Chapter 4
Chapter
Four
She’s dead.
My mother’s face, bloodied and broken, flashes in front of my eyes.
She stopped breathing long before I stopped hitting her, but the cold rage that made this coolness in my veins look like a summer breeze had demanded I keep going.
Some sick part of me wanted to see if maybe she was the monster, and what was hiding under all that pale skin and those pretty blue eyes that I inherited.
He’s dead.
The bathroom smelled of cooking meat and burned hair.
The lights buzzed and surged, flickering and turning the scene into something even worse than it had been before.
That’s when the cold receded, at least momentarily, and I could only stare at my dad in the bathtub, taking in every single detail that would imprint on my mind forever.
I’d thought he still loved me. I didn’t know he made his choice long before my first blow with the flashlight.
He’s dead.
Esme whimpers, like she’s trying to scream, but it’s too breathy and soft to be anything close.
Alan is still bleeding on the hardwood floor under us, as the crimson pool is growing and heading for my shoes.
I don’t step back, though. I doubt it’ll make it far enough to stain, and they’re black, anyway.
His eyes stare up at me, the light having faded sometime in the last few minutes while my mind is blurring from here to years ago, then back to here again.
It’s Esme’s cries that finally snap me back to the present. My bloody fingers curl around the scissors in my hand, and I let out a long breath. I’m still so comfortingly cold, and when I look at Esme, it strikes me as strange that she’s so hysterical.
“Calm down, Es,” I find myself saying, though that only has her whirling on me with wide eyes and shaking hands.
“Calm down?” she hisses. “Calm down? You killed him, Tova! You murdered him!”
I turn the scissors in my hand, gazing down at the now dull metal covered in his blood.
My first order of business will be washing my hands, and I doubt I’ll be keeping these clothes after tonight is said and done.
This time, I doubt I’ll just be shipped off to an asylum in Ohio if they find out I killed someone.
In fact, I doubt I’ll get to see the light of day ever again.
That’s a more unsettling thought than having killed Alan, though I sigh down at him with a look of frustration.
He’s really ruined my night. My headache continues to throb at my temples, though weaker now, as if the cold feeling is somehow dulling the pain and allowing everything to snap into focus around me.
“He would’ve killed you.”
“He’s dead!” she wails, her voice a little too loud for my comfort. “He’s fucking dead, and—fuck!” She stumbles back until she’s against the counter again. “W-we have to call the cops. We have to—”
I cross in front of her and pick up her phone with my clean hand, offering her a flat look as I do. “No, thank you,” I reply as she watches me carefully open a drawer to pull out a plastic bag. “I’d like to stay out of jail, or another asylum. Honestly? Not that enjoyable.”
“What are you doing?” she asks after a few moments of watching me start the cleanup process. “How do you…know what you’re doing?”
“So, the fun side effect of being in an asylum for the criminally insane is that I made friends,” I explain easily as I work.
It gives me something to do while going through the mental checklist I’ve never actually had to use.
“I had a friend who, uh, killed his sister. After we were let out, he and I made other friends. They did more than kill their sister. I learned things.” I shrug my shoulders at her when she shoots me a horrified look.
“It’s good to know what to do in emergencies, you know? ”
Esme’s mouth opens, then closes. She looks down at Alan’s body again, and I see something almost like regret on her face, before another expression that I can tell is relief. But she pushes it away in a moment, her eyes darting up to mine guiltily to see if I’ve noticed.
I have, but I don’t plan on judging. Instead, I hold her gaze, studying her, as she does the same to me.
Her lips part as if she wants to ask something, or protest, but then Es squares her shoulders and straightens.
“What can I do to help?” she asks. “Though I need to tell you in advance, I don’t think he’s going to go in the food processor, no matter how small we chop him up.
And, uh, I will not be the one chopping him up. ”
A smile twitches at my lips and I hand her a bag.
“Personal items,” I tell her. “Put them in there for me. We’re going to have to get him out of here, but we’re not going to do it yet.
See if he told anyone where he was going.
You know his passcode, right?” Already, Es is unlocking his phone, and she leans back on the counter with her hands trembling only slightly.
“Wait, are you telling me we’re going to have to hang out with his dead body?” she blurts out suddenly as my words sink in. She glances down, then up. “In here?”
“Yep.” I unroll a garbage bag, and use the kitchen scissors in my hand to cut the side.
“But we’re not going to let him bleed all over the hardwood.
I don’t want to have to re-stain it, do you?
Hell, I don’t actually know how.” I’m no handyman.
“So we’re going to make this into a tarp, you’re going to help me roll him onto it, and we’re going to turn him into a human burrito.
” Glancing up at her, I catch her momentary horror but choose to ignore it.
“Can you go get the duct tape from my room?”
Esme squeaks when she drops Alan’s head a foot from the trunk, her grip finally giving out as she fumbles to keep hold of him. Panting, she looks up at me in abject horror, but I only offer her a look with raised brows.
“He doesn’t mind,” I tell her quietly, glad that the parking lot is just as empty as we predicted it would be.
Our building is low-quality enough that we don’t have cameras in the elevator or the parking garage.
Something that was impressed upon us when we moved in by the chronically high building manager.
Usually, that’s a concern. Tonight, it’s a blessing.
My words have the opposite effect of what I intended, however. Esme’s face pales, and even in the low light of the half-underground garage, I can see her going a bit green around the edges. I’d laugh if I weren’t trying to think of what we need to do here, and making sure I don’t miss anything.
Could I call Cass? Sure. But I don’t really want to hear him lecture me. Maybe Wren would be the better call, but he’s never liked me so much. Or at least, never quite trusted that I’d gotten over my “phase.”
Clearly, he was right.
Killing Alan had been easy. Easier than it should’ve been, and I almost hated washing his blood off my hands instead of smearing it over my face and lips just to see how it felt.
With a huff, I shake my head, trying again to clear it and to shake off the feelings that keep bubbling up.
I can’t do this. I can’t be this. Not now, when I’m an adult and the court definitely won’t give me any leniency.
Esme pops the trunk of her car and together we hoist Alan into it, his body thumping around and making her wince again as he rolls onto his side.
I’ve taped him up in trash bags so well that he’s not going anywhere, and his blood definitely won’t be getting in her car with all the prep work we’ve done to make sure of it.
While our fingerprints will be on him, that’s okay, I hope. If he’s found, we can tell them the truth. That he was dating Esme, and that he and I were together often because of it. Not that I’d ever willingly touch him, but the cops wouldn’t have to know that.
The drive to the bay is silent, and I use my phone’s GPS to take us near enough to the trail where the body was recently found that I hope we can piggyback off the PNW serial killer who, right now, doesn’t have a cool name.
The whole time, I can see Esme talking to herself, mumbling soundlessly as her lips move and her eyes stay wide and mostly unblinking.
Maybe I should be like that, I think to myself. Horrified, instead of going over everything in my head to make sure I didn’t forget an important step. I should try to keep myself together and slowly shaking apart, like how Esme’s hands occasionally twitch or tremble.
But I’m not.
I can’t understand her reaction, and it makes me wonder if what I did so long ago wasn’t just a product of all the years of abuse and neglect I experienced. Maybe Mom had been right. Maybe deep down I’m—
Don’t go there, Tova. I chastise myself silently and lean back with a sigh, eyes closing as I ease into the passenger seat.
The drive passes slowly, but at the same time, I’m almost surprised when Esme pulls into a parking spot at an old trailhead.
She doesn’t pop the trunk, but she cuts the engine, and when I expect her to say or do something, she just sits there.
Hands on the steering wheel.
Staring straight ahead.
She looks petrified, both literally and not. Except her lower lip trembles, and I see tears in her eyes, which feel a bit pointless now to me. I’ve already killed him, and she’s helping me clean up. The time for crying or other options has long passed.
“You’re okay.” The words pass my lips as a statement, not a question. With only a little hesitation, I reach out and touch her shoulder, my fingers light on her hoodie. “You’re okay, Es. We’re almost done.”
“Someone is gonna find him,” she whispers. “There’s no way he’ll—”
“Get eaten by sharks? Get torn apart by dolphins? It’s the bay, Es. There’s a current, there’s marine life. And even if he is found, we’ve planned for this. We’re close enough to where they found the other body to pin it on whoever did that. We’ve planned this out.”
At least, to the best of my ability.