by Trisha Wolfe
The ground is made rich by the nutrients buried here.
Chemistry is vital, especially when disposing of bodies.
With a resigned breath, I push my hands into the frigid river to cleanse the filth away. Then I begin to pry a large rock loose from the bank. I start with one, then a second. I select each stone with purpose. Size, weight, shape.
Fresh water rushes past boulders, shaving down rough edges as it has done consistently over the years, making the river stones worn, smooth. Welcoming, even.
This is the process. Take the hard and jagged thing and apply pressure and consistency until it conforms. Geology. Trial by trial. The scientific method. And if that fails, there is always elimination.
Eradicate the deviation.
I place the cleaned rocks in the sack and heave it over my shoulder.
As we are not primitive animals, we all have a psychological weakness. One consuming desire that renders us helpless.
She is mine.
The brightest flower, the intricate butterfly wing—she was designed for me, to lure me in, to make me weak. Trying to resist her snare was vain, and ineffective.
Do not touch.
Oh, I touched. I put my hand right into her flame. Then I begged her to burn me again.
Obsession is the eighth deadly sin…and she owned me with one kiss.
She’s a deviation. A flawed design. Yet so perfectly engineered for her purpose.
Eradicate the deviation.
The stones knock together against my back as I hike up the hill. The wrought iron gate squeaks open, disturbing the tranquility, a noise out of place in this isolated habitat.
I drop the sack near my feet and dig out one of the medium-sized stones. I bring out the pewter pocket watch and click it open, lay it on the hard-packed earth. The ticking reverberates against the bark of the thin pines. I watch the second hand jump, jump, jump…
I smash the rock against the glass face of the clock.
My hand trembles as I stare down at the broken timepiece. I release the rock back into the pile in the sack, flex my fingers. Sweat trickles down my temples. A bird flutters its wings too loudly.
The silence is unsettling.
A glimpse of Mary’s smiling face, then the image catches fire, smoldering into cracked, charred ash. All this time, I’ve held on to an ideal memory of her that shaped who I became.
A monster.
I hear Blakely’s voice as she says it, and I’m no longer denying the truth. Just as Blakely shamelessly accepts who she is, I accept who I’ve become.
When I emerge inside the chamber, I’ve been reborn. An all-new synthesis of a man. What I have to do has never been more clear.
I am a curer of disease.
My life’s work cannot succumb to one malady—one deviation in the design.
She’s my illness…and there’s no cure.
Elimination.
The loud thunk of the sack hitting the wood floor startles Blakely, and she looks up to find me in the one source of light beneath the bare bulb. She’s absorbed by the darkness of the room, but I can still make out her silhouette.
A thousand ticking hands, a thousand glass faces peering down, reflecting her beautiful face back at me.
I empty the sack of rocks.
“Alex, whatever you believe you have to do—”
“It’s no longer about what I believe.” I swoop down and select a stone from the pile. I turn the rock over as I inspect the smooth surface, the flaws. I chose this stone for her. I set it aside. It’s not yet time.
“You were right, Blakely,” I say. “Every beginning has an end, and we’ve reached ours.”
I hunt through the rocks and choose a larger rock, then I face the wall of floating clocks. I pitch the stone at the backlit clock in the center. The glass cracks, knocking the clock to the floor and shattering the face into shards.
“Willy Sturgis. Subject number one. Ten thirty-two P.M. was his expiration time.” I glance back at Blakely. “The time of his death. The time I killed him.”
Her knees are pulled to her chest, her eyes large and watching. She’s almost convincing of her helpless state, but I know better. She’s a temptress who will tear my throat out. She made me that promise.
I select another rock and lob it at the wall, striking the clock to the right. “Thomas Sanders. Subject two. I terminated his life at four twenty-seven.”
In a violent production, I continue to destroy the clocks. One by one, I break the faces that have hung in suspension since the conception of my project. Mary’s clock stares at me, the only other timepiece with frozen hands, the time displaying the moment I received the call of her murder.
I truly believed I was avenging her—that it was love for my twin sister that drove me to such extreme measures. Now, I wonder if denial for who she was, the choice to refuse to accept her character, was the driving force.
“In the end, we remained a reflection of each other, didn’t we?” I say out loud, laughing at the absurdity. My sister and I, twin monsters. Why didn’t Grayson come for me next?
Because that’s not who I was.
My fingers curl around the rock, gripping to the point of pain. I pitch the river stone at the clock and smash the glass, watching as the pendulum crashes to the floor. The room fades darker.
One rock left.
I pick it up and note the weight in my hand before I stalk toward Blakely.
No longer playing the victim, she slides up against the wall to stand before me. The thin shirt is still damp and clings to her body. She wraps her arms around her waist as she watches me cautiously.
We’re shrouded by darkness, nearly all light sources have gone extinct. I tap the bare bulb as I pass underneath, and the light swings back and forth. As I near Blakely, her face illuminates and then fades into shadow. Light, dark. Light, dark.
The still quiet of the room is eerie, the constant ticking has gone silent, all except the faint tick tick tick of her clock in the background.
When the light swings away, leaving her in the pitch-black of the room, I hear her scramble off the wall. She makes for the door, and I circle my arm around her waist to halt her escape.
“This is what you wanted,” I tell her. “No more lies. Just the harsh, candid truth between us.”
I thrust her back against the wall and grip her shoulder, my forearm pressed to her chest to prevent her from moving. Breaths ragged, she stares down at the rock in my hand before meeting my eyes with a spark of defiance.
“That’s my rock,” she says, needing me to confirm it.
Arm braced across her chest, I bring the stone up so she can see it.
“What time is it, Alex?” Her throat dips with a forced swallow. “What time do I get before you eliminate me?”
I keep the rock held aloft. “Since I broke my watch, time no longer has meaning here.”
Her eyes flare, and I wonder what my confession means to her. That I’ve lost all rational sense, that this really is the end…for the both of us?
I lower the stone and watch as her eyes seal closed in anticipation for the strike. I allow myself one greedy moment where I inhale her addictive scent, memorize her beautiful features, before I place the rock in her delicate palm. “There’s only one timekeeper left.”
I feel her chest collapse as she releases a pent-up breath. Her confused gaze shifts to the lone clock hung on the black wall and then tracks to me.
A tight smile rims my mouth. “You know what you have to do.”
Understanding alights in her eyes, her features strained with a mocking imitation of sentiment. “Alex…you’re insane.”
“That’s been established.”
“I can’t—”
“I’m not like you,” I confess. “The moment the secondhand stops, I’ll be forced to confront what I’ve done, and the guilt will destroy me. I’m not sure what I’ll do then…what I’ll be capable of. You have no choice.”
She shakes her head. “I’m not a killer.�
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Her teeth catch her bottom lip, and the sight sets my blood on fire. An act I once deemed she did to assert control over the opposite sex, I now realize, with sullen remorse, is an impulse of her uncertainty.
She’s not committed to her words.
Instinct is impulse, and I reach out to touch her. My hand is sure as I caress the strands of her blond hair, dragging my fingers down the side of her face to tilt her chin up. The hunger to taste her one last time burns through me, voracious.
The room feels as if it exhales a leaden breath as I rest my forehead against hers. “This is exactly what you’re designed to do.”
She releases the rock and I catch it before it hits the floor.
“That’s not true,” she whispers, her breath unsteady.
With every vicious craving, I place a tender kiss to her forehead, then take I aim at the clock. The loud crash reverberates through the room. Glass clatters to the floor. The silver pendulum lies motionless in the dark.
A moment of sublime silence where the vile, relentless ticking ceases, then the cold chill of darkness.
As I face Blakely, her relief is momentary as it flits across her features. I dig the keyring out of my pocket and push it into her hand. “Run.”
Her soft forehead creases as her eyebrows knit together in confusion before realization dawns.
I remove the glass vial from my pocket and hold it up so the chemicals within catch the light.
“Alex—?”
Her voice is a faded whisper as I smash the vial to the hardwood floor. The potassium chlorate and glycerin work just fine when combined, but the addition of water reacts as an accelerant.
Blue flames spark on impact. A white-hot liquid fire races across the floorboards, chasing every flammable material and igniting the cabin like kindling. The flames start blue and hot, then surge into a wall of red that rises up between us.
22
Escape
Blakely
I meet Alex’s eyes across the flames. My whole body is paralyzed, waiting. For him. I’m not sure what I’m afraid of more: the fire, or Alex’s pain swallowing me like the void of this room.
This one moment of hesitation, of indecision, will haunt me a lifetime.
The dark room glows with its own roaring sun, the light of the fire almost blinding amid the blackness. I lose sight of Alex, and as the heat intensifies, I run toward the only escape in the room.
Fire takes hold of the cabin with a punishing violence, consuming the dry, timeworn wood like rain drops in a parched desert. The walls crackle. Thick smoke billows down the stairway as I race ahead of the flames.
Panicked, I grab an armful of clothes from the cot. Using a shirt to cover my nose and mouth, I start toward the storm door, pausing at the stairway entrance just long enough to look for Alex.
A loud pop spits out, and I dash toward the basement stairs, using the key to unlock the chain and sliding the bar aside. I cough to clear my lungs as I make it free of the basement.
Looking back once, I watch the plumes of smoke rise into the morning sky like dark storm clouds. There’s no other way out. Alex is trapped in that blaze.
And I left him there.
A sick weight pulls at my stomach. With trembling hands, I slip on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, then I shove all doubt away as I follow the trail toward the other side of the river.
The fear of Alex emerging from behind a tree chases me at the corner of my mind. Every shadow, every snap of a twig, causes my heart rate to spike. It’s a twisted mix of dread and relief, and it forces my legs to move faster.
My bare feet hit every bramble and thorny vine, but the adrenaline coursing my bloodstream numbs the pain. My mind turns obsessive as I search for the truck.
Another loud explosion from the cabin that rattles the ground, and my foot hits a root. I trip and fall face-first into the dirt. Classic, I think, as I use the heels of my hands to push onto my knees. The final girl fleeing the bad guy trips during her escape.
A quick whip of guilt lashes at me. Alex was the villain. But that doesn’t make me the hero.
I left him.
Sharp pain stabs my hand, and I curse. I dust the dirt off my palm to inspect the cut, my gaze trailing to the offending object poking out of the ground. “Shit.”
With an unsteady hand, I push pine straw and leaves aside to reveal the bleached bone. A terrifying realization that it doesn’t belong to an animal seizes me, and I glance around, knowing exactly where I’ve stumbled.
This is a graveyard.
What’s left of Alex’s subjects that couldn’t be dissolved by chemicals lie here, waiting for the earth to decompose the remains. An ill feeling sweeps through me. I would’ve been next.
With sheer willpower, I’m back on my feet and running toward a thick row of trees. I reach the other side and, nearly falling to my knees, I find a black truck. Oh my, God. There’s really a fucking truck. I get the door unlocked and hoist myself into the driver’s seat. My hands shake as I key the ignition.
The engine cranks.
I close my eyes in relief. One second to center myself, then I drive the truck through the cut of the forest.
Once I’m free of the woods, I steer onto a paved road and a frantic laugh tumbles free. I have no idea where I’m going or where this road leads, but it’s not important. For the first time, there is absolutely no plan—just the desire to keep going.
I drive until the last wave of adrenaline is depleted from my system. I sense a hard crash coming on. My eyelids are heavy, my body is beginning to ache. Every cut, bruise, and injury makes itself painfully known. I turn the stereo on to find a song to keep me awake and distracted.
I always liked music. It was entertaining. Although I never understood how people were so moved by it they invested so much time and energy into learning to play an instrument, or became emotional enough to cry…
An ache builds behind my eyes as the sorrow in the woman’s voice bleeds through the speakers. She sings about loss and heartache, and my own proverbial heart pangs in sync with the beat. My chest tightens, my throat clogs, and I tap the brake to slow the truck.
I pull off to the side of the road. “Jesus Christ, Blakely. What the hell?”
The song crescendos, and I grip the wheel, my fingers throbbing from the pressure. I see Alex’s face right before the flames engulphed the room. I feel the anguish he felt as I told him his experiment had failed. A searing flame thrashes my insides with an overwhelming surge of…guilt? Remorse? What?
Some savage emotion rocks through me, and the only thing I can do to make it stop is scream. When I finally stop, my breaths ragged and chest on fire, the cab of the truck becomes eerily quiet.
I rest my head against the steering wheel. No. No, I am not responsible for his death. I continue to repeat this, yet, this tiny voice inside me questions what would have happened had I admitted the truth under that waterfall. Is this regret?
“That is seriously twisted logic.” Shit, he abducted me and tortured me and would have killed me in the end. I’m just exhausted. I need sleep. Or to eat. Or… I hit the dial to shut off the fucking song.
A drop of wetness hits my cheek, and I wipe at my eye. I stare at the tears on my fingertips and a tremor of fear takes hold.
I can deny what I felt on that cliff with Alex. I can refute that it wasn’t all just pretend. I can claim it was temporary lunacy. A side effect. An infection of my brain.
But I can’t lie to myself.
Whatever I experienced with him, I have to leave it behind at that waterfall.
I put the truck in Drive and swerve onto the road.
The farther I get from Alex, the farther away from these emotions I’ll be, and the more I will start to feel normal.
23
Affliction
Blakely
I check news stations daily for any mention of Alex.
So far, there’s been nothing. No account of a man gone missing. Not even a press release
of the fire. Which someone had to see…had to report.
I’ve combed the Internet, searching all the local sites in New York for an obituary of a John Doe. Nothing has turned up citing anyone dying in a freak fire in the middle of the wilderness.
I’ve spent the past few days in a state of staggered wonder, questioning if I was somehow gaslighted, if the whole thing had even happened at all. Did I imagine a cabin combusting into flames? Did I really spend almost a month chained in a basement, being experimented on by a mad scientist? It sounds absurd even in my head.
Which is why I haven’t said any of this out loud. To anyone.
After I escaped, I drove Alex’s truck as far as some one-stop town before it ran out of gas, then I used a tow truck driver’s phone to call Rochelle. In the middle of a highway, wearing filthy clothes, barefoot, and having zero access to money, she was the only person I could think of to call.
I explained away my circumstance as a “scheme gone wrong,” to which she laughed and gave the driver her credit card number and told him to rent me a limo.
There were no limos to rent at two o’clock in the morning in bumfuck, New York, so he very suspiciously but courteously called for a Taxi.
When I made it to the city, I went directly to my apartment and showered. I ran hot water over my body for as long as I could tolerate. Then I buried myself under a mound of blankets and slept hard.
At some point, I emerged from my apartment to purchase a new phone. I had three voicemails. There was this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as I realized I had to return calls and try to explain my disappearance.
The first message was abrupt. Jeffery Lomax—the divorce lawyer I use for referrals—had a client for me if I was interested. The second voicemail was from Rochelle. She had left a cackling message thanking me for tanking that “little twat” and her brand. And the final message was from my boss at Lucy’s data processing job. I was fired for repeated no-shows, no-calls. Which, he said, wasn’t too surprising for me.
That was it. No frantic calls trying to locate me. No worried voices urging me to contact them, whoever them—the people who cared about me—were.