I don’t care if Tash thinks I’m lame over it—people lived there and now they don’t, and while I can’t stop thinking about it, I want to. God, I want to.
The next day we go back. It’s like I can’t stop myself—can’t stop him. I’ve started doodling on my assignments in the margins, little theories, little stories. . . . What if they were witness protection? What if the mob put a hit out on them? Carbon monoxide poisoning? What, what, what?
That day Tash says we should check the basement. So we do, and I can tell the second the door opens and the cool underground cave air comes rushing up to meet us that this room is different. I go down, slowly, one awful step at a time. The threadbare lightbulb dangling above the stairs. When it clicks on, even the air in my lungs feels cold.
It’s . . . empty.
Tash eases by me and goes to stand in the halo of pale white light pooling under the bulb. Just concrete. Smooth, very smooth cement, like glass.
“Something’s weird,” I tell him, afraid to put even one foot on the too smooth concrete.
He gives a single pained laugh. “Something’s always been weird. You didn’t just figure that out, did you?”
“Course not. But . . . Dunno. Thought maybe I could piece it together. But there’s nothing down here, just that old dryer.”
In the far right corner was a single dryer unit, the matching washing machine nowhere to be found.
“Lauren,” he said, and when I looked at him his black eyes had gone all electric and intense again. “There’s something I want to show you.”
“Go on.”
He nodded toward the corner with the dryer. “Move it out from the wall.”
“You move it. Lazy.”
Tash snorted. “You move it, Lauren. I can’t.”
“Weaker than you look, mate,” I joked, but like the empty basement, like the smooth concrete, it was all wrong. But I went anyway. Had to. What’s that word? Compelled. It’s like that, like I could feel his eyes moving me across the floor, lifting my hands and bracketing them around the dryer. Like it wasn’t even me wiggling that heavy piece of shit out from the wall.
But I did. He didn’t need to say what he wanted to show me. It was there, the only wonky bit of the concrete. Something stuck out, round, almost white, a knobby dark dent at the end reminding me right away of . . .
“Shit. Shit. No.”
I don’t know what Tash did, but I ran. Not out of the house. Why not out of the house? Compelled. I just couldn’t go, because the answer was right there. It was right there in the concrete or maybe in that look Tash kept giving me. When I looked up again, I was in the boy’s room, sitting on the bed, trying to catch my breath.
Tash followed, quiet as you like, and leaned on the doorframe, waiting or, I don’t know, watching.
“That was bones we saw,” I muttered. Sweating. Christ. I was sweating like mad now. “Bones . . . Tash, what the hell, mate?”
He came and sat next to me on the bed and lifted his hand. I flinched. Sorry, but, instinct. Habit. But he wasn’t taking a swing at me. His knuckles almost touched the patch job I’d done with Rimmel.
“He hit you,” Tash says softly.
“Yeah.”
Bones.
“He’s awful.”
Actual human bones.
“Obviously.”
Area’s gone to shit.
“A monster.”
At that, I go quiet for a long time. Tash stares at me, and it’s not scary this time, just gentle. I finally look back, and it’s like I can see in his brain. It’s dark in there, terrifying, but I don’t want to look away. He waits for me every day after school. For the first time in, like, ever, I want to touch another person, touch a man.
I lie down. I want to do it, and Christ I hope he lies down with me because otherwise I’m going to look stupid. But he does, and I can see how difficult it is for him to swallow normally. The same thing’s happening to me. It’s so, so quiet and for five minutes? Ten minutes? We just stare at each other, sometimes he smiles and I smile back, other times I don’t know what my face is doing.
“Tash, what did I see down there?”
“You trust me, don’t you, Lauren?” he asks, and I do, so I nod. “You had better, yeah? You’re lying in my bed with me.”
Even if I knew it deep in my chest, still stings to hear it. We laugh. You have to, right? You have to laugh when a thing like that is said, when a thing like that is the truth. I lean in to kiss him, and I lean right through his beautiful face. I’m shaking, Christ am I shaking, but he’s still there, letting me do it, letting me have it all sink in.
“Your uncle’s a builder,” he murmurs, and it’s like he’s kissing my ear, my cheek, my lips . . . I can’t move, I can only nod, only shake. “Lauren, he isn’t a person. He’s a monster, yeah? He’s a monster.”
It’s like I’m suspended there, stuck, like the air has turned to ice around me, freezing me in place on my side. But time is moving, and I can hear everything Tash is saying. When I close my eyes, I see the white bump in the concrete. His hand moves over my shoulder, and it doesn’t feel like anything but cool air, cool air turning colder, turning frozen. His hand is on my stomach, going lower. I’m going to let him. I would let him.
I would like him to.
“You have to make this right,” he whispers, kissing me again.
“I have to make this right.”
Tash touches his lips to the bruise on my cheek, and the little spark of cool feels nice. When I look again—really look—those two black coals for eyes of his are gone.
• • •
“Right, um, I’d like to report a murder.”
So here we are, back at the beginning.
“Could you repeat that?”
It’s easier to say the second time around. “I’d like to report a murder.”
“Start from the beginning,” he said, resting his elbows on the desk.
Christ, where to start? It was easier telling you lot. My hands are throbbing then, hot, hot, too hot and needly. Pricked all over. I hold my hands up for the cop and let him get a good look. I couldn’t get all the blood off, or really I just gave up trying. That’s probably what feels so weird and hot.
“There’s only one knife in the house,” I say, which is weird, because that’s not a good place to start the story. But I’m laughing—it’s funny, isn’t it? It’s all too unbelievably funny, when you think about it. “Left it on the table. Right in the open. Shouldn’t be hard to find, and that’s your job or whatever.”
The cop’s eyes are getting big now, and he’s listening. He’s listening good and proper.
“I had to make it right, you see,” I tell him, like I’m telling you. “The area had gone to shit. It really had. Sid made it shit. He’s a monster, yeah? I had to make it right.” He’s coming around the counter now, eyes big and nervous, and he’s putting his hand on his belt, like reaching maybe for a weapon, something to subdue me. That’s fine. I’d like to be subdued for a while.
I don’t put up a fuss. I don’t fight back.
No, I just keep my hands up and smile, maybe laugh again. Can Tash see this? He’s probably laughing too.
“He was just a piece of shit,” I tell the cop, and the word “piece,” the way it sounds, the way it slides out of my mouth, makes me remember the knife going in, smooth as silk, smooth as that perfect concrete, right into his lumpy belly. I shiver, because putting the knife in didn’t feel good, but it did feel right.
“Just slow down, little miss,” he says, hemming me in against the counter.
“No, it’s fine now,” I tell him, like I’m telling you. “It’s all fine now. I made it right.”
Madeleine Roux is the New York Times bestselling author of the Asylum series. She received her BA in creative writing and acting from Beloit College in 2008. In the spring of 2009 Madeleine completed an Honors Term at Beloit College, proposing, writing, and presenting a full-length historical fiction novel. Shortly after, she began
the experimental fiction blog Allison Hewitt Is Trapped. Allison Hewitt Is Trapped quickly spread throughout the blogosphere, bringing a unique serial fiction experience to readers. Born in Minnesota, she lives and works in Seattle, Washington.
Website: madeleine-roux.com
Twitter: @Authoroux
Facebook: facebook.com/madeleinerouxauthor
* * *
Shadowtown Blues
LUCY A. SNYDER
* * *
Scary
There are a trillion things about being teen
to scare the devil out of you. Or maybe in.
It’s basic: TV people say this must be your best
time ever, but these months are lumps of misery
in a gruel of boredom. And a queasy terror
that TV might be right: Life won’t get better.
It’s scary, so scary out there.
You can’t stop puzzling grim possibilities,
turning the future over like a cube to solve:
What if all the tedious crap of adulthood
is a burden that breaks you like a straw?
What if you sprint to meet your dreams
but crash in a stinking welter of failure?
What if nobody ever really loves you
so you die alone, broke, old, forgotten?
It’s scary, so scary out there.
It’s more fun to fear fictional monsters:
possessive devils, snap-jawed aliens,
howling wolves, snarling madmen,
ravenous dead, tentacled abominations.
Cue up the movie, crack open the book
Gasp and shriek and forget the world.
It’s scary, so scary out there.
Dangerous
“Oh, Johnny, it’s dangerous outside,” Mama cried
When good friends tried to take you caroling one December.
“Just stay in here where you’ll be safe and dry.”
You couldn’t wait to ditch her drab little town when she died,
Tried to forget her in that coffin, but still you remembered:
“Oh, Johnny, it’s dangerous outside,” Mama cried.
Nobody in the city would hire a kid, no matter how you tried
Homeless, shamefaced, you panhandled, growing thinner
Hitched back to her old house; at least it seemed safe and dry.
The floor is warped, the windows crawling with flies
And their relentless buzz calls you a loser, a sinner.
“Oh, Johnny, it’s dangerous outside,” Mama cried.
You tried to visit your good friends but they’d always hide,
Whispering, pretending you were nothing but a ragged stranger.
You burned when you spied them at the prom, so safe and dry.
Dogs found their bones in the woods; you weren’t tried.
You rock yourself in her rotting house, mind an ember.
“Oh, Johnny, it’s dangerous outside,” Mama cries.
“Just stay in here where you’ll be safe and dry.”
turnt
let’s get turnt, says the heartbreaking boy
i wanna get crazy, lose my mind tonight
smile, girl, shake what ya mama gave ya
the stereo rattles his Kia’s tinted windows
hungry, you shake your head, say it’s late
but he grabs your wrist: just one drink?
his Marlboro’s burnt down to the filter
he’s sweating smoke and his whiskey
smells so sweet. you take a long draw
he says Whoa girl you got a hollow leg
and your heart is pounding skin itching
ancient genes singing pupils constricting
he says Hey that cost me twenty, ease up!
but you know drink’s not your demon tonight
it’s the only solution to snuff your appetite
but your cheap date’s pulled the bottle away
you’re still so famished you can’t even think
and before you can say Stop you’re turning
pulse hammering inside the secluded car
skin splitting over hairy muscle, scarlet claws
and he’s screaming, wailing like he’s burning
your mind is a feral void of rage and need
and this boy you hoped to please is meat
booming bass muffles the crack of bone
conscience returns; you see what you’ve done
stare at sticky hands, know you have to move
again. avoid boys, endure your life alone.
it’s dark outside; the night’s your mother
shielding you, soothing your shame
so you quietly walk yourself home.
Lucy A. Snyder is a four-time Bram Stoker Award–winning writer and the author of the novels Spellbent, Shotgun Sorceress, and Switchblade Goddess. She also wrote the nonfiction book Shooting Yourself in the Head for Fun and Profit: A Writer’s Survival Guide and the story collections While the Black Stars Burn, Soft Apocalypses, Orchid Carousals, Sparks and Shadows, and Installing Linux on a Dead Badger. She lives in Columbus, Ohio, and is a mentor in Seton Hill University’s MFA in Writing Popular Fiction program.
Website: lucysnyder.com
Twitter: @LucyASnyder
Facebook: facebook.com/LucyASnyder
* * *
Beyond the Sea
NANCY HOLDER
* * *
The sea has neither meaning nor pity.
—ANTON CHEKHOV
The sea. Vast and black, an open grave.
Where Marie died.
Where I left her to die.
It was chilly for a June night, especially in San Diego. Anya had on shorts, flip-flops, a T-shirt, and a hoodie; she had realized too late that she should have worn a lot of heavy clothes. She hadn’t been thinking, but that was the point, wasn’t it? To stop thinking. There was no fairness or logic. There was nothing. Nothing left.
The moon was full. A year ago, it had not been. Exactly three hundred and sixty-five nights ago a crescent moon had hung in the sky, dancing with bright stars. A gigantic bloodred bonfire had burned away whatever was left of Marie’s inhibitions. In the scarlet light Anya’s best friend’s eyes had spun like soccer balls. Marie, a good girl gone very bad, very harsh, very crazy, whirling in a thong and a bikini top, head thrown back, while too many guys watched and hooted and cheered when she stumbled toward the fire. It was all guys, in fact, except for Anya and Marie. Those were not good odds, even if the guys hadn’t been older unknowns. Anya was furious with Marie for luring her there with the promise of a party. This was just a drugfest and date rape waiting to happen.
“Let’s leave, let’s go,” she had insisted. Ordered. Pleaded. The sea air reeked of weed. The guys were throwing half-full bottles of alcohol into the fire to see what would happen. Glass was exploding, comets of crystalline shards popping like fireworks. Marie kept dancing, not so much oblivious as lost. Utterly.
Drowning in misery.
Only, Anya hadn’t known that then. She hadn’t known what drowning looked like. Numb with anger, she had shifted her weight and watched her cell phone battery run out while Marie ignored her. She hadn’t brought her car charger. She couldn’t call anyone. Couldn’t use her safety word to let her mother know she had an emergency. Marie hadn’t even brought her phone. Marie had brought a little straw purse containing twenty dollars and her student ID. Bitch.
I was her ride. And I left her.
They had found Marie’s purse on the beach ten hours before her body had washed up. Her eyes had shone like mirrors, and that was how they confirmed death by drowning. Marie’s bloodstream had been filled with drugs and her lungs with seawater. How long had it taken? Had she suffered?
Hard to say.
Now, a year later, Anya’s conscience pushed her to her knees. Water swirled inches below the rock shelf she perched on and splattered spray and salt on her face. Barnacles bit into her skin; the rock was gritty and wet.
There were no tears. There had never been, not in the whole long year. She was as dry as a desert.
The cove was hard to find, though close to busy places: the Cabrillo lighthouse, now a museum, and Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, where they buried people in the military. You had to leave your car in a hiking trail parking lot, walk down the trail, and then push through chest high clumps of white sage and deerweed bushes. The cove’s seclusion had been part of the draw. You could do what you wanted and no one would be able to stop you. But Anya hadn’t wanted to do any of it, and she couldn’t stop Marie from doing it either.
Marie, her best friend for her entire life—preschool, Brownies, soccer, boys—had been out of control. Her parents’ ongoing divorce had been hideous. In the middle of it Marie’s stupid cheating boyfriend had dumped her. First came the cutting and then the partying, and Anya had known the cove was a mistake. But she couldn’t deny Marie anything. They had once been so close that now saying yes to anything and everything Marie wanted felt like building a bridge over troubled water, a way to calm her friend down. Maybe even to save her.
Now, a year later, she stared into the water and faced the truth: by then Marie had scared her and hurt her, and their friendship had been all but dead. In the black glassy ocean, she couldn’t see her reflection, but she couldn’t face herself anyway. No one knew that she had left Marie here, no one in the world. Those guys that night had been so preoccupied with Marie that they had forgotten Anya had been there. Or if they remembered, they didn’t know who she was. For months she had held her breath, bracing for trouble, or at least blame. Checking social media for someone to mention that Marie had been stuck there because her best friend had driven off. All night, every morning, at school, she braced for consequences. She began taking stuff to knock herself out, wake herself up. No one noticed that, either.