Thou Shall Not: A Dark Ten Commandments Anthology

by Michelle Brown

  It doesn’t matter what he has to say. I don’t want to be around him or my mother right now. Spinning on my heel, I turn to go upstairs to my room.

  I lay in bed for at least half an hour before the sound of my door opening and closing burns my ears.

  She’s here.

  “Hey, baby,” she whispers as she lies behind me, her fingers finding her way beneath my shirt. “Your dad said you didn’t want any pizza. Are you all right?” My skin shrinks around my bones, and I choke.

  “I—I’m just not hungry.”

  She shifts in the bed and turns my face to kiss me. I swallow my sob when she removes my pants, kissing her way down my body as if what she’s doing is loving.

  Her eyes shift up to mine with a small smile. “I love you, too, sweetheart. I’m going to make you feel better, I promise.”

  Not a single word left my mouth making me wonder what the hell she hears me saying in her head to make her keep fucking doing this. Closing my eyes, I cover my face. All it does is make the wet sounds louder in my ears. I wonder, if I scream, would she even hear me? My dad would though, so I keep quiet.

  Her insensibility allows me to silently cry while my body fucking reacts to her violation. As arousal forces itself onto me, my thoughts take me somewhere safe. Somewhere peaceful.

  “Do you ever wonder what it would feel like to have maggots eat your flesh?”

  Adriel’s beautiful, gray eyes widen with her grin, and I snort. “I can’t say that I have.”

  She lifts ‘Optimus Bunny Boo’, a rabbit-legged Bratz doll wearing the head of one of my old Transformers. As she shifts around, her Hello Kitty panties flash at me, swelling up my throat. My face burns hot, and even though my stomach turns in embarrassment, I wish I had the courage to ask her to spread her legs wider so I can see...

  My lungs open up, and her face is in my thoughts. My mother’s kisses and body turn into my sister’s, drowning me in fantasies of how she would look and feel connected to me this way. A moan falls from my lips as her whispered name slips into the air.

  “Adriel.”

  ASHLEY DOESN’T GET discussed at dinner, and neither does my father’s failure to answer the school’s phone call. They all go on, ignoring how fucked up this is getting, as if we’re the goddamn Cleavers. Adriel talks of her school projects, and Mom leaves out her assault on the cadaver when she mentions the removal. My father somehow comes up with a day full of events that he never could have done while spending the morning with Snow. I keep quiet, only responding when being asked a direct question, and leave a mostly full plate by the end of dinner.

  I murmur a half-ass excuse about not feeling well and ask if I can skip church tonight. My father weirdly doesn’t argue, and I get into bed without bothering to shower first.

  My eyes flip open when my mattress dips, my heart stuttering at the sound of Adriel’s whisper. “Kai? Are you awake?”

  It’s dark out, so church is over. I wrap my arms around her shoulders, pulling her against me, allowing her head to rest on my chest. “I am now. How was youth group?”

  “It was fine.” She nuzzles closer. We lay in silence, and I’m almost back asleep when she says, “I did something today...it’s a secret.” Her whisper gets louder with her eagerness as she shifts up into a sitting position, the fingers of her dark form spreading out in the moonlight. “You’ll keep a secret, right?”

  My veins vibrate beneath my skin, yet I keep my voice even when I respond. “Of course. You can tell me anything.”

  She giggles, barely containing her excitement, bouncing next to me. “I put some arterial fluid in Ashley’s water bottle during her cheerleading practice! She was sick all day but wouldn’t go home because she wanted to perform at the pep rally.” With a shriek she adds, “I got to watch her die!” Clapping her hands, she abruptly stops when I don’t join in with her glee. “Are you mad at me?” Her voice goes back to monotone, but there’s a slight shake to it which is the closest she ever comes to crying.

  I lift her chin. “I’m not mad. What she did to you made me furious. It’s just... do you really believe she deserved to die for it?”

  What I don’t admit is that my mind is becoming numb. I understand by logical standards this is horrific, but with the events of the last couple of days, it doesn’t bother me as much as it should.

  She lies against me, squeezing tight and whispers, “Yes. She was a very mean girl.” After a moment she asks, “Will you sing to me, Kai?”

  Kissing her temple, my lips brush her skin. “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.”

  I LOOK OUT THE WINDOW to watch for Adriel. The bus should be dropping her off soon. She stayed home from school yesterday and we went sledding. While Mom and Dad were working, we cuddled up under a blanket with hot chocolate and watched TV as I played with her soft, black hair.

  “Do you love me, Kai?”

  Pulling my eyes from the cartoon she chose, I nudge her shoulder. “Why would you ask me that? Of course I do. I even love you more than Mom and Dad.”

  “You love me more than Mommy?”

  I swallow, meeting her smoky eyes. Adriel is like a cat. She slinks around without anyone aware she’s there. She always seems to know everything going on in this house, and it makes my eyes burn with tears and rage that she knows this.

  “I don’t like to do that stuff with her, you know. I just can’t figure out how to stop it. I don’t want to hurt her.”

  Scooting up to put her face directly in front of mine, she whispers flatly, “Thank you for not being mad at me about Ashley.”

  She leans forward, pressing our lips together. The beating beneath my chest is the only thing I can hear as she moves her mouth, soft and slow. She tastes like cocoa and peppermint. This isn’t a normal kiss. I can’t breathe. My skin pulsates over my bones with the urge to unbutton her dress and touch her chest. Moths fly around in my gut, and I don’t understand why I want this.

  Her.

  Desperate to find a correct thought in this moment, I reach up and grip her face, deepening our kiss.

  “Malakai,” she whispers. Her voice saying my name strikes me with the reality of what I’m letting happen.

  My breathing shudders against her lips. She’s my little sister, she’s supposed to be safe with me yet here I am taking advantage of her just like Mom does with me.

  I pull my mouth from hers and kiss the top of her head. I don’t want her to think she did anything wrong. I’ve been wanting to talk to her about something that’s sure to kill the mood anyway. “I caught Dad and Snow having sex in the arrangement room yesterday.”

  She doesn’t say it, though her stiff body tells me this was not something she knew. “Why would Daddy do that?”

  I wrap a tendril of her hair around my finger. “I don’t know.”

  I’ve been on edge ever since. I constantly want to be close to her, that’s nothing new, but now I keep thinking of kissing her like that again. Then my guilt sets in, and I force myself to stay away from her. It’s wrong in every sense of the word. Though my moral compass is on the fritz, it isn’t completely broken.

  On top of that, I’m scared about what will happen when they investigate Ashley’s cause of death. When they realize she was poisoned by formaldehyde, the first person they’re going to point to is the mortician’s daughter who was ruthlessly picked on by the victim.

  The final piece that’s going to spring free and cause me to fall apart is that she’s being so oddly quiet about Dad and Snow. Her not mentioning it makes me much more nervous than if she would express anger over it. She’s always worshipped our father, and I wonder if this will alter that.

  While she seems fine when she’s around him, last night she was coloring her barbie doll’s blonde hair with a blue marker. I found her in her room dismembering it singing, “Snow, Snow, don’t you know? Don’t you know? You did a bad thing, so it’s time to go.”

  The fact that she won’t hesitate to kill her classmate eliminates any doubt about what she wo
uld do to our father’s mistress.

  Finally, the bus pulls up, and she steps out, turning away from the house and skipping to the alleyway between our yard and the Wallace’s. I sprint down the stairs and across the yard. The fence creaks when I open it to get to the alley. She’s sitting on the ground, her long, black hair stark against her pastel, pink coat. I shove my hands in my pockets, scolding myself for not grabbing my own jacket.

  As I get closer, I hear her talking to herself. It gives me a chill to think that she’s like Mom. She’s always playing make believe though.

  The snow crunches under my shoes, so I know she hears me, yet she doesn’t turn around or stop what she’s doing. Once I’m near enough to look over her shoulder, I grimace before getting hit with a dizzy spell.

  The body of a decapitated rabbit lays in the snow next to its own head and the head of a squirrel. In her lap, she jabs a long stick into the neck hole of the headless squirrel. Once the stick is lodged far enough into the rodent’s corpse, she picks up the rabbit head and rams it down onto the stick. She giggles, laying it on the ground with blood-soaked hands, switching it for the rabbit’s body.

  I kneel next to her. Her dress is drenched, and her face is smeared in crimson. “What are you making?”

  “Mr. Rabbit wanted to be a squirrel, and Mr. Squirrel wanted to be a rabbit, so I helped them.” The rabbit’s body squelches as she stabs the stick into its exposed neck.

  “These are really neat, but they could make you sick. How long have they been dead?”

  She’s much more tender with the squirrel head, I’m guessing because of its size which suggests this isn’t the first time she’s ‘helped’ some poor creatures. I always wondered if she had something to do with the Wallace’s missing dog even before Mr. Wallace came over accusing her. I almost choked at my father’s response: Adriel loves animals.

  Yeah, loves ‘em to death.

  “Since this morning before school.” With the transformations complete, she picks up the rabbit-headed squirrel body off the ground. The decomposition is under way, and the stench is bad, but not as bad as it would be if it were summer. She shakes it, making its tongue flop around. “Oh, thank you! This is what I always wanted!” She speaks in a screechy, high-pitched voice to talk for her new macabre friend. “I shall now be called, Mr. Squabbit!” Placing ‘Mr. Squabbit’ in her lap, she picks up the rabbit body with the head of a squirrel. “Oh, yes, Mr. Squabbit, I feel the same way! My name is now Mr. Rirrel!” She lets her new friends greet each other before having Mr. Rirrel add, “It’s very nice to meet you, Mr. Malakai!”

  Despite the morbidity of her playmates, her joy makes me grin. “Well, hello, Mr. Rirrel and Mr. Squabbit. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Glancing at her to see her smile I ask, “Is it all right if I take my sister inside to get cleaned up? She’ll be back to play with you tomorrow.”

  She thinks for a second then makes Mr. Squabbit say, “Oh, yes. Mr. Rirrel and I have a tea party we need to go to anyway.”

  Laying the creatures against the tree she waves at them, taking my hand with her bloody one. “Did you have a good day at school?” I ask as I open the gate.

  “It was okay.”

  “Did they say anything about Ashley?”

  With a shrug she kicks the snow. “Since she did drugs, they think she took something laced.”

  My chest opens a little making it easier to breathe. If they suspect drug use, hopefully they won’t investigate any further. When we reach the house, I instruct her to take a shower and rinse the blood off her clothes while she’s in there.

  I walk into the kitchen where Snow is texting on her phone, twirling her blue ponytail between her tattooed fingers. There’s nothing nice I have to say to her, so I keep my mouth shut on the way to the fridge to get a soda and a piece of leftover pizza. Dad told me this morning we’d be responsible for our own dinner tonight since he’s having a bible study at the church.

  “I want you to know,” she says to my back, “what happened between Micah and me was a one-time thing. I swear. It won’t happen again.”

  Rolling my eyes, I do nothing more than flip her off. I climb the stairs to my room, fall on my bed, and put on headphones before I reach beneath the mattress for a knife. Once I push up my sleeves, I swipe the blade across my skin. With a sigh, my nerves calm, bringing me back to something related to normal.

  The light catches my camera sitting on my desk, and I get off the bed to wrap the strap around my neck. I push open my window, giving the lens a clear shot of the kids playing in the snow while Tommy Wallace and his father toss a ball to each other in the yard. They’re all either oblivious to the darkness around them or they choose to ignore it. Either way, their existence is fiction. They hide behind the mundanity of everyday life and the responsibilities that come along with it.

  The sun casts a golden glow on everything it touches, telling me that more time has passed than I’d thought. I check Adriel’s empty room before heading back downstairs. She’s not in the kitchen or the living room, so she must be downstairs with Mom. As soon as I turn down the hall leading to the morgue, I see her standing with Snow at the top of the stairs.

  “I don’t know why, she just wants to talk to you,” Adriel says.

  At the exact same moment I open my mouth to speak, she shoves Snow with all her might. It’s like those disgusting internet videos. I don’t want to see what’s on them, yet I can’t stop watching.

  I run up to Adriel as Snow hurdles down the stairs, thumping every time she hits a step. Her body lands at the bottom hard, hitting the wall before laying twisted and broken.

  Adriel looks up at me, holding my hand as she smiles. “There. Now she won’t touch Daddy ever again.”

  Toe Tag

  Adriel~17 years old

  I hate school so much. Having to be with these people for another year makes me afraid I’ll go bonkers. Their constant teasing hasn’t let up once since kindergarten. Daddy used to say I would find a friend eventually, but he doesn’t say that anymore. My only friends are Malakai, my parents, and my creations. That’s all I need.

  I haven’t killed outside of family night since Snow Ryan because I promised Daddy I wouldn’t. It’s the hardest promise I’ve ever had to keep. Ever. Especially because Bridgett Matthews is the worst. Since Ashley died, she’s become the queen witch at Lettleton High. She spreads rumors that we eat the bodies at the morgue and have sex with the cadavers. It’s stupid, yet all these morons believe it. I want nothing more than to turn her into a cyclops. It wouldn’t be hard—I did it to Katy Reynolds’ cat last year. I smile, imagining how fun it would be to scoop out her eyeballs and sew her eyelids together. I’d cut a hole in her forehead and glue one of her eyes inside. It would be even more fun if she were alive though. I’ve never done that.

  Once I graduate, I’m going to take classes online, so I can work in the morgue with Mommy and Malakai. I hate that they’re still fucking, even if it’s become a lot less frequent. I despise seeing them together, yet whenever I know she’s in there with him, I sneak out of bed to watch, sliding my fingers inside my slippery hole. He says he doesn’t like to do those things with her, but I see how hard he thrusts into her when she moans for him, “Yes, Malakai, make Momma come, baby”. It equally sickens me and makes me wet.

  I’ve tried to get him to touch me like he does her, but last month, my bravery made him angry.

  I love it when Kai lays in bed with me. He kisses me softly and slowly, touching me everywhere other than where I want him to. My desire to feel him is overwhelming. Reaching down, I rub his cock over his sweatpants.

  His fingers squeeze my wrist as he seethes, “Adriel! What the fuck are you doing?” Even with the fury in his whisper, his cock grows in my hand.

  “Please? I want to suck on it. I know you like that.”

  His eyes blaze with what I’m scared is repulsion as he shakes his head and pushes my hands off of him. “Don’t, ever do that again, Adriel.”

  I almos
t beg him to come back when he gets off the bed and leaves without even saying ‘Good night’.

  My anxiety to get out of class is worse than normal because we get to kill a sinner tonight. Mr. Jasick. It’s been months since our last family night. Daddy told us he was getting him yesterday. He’ll keep him drugged long enough for us to get there, so he won’t make too much noise during the day.

  The final bell causes a chain reaction of books closing and mouths talking. I shut my notebook, throw my backpack over my shoulder, and get out of there as fast as I can to find Kai. My MaryJane shoe hasn’t even stepped into the hallway when I hear Bridgett’s piggy-squealing voice.

  “Hey psycho, you can answer this: Does a dead man’s dick harden automatically, or do you have to do something creepy to get it up and ride it?”

  The girls around her laugh, and I glare at them. They’re such pathetic sheep. It obviously takes blood to make a dick hard, and blood doesn’t pump in a cadaver. Death erections are rare. The only way angel lust could ever happen is if the dead were hanged or suspended in some way. I look at my homeroom teacher, and she’s either deaf or uninterested in what Bridgett and her coven are saying.

  Walking over to Bridgett, I whisper, “You better pray you don’t die and get sent to us.” I lean forward, brushing my glossless lips across the shell of her ear. “I will do things to your corpse that you can’t fathom.” I smile at her and wave, raising my voice to normal. “See you later.” Her pale face makes my giggle hard to keep down.

  Since we’re not allowed to run, I walk as fast as I can to the senior hall. When I’m halfway to Kai’s locker, I see him leaving class all by himself. My heart pitter patters at the way he brushes his raven hair out of his face. His worn, black shirt is old but fits him better than ever. I rush to him as he lifts his books into his locker, giving me access to hug his torso.

  “Are you ready?”