Naked or Dead

by Murphy, A. E.

  Scenery blurs by, a mess of black and white patches fading out of existence.

  “You could have called the police!” she shrieks at me. “We could have gotten her help!”

  “She was in so much pain. They’d have locked her away for thirty years and then killed her anyway. She’s at peace now.”

  I look down at my trembling hands and my tears fall onto them. Is this a memory? It feels familiar.

  The pain I’m suddenly feeling feels all too familiar. Both mental and physical.

  The car lurches to the left, through a metal barrier and down a steep road. I’m tossed around in the car. So much pain.

  It hurts so bad.

  I’m back in the kitchen again, still on my knees.

  “WILLOW?” I yell, scared now. I need my sister to help me get through this.

  I need my mom.

  “I’m here, baby,” a warm hand touches my shoulder. Thank God. I turn and bury my face into her stomach. “I’m right here.”

  “I don’t know what’s happening,” I whisper, crying now. I just want out of this nightmare.

  She strokes my head. “You’re very sick, Lilith, but none of this is your fault.”

  “I’m dying.”

  “You are. But you always have been.”

  I peek up at her and she helps me to my feet. Her eyes shine with tears too. She’s so beautiful, even when she’s crying.

  “Help me,” I whisper, and she pulls me into her body. “Help me fight this.”

  “Don’t fight it. Accept it. Remember. Let it in. Just relax and let it in.”

  She kisses my eyelids and wipes away my tears with her thumbs.

  When my eyes open, I’m standing in my garage which has been cleared of everything, is now covered in plastic, blood and… holy fuck I’m holding a gun and pointing it directly at Nokosi.

  I click on the safety and lower it.

  “What the fuck is happening? Is this real or am I having another weird dream?” I ask, murmuring the words. My mouth is so dry.

  “Lilith?” Nokosi asks, his eyes swollen and red, his cheek still covered where I clawed him. “Please tell me that’s you?”

  I glance from him to my father and mutter a curse. “This is a dream. It’s great to see you, Dad, but please go. Mom’s fucked with my head enough already, dragging me to cars and driving us off fucking cliffs.”

  I tremble and shiver when somebody taps at the inside of my head.

  “Can I have the gun?” Dad asks.

  I shrug my shoulders. “What the fuck ever, I’m going to wake up in a minute anyway.”

  I start to hand it over but my vision goes black and pain like I’ve never felt attacks the inside of my skull. It feels like my head is going to explode.

  I fall to the ground in pain, screaming and seizing, bleeding from the nose. No. No. No. What the fuck is going on?

  I can hear Nokosi yelling my name, telling me to fight it.

  FUUUUUCKKKKK

  This hurts.

  It feels as though something, or someone is peeling away from me. My skin is on fire, my body an aching entity no longer under my control.

  I writhe on the ground, resisting the urge to vomit and then I feel a slap around my face and the pain stops. I open my eyes and find the eyes of my sister.

  “Get up,” she barks and I do so, confused and unsteady. She has a gun in her hand, the gun I took from those racist fucks at the gas stop. I still have a gun in my hand too, where is this one from? “Look what you did.”

  I look around and scream when I see the body of Officer Deacon on the floor. My heart thumps against my ribs and I fall backwards onto Willow but she shoves me away from her. “I didn’t do this.”

  She points at me with the gun. “You made me do it.”

  “No. I didn’t. I swear. I would never…”

  “You promised me blood.”

  I look at Nokosi. “I couldn’t let you hurt him.”

  “YOU FUCKING KILLED ME!”

  “No… you’re standing right there.” I look at my dad who has his hand on Nokosi’s chest, holding him back.

  “Remember?” Willow asks, tears falling down her cheeks. “It was YOU who made me go to the fucking party. It was YOU who wanted to live before you died. YOU KILLED ME! You made me a monster and then you slipped your pills into my drink, wrapped your hands around my throat when I was asleep and strangled me until I could no longer breathe.”

  The memory surfaces, coming to life.

  “What happened in Vegas?” my dad asks me.

  With chattering teeth I reply, “I followed her, I suspected her for a while but I didn’t want to believe it and I saw her stab that boy in the stomach.” I look at Nokosi. “She was in so much pain and she told me… she told me how many she’d killed, what she’d done to them, that she needed it.” I wipe my eyes on my arm. “I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t stomach what I’d seen. I was so angry. She’d ruined everything. I was dying and my sister was dangerous. She wasn’t Willow anymore. I remember drugging her warm milk and waiting for her to fall asleep. And then I squeezed her throat… I thought it was mercy. I didn’t want anybody to know what she’d done. I didn’t want that to define our family but then Mom came home.”

  I did. It was me.

  I look at my dad and then Nokosi. “What’s going on, how is she here if I killed her? I don’t know what’s happening?”

  “She’s not here,” Nokosi answers softly. “It’s all in your head, Lilith. It’s been you this whole time.”

  “We found your mother’s body in her car deep down a steep decline just days after we found your sister’s and I’ve been looking for you ever since,” Daddy whispers, smiling with so much sorrow and anguish my lip trembles. “Your blood was in the passenger seat. We knew you’d been in the wreck and knew you must have been hurt, you saw your mom die less than hours after your sister. You couldn’t handle the trauma of losing your family, so you created a new one. A replica. You became both Willow and Lilith, and Willow took on your sickness so that Lilith could be strong. Think about it. Look at your memories… they’re Lilith’s memories—”

  “No,” I look at my sister who is standing beside me, as solid as my father. “You’re the one who’s dead.”

  “Look at me,” Nokosi orders, stepping closer but not close enough to touch me. “I’m not dead. I’m telling you; your father is alive and your sister, whoever or whatever you’re seeing right now, isn’t there.”

  I reach out a hand and so does she. Our fingers touch.

  But she’s cold.

  I stagger a sob. “Are you dead? Did I kill you?”

  When she nods, I break down. My body is pained with hysterical tears and agony. It’s too much. It comes flooding back so quickly and violently that all the grief slams into me, buckling my knees. I can feel my hands around her throat, squeezing the life from her limp body.

  I’m sorry, Willow. I’m so sorry.

  My dad takes the gun from my hand and Nokosi pulls me into his arms.

  “I killed my sister,” I breathe. “I killed her. And my mom… she’d be alive if I hadn’t… I killed them. This is all my fault.”

  “Shhh.” Nokosi strokes my hair as I cling to him. “It’s not your fault.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Willow. I’m so so sorry.”

  The door opens and people enter the room. I hear their footsteps and their voices but I’m too deep in my hysterics to hear them.

  I’m a monster.

  “No,” Nokosi begs. “Don’t… don’t take her. Please.”

  “We have to,” somebody replies softly as I sob into his chest, soaking his blood-stained shirt with my tears. “She’s sick. We’re going to help her get better.”

  He holds me until he physically can’t anymore. Muttering promises that he loves me and that it’s all going to be okay.

  How can he still love me when I’m not good?

  Lilith

  “It has been six months since the discovery
of the School Sigil Searer in Las Vegas and two years since she claimed her first victim…” The TV goes blank.

  “How does that make you feel? Seeing all of those families rejoicing over their justice?” Doctor Geraldine, my therapist, asks.

  “It makes me feel… justified,” I respond honestly and the handsome doctor scribbles that down in his notebook.

  I twist my hands in front of my lap and look at the window where Willow is standing, staring out over the grounds. I wave at her, flapping a hand as though wafting away smoke and she vanishes.

  “Was she here just now?”

  I nod and then ask, “Will she always be here?”

  “Most likely,” he replies gently, smiling sadly at me. “But you’re in control now.”

  I nod again and reach for my tea, sipping it after blowing on it. It’s good tea. Reminds me of Dasan’s. The only other place I’ve had tea in my entire life so maybe that’s why I immediately think of him.

  “Why’d you kill your sister, Lilith? Do you want to talk about that?”

  I know why I killed her, I remember wrapping my fingers around her throat as I sobbed and screamed, and she didn’t even move beneath me due to the drugs. I couldn’t leave her here alone. I couldn’t stomach it. Not when she was going to continue killing innocent people and I was dying. I couldn’t hand her in and leave her to face prison and her lingering rage and pain without anybody left to love her. Mom was useless, Dad was gone.

  It was just us. I had to stop her. I had to.

  “It was the nicest thing I could have done for her.”

  He scribbles that down, eyes sad. “It must have been hard.”

  “Harder than you’ll ever know.”

  I look away, trying to repress the memories to a darker place. They haunt me, what I did, what I caught her doing, what she asked me to do for her, with her. I couldn’t, I’m not a good person but I couldn’t kill those men, I couldn’t trap them into death. But when she died, my brain somehow let me believe that that was exactly the path I chose. I rationalized it in my grief-stricken, fucked-up brain that she was doing the right thing and I had been helping her. I suppose as a way to take back the fact I killed her.

  The guilt weighs on me so heavily there’s little room for anything else these days. I understand why I repressed it. It’s too painful to bear.

  “Do you want to discuss…” He points at my stomach with his pen. “Because it can’t go undiscussed anymore. You might very well pass away before…”

  “I know,” I say, biting my lip. “But we have to ignore it for the most part. She can’t know. I can’t trust her to do something that might hurt it before I can give it a chance to live.”

  “You think you can keep it hidden from her?”

  I nod again. “She only sees what I let her see. She only knows what I tell her.”

  “And when it’s born?”

  “Send her to her father.”

  He reaches over the table and takes my hand. “You’re a very, very brave young woman, Lilith. You have been through so much. You don’t have to do this, there’s still time to end the pregnancy, have the surgery…”

  “No,” I respond, pulling my hand away. “It should be this way. I’m not a good person, I’ll never be a good person and I have this demon inside of me that will forever put those I love at risk. Regardless of whether or not my inner Willow is my sister, she believes she is, and she believes she’s the School Sigil Searer. If she gets control. If she beats me… I’m terrified of that ever happening, and the weaker I get, the stronger she gets.”

  He dips his head with understanding. “I’ll look after you until the end.” When he smiles kindly at me and holds out a tissue, I take it to wipe the tears I didn’t realize were falling.

  “I just want to leave one good thing behind.” My hand strokes my rounded belly again and she kicks me, comfortable and happy in her cozy little bubble.

  “Have you written to Nokosi? Have you replied to any of his letters?”

  “Not yet, it’s better that he doesn’t know. Not until it’s too late.”

  “You don’t think he should get a say?”

  I allow myself to think of Nokosi for a fleeting moment and of how it’ll hurt him if I even consider telling him about the pregnancy, just for me to die before the baby is viable. Not to mention the fact that we have to be extremely careful. I have control of Willow for now, but I dread to think what she might do if she knows we’re pregnant. She’s unstable now more than ever.

  Or I am…

  I shake my head. “I can’t risk him talking about it. We should stop talking about it.”

  How I want to talk about him and to him. How badly I want to love him, hold him, return to the forest with him and catch fish and live a simple life, just us. That will never be. Not anymore. It’s impossible.

  “Is she coming back?”

  I nod and remove my hand from my stomach. “Like you said, she always does, and she always will.”

  “What did I miss?” Willow asks, grinning and sitting on the empty seat beside me. “You look so intense. What’s going on? Damn, that doctor is a hottie. Don’t you think, Lil?”

  It never fucking ends.

  * * *

  Nokosi

  I raise the axe and bring it down, it splinters the wood into three pieces. They’re a bit dry this time of year. Great for burning. I drop the axe and wipe my face with the T-shirt I’ve hooked over the waistband of my jeans.

  After taking a gulp of water, I place the bottle back on the ground and pick up the axe again, letting it stall in mid-air after chopping another block when a truck I recognize pulls down the driveway over a hundred yards away.

  “Stay there,” Anetúte yells at me as he bounds out of the house. I’ve not seen him move that fast in years.

  What the fuck is Shaw doing here? Lilith’s father.

  Nash suddenly appears at my side and places his hand on my chest as I wipe my hands clean.

  Anetúte and Shaw speak sometimes, but apart from asking him how Lilith is, we don’t personally have fuck all to do with each other. It’s not personal, I just fucking hate him for abandoning Lilith when she needed him the most.

  If he hadn’t left, maybe she and Willow might not have suffered their pain so much.

  I watch them talk in silence. Nash and I don’t say a word. But then Shaw starts sobbing, his head falls onto my father’s shoulder who hugs him with one arm.

  My eyes burn.

  Nash holds me under his arm.

  She’s gone. She’s gone and she never replied to one of my fucking letters. I never got to say goodbye.

  “Fucking bitch,” I hiss, gritting my teeth and turning back to the block. I put another piece on it and whack it with the axe, letting all my anger out. “I’m glad she’s dead. She can go to fucking hell.”

  Nash squeezes my shoulder and I turn to him, hating that I want to hate her, but I can’t. She was the fucking light of my life. She was everything to me. She consumed me. Her kisses, her touch, her smell, her smile.

  I never accepted that I would actually lose her until now.

  I shove my brother away after a moment and he puts another log down for me.

  THWACK.

  And another.

  THWACK.

  And another—

  There’s an ear-piercing screech from far away and Nash and I turn to watch Shaw’s truck reverse and peel out of here faster than if flaming cops were chasing him.

  “Coyote?” Nash asks when the sound gets louder.

  “Doesn’t sound like any coyote I ever heard.”

  Dad makes his way towards us, his arms cradling something pink and fluffy. His cheeks are shiny with trails of tears and his eyes are swollen with grief and sorrow but then they hold something else… something akin to joy.

  “Son,” he says to me, beckoning me closer.

  “Is she dead?” I ask, crass and guarded. I don’t want to cry over her anymore. I’ve allowed myself to do so too much.
>
  “She passed away this morning at five fifteen,” he breathes, and my chest tightens. “She passed in her sleep, gently.”

  I’m never going to see her again. I’m never going to see her smile and she had the most beautiful smile. Her evil-as-sin eyes, green and fucking weird in a sexy and seductive way. Her laugh… so mischievous.

  Gone. No more.

  The lump in my throat gets bigger.

  “She’s at peace now, son, she was in a lot of pain.”

  I look down trying to compose myself.

  “But…” He takes a final step towards me and holds out the pink fluffy thing. “She left us a gift. A very precious, generous, beautiful gift.”

  I pull down the edge of the fluff, it feels soft like rabbit fur.

  A gasp gets clogged in my throat when I see a tiny little nose, fingers clutching a chubby little cheek, teardrop eyebrows above soft, closed eyelids and thick lashes.

  “She gave you a daughter,” he whispers, gently guiding her towards my chest.

  I look down at the girl almost in my arms and one of my tears falls onto her forehead. She cries, it startles me, so I push her back.

  “I don’t know what to do with a fucking kid. I want Lilith… not a baby.” I walk away, from them, from a child that’s supposed to be mine.

  “Wait!” my father calls, handing the girl to my brother who is more than happy to take her. He can be her dad. I don’t want this. “There’s something else.” He grabs my ponytail, something he did to us as kids but not adults. Then he slaps a large envelope to my chest. It’s thick and heavy and it has my name on the front in her handwriting. Or at least I think it’s her handwriting, I didn’t get her for long enough to ever fucking know.

  I carry it up to my room and lock the door, ignoring my brother’s coos to the child.

  How dare she just leave me a fucking baby I never asked for and then die?

  I punch my door, and then punch it again, and then again until my knuckles start to bleed and red stains the oak.

  “FUCK YOU!” I scream at her picture that I pinned there. My body hurts. My soul.