Naked or Dead

by Murphy, A. E.

  “Pussy,” I comment, grinning at him as he rights himself and kicks the knife across the floor. It scrapes along the tiles before coming to a stop at Nash’s table leg. Nash who is currently on his phone with a serious look on his face.

  We’re in a diner just off the route home after a long day and night and morning of camping. We had to leave first light because the storm changed course and by the time we packed up it was ready to rain hellfire down on us. The clouds are so thick and gloomy they look almost black. But overall it has been a great morning and now I’m treating them all to pancakes and whatever else they order. Because everyone is poor right now and I’m desperate for greasy food slathered in butter and syrup.

  “How can you afford to pay for everyone’s breakfast when you don’t even have a job?” Mackenzie, who decided to sit opposite me, asks.

  “How do you know I don’t have a job?”

  She looks away for a moment, embarrassed. “Do you have a job?”

  “Do you?”

  “I do. I work for—”

  “Didn’t ask, don’t care,” I respond, and she laughs around the word, “Bitch.”

  Then she sobers and adds, “You didn’t answer my question.”

  I tap my nose and sip my coffee. It’s not the best but it will do.

  “You’re super evasive,” she comments, her smile fading now. “In a bad way not a good way.”

  I stare her down, wondering what her deal is. “And you’re super nosy, in a bad way… not a good way.”

  She looks away, out of the window, and chews on her lip. After a moment she apologizes but it sounds insincere and forced. “I’m not the best company in the mornings. I don’t like not knowing things.”

  “I can tell,” Nokosi says, having my back as always.

  She ignores him and continues. “I just find it all a bit weird.”

  “What?” Bobby asks, looking at the girl who is sitting to his right.

  Joseph and Mack’s friend, the giggler, are sitting opposite Nash on the other table looking over with inquisitive gazes.

  “That a new girl rolls into town and throws actual cash at a fancy school that costs thousands per semester, a furnished house in the richer side of town, yet no job to speak of.” She shrugs her shoulders.

  “Have you been putting your nose in my business?” I ask, suddenly seeing Mackenzie in a darker light, one more threatening. I completely underestimated her.

  “It’s what I do. I can’t help myself.”

  “Don’t go down this road, Mack,” I warn, gritting my teeth. “You won’t like what you find.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  I shake my head to clear it. What am I doing? Mack is obviously good at getting information. The last thing I need is her poking around where I don’t need her poking and provoking her isn’t going to entice her to stay away. “It’s a private matter, one I don’t like talking about.”

  “I can tell,” she rebuts, shrugging her shoulders like she doesn’t give a fuck.

  This bitch… she’s starting to piss me off. But she’s dangerous. She asks all the right questions. She’ll be an excellent detective one day. “You want to know where and how I have money?”

  “Yes,” she replies, and I take back what I said about her being pretty. She’s fucking ugly and I hate her. But I also need her off my back. I don’t like that she’s not intimidated by me.

  I start to lie, “My mother—”

  “Your mother the environmentalist that nobody has ever met? Your mother who doesn’t work where you said she does or if she did it’s under a different name and also… if she did, she wouldn’t be earning nearly enough to throw the amount of paper bills you threw at the school to get a place.”

  I decide at this juncture it’s best to tell the truth. Maybe it will make them all so uncomfortable they’ll never talk to me about it again. Dad always said the most convincing lie is one based on the truth. Well… let’s hope he was right. Although this one is all true. Sadly. Such is the tragedy that is my life.

  “My twin sister and I were assaulted…” Nokosi tenses and everybody’s eyes swing to me. I’m not being loud but I’m not being quiet enough so that nobody hears. Luckily her smug face starts to fade into something a bit softer, more understanding. “It was brutal, it scarred us both for life. The money we have is the compensation from the assault. They were loaded. They paid well to make us disappear. End of conversation.”

  “You said they…” she points out and I want to reach over and punch her in the face. “There was more than one?”

  I nod bitterly. “There were five of them and two of us. Happy now?”

  The glass of OJ in Nokosi’s grip cracks and then shatters. That took some serious strength. Orange juice spills over the edge of the table and between his legs but he doesn’t see it. His eyes won’t leave me.

  He looks devastated, angry, upset. All of them swirling around his eyes.

  “I am so sorry,” Mackenzie breathes as Bobby rushes to clean up the OJ. “I should never… I feel terrible. I can see I’ve made you… I’ve made us… I do this, okay? This is why I don’t have friends. I’m not a trusting person. I’m too paranoid. I hate myself for it, but I live for it. I’m sorry. So sorry.” She reaches for my hand, but I pull away. I’m not taking comfort from this bitch who put me on the spot in front of people I consider friends. “If there’s anything I can do to… I just…”

  “Stop,” Bobby tells her softly. “Stop talking.”

  The waitress places our food down, but nobody starts to eat. Suddenly everybody has lost their appetite, everybody but me.

  “Get the fuck over it, guys.” I stab a piece of bacon with my fork and pop it into my mouth. “At least now you all know why I’m a fucking psycho. And let me just tell you, if you breathe a word of that to anybody, I will pluck your eyeballs out and feed them to the person beside you.”

  Nobody knows what to say. It’s awkward now. I made it awkward.

  No… Mackenzie made it awkward.

  I look at her again. “Satisfied?”

  “No. I wish you’d robbed a bank to be honest.”

  At that I laugh lightly and wag my brows at her. “Maybe I did.”

  * * *

  Willow

  “We need to tell Lilith about this,” Nokosi declares.

  We’ve put three coats of white paint over the dirty garage walls and I don’t have anymore excuses to keep him to myself. That’s so bad isn’t it? Wanting my sister’s boyfriend all to myself…

  I think he knows that’s my game too because he’s been keeping his distance ever since I told him I wanted to kiss him. It’s crazy thinking that was almost a week ago. He’s been around twice since. Not nearly enough.

  “I know,” I murmur, looking at him with puppy dog eyes. “But not yet. Please. I just need more time to think. If she knows we’ve been hanging out, one, she’ll get insanely jealous and two, she’ll think that means I want to stay.”

  “Why don’t you want to stay?”

  I raise my hands and let them hit my thighs with a slap. “Because I want to see more of the world before I die.”

  His head dips. “I get that. I respect that too.”

  “It’s not like she can’t come back when I die.”

  He nods again. “I totally understand that too. Have you told her that?”

  I walk away from him and play with the end of my braid. My hair feels so dry these days. Another symptom of the meds, perhaps? Who the fuck knows anymore?

  “We just end up arguing about it.”

  He blows a raspberry. “Siblings fucking suck sometimes. But… I can’t keep hiding this from her because you’re worried about the fallout.”

  “I know,” I agree sadly.

  “You need to tell her about this.”

  I look at him, the narrow points at the edge of each eye, the heavy lids that make him constantly smolder, the creases around his thick, heart-shaped lips, the striking dark ring of brown that circles his light
brown iris. “She won’t let us hang out anymore.”

  He chuckles under his breath and murmurs, “Maybe that’s for the best.”

  I laugh with him, not denying the fact I want more from him than I know he will give. “Promise me you won’t tell her until I do?”

  “I’m not making that promise.”

  Of course, he’s not. He’s too fucking loyal to her.

  I groan and punch him playfully in the chest, it doesn’t bother him in the slightest. “Then can I ask a favor?”

  “You already asked me about a million and I’m still working on them,” he jokes, smirking at me now in that very way that used to infuriate me.

  “Can you use this last time alone with me to make your confession?”

  His smile fades as I knew it would. A sad sight.

  “What?”

  “Your confession. I told you mine, my sister told you too, so now you tell me yours.”

  He looks dumbfounded, almost terrified. Suddenly this strong, handsome man that my sister is bedding looks about nine years old, wanting to hide from monsters that don’t exist. Or perhaps they did for him.

  “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  “I know, and that’s exactly why you should.”

  He frowns. “Why?”

  “Because damaged people understand damaged people. I’m about as damaged as it gets. Lay it on me. Let me take it from you for a while. I know you want to tell somebody.”

  He shakes his head. “If that’s so true why won’t your sister talk to me about what happened to her? I want to ask her about it, but I gave her my word I never would.”

  “What do you want to know?” I ask, and we both sit on upturned buckets facing each other. “Ask me anything, I’ll answer if I can.”

  “I’m almost scared to,” he mutters and rubs his eyes with the heels of his palms.

  I wait expectantly and I can tell by the look in his browns and the way he’s biting his lips he’s really thinking hard about the questions he wants to ask.

  “What happened? How did it start?”

  “Are you sure you have the stomach for it, Nokosi?”

  “No.”

  I laugh through my nose. “Well, you better line it with lead in preparation.” I rub my hands on my thighs. “Growing up, my sister and I were good students, great daughters, good friends. We weren’t bullies or bullied, we had stable lives and a happy-ish home.”

  “That’s good to know.”

  “But…” I continue, smiling sadly. “We found out I was sick. I had a seizure and collapsed during a school trip, they did a brain scan and six months later I was being pumped full of medications to stop the growth of this tumor. A tumor I’ve had unknowingly since birth.”

  His lips part. “I’m sorry… that sucks.”

  “Yes… well… anyway. So, treatments failed, and I was told I had maybe two years left to live. The chances of me reaching my nineteenth birthday were slim then and even slimmer now.” I raise my hands to show him all I am.

  “You don’t look skinny and frail like I imagined you would,” he admits softly, and I laugh.

  “You’ve been imagining my body, have you, Nok?”

  He rolls his eyes.

  “Anyway, I decided that we needed to live a little, me and Lilith. We didn’t really party or do much other than take our bikes out, and I really didn’t want to die a virgin but not many people wanted to date the new girl with no hair.”

  “I’m sure you were still beautiful.”

  “What’s worse is… I lost my hair for nothing. The chemo failed to stop the tumor’s growth, so it was all pointless.” I flap my hand at him. “So, me being me I decided to make friends with all of the wrong people. I started dabbling in drugs because you only live once, right? I started drinking and partying and then finally I met this gorgeous eighteen-year-old guy. He was so fucking handsome, really preppy, rich, like Bill Gates rich.”

  “Sounds like a dick.”

  “He was, but he wanted to party, and I wanted to lose my virginity. He said he knew what he was doing, that he’d make it good for me. I believed him, but my sister didn’t want me to party alone. Of course, she didn’t. She never did. She followed me around, making sure I got home safe, loving me and looking after me…”

  “Lilith is good like that.”

  I nod slowly. “She really is. She’s amazing. So, we go to this guy’s house and he’s having a gathering with his friends, right? Just him and a few buddies, but that’s cool, they’re all snorting coke and drinking tequila, we’re all just there to have a good time.”

  His back stiffens. “I don’t know if I want to hear this.”

  “I’ll spare you most of it but let’s put it this way… one minute I was awake and grinding up on him, the next I’m on the ground and my head is foggy. But I hadn’t done any drugs or drank much. I wanted to be mostly sober for my deflowering.”

  Nokosi buries his head in his hands for a moment, his thigh is bouncing. “I really don’t know if I want to hear this.”

  “My sister, who was saving her virginity for somebody she cared about was on the floor next to me but too far for me to reach. Some asshole was peeling down her pants as another kept trying to get her to drink. She’d been saying no to their offers for drinks all night and they didn’t like that. They pushed the bottle into her mouth… it broke her tooth, her incisor. She rolled over and vomited, I saw it floating in the bile between us.”

  “Fuck… what the fuck?” he breathes, looking as sick as I feel telling this story. This truth of mine that I’ve never once told anybody.

  “They raped her, I watched them lift her legs, spread them in her dazed state and one by one they fucked her, coming inside of her, laughing with each other and chatting like they weren’t committing a crime. She screamed. She wasn’t one of those who lay there and just took it like I did. She screamed, and begged, and fought, and they wouldn’t stop. They didn’t care. These were not men, they were fucking animals and they took something from her that she’d never get back.”

  Nokosi places his hands on mine and squeezes. “You don’t have to continue if you don’t want to.”

  “I felt my sister’s pain more than I felt my own, that’s crazy right? I felt sadder for her than I did for myself.” I turn my hands over and grip his tight.

  We’re bonding, sharing this moment with him is bringing us closer together, I can feel it.

  “What happened to them? What happened to you?”

  “Well, there wasn’t really any hiding what they’d done, we were a mess, I felt sure they were going to kill me but everybody knew where we were because the fucking idiots had posted all over social media with pictures of us partying with them.” I sigh, thinking back to that night all the while trying not to vomit and lose my mind over it.

  “The rich one, he was an arrogant son of a bitch. He didn’t care who knew what he’d done because it turns out his father was… let’s just say an important man. It became clear to us by the morning that nobody was going to help us. The father of said prick was as sadistic as his son… he told us he’d have us institutionalized and accuse us of trying to rob him to pay for our medical expenses. Blah blah blah. It was all bullshit. He paid us off for our silence and we took the cash, of course we did, we weren’t stupid. Or I wasn’t… My sister wanted nothing to do with the money.” I laugh coldly. “The fucker even paid for our medical care, made one of his doctor buddies take care of us. We were so badly brutalized that we needed stitches down below… that’s how fucked up that night was. Trust me when I tell you that I’m sparing you the gore.”

  “I believe you. You don’t have to. I can handle it.”

  “No, you can’t. You love my sister. It’ll keep you up at night.” I relax my hands in his. “The man had us followed for weeks, making sure we didn’t go to the police. He had our clothes that we were wearing that night burned and any other evidence. We had not a leg to stand on even if we did go to the cops. We knew it was pointle
ss and to say that felt frustrating is an understatement. We couldn’t handle how unfair it felt. But we told our parents, of course we did… though I wish we hadn’t.”

  “I bet they wanted to kill them.”

  “Oh yeah, my dad couldn’t handle it either. The animals that did it to us, he approached them, he asked them why and they goaded him. Bragged about it. He lost his mind, he couldn’t speak to us, he felt too guilty. He blamed himself. And then… he killed himself. My mom is a shell of the person she was, Nokosi. She can’t even look at us.”

  He’s mirroring my sadness. “I’m so sorry, Willow.”

  “Me too,” I reply, keeping hold of his hands when he tries to pull them away. I shuffle closer until my knees are between his parted ones. “Now it’s your turn.”

  “I don’t think I can, not after what I just heard…”

  “You should. Or you never will.”

  He shakes his head. “I feel like I’m trying to take away from your moment.”

  “I’d rather you did.”

  He groans and rubs his eyes with both hands. “I used to be best friends with a kid called Conner. Our moms were friends once upon a time, but then she died giving birth to me. Conner’s mom kept in touch and often took us on days out together, which turned into sleepovers as I got older. Conner’s father was an officer of the law, so my dad thought this was a great idea. Officer Deacon was an excellent role model, he’d say.” Laughing bitterly, he clings to my hands like I’m his lifeline and I almost wish I was. “Officer Deacon is a pedophile who started grooming Conner and me from around age three. He used to make us do things together, things that…” His eyes cloud over with shame. “It felt good, okay? And we were young, so we didn’t know any different.”

  My heart rate begins to rise. I’m not sure I can hear this, I keep telling him he can’t handle my past but the truth is… I don’t think I can handle his.

  “And then one day, Conner was walking funny. He was in pain. We must have been about seven at the time and we had this secret that only each other knew. It made us close because we had to be. So, Conner had no issues with telling me his father had… anally penetrated him the night before.”