
“Your place.”
“My…back home?”
His face went serious, but his eyes still danced in the way that reminded her of gypsies twisting and burning at
the stake. Dangerous. Riveting.
“Yes.”
“Why would we go back there? Don’t you know Renan—”
Lu kissed her fingers.
“I think you put too much stock in that man. Give him too much power.”
Her face had gone completely translucent. All of the blood had bled out through her tears, flowed from her cuts and bruises and wounds. Years of them.
“Baby,” he said, and there was a tone in his voice that told her to look at him. She did, and her eyes were wide with circles of deadness inside.
“Baby,” he said again, softer. “Do you think I’ll let him hurt you?”
“I don’t think you’d mean to.”
“Montessa. I won’t. I promise. But more than that, you won’t.”
“Lu.”
“His time is over, Montessa. You need to let him go. Erase that evil from the world.”
Her eyes locked with his, and Lu nodded before turning his attention back to the road.
“You’ll see,” he said. He turned slowly on the winding road, following a path he knew was unfamiliar to Montessa. “It’ll be like magic. It’ll be holy. It’ll be one of the best experiences of your life.”
She didn’t know what to say, but her heart swelled and burst. It kept trying to race, but she blinked and breathed and pulled her knees up to her chest. Wrapped her fingers around her seatbelt.
She didn’t speak for two more states.
“Will you help me?” she asked. They were only a few hours from her home.
“Of course I will. I’ll always help you. Keep you safe. As safe as I can, anyway. I’ll be by your side forever.”
“Forever,” she repeated and swallowed.
“Until the end of time. For as long as we have.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lu handed her the knife, and she took it with a respect that made her even more stunning in his eyes. She held it gently, ran her finger carefully across the blade, and held it to her face to inspect it. Her breath fogged up the metal and Lu grit his teeth to keep from moaning.
“From your father to you. And now you’ll let me use it?”
“For your first kill. For any kill you want. Until you find something that you like better. Or always.”
They parked far away, walking to her house. It was dark. The gravel crunched beneath their feet. Montessa held Lu’s hand and ran her finger across the bones of his knuckles.
“This is…crazy,” she said, keeping her voice low.
“This is what is meant to be,” he answered back.
How many times had he prowled this area? He knew it backward and forward. Inside and out. But Montessa still knew it better. They strolled under streetlights, through darkness. Past addicts and drunks and frightened runaways. Through alleys and parks and cemeteries.
“This is a long way to walk alone. Dangerous, too. I can’t believe he made you do it so often.”
“Oh, don’t be so harsh,” she said, her voice light. “Really, what could happen?”
She laughed but Lu didn’t. He remembered beating her in the head with the wrench and felt a punch in his gut, his muscles pulling together too tightly.
He grabbed her, pulled her to him, and kissed her hard.
“I’m sorry,” he said. He held her close, nipped her ear. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
She held him back.
“I know, baby. I know.”
She smiled at him, and it was real. Fear and joy and the sorrow were erased from her face, everywhere but her eyes. He feared she’d always hold it in her eyes.
“Let’s go do this, okay? Be with me, Lu. I need you for this.”
He nodded and they were on their way again, fingers laced.
Her home looked lonely. The grass was too long and her flowers were already starting to wilt. She shook her head.
“This place is all the joy I had, and he couldn’t water the flowers?” she said, and they skirted around to the back. She peeked in her window, saw Renan and a froth of black hair on the pillow next to him.
“He has company,” she said and frowned.
“I’m sorry, baby.”
“It’s okay. It’s not like he wasn’t doing it before. But…I don’t know.”
She looked at Lu and her eyes were too bright.
“I was kidnapped, Lu. Tied to a metal chair. And he—”
He pulled her close and kissed her forehead.
“We’ll make them pay,” he whispered.
She took the spare key from a fake rock in the garden.
“Those are terrible places to hide keys,” Lu said. He bounced on his toes in anxious delight. “Everybody knows about them.”
“I know,” she said. “Half the time I’m hoping somebody will break in and kill me.”
The key slid in smoothly, without a sound. She unlocked the door, slipped inside. Lu followed her on sneakered feet.
He chloroformed two rags.
“I usually don’t use it,” he had told her earlier. “It’s your first time and it’s pretty tricky until you get the hang of it. No mistakes or regrets. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Now she held her cloth tightly in her white fingers, looking at Lu nervously.
He winked and grinned. She smiled back.
He pointed at her and then at Renan. Himself and the girl.
He’s yours, he mouthed, and she nodded. Studied Renan’s sleeping form, his shaved head and ratty mustache. The softness of his lips belied the hardness of the rest of him.
She couldn’t look at the woman who belonged to the tight black curls on the pillow. She wouldn’t. There would be no ill will if she wasn’t here right now. Wrong place, wrong time.
She closed her mind, closed her heart to the sleeping woman. She didn’t exist anymore.
I almost thought I loved you once, for a while, she thought, and Renan’s brows bunched up, his lips pursed, and he turned in his sleep like he heard her. Perhaps he had.
It was time.
She looked at Lu, and he looked back.
Now? his raised eyebrows seemed to ask.
She nodded.
Now.
She held the chloroformed rag over Renan’s nose and mouth.
His eyes opened, too wide, staring at something in his nightmares, something standing at the foot of his bed or his mother’s old, undressed lovers, or whatever it was that made his eyes bug out and strange sounds come from his throat. He grabbed at Montessa, but she stepped deftly aside.
“Renan, sweetheart. It’s me. I’m home. Shh.”
He relaxed slightly at her voice, but then scrabbled at her hands, at the cloth, at his face. His muscles were already confused and weak with sleep, and the chloroform was more effective than she would have thought.
“Shhh, darling. Just some medicine for you. I missed you, sweetheart. I’m so glad to be home.”
The lies tasted like her lies always tasted. At first they had been bitter and acrid, but she was so used to them by now that they tasted sweet like frosting. I’ll never leave you, Renan. I love you. I’ve never been happier.
He struggled and she soothed and soon his dark eyes fluttered shut again. His face was slack in a way she had never seen before. This was more than sleep. This was something darker and longer lasting.
She realized she was panting, and pushed her sweaty hair out of her face. She looked at Lu. He was crouched over the body of the woman, watching Montessa carefully.
“You did fine,” he said, and Montessa jumped at the sound of his voice.
“Shhh! Quiet!”
He grinned at her.
“Why? They’re out, baby.”
He lifted the woman’s arm by her wrist and dropped it. It fell heavily on the bed with the sound of wet meat.
Montessa bit her lip, staring at Renan and his new woman du jour.
“And now we…what?”
“Kill them.”
“Lu, I don’t think—”
“You can do it. You know yo
u need to do it. He saw you. He’ll come after you.”
She chilled, felt her stomach twist and suddenly felt like she needed to use the restroom.
“Montessa. You can do this.”
He turned back to the woman, took a second knife out of its sheath, and traced it along her dark skin.
Montessa took a deep breath. Another. Took Lu’s beautiful knife from his first and most important kill. Held it to her heart as if it were a stuffed animal from a boyfriend. As if it were the most precious thing she had ever owned.
“Where do I start?”
“Make it quick. It’ll be easier for both of you. You can slit his throat, if you’d like.”
She felt herself go pale. Put her hand over her mouth.
Lu nodded.
“I didn’t think so. That’s something to ease into. Garrote him, baby. Or go up under his ribs and into his heart. I’ll show you where.”
“I’ll be right back,” she said, and put the knife on the bed. She walked out of the room and down the hall to the kitchen. Funny how this was her house, but it seemed so unfamiliar. She knew where things were and what room led into what room and where all of the doorways would take her, but it wasn’t her home. It was a place she had never been before. An alien land. A dream.
Her feet took her to the fridge. She opened it and reached for the Diet Coke shoved in the back. There was one left, and little else. Of course Renan wouldn’t go shopping. He’d wait for her to come back so she could do it. Or tell one of his little whores to do it instead.
She popped the top and took a long swallow. Two. Held the cold can to her cheek and tried to pull herself together.
This was death. Not playtime. Not the sad little revenge of a teenager. This was murder.
She wasn’t a murderer. She was a lot of things. Sad. Tired, mostly. Special. That last one made her laugh. Sure, she had a few little parlor tricks, but everybody had their secrets. Their things that made them tick.
Renan never made her feel like she was special.
She was singled out for his abuse, but that wasn’t being special. And he hit the other women, too. She’d seen enough split lips and sunglasses at night to know he was lavishing his particular type of charm on more than just herself.
Apocalyptic Montessa and Nuclear Lulu: A tale of Atomic Love Page 6