by Dia Reeves
What am I sitting on?
Sterling.
One of your twins? Where’s the other one?
Never mind. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.
Rue pulled Nettle to her feet, and Sterling jumped up, wiping dirt from his face. “Hi.”
Nettle nodded at him.
“I’d better go find Stanton.”
“Yes.” Rue gave him a speaking look. “Two of you can move faster than one.”
He took off down the path.
He’s cute, Nettle decided. Too skinny, though. Tell me about the Basin. You go already?
Rue told her sister all about it, and how the progress made there had come undone during dinner.
And the whole time they sat there berating me, Rue continued, they were eating their servant. The hypocrisy had to be seen to be believed.
I was having high hopes for these twins of yours, but not now. They sound awful. Why are you here with them? To leave them here to be eaten?
It was just a misunderstanding, Nettle. They’re okay. Even kind of nice. Especially Stanton.
Do you smell that? Is that Grandpa Thyme?
He’s not our grandpa anymore. I’m sure he’s around. Nettle wait!
But she wouldn’t. Nettle ran down the path, a much speedier runner than Rue had ever been. Rue caught up with her just as she was tackling Stanton to the ground, pulled her away before she slashed him.
“What are you doing with Grandpa!”
“Nettle stop. It’s Stanton. He isn’t doing anything.”
“He’s kidnapping Grandpa!”
“They need him.”
The worried blue of Nettle’s limbal rings iced over. You did this? You killed Grandpa?
He’s not dead.
Nettle stood. Pointed at Rue. “You did this.”
“I just need to borrow him.”
“We,” said Sterling. He and his brother stood next to Rue. “We need to borrow him. She was helping us.”
“Helping you to harm the family!”
“He’s not family.”
Nettle looked at the twins and then her. “So what is the plan with him? What will you do?”
Before Rue could think of an answer that wasn’t damning:
“Nettle?”
The sisters drew together, startled by their mother’s voice. The nearness. Calling to Nettle, who was uncharacteristically out of sight.
Sudden frantic rustlings, all around, as of a herd of deer trampling the woods. So many heartless out hunting together. If they saw Rue.
If they smelled her. Smelled Thyme. If they smelled her on Thyme.
“Go,” Nettle hissed. “Go with your twins. I’ll take care of this.”
Sterling grabbed Thyme, and when Rue would have spoken, would have said anything to erase the color of betrayal from her sister’s eyes, Stanton grabbed her hand, “Come on.”
“Is there food where you are?” said Nettle and Rue’s mother.
“No! No point to come this way,” Nettle called, staring Rue in the eyes. “It is not worth it.”
Rue had been back from her sojourn into the dark park for several hours when she came upon Karissa in the garden near the camellias. She sawed through the neck of a dead dog so vigorously, the woolen cap with bunny ears sat askew on her head.
Rue almost didn’t say anything, but it was near dusk. The servants would be freeing the dogs from the kennels at any moment, dogs that might not take kindly to Karissa dismembering their brethren.
“Do you need help?”
“No.” A few more strokes and the hacksaw completed its job.
Rue wondered if something similar was happening to Thyme. She made herself stop wondering.
It was done.
Karissa tucked the severed head under her arm and headed toward the house.
“You shouldn’t leave your kills out in the open,” Rue told her. “It’s disrespectful.”
“I didn’t kill it.” Karissa shook a bit of gore from her hand. “I’m glad it’s dead though. I need the head for my experiment.”
But when Rue continued to stare, Karissa sighed and dragged the dead dog to the incinerator. Rue helped her burn it, and Karissa even said a little prayer. “I hope you go somewhere you can jump and play. Amen.”
“You should take a bath,” Rue said as they entered the house.
“Aunt Grissel’s not back yet. She won’t be back until nine or ten.” Karissa took Rue’s hand, left it bloody and sticky. “Will you do it?”
After giving Karissa a bath, a nice steamy one with lots of bubbles and bath toys, Rue sat in Karissa’s room as she wriggled into her nightgown. The room looked nothing like a little girl’s normally did, according to the films Rue had seen—no pink lace or white ruffles, no pony decals on the walls or doll collection lining the shelves. On one side of the room, Karissa had a massive bed like Rue’s, and the other side was crowded with terraria. A box turtle eating a strawberry. A gecko on a rock licking its own eye. A skink shedding its skin.
“No snakes?”
“Peppermint gets jealous.”
A table near the window held a pile of model dinosaur bones in various stages of assembly.
“You’re going to add the dog’s skull to your bone collection?”
“The dog’s for my experiment. I told you that.” Karissa tugged a bunny from beneath her pillow and gave it to Rue. “What’s that smell like?”
“Lavender and…something.”
“That something is what Mama used to smell like. That’s the only thing I really remember about her. The smell is too faded for me right now, but if my experiment works, I’ll be able to smell her again.”
“How?”
“That head and the lizlings.”
Karissa swung a magnifying glass before what Rue thought was an empty terrarium, and through it Rue saw several white microscopic lizards crawling along the branch of a tree.
“The twins made them for me last year for a joke. Usually their dolls stop working after a while, but they never put a limit on the lizlings, so they keep being alive, and I’m glad. They can fetch things. Anything, as long as it’s super small. Like bacteria and molecules. They fetched me some camouflage from a chameleon one time. That’s how I can hide from Daddy.”
“The lizlings fetched you some camouflage,” Rue repeated, not sure she’d heard right.
“They went into a chameleon, got the camouflage and then they put it in there.” Karissa pointed at a row of hypodermic needles lined up on her desk. I mix in some disinfected water, just a little bit, and then I inject it. It hurts like everything, but it works real good. See?”
Karissa disappeared and then reappeared.
“That’s how you do it!”
“This time, I’ll send in the lizlings to get the smell glands from the dog’s head. Or,” she gave Rue an appraising look, “I could send them into you. You can smell good too cuz the smell’s been gone from Fluffster for a long time.”
Rue lifted the magnifying glass out of her way. “If you put those in me, my soul will destroy them.”
“Like white blood cells and germs,” Karissa said, and yawned. “That’s too bad. Stay til I go to sleep?”
Karissa let Rue tuck her into bed with Fluffster, and then held her hand.
“I can be your new sister.”
“I don’t want a new sister.”
“That was mean.”
Rue rested her head on Karissa’s back, exhausted suddenly. She listened to Karissa’s heart, such a strange heavy beat for a small girl.
“I already have a sister.”
“You can have more than one. I have two brothers.”
“I already have a sister, and I don’t think she likes me anymore. And I can’t blame her. I don’t want you to feel that way; I want you to like me.”
Karissa yawned again, and closed her eyes. “That’s gonna be my birthday wish—for Daddy to like me more than he hates me.”
“I wonder why it’s so hard to be love
d,” Rue whispered. “Do you know?”
“It’s because we care. People only love you when you don’t care if they do.”
“How do we stop caring?”
“I haven’t figured it out yet. But it sounds like a neat experiment.”
Chapter 20
The next night, while patrolling the grounds, Rue checked her phone for what felt like the millionth time, but Nettle had not returned any of her calls or texts. She put the phone away, shivering, and tried to focus on something else, like how beautiful the plantation looked in the moonlight. How fun it would be to twirl on the lawn in a floaty dress. To be twirled and then kissed beneath the stars.
Instead of romance, Rue found vomit.
She followed the trail of ejecta to the kennels. Found the twins throwing pieces of raw meat over the fence. Most of the dogs were out hunting, except the older and younger dogs who couldn’t keep up, and the ones that were more lizard than dog and preferred to stay in their little houses instead of braving the cold for scraps.
As they fed the dogs, the twins took turns retching. Toss an arm. Heave. Toss a leg. Heave. Toss some fingers. Heave. Toss half a face.
Rue recognized the face.
“Thyme?”
The twins straightened from their task, wiped their mouths, their chins, but neither twin seemed embarrassed to have her there at such an undignified moment, not even Stanton who was usually so priggish.
“Are we being offensive?” Stanton asked. “We remembered what you said about not wanting to be buried. How you prefer to be eaten.”
“It’s fine.” Rue grabbed a handful of fencing. Squeezed as a few of the friskier dogs fought over Thyme’s face. “He didn’t really belong anywhere. The dogs have as much right to him as anyone.” She swallowed hard. “Did Westwood learn what he needed to about heartless souls?”
“I think so,” said Stanton after a brief glance at his brother. “Dad fed part of Thyme to us while he was still alive, to see if it would strengthen our souls. It didn’t. Just made us sick.”
“Heartless aren’t good to eat. Our bodies manufacture toxins to make us inedible to predators. If Thyme had been less heart-drunk, less eager for death, you’d be dead.”
“I wish I was dead,” said Sterling. “Jesus. But at least now Dad isn’t curious about what’s inside you anymore, and Nettle gets to come to the spectacular. Everybody wins.”
“Except you.” They looked like the opposite of winners. Blood in their hair, puke on their shoes. So sick, but only thinking of Rue.
“Are you mad?” Sterling said.
Rue laughed mirthlessly. “My parents wanted me to…marry, I guess you’d call it…a boy I can’t stand. I said no. Your dad asked you to kidnap an innocent man and then eat him alive. You said yes. There really is something wrong with me. Something missing. Why can’t I just do what I’m told?”
“Must be nice.”
“Very nice. Until they disowned me. Now even Nettle hates me.”
“She said that?” said Stanton.
“She saw what I did; how could she not hate me?”
“Don’t assume. Talk to her.”
“She’s not allowed to have a phone. So I left a message with Heath. She hasn’t responded.”
“She will. Give her a chance.”
The twins carried their empty buckets back toward the house, occasionally retching, but nothing was left but saliva and bile.
“Y’all should eat to replace what you lost.”
“Don’t even mention food,” Sterling said. “I can’t eat anyone else—cooked or raw. Maybe tomorrow.”
“Or the day after.”
“Do y’all always throw up after eating people?”
They nodded.
“I’m no doctor, but that can’t be healthy. You should eat food you can keep down. I’ll cook something for you.”
“You can cook?” said the twins.
“I’ve seen it done.”
An hour later:
“What is it Stanton’s always scolding me about?” Rue asked.
Karissa looked up from her ice cream, wide-eyed and chipper despite the late hour. “Keep your clothes on, don’t spit, and close your legs when you sit.”
“That’s right. But what does he say about eating so piggishly that more of the food ends up on his face than in his mouth?”
“Ooo, that’s a big no-no.” Karissa wagged her finger. “That’s not proper table etiquette.”
“Cut us some slack,” Sterling said, he and Stanton’s faces covered in gravy from the mashed potatoes. “This is the first food we’ve tasted in forever that couldn’t taste us back.”
Their plates were piled with a random assortment—potatoes, raisin bread and cream cheese, cold mango slices, trail mix, and chocolate cake. Rue had had a mind to cook something balanced and nutritious, like they did on TV, but she hadn’t been able to find a cookbook, and the twins didn’t trust most of the items in their kitchen. And so she improvised.
“Yeah,” said Stanton. “I forgot what it was like to be hungry, to actually want to eat. I could eat the whole world!” As he threw open his arms, the mashed potato from his spoon landed on Rue’s cheek.
He grabbed Rue and ate the food off her face, nibbling at her in the process.
Rue flinched when his mouth found her neck and pushed him away. “The idea is to get you to stop eating people.”
“But we’re your family now,” Stanton said, stroking the red mark he’d made on her cheek. “So we’ll have to be the ones to eat you someday. We’d never feed you to the dogs.”
“It wouldn’t even be cannibalism, since heartless aren’t human. You look like you’d taste good, too.”
“Like lamb or something.”
“Did Thyme taste like lamb?”
“No,” Stanton shuddered. “But we’re not predators. You could make yourself taste like lamb for us.”
“I could also make myself taste like stink radish. Maybe I would just to spite—ow!”
Karissa giggled, her cold little teeth still embedded in Rue’s forearm, a good sharp grip for someone whose incisors were still missing.
“Your turn,” Sterling said, offering Rue’s other arm.
“Absolutely not,” Stanton said, glowering at them. “You know I’m a leg man.”
Somehow, Rue wound up on top of the dining table, howling as the Westwoods pretended to eat her. The twins were pretending; Karissa was more interested in squirting everyone, including herself, with chocolate syrup.
Would it be like this when she died? Devoured with such passion. Floating above the table, except their teeth anchored her. Such friendly teeth.
“Don’t that look right cozy?”
They sat up and gaped as Drabbin strolled in, wiping his bloody hand against his apron. He looked photo-ready as always from the neck down, but his face…
Someone had filled his head past capacity with air and then popped it, like a balloon. This was not the hallucinatory side-effect that Rue had experienced; this was real. Folds of skin hung over his left eye. His curly hair had drifted backward and to the side and had settled like a furry pet, hitching a ride on his shoulder. Other things had gone astray: his nose slightly sideways, his mouth twice as long and nearer his chin. His right eye was in the right place but, in the warped landscape of Drabbin’s new face, didn’t seem to be.
“What happened?” Stanton said.
“I let slip to the mister that I told Rue about his plans.” Drabbin didn’t look at them as he spoke. Instead he scanned the room, the walls, until he found a target: a mirror. “So he sent me down here to remind you what happens to family what talks too much.”
He stared at himself and then smashed the glass with his fists.
Chapter 21
Drabbin circumnavigated the house and killed all the mirrors. He’d already been in Rue’s room to destroy the mirror over the dresser and the one in the wardrobe. He’d used his fists, and blood and glass stippled the fluffy carpet.
&nbs
p; Rue lay awake and restless in bed, long after the crystalline crack of glass had quieted. Running her fingers over the bite marks Karissa and the twins had left in her arms and legs.
“Rue?”
She sat up, embarrassed, even though Karissa couldn’t see anything in the dark.
Rue switched on the bedside lamp.
“Careful. There’s glass everywhere.”
“I know. My room too.”
Karissa stomped over in her galoshes but kicked them off before climbing onto Rue’s bed. “I don’t want to sleep in my room tonight. It doesn’t feel safe right now. Can I sleep in here?”
“You don’t want to sleep in the twins’ room?”
“They’re in the lab. I’m tired.”
Rue made room and pulled back the covers.
Karissa snuggled against Rue who recoiled from her at first—Karissa was freezing.
“Did you go outside?”
“Aunt Grissel saw how dirty I was after dinner, from all the chocolate syrup, so she took me another bath. She made the water really cold. She can't tell the difference between hot and cold anymore. Then Drabbin came in and broke the mirror.” Karissa shivered.
“I’ll bathe you from now on, but why don’t you want to sleep in your room?” Rue asked, rubbing Karissa’s back to warm her. “Because of what Westwood did to Drabbin?”
Karissa mimed zipping her mouth and locking it. Then, for good measure, she reached up and zipped Rue’s mouth as well.
Rue turned out the light and thought she’d have trouble sleeping, but fell asleep immediately, even before Karissa. Who had turned into a bird. The same bluebird Rue had tried to rescue several days ago.
“See, I knew you were strong.”
The bluebird flew to Rue’s shoulder and began to peck it, ripping thin strips of skin away. As much as it hurt, Rue could only feel glad.
“I knew you’d find a way to survive.”
The bluebird swallowed her flesh and said, “Death isn’t the worst thing. I’m not even dead. I just like to eat dead things.” It jabbed its beak into her shoulder again, and the pain in her shoulder blazed.
Rue awoke with her shoulder sizzling and Westwood above her, his head eclipsing the overhead light. Aiming something at her. A gun? But it wasn’t shaped right.