She glanced longingly at her bag but knew it didn’t contain the essentials. She hadn’t had time to prepare. She hadn’t filled the bag with the items needed to fill her. She flashed back to a trip she’d taken to Salt Lake City, lying on the bed, her nipples clamped, a dildo in her cunt and ass, another in her left hand she slid in and out of her mouth. How long had that lasted? Her pushing the dildo into her mouth until she gagged, the spasm clenching her stomach and buzzing her pussy, each time thinking it was maybe going to happen. And then it just left. Her ass felt sore. Her cunt felt raw. Her throat and stomach hurt. And she’d ended up throwing everything in the trashcan and spending the rest of the evening watching porn and laughing over passages in The Book of Mormon that had been in her hotel nightstand.
She slid her underwear down her legs and lay back on the bed. She wasn’t going to touch herself. She thought for a second about the maid and had a moment of regret. Then her thoughts were consumed by the same man who’d consumed them all these years. She wasn’t even sure if what she felt for him was longing or repulsion. She supposed his face and body had changed over time. Hell, he’d be practically an old man at this point. It seemed absurd. While she’d fully expected Shawn to look the way he had, she couldn’t imagine the other one aging a day. She’d never known how old he was to begin with and hadn’t known him long enough to see him age. The other guys—Grant, Edward, Shawn—she’d watched go from puberty into young adulthood so the next metamorphoses weren’t so hard to imagine but she couldn’t see Lucas Wyatt as anything other than that magical creature who’d elevated and then haunted that summer so long ago.
Lucas Wyatt.
She’d tried hard not to think of his name.
There had been many drunken nights spent scouring the internet, always coming up empty, always landing on some other Lucas Wyatt. She’d even contemplated hiring a private investigator at one point. Ultimately, she figured that would just make her a stalker with cash. Because, she knew, if she found out where he was, she would go to him, run to him. And if he rebuffed her or turned her away, her life would be over. It’s not that people become any less romantic as they get older, they just learn to avoid the things that might break their heart.
She slid her hand down her stomach, beneath the waistband of her underwear, over her bare pubic mound, parting herself and pushing a finger in to moisten it before swirling it around her clit.
She let herself go back to the tent in the woods, the dirty covers spread on the floor, the sweaty heat, that period of purity before it felt like everything went to hell.
After about twenty minutes her wrist had frozen up and it felt like her clit would fall off if she rubbed it any harder so she stopped and cried for a little before dozing off into a late afternoon nap.
SIX
Edward turned into the driveway to find the gate open. He pulled through and, after a somewhat frantic exploration, flipped the high beams on to navigate the narrow band of blacktop. It seemed exceptionally dark. He drove slowly around the bend, turning his head toward the house at the top of the hill, resting there like some kind of shadow.
Nothing had seemed right about this from the beginning so he didn’t know what he expected. He knew what he wanted. He wanted it to be some kind of homecoming. A homecoming away from home, wherever that was these days. A party with his old friends.
The house was much larger than he expected. When he’d pulled it up on Google maps the first time, he thought it might be some kind of joke. That there wouldn’t be a house there at all. Just a clearing and an old tent. A couple lights were on in the house. He imagined the cheerful atmosphere on the inside. He was probably the last one here. He was used to arriving late. Everyone else would be a few drinks in, maybe the first joint had already been passed around, and they’d be rosy-cheeked and jovial, welcoming him with open arms.
He pulled through the circular drive and came to a stop in front of the walkway leading to the front door. He picked up his phone and clicked the music off. Tapped the icon to check his texts and noticed he didn’t have a signal. Surprisingly it didn’t look like he’d missed anything. It wasn’t yet showtime in Vegas, though. That’s when the hate would come vibrating through his phone. Veiled, career-ending threats.
A sense of calm washed over him when he thought about his phone not getting any reception. It must just be a dead area since they weren’t really all that far from civilization. He slid out of the car and stood up, rising to his tiptoes and stretching his back, hearing and feeling all the satisfying pops. He brought the phone back and threw it as far into the darkness as he could. He thought he heard it hit the ground and imagined the grass and dead leaves and dirt rising up over this piece of modern technology and sucking it down into their primal darkness. He smiled with the image. There would be plenty of time to do damage control later. Right now, he had to do this. Wanted to do this.
He turned back to the house, now surprised by the blinding light from two lamps to either side of the door.
Grant swung the heavy door open and stood in the doorway.
Edward thought he looked good, until he got closer.
Grant wore a fitted white button-down shirt, tucked into a nicely tailored pair of gray slacks. They could have been the same slacks Edward was wearing. He was thin but it looked like a healthy, yoga-thin and not an emaciated poverty-stricken thin. His hair was cut fashionably and his large-ish beard was well coiffed with not a streak of gray or white in it. In short, he looked like nearly every middle-age man of a certain type Edward ran into constantly.
“Hey, Grant,” Edward said, holding out his hand.
“Edward,” Grant said, moving in for a hug.
Edward took a step back. Maybe Grant didn’t even realize something had happened to him.
Edward threw his hand in between them, pointing at Grant’s torso.
“You’re, uh, bleeding, man,” he said.
There were several spots where Grant’s shirt was stuck to his skin, blossoms of red spreading out into pink coronas.
“I’m not worried about it,” Grant said, throwing his arms around Edward.
Edward didn’t fight it. He embraced back.
They broke apart and Grant looked over Edward’s shoulder.
“Where’s Natalie?” he asked.
“Um . . . she ran off.”
Something dark flickered through Grant’s eyes. “Ran off?”
“In town. Said she couldn’t take it. We were stopped at a stoplight and she just got out and ran off.”
“Did she say anything else?”
“No.” He paused and tried to smile a little. “She actually said she wasn’t supposed to talk to me. The whole thing was kind of weird, really.”
Edward suddenly felt guilty. Did Grant think he’d done something with Natalie? He knew Shawn and Grant had resented him for being the only one of them to ever be in the position to do anything with Lena, but surely that kind of suspicion would have lessened over a couple of decades.
“She was lazy and incompetent anyway,” Grant said. “You’re all here now. That’s what matters.”
“So Shawn and Lena are here too?”
“Of course. We have work to do. Follow me.”
Grant turned and Edward followed him, noticing a couple more of those red blotches on the back of his shirt. They walked through the darkened house, through the kitchen and out to the patio, where Shawn and Lena sat in chairs staring at a lit up but empty pool and the wall of darkness beyond. They turned, startled at the sound of the sliding glass door. They both spotted Edward, something unreadable in their eyes.
“I give you the world renowned recording artist, Edonymous,” Grant said.
Shawn stood and moved in for a hug. Lena stood and moved slowly toward him, bumping her hip on one of the chairs. She moved in for a hug and a kiss. Edward thought it would be a quick peck on the cheek, but her lips locked on his and he could taste breath mints and vodka as her tongue slid into his mouth and, despite the complete aw
kwardness of the situation, he found himself responding, moving his hands along the ribs down her back and coming to rest on her narrow waist. Then she broke the kiss, looked into his eyes and . . . spit in his face.
Shawn started laughing. “That’s better than what I got. I just got a nice firm smack.”
“Lena, Lena, Lena,” Edward said. “It’s been too long since I’ve had that rancid flesh in my mouth.”
“Fuck you,” she said.
He brought a hand out to cup her chin and said, “My sweet, you’re about twenty years too old for me.”
“That sounds about right,” she said. “I always knew you’d grow up to be a pedophile.”
“That stings. Like, really a lot.”
“Aren’t you even going to wipe the spit off, you fucking slob?”
“Why bother? I’ve got Grant’s blood all over this awesome t-shirt. Now I’ve got your spit on my face.” He turned to Shawn. “You want to take a come in my hair or something, big guy?”
“Nah, man, I jerked off a while ago. I’m not feeling it.”
“Should we go in and get caught up?” Grant said. “Natalie made some food earlier. It’s probably terrible. I’ve got plenty of drinks. Word of warning though: I’m going to need one of you to beat the shit out of me every fifteen minutes or so.”
They had all gathered to follow Grant into the house and now came to a collective halt.
“What?” Shawn said.
“Yeah, it’s no big deal. I’m just going to need one of you to beat the shit out of me periodically. And, like, don’t stop until I’m really begging you to. Preferably only after you’ve drawn blood or raised a welt.”
“Is this some kind of therapy or something?” Edward asked.
“I’ll explain it when we go inside.”
“Fuck,” Lena said. “I’ll do it. I don’t even care why.”
SEVEN
It was hard for Grant to focus until the first beating was out of the way. Lena had signed on to do the deed, which he was happy about. She had always struck him as having the greatest capacity for cruelty, both taken and dished out. Since his liberation from Peace Point, it was something he had to deal with himself. His time at Peace Point was somewhat of a blur. He was so doped he didn’t know what was going on. Didn’t experience the sliding and the shift. That’s how he thought about it. The sliding was that nebulous period before the shift, the end of his awareness, his entrance to the blank space. If he could recognize the sliding had begun, he could prevent the shift from happening. The shift was like a blackout he had to try and piece together once he came out of it. That was the awakening. The awakening was really the only time he felt anything approaching clarity. The medication, that had been more like a deep sleep where he had no real feelings, following a series of commands through the serene grounds of the clinic, experiencing everything through a pane of clouded glass, moving almost eternally in a sliding state, not fully able to grasp or process what was actually happening in the present.
Take, for instance, the people he had gathered around him here. He knew why they were here. All of the emails were in the sent folder on the laptop he hardly ever used. But he wasn’t sure if he was the one who’d sent the emails or if it was that other person, the one who occupied his mind and body after the shift. Actually, he didn’t know if it was right to think of it as a person. Thinking it was some kind of demon was almost laughable, so he didn’t think about it that way, even if it was probably a little closer to the truth. It was easier for him to just think of it as Debbie. Maybe a person, maybe a demon. Did all demons start as people? He didn’t really know. Probably didn’t want to know. He only knew what he’d seen. What he felt. He only knew his reality.
They all went back into the house, just a gathering of old friends, talking and laughing, keeping things light and fun. He pulled the food out of the refrigerator and oven. It looked like a collection of Hot Pockets and cheese cubes with fancy sauces for dipping.
He muttered, “This spread seems thematically nebulous.”
Everyone’s eyes lit up when he pointed out the liquor cabinet and the beer in the fridge. He would be abstaining from any of that. Being even the slightest bit intoxicated made it too easy for Debbie to take over.
The simple fact that he was here, that there was food and drink available, was evidence that Debbie had taken over at one point, for a sustained period of time. And he was all too aware of where here was. He supposed he’d responded to his own invitation, although it wasn’t a written one. Before the house, the last thing he remembered through that smudged glass vision was being at his mother’s graveside. She had finally joined his father, twenty years later. Justin Cooper had brought him from Peace Point. Justin was an orderly there. The patients were supposed to refer to them as ‘friends’, just as the orderlies and doctors were supposed to refer to the patients as ‘friends’. Justin had been there for as long as Grant could remember and had always taken an interest in him. He was the one who got him fitted for the suit. Told Grant it would be best if he looked good. Told him it was okay to be sad but this was also a new beginning. Then . . . what? Had Grant just checked himself out? Had he even bothered with that formality? He knew he was there voluntarily, even if it was, more or less, his mother who had volunteered him. Had he gone off his meds schedule just long enough for Debbie to slip in and take over? That wouldn’t have been the first time it had happened. But this time he couldn’t remember anything, not that he’d had a lot of time to try. Maybe Debbie was getting stronger. In the past, he could occasionally dredge up memories from the blank zone, like he’d simply taken a backseat and not been knocked out of the car completely. That was one of the reasons he felt like he’d never completely lost touch with Shawn and Lena and Edward.
After his most recent awakening, however, he had no memories. Just Natalie asking him what she could do and a dull ache in his ribs and him telling her they were having a party, a gathering, for just a few people, and the sudden realization that he didn’t have access to his meds and the knowledge that he would have to hurt himself or have someone else hurt him once he felt himself starting to slide. Debbie liked pain. That much had been clear to Grant. If he didn’t have the meds to keep her at bay, he had to give her a small taste of what she wanted to keep her from taking over completely.
The four of them took seats at the large table and Grant felt himself getting swept away in the catch-up conversations. The people around him began to change, the words coming out of their mouths nearly incoherent.
Edward was a pulsing orb of orange-yellow light, surrounded with a luminous black glow, becoming not even human in form.
Shawn was an even fatter version of himself, laughing and glowing, tethered to a storm cloud. Darkness everywhere.
Lena was an even thinner version of herself, shrunken and wraith-like, black-eyed and wrinkled, all of her features sharpened to points, voice shrill and rending. He tried finding the light but if it was there, it was buried deep.
It was here he realized he was sliding, having reduced all of his old friends to mere essences. If he waited any longer, he wouldn’t be able to speak.
“Lena,” he said. “It’s time.”
She wasn’t paying any attention to him. She was listening, rapt, as Edward talked about the first time he’d been abroad, playing a show in a loft in Amsterdam on the eve of a new millennium and getting paid in free beer and cocaine.
Grant struck the table with a hand that barely felt like his own, causing everything to jump and clatter. He wanted to keep striking it, to continually bring his hand down to see which would crack first, the table or his bones.
Suddenly there was silence, everyone turning to look at him.
“We need to do this.”
Lena looked at him like he was crazy.
Well, he thought, I probably am.
“Um, okay.” Lena’s cheeks were rosy with the first flush of alcohol. “Where do we do it?”
“Let’s go outside. I have a larg
e stick out there.”
Lena stood and smoothed down the front of her shirt.
“Pardon me, guys,” she said. “I have to go beat the shit out of Grant.”
“Let me know if you get tired,” Shawn said.
“You never did tell us what this was for,” Edward said.
There was no time to explain. Grant held his shaky hand out as if to say, “Later,” and walked quickly toward the sliding doors.
EIGHT
Lena liked to think it was only because of the tequila shot and the generous glass of wine she’d already mostly downed, but she felt a palpable sense of excitement when she followed Grant outside. She didn’t think it was sexual in nature, exactly. Although maybe it was. She wasn’t a violent person, had never been in a real fight, so the only time she welcomed giving or receiving pain was in a sexual context. When you couldn’t orgasm, sometimes you didn’t know you were finished until you just couldn’t take it or give it anymore.
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