Yes, just like Larry, we all seemed to be devolving to our most animal selves. The only difference was that, it seemed, at the core, Larry wasn’t a nice guy. Kevin and I? Well, we might not have been good, but we definitely weren’t evil. Not by a long shot. Not Vera, either. The woman clearly had a lot of problems, but I didn’t feel like she was a bad person.
Not even when she and Larry started getting physical with each other.
Maybe it was the fact that we’d felt, for the most part, like we’d been cooped up for months together. Yes, we’d made our way outside, sometimes a lot, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t like our lives before—we couldn’t take a walk around the block or go shopping or hang out at a bar to blow off steam. Even if we left, we had to get back inside before it got too cold or dark, and then we were there together. There was no escaping it, and it was starting to get to all of us.
I’m sure, too, that they both had some kind of mental unbalance that made it even harder for them to hold it together.
Before that, Kevin had talked about going back to “our” retreat, even against my protests that we didn’t know for certain if someone was living there. What stopped us was the fact that we believed Larry would follow us and find us and then do God-knew-what to us…and we weren’t willing to take that chance. I’m not sure which one of us remembered that old quote from the second Godfather movie about keeping your friends close but your enemies closer, but we both agreed it was better that way. If we escaped, he’d find us, and we had no idea what he was capable of. No, we’d wait until the weather would permit, and we’d either go as a group (because we believed Larry would either shape up when returned to the collective of humanity or he’d tip over the edge and then have to deal with the authorities, someone who was just like he’d been at one time) or Kevin and I would find a way out. The snow was a huge part of why we chose to stay under my aunt’s roof. It was hard to avoid making tracks and it was almost impossible to cover them up. We even discussed making fake trails, double-backing and that sort of thing, but knew that Larry would be a man possessed. No track would go untraced. Our only hope would be to leave in the middle of a snowstorm so our footprints would be blown away and buried…but that would be suicide. Instead, we grew smarter. The bedroom door locked. And Kevin took a chef’s knife out of the kitchen and slid it under the mattress on his side of the bed, just in case.
Kevin was going to confront Larry. I knew Kevin could take the guy if he had to, but we needed to find a way to stay together and get along…and that was how I managed to convince Kevin to just keep it quiet and stay guarded. Larry felt like the loosest cannon on deck, and one wave going the right direction might leave him spinning out of control. We would be collateral damage…and all I wanted was to make it out alive. Kevin listened to my appeal and promised to simply watch, sit, and simmer—but if Larry grew outwardly dangerous, he would act—and I told him I would be okay with that if it happened.
And, just when we thought the worst was over, we got more snow—this time, a blizzard, and we had to make our water last, because Kevin and I weren’t about to go out in it. It was cold, too, and even our fire didn’t seem to warm our bones as well as it had been.
A week of tension and anxiety, and we’d survived just fine—but the Dingels were just warming up. After two weeks of extreme closeness, they were beginning to get physical with one another.
I couldn’t tell if it was something they’d done before, and I think I doubted my observation skills, because a year ago, if someone had asked me a question about the Dingels and, perhaps, who they were at the core, I would have been dead wrong. Why? Because I was starting to believe they were showing their true selves here…and they weren’t pretty.
One day, in the midst of all the snow and cold, the four of us were feeling caged. I’d asked earlier in the day if anyone wanted to play some cards. They all declined, but Kevin said he’d watch. I gave him a sly grin and told him solitaire wasn’t any fun to observe, so I found a book instead. He dozed off on the couch with me curled up in his arm while reading one of my aunt’s old Michael Crichton novels, because I knew one would keep me occupied for hours, maybe days.
It started with the two of them grumbling at each other in the kitchen while she was scrubbing a pot. Then they brought their argument into the living room and Larry said, “Why don’t you take a bath, woman?”
She practically snarled at him. “Why don’t you?”
“‘Cause I don’t smell like a fucking fish!”
Oh…if Vera hadn’t been able to give as well as she got, I would have jumped up and ragged him out myself. Even though I bathed regularly here (something Vera didn’t do), I often felt self-conscious about the way I smelled. And I knew Larry didn’t give a shit about her hygiene—it was a power thing, and I almost shook my head as I marveled that I’d never seen it coming.
Her voice was low and she sounded like a mountain lion ready to strike. “You’re right, Larry. You smell like a goddamned rat.”
“Better than smelling like a tuna factory. How can you live with yourself?”
“Shut the fuck up.” Vera snarled and stuck the middle finger of her right hand up right in Larry’s face, just in front of his nose.
He glared back and grabbed her wrist. “Keep your fucking hand out of my face.”
Kevin was awake by then and said, “Christ. Can you guys just stop talking to each other?”
The two of them stood facing each other, unwilling to be the first to back down. Kevin pulled his arm out from behind me and stood up, and I saw Vera roll her eyes before saying, “Yes, dad. I think we can.” She then flipped Kevin off and plopped in her chair, grabbing the blanket off the back and curling up in it, burying her head inside. A lot of their arguments ended that way, or she’d run off to the bathroom and lock the door or even up the stairs to the sewing room. She was just as aggressive as Larry but she at least seemed willing to get away when it was clear there would be no winner in their fight. Larry, on the other hand, never seemed able to let anything go, and that was the cause of many of their arguments—old wounds continually reopened with his mean-spirited words.
A lot of times, I knew we were all getting off easy, because Larry felt like a ticking time bomb. But if he was a bomb, Vera was the fuse. I knew if we didn’t get out soon, something was going to happen. I could feel it in the air. I could only hope it was like what I’d studied about domestic violence—they’d blow and then they’d have a calm period. If so, the quiet period would no doubt last until we made it home.
Their fights continued to escalate and got more physical. It wasn’t just Larry losing it and slapping her, either. They both became violent and they both got in some mean licks. Kevin broke them up twice until he got a fist in the jaw for it—and then I got involved too, and we both held them back from each other and told them to either break it up or fight in the garage or outside. They were pissed at us then, too, and that night in bed we agreed to just leave the room when they started up.
The problem was their fighting was becoming persistent.
But then, the weather broke. We had one sunny mild day, followed by another and another, and it was then that I noticed—all of a sudden, it seemed like the sun was rising earlier and earlier and it had seemed to happen overnight.
It gave me hope.
The problem, aside from the fact that I had spring fever worse than I ever had before in my life, was that there was still plenty of snow on the ground. Yes, it was melting, because for days we watched it drip off the roof, and in places where we’d walked and walked and walked, it had already melted and left mud. And the nights were still cold.
But then, before all the snow melted, we got a rain that turned into heavy, wet snow at night, and it continued all the next day. It felt like a setback and we began to feel cooped up once more.
It was the day of the worst Larry and Vera fight, and Kevin and I went out on the deck, bundled up, and watched the snow fall until it was quiet inside once more. The
n we gave it another ten minutes for good measure. While we were out there, though, Kevin asked, “When will you feel good about leaving here?”
I couldn’t help myself. I started laughing. “Uh…when this shit melts. And it looks like we have plenty more where it came from.”
He wrapped his arm around my shoulder. “Soon, though.”
“Yeah,” I replied, resting my head against him. “Soon.”
Chapter Fifty-four
“Follow Me Down” – The Pretty Reckless
PROBABLY ANOTHER WEEK later, and the weather was nice enough that I was sure we’d already started spring. It had to be late March or early April, but I had no calendar as reference, no sense of detailed time. I also didn’t know much about the change of seasons at this higher altitude, so I wasn’t sure about any other signs. At home, there were buds on bushes, green grass, birds chirping, and early flowers blooming in addition to the longer days, warmer air, and snow turning to rain. Here, though, the only signs we seemed to have were the sun rising earlier and setting later…and melting snow.
Kevin and I were making our daily water run down to the creek. Vera and Larry had been getting worse and worse. They hadn’t been physical as much over the last two days, but they hadn’t said a single word to each other that wasn’t nasty.
Except for today. It was eerie how quiet they were…and yet we could feel it. There was something hanging in the air, something charged—dangerous, violent. Something imminent.
I felt relief when we left the house and started walking down the mountain. At least we had warm air to walk through, so lovely we walked without gloves and without zipping up our coats. The inside of the house was beginning to feel colder than outdoors, but the weather had little to do with it. “Shit. What the hell’s going on with them?”
“No idea.”
“How long have they been married anyway?”
I tried to think but they’d never told me. “A long time. Their son is close to thirty.”
He shook his head. “What the hell?”
“I know. You’d think they’d be used to each other’s bullshit by now.”
We were quiet, our shoes making slushy noises in the melting snow, and something gripped me—a stupid question I had to ask, but it never needed to be answered. “I wonder what we would have been like if—” And then I cut myself off. No. I didn’t want to know what his answer would be, and if I kept talking, it would beg for one.
His gait slowed and he glanced my way, first looking at my hand wrapped around the handle of the axe that had become my new travelling weapon, and then his eyes drifted up to meet mine. “If we?” A smile curled up the corners of his lips ever so slightly, and I couldn’t tell if he was being mischievous or if he genuinely wanted to know. “If we’d—”
He couldn’t say it either. “Yeah. If we’d gotten together.”
We were quiet again and he finally said, “Well, my wife and I stayed together a long damn time. How long were you and your husband together?”
“Over twenty.”
“Yeah. Us too.”
We didn’t talk for a while longer until I said, “So…chances are…”
“Good.”
I started thinking of how I’d felt about him back then, how infatuated I’d been, how I’d drowned in a feeling of giddy happiness at just the thought of being around him. I don’t know why I felt the need to say anything. I could have just kept my mouth shut, but I was trapped in that old feeling, the sensation of walking on feathers and drinking in sunshine. It was a heady feeling of hope and anticipation, one I hadn’t experienced firsthand in decades. It made me brim over with a need to share.
I should have felt my cheeks redden as I began gushing, but I’d already told him so much and had been through so much in my life that it didn’t bother me like it maybe should have. However, that didn’t stop me from keeping my head facing straight ahead, my eyes looking forward. “It’s hard to say. I mean…I look back at myself then and never in a million years would have predicted that my life would have gone the way it did. But back then? Oh, God. I thought I loved you. You were all I thought about…all I dreamed about. Yeah, my head was filled with ideas of college, and physics, and senior seminar, and music—but you trumped it all. Your face was the last thing I saw in my head before I fell asleep and the first thought I had in the morning when I woke.” My voice got lower but my pace quickened, because I could see him out of the corner of my eye looking at me, and I wanted to finish what I had to say. I kept walking forward and talking. “I wanted to give you everything—everything in me, everything I was. I wanted to be with you, be filled with you, be part of you. Marriage? Forever? Yeah…” I could barely hear myself as my voice dropped to a whisper, but then my steps slowed because the creek was just ahead a few yards. “That would have been just as easy.”
I felt his eyes burning me, and I could feel my heart thumping in chest, and not from exertion. I was breathless then and, oddly enough, on the verge of tears. When I finally forced myself to look him in the eyes, I saw a kind look on his face, gentle and full of love. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?” I let out half a chuckle, but words were no longer easy to access. I searched his eyes and saw them change from amused and sweet to something darker, more animal, tapping into the uncivilized part of himself as we’d been doing more and more over the past few months. “Why didn’t you ever do anything, Nina?” He put down the tire iron and jug, shaking off the backpack, and touched my cheek with his hand. His voice was the equivalent of a pin drop, and—in spite of the babbling creek nearby—I would have sworn animals for miles could hear it. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“Because I was afraid of…” Rejection. The very thing he likely felt from my inaction.
“What was there to be afraid of?”
“I—” His kiss interrupted anything else I would have thought to say. His fingers wound into my hair, holding my lips up to his, not that I would have ever dreamed to pull away, because the truth was I still belonged to him, down to the depths of my very being. In desperation, I let the axe drop into the snow below and shrugged off my backpack, grabbing the sides of his coat to pull him as close to me as possible.
I needed him that moment and was not going to wait.
He felt the same way. As my fingers fumbled with the button on his pants, I felt his hands graze down the front of me, under my coat, and I had my hand on his cock by the time the zipper was down on my pants. He slid his fingers down my slit and I gasped, amazed that I was that close already. Then I felt his hands move to my sides as he lifted me up and I maneuvered him inside me as he walked a few steps, backing me against a tree.
We were animals. The last few months had turned us into beasts. But it was more than that. It wasn’t just that we were operating on our basest instincts, our primal needs and desires, but we seemed to be down to the core—raw, honest, and free. Even Larry and Vera, as abhorrent as they’d become, seemed to be stripped of the layers we wore every single day in our old lives. We were living life as it came, taking the cards it dealt, and unconcerned about tomorrow except for one singular desire—to leave this place.
Kevin and I were in tune with each other, it seemed, because we reached our climax about the same time, but as I came down, clenching against him, I felt a stab of dread inside. I felt my eyes widen as I looked at him, and he registered my panic. “What?”
I sucked in a deep breath. “I don’t know.” He set me down and zipped up in seconds, turning around and scanning the landscape. Then he dashed to where we’d dropped our things, gripping the tire iron in his hand while turning around, still searching the land. What we’d done had been stupid, and it was probably the only time we’d ever dropped our guard while outside the house.
“Everything seems okay, Nina,” he said as I joined him. “But maybe we shouldn’t fuck around. Let’s get the water and get back.”
“Yeah.” But I couldn’t shake that feeling of unease.
Chapter Fifty-five<
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“Run Free” – Asking Alexandria
AS WE TREKKED back up the mountain for what seemed like the thousandth time in the months we’d been there, Kevin moved the tire iron to his hand that held the jug and wrapped his free hand in mine. In spite of the fact that an overwhelming dread had taken up residence in the pit of my stomach, I felt no fear walking beside him. No matter what we had to face, I knew I could do anything with him.
It was like the infected man I’d had to kill a couple of months earlier. I never would have thought I’d have the strength or fortitude to do that, in spite of the fact that I knew I was a strong person, but Kevin’s belief in me and words of encouragement allowed me to grasp the idea that I could do anything I set my mind to.
The closer we got to the house, the more anxious I felt. Something was wrong—very wrong—and I had no real way of knowing for certain. It was simply a feeling in the air, in my bones. It seemed as though Kevin could sense it in me or maybe he could feel it too, because we weren’t wasting anytime walking back.
As we rounded the last corner and took in the house nestled on the hill, nothing seemed amiss. It looked just like it had when we left, and yet that feeling of dread increased, making my stomach knot up. “You okay?” Kevin asked.
“Yeah. Why?”
“You’re as pale as the snow.”
I frowned. “Something’s wrong.”
“Inside?”
“I don’t know. Just…” The breath caught in my throat before I was able to add, “Let’s just be careful when we go inside.”
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