Chapter 50 #2
“I’ve been trapped in a jar my whole life,” Billy says.
“Not for much longer. Just three more years—”
“I don’t have that long.”
Her pronouncement takes the air out of my lungs.
She says it so calmly, so matter-of-fact, I know she’s not being dramatic. My mind scrambles as I try to figure out what to say, a way to dig her out of this ditch she’s in.
“You’re fine.”
She shakes her head, her bleeding lip quivering. “I feel wrong, Bash. Like I don’t belong in my body anymore.”
I scoff. “It’s probably just an iron deficiency or something. I’ll speak to Evelyn tomorrow. Tell her she’s gonna have to feed you more unless she wants to keep taking you to the doctor. Doctors ask questions. She doesn’t want that kind of attention—“
“I don’t want to be in this jar anymore.”
The determination in her quiet voice cuts effortlessly through my babble.
“What’s that ‘sposed to mean?” I mutter.
“I want to be free.”
“Okay,” I sit back, raking my hands through my hair.
She holds herself up in the water without my help, watching me so intently, the hairs on my nape rise.
“Okay, okay. We’re gonna clean you up. Get you dressed.
” I lower my voice. “Then you’re gonna pack some clothes, and we’re gonna climb out that window.
It’s high, but I’ll help you down. There’s a dumpster by the bakery that kinda shields the wind a bit.
We can stay there until they open. They know me by now.
They’ll help us. Maybe we can work there for a bit until—“
She presses her fingers to my mouth.
“You have to break my jar, Bash. It’s a sin if I do it, and I don’t want to swap out one hell for another. If I’m going to stand any chance of getting into heaven, you have to break my jar.”
There’s a whining in my ears, my mouth going dry. I snatch her fingers away from my mouth, shaking my head furiously.
“I can’t do that. I won’t.”
“You’re the only one who can.” She takes my hand, turning it over and pressing her lips to my inner wrist. “Please, Bash. Please.”
Tears trickle down her face, but they don’t seem to sting the wounds on her cheek because she doesn’t even seem to notice them.
“I know what I’m asking is unforgivable. After everything you’ve done for me, it’s selfish, and cruel, and the worst thing I can ever do to you. But I need your help, just one last time.”
Goosebumps break out on my skin when she kisses my wrist again. The skin is so sensitive there, it’s beyond ticklish.
Then I realize what she’s insinuating.
She’s not just asking me to kill her.
She’s telling me exactly how she wants it done.
“No!” I tug my hand free, rubbing furiously at the spot she kissed when it won’t stop tingling. “That’s…that’s murder! You’re asking me to murder you!”
“It’s okay. God won’t punish you. I promise.”
“Fuck God,” I croak. “What has He ever done for you?”
Billy winces faintly as she tries to smile at me. “He gave me you.”
I read an article in a clinical psychology quarterly a couple of weeks back.It premised that two wolves live inside every person, constantly at war. The author called them Good and Evil, which struck me as just plain lazy.
Apparently, whichever one you fed more often ultimately won.
It sounded like Jungian shadow theory packaged for mass consumption.
But I get it now.
There’s this intense internal pressure building at the base of my skull that feels almost like the start of a headache. I can feel myself being pulled in two directions—morality versus immorality. Wrong versus right.
Good Wolf versus Bad Wolf.
I guess they’re both puppies. Newly born scraps of fur, mewling for sustenance. And even though I’ve already decided what I’m going to do, I don’t know which one is about to be fed.
Is mercy killing good or evil?
Is setting someone free—through death—moral or immoral?
Will slicing my sister’s wrists and watching her bleed out in the tub forever mark me as a good man, or a monster?
My wolves are only just opening their eyes. Only just staggering to their feet.
I know there will be situations where I’ll need them both. Surely I don’t have to feed only one?
The wolves don’t weigh in on my dilemma.
I suppose I’ll have to make this choice alone.
Except…it doesn’t feel like I have a choice.
I’ve spent a considerable portion of my life doing my utmost to ensure Evelyn didn’t torture Sybil. Usually by making Evelyn even angrier at me so she’d forget to punish Billy for whatever bullshit transgression she accused my sister of committing.
I’d be a damn hypocrite if I stopped taking care of my sister right when she needs me most.
So…yeah…I guess there isn’t a choice, actually.
The resistance I’m feeling is cowardice, not guilt.
I leave Billy in the bath and stride to my room on steady legs. My mind is clear. My breathing slow and even. My hands have stopped shaking.
I keep the razor blades I stole from Evelyn’s bathroom trash in a tin under my mattress. I use them to carve things—I’m working on a chessboard at the moment, about a third of the way through carving the pieces.
I take a blade.
When I return to the bathroom, Billy is humming Hallelujah. She stops when she senses me come closer and turns to face me.
She looks insignificant in the bathtub. A pale, skeletal girl with faded hair and shadowed eyes. Like a fairy someone left tied up in their basement too long, her tiny frame starved of magic.
I sink to my knees beside the tub.
“Are you sure about this, Billy?”
She holds out her arm, nodding slowly. “It’s the only thing I’ve ever been sure of.”
I take her arm. The veins at her wrist are clearly visible under her paper-thin skin, those blue lines mapping the geography of a wilted life.
“You can’t change your mind,” I warn her.
“Why would I want to?”
The blade warms in my fingertips.
A thrill chases up my spine when I press the blade to her flesh, and that makes me hesitate.
There’s a low growl coming from somewhere inside my mind.
It feels—hungry. Desperately, desperately hungry.
“Please,” Billy whispers. “Please!”
I pierce the corner of the blade into her skin and drag it down her wrist. I expect resistance, but it’s like shearing through smooth clay.
She lets out a sharp gasp, but she doesn’t pull away.
Doesn’t scream.
Doesn’t start crying and panicking.
She starts humming again.
Her blood pours out in a rush. It swirls in the milky bathwater, its coppery scent mixing with the lavender, almost strong enough to wipe out the mildew.
“This one too,” she whispers, stretching out her other arm for me.
I cut again, trying to ignore the way my body—especially my dick—pulses in rhythm with my heart.
This time, she doesn’t even gasp as she watches the blood sluice down her wrist with those sad green eyes of hers.
“Are you scared?”
A tear races down her cheek, her lips compressing. “A-A little,” she whimpers.
“Do you want to stop?”
“No—”
But I’m already standing, ready to fetch something to wrap the cuts, ready to keep her blood inside her.
She grabs my pant leg, tugging. “No! Please, Bash! I can’t do this alone!”
Blood traces sinuous lines down her pale arm as she stares up at me.
I kick off my shoes and climb into the tub behind her, still fully clothed, the water instantly soaking through my pants.
She lets out a relieved sigh, sinking back against me. She’s somehow heavier than any time I carried her, yet the pressure of her body against mine is…euphoric.
I wrap my arms around her, my hands gliding down the back of her arms. I grab her hands and twist them so I can see the cuts I made along her wrists.
Her blood flows faster now—a thin, intermittent stream trickling into the bath. The water turns pink, then red. Sybil’s humming is getting softer, her body growing heavier against mine. She rolls her head onto my shoulder and lets out another sigh.
I can feel her heart beating against my chest.
Too fast. Too faint.
Like a baby bird that knows it’s dying.
“Light shows what eyes shouldn’t see,” I murmur, pressing my lips to her damp hair.
“But the dark keeps bad places safe for me,” she finishes in a desperate whisper.
I hold her a little tighter and try to ignore the press of her body against mine.
Holding her wrist, sliding that blade through her flesh—everything leading up to this point—is doing strange things to my mind and body.
But all it takes is a soft growl in the back of my head for the judgment to pass.
Is that the bad wolf?
I snuggle closer to Billy, nuzzling the side of her neck until all I can smell is lavender and blood and her.
“I love you, Bash.”
“I know,” I murmur.
But it’s not enough. I know it’s not enough, not just from the way she tenses against me. There’s a sickening weight in my stomach.
“I…” I force a hard swallow and croak out, “I love you too.”
A shadow flickers over us.
For a perversely surreal moment, I’m convinced it’s Billy’s soul leaving her body.
Especially when Billy murmurs, “Oh!” like her life is starting to flash before her eyes.
But then I hear the faint flutter, and I look up to see a moth circling the bathroom light.
It must have come in through the bathroom window that we always leave open, despite the weather.
It’s supposed to help with the mildew and mold, but at the rate those black spots are advancing on the ceiling, we’d need a nuke.
It flutters around the room before heading back toward the light. It ventures close enough for me to capture it.
I cup it gently in my hands as it flutters against my palms, and I bring it down to rest on the back of Billy’s bloody wrist.
The moth walks across her hand, its wings catching the light. Brown and gray, nothing special, but Sybil watches it like it’s the most precious thing in the world.
Her head lolls against my shoulder.
“Bash?”
“Yeah, Billy?”
“Will you stay with me? Just until—”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Promise you’ll stay?”
“I promise.”
“No…promise me you won’t follow me.”
I open my mouth and then close it again.
“Promise you’ll stay, Bash. Promise me your life will be full of love and joy.”
She’s delusional from loss of blood, of course. Nothing about my life will ever be joyful. Love is merely an illusion. A fiction told in fairy tales and romance books. And even if it was real, I’d have to leave the safety of the shadows to find it.
We’re creatures of the dark, Billy and I. That’s The Witch’s curse.
But I shove all those thoughts away and say, “I promise,” because Billy doesn’t need to hide in the shadows anymore.
“Thank you, Bash.”
I know she’s not just referring to the promise I already plan to break.
My sister just thanked me for killing her.
She hums a few more bars of the hymn as the water turns red.
The moth flies away. The humming stops.
And Billy—my only friend in this godforsaken world—finally breaks free of her jar.
The bathroom is silent except for the drip of the faucet and the flutter of moth wings against the window as it tries to find the exit.
When it finally escapes, I realize I’m alone.
Absolutely, achingly alone.
I fancy Billy hitched a ride to heaven on the wings of that moth. If anyone deserves a fairy-tale ending, it’s my little sister.
I stay in the bloody, milky water until it goes cold.
Then I get out, change into dry clothes, and climb out the bedroom window into the chilly night.
I don’t cry.
Not even when I look up and see the moon glowing in the sky.
I haven’t experienced joy in a decade, if not more. Sadness didn’t last long either. Now all I experience is rage and spite and malice…but now that Billy’s gone, I know those will atrophy too.
There is no place for emotion in my world. I’ve never had a soul, and Billy took my heart with her when she fluttered out of her broken jar.
You can’t break what you can’t touch.
That was Billy’s only weakness.
She could never give up that most fragile part of herself, like I did.
If she had, The Witch would never have been able to trap her.
And I would never have had to set her free.