Chapter Eight #2
Until crack! His skull splits, blood instantly pouring out of him.
I’m gasping, panting and heaving, crying and crying and crying . I can’t see. I can’t breathe … I can’t…
I just… can’t believe it.
“I love her…” I sob.
And she’s gone.
This can’t be real.
“Nicely done, mate.” The familiar voice settles me down. I sniffle, my tear-stained gaze lifting slowly to where Leo is leaning up against the wall, smoking. “Now… Let’s get this cleaned up, shall we?”
“Snap out of it, man.”
“No… No… No no… no no no.” I’m shuddering, down to my bones. Sick to my stomach. I’ve already thrown up twice. “This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening.”
“Hey!” Leo shouts at me, grabbing me by the face until I’m forced to stop mumbling and sniffling. “Pull yourself together.”
“I c-can’t…” I whimper, cowering as he glares at me; dark, sinister eyes behind a tattered blue mask. “She’s g-gone. I… k-killed her.”
“Trevel, look at me.” His voice is deep, commanding. “I need you to wade through the drug-fog and harness every bit of your mental capacity right now.”
Blinking at him, I sniff, “What does that… m-mean?”
“You know what it means,” he says firmly. “ Think , Trevel.”
My head goes back to swaying. Lips shivering, breaths labored. “I don’t… I don’t know what… h-happened.”
“ Yes , you do,” he snaps. “Think.”
Pulling a long inhale, I attempt to steady my heart rate, glancing at Andres Alvarez, dead on the floor. There’s a pool of blood around his head.
“I killed him,” I whisper.
“Yea… And?? ”
My eyes move to the doorway to Alice’s bedroom. I whine an aggrieved sound. “She’s dead. My Alice …” Tears slip from my eyes once more. “She was the love of my life… and now she’s just… gone.”
The feeling of Leo’s grip on my face loosens. His furry hands slip down onto my shoulders. “I am sorry, mate. She was a good girl.”
Flinging a glare in his direction, my eyes harden. “Why didn’t you stop me?! You wanted me to kill her, didn’t you??”
His look of sympathy returns to one of frustration. “No. Wrong. You will not blame this on me…”
I let out a breath and rub my eyes. “I miss her already…”
“Go…” His voice echoes, more of an internal command as I scramble to my feet and dart into Alice’s room.
I freeze when I see her still lying on her bed. And I want nothing more than to crumble to bits on the floor and die with her. But I force myself closer. At the edge of her bed, I look her over, attempting to find any sign of what might have happened.
There’s no blood. No strangulation marks around her throat…
How else would I have killed her? Maybe I… smothered her with a pillow?
My heart is cracked in half inside my chest, barely pumping enough evil black sludge to keep me alive.
I’m damaged, man. Broken. A complete and utter monster.
I was in the bed next to her… Panting like a whore for her asshole twin brother while she was lying dead right next to me?! What kind of person does that??
“An evil one,” Leo says from the doorway. I aim a tearful glower at him. “No, Trevel, you’re not a good person. But that doesn’t mean you killed your girlfriend. Now fucking focus .”
“Why can’t you just tell me what happened…?” I whine, exhausted and devastated, angry and scared. Guilty. And confused.
Very fucking confused.
“You know I can’t do that,” he hums, voice fading once more.
Shaking myself out of the grief and despair—as much as I can—I crawl tentatively onto the bed, taking a closer look. I touch her neck…
Aside from being cold, it feels normal. I check her pillows for makeup, and I check myself for scratches that could allude to a struggle. I see nothing.
Lifting Alice’s hand in mine, I brush my fingertips along her skin, still so supple, despite the early signs of rigger-mortis. I bite my lip. “Baby, I’m so sorry…” My fingers run up her arm, cherishing her one last time.
But then they stop… when I notice a small mark on her inner elbow. I recognize it immediately.
“A track mark…?” I whisper, puzzled, blinking for a solid thirty seconds before checking my own arm.
I have the same mark. It’s from Andres shooting me up earlier. Just a tiny, reddened bump. Nothing more than a swollen dot from where the needle injected the poison into my vein…
But why would Alice have one too?? She doesn’t do drugs like that…
“ Remember , Trevel…”
Closing my eyes, I think hard, deep , searching my mind for any memories from earlier…
Andres shot me up, and I sort of collapsed into him. The feeling is… indescribable . Like a wave of soft ecstasy. A blanket of tranquility that folds you up and carries you in weightless perfection.
I tend to black out a bit when I shoot it, which is why I prefer not to do it that way often. I don’t like to waste the high lying around like a zombie.
Maybe that’s why Andres chose that method tonight…
Because he wanted me out of commission.
This thought sparks a recollection… The sensation of being carried. Someone was carrying me…
Andres helped me out of the bathroom and into the living room.
Alice’s voice…
“Oh my God, what did you do to him??” She rushed over, taking me from him. I can feel her touching me… I remember her arm around my waist and her lips kissing my neck. “Trevel, baby, are you alright??”
“I told her goodnight…” I whisper now. I remember getting those words out.
“Okay, goodnight, beautiful stranger,” she’d chuckled. Hearing it in my head breaks my withered heart into even smaller, jagged pieces.
Then she helped me into the bedroom, lying me down in her bed. After that, it’s all darkness. My memories are of a dark room… Her bedroom. That’s it.
Running my fingers up into my hair, I grip it hard and pull. “Think think think . Come on!”
Voices…
I hear them… Slowly, they come back into focus.
They were speaking in the living room. I’m not sure I could hear what they were saying, though.
“Focus,” Leo insists. “What were they saying? Listen to them…”
“I don’t… know ,” I groan hopelessly. “The next thing I remember was waking up with Alice next to me… But when did she come into bed? And how did she get that mark??”
“You know you want to try it…” Leo says. But his voice doesn’t sound like him.
It sounds… like Andres.
“You know you want to try it, Sis,” he said to Alice. “There’s a reason loverboy in there is so obsessed with this shit.”
“Because he’s hurting,” Alice clapped back. “He’s suffering with his own shit, and you’re preying on that.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” Andres huffed.
“You wanna talk about dramatic ?” she muttered, her tone accusatory. “Let’s talk about why you find it necessary to take my boyfriend into the bathroom alone to do drugs…”
“Maybe they’re fucking,” someone chuckled. I think it was the friend.
“Yea right.” Andres growled. “I ain’t no homo.”
“Real mature,” Alice grunted. “Honestly, I wouldn’t put it past you…”
“Wouldn’t put what past me??” Andres snapped.
“Fucking around with my boyfriend behind my back,” she went on, sounding angry, but also not all that shocked. “You’ve always been jealous of me… Always trying to steal my stuff.”
Quiet. Tense silence, for a few beats before…
“Fuck off, Alex ,” Andres hissed.
Then things got loud .
Slap! “How dare you fucking call me that!” Alice hissed. Shuffling. “Do you have any idea how much that hurts?? For my own twin brother to disrespect me like that?!”
More sounds… Banging and thudding. Yelling and cursing.
“Get off me!”
“Fuck you, you bitch!”
God, I wish I could see what’s happening!
I loathe the idea that I was lying in the next room, rotting like a piece of trash while the woman I love was fighting those pricks. Rage is rising inside me again, regret and remorse so strong it’s burning up my throat like bile.
If I could revive that cunt just to kill him again, I would.
“And then it got really quiet,” Leo says.
“Shit, man… That was fucked up,” the friend says in my memories.
“Shut up. Whose side are you on??” Andres barked. “Gimme the bag of that other shit.”
“Wait… why??” the friend asked nervously.
“Just do it!”
I remember them stomping around, whispering back and forth. I didn’t hear it all… But there are flickers.
“… How much?”
“All of it…”
“Make it look like an overdose…”
“… blame that British fuckboy…”
My chest is caving in, blood rushing so loudly in my ears it’s drowning out the memories.
This can’t be right… There’s no fucking way.
They actually shot Alice up with drugs to give her an intentional overdose?? Why would her own brother do that to her??
“You heard him,” Leo says. “He was jealous. He’s probably always been jealous of her. That’s why he fucked you…”
“Thanks. That makes me feel so much better.” I rub my eyes hard.
Leo shrugs. “Hey, you’re the one who bent over for him.”
“Because he was hot! And an asshole. And I’m a goddamn chaos agent, you know this!” I bark, hating myself so deeply I could vomit. Again.
“But the good news is you didn’t kill her,” Leo declares, far too chipper for my liking. “So, you know… silver lining.”
I glower at him. “My girlfriend is dead! The only person I’ve ever truly loved… is fucking dead. And I let her killer fuck me…” I whimper, covering my head with my arms. “ Fuck , I can’t believe I did it again… I’m going to jail.”
Curling up into a ball on the bed, I rock myself back and forth.
The memories are coming in clearer now… Now that my high has mostly dissipated and I’m stuck in the purgatory of real fucking life.
Andres and the friend moving Alice into bed with me… The friend grumbling about being fucked as he shuffled out of the room.
But Andres stayed. I can feel him staring at us in the dark.
“Sorry it had to be this way, Sis,” he’d whispered, running his hand from her over to me.
I remember feeling it, on the edge of my consciousness… My clothes being removed. I knew I hadn’t passed out practically naked. Andres took off my shirt, then my pants, touching me all the while.
The feeling of being touched and groped… At the time, I’d thought it was a nightmare. But it was him .
“Your boyfriend wants to get fucked by a man, Alicita… I could do it right now and he’d probably love it.”
And the worst part is that he was fucking right . I am a pathetic whore who let his girlfriend’s brother fuck him right next to her. The whole time, I thought she was sleeping, and it was some forbidden game, when in reality… she was dead. And it was just tragic.
“Alice, I’m so… so sorry,” I weep, holding her and kissing her shoulder and neck. “I failed you in so many ways. Because I’m… cursed…”
I’m falling into panic once more, memories from deep within who I am resurrecting…
“No… please…” Pain. Rough, throbbing agony.
“Please stop…” Dirt in my face, in my mouth.
I can’t breathe.
“Fuck, yea… Shut up and take it.”
“Mate, I know you’re grieving, but time is of the essence here,” Leo rumbles, cutting into the flashes of misery in my brain. “We’ve got to get a move on.”
I hate what he’s saying. But I know he’s right.
Only a moment of wallowing more, and I eventually pull myself together, saying one last goodbye to somebody who may have been my true love… My other piece.
Maybe in another life.
“I’ll never forget you, Alice Alvarez,” I whisper to her, closing her eyes with a swipe of my fingertips. “I’m sorry I couldn’t… be good for you.”
Stomping out of her bedroom, I sniffle and wipe my eyes, glancing around the apartment. The place is a mess; drugs everywhere, blood… And in the middle of it, a very dead asshole.
I kick Andres’s lifeless corpse.
“I can’t believe I let him fuck me,” I sigh, shaking my head.
“Can’t you, though?” Leo snarks, and my jaw tenses.
“Whatever. It wasn’t even all that… I barely came.” I bite my lip. Leo snorts, and I whip a scowl in his direction. “Don’t say a fucking word.”
He holds his bear paws up, smirking. “No judgement.”
“Sod off.”
Pacing around the body, I can feel the drugs fizzling out of my system more and more as adrenaline takes over. Awareness is turning up my manic state several degrees.
I suppose I should just get the fuck out of here.
Leave Atlanta in my rearview and go out on the run…
After all, that’s what I should have done the last time.
But I was young. Na?ve. I didn’t want to leave New York.
But more than that, I was proud of myself.
I foolishly thought the punishment would be minimal because of why I’d done it, and a minor price to pay for my revenge.
I suppose I’m proud of killing Andres, too… Avenging Alice’s death feels like the best parting gift I could give her.
“So Dr. Love was right…” I sigh. “I couldn’t stop myself from killing again. All that work I did, the hiding and pretending to be someone else. It was… no use. This is who I am. I was—”
“Born this way?” Leo finishes, and I peek at him, shrugging. He rolls his eyes. “Maybe. But you didn’t kill her. That’s what matters.”
“I suppose…”
Glancing at the body on the floor, my mind swarms with thoughts of my former doctor… What would he think about what I’ve done? Will he find out?
Could this… bring him back?
“So… What’s the plan?” Leo asks impatiently.
Wandering over to the couch, I plop down in front of the coffee table, picking up a rolled bill. Tightening it, I stick it up my nose and snort the drug leftovers. Sniffing and swallowing back the bitter taste, I’m hit with an instant rush; a warm wave of confidence and sharp, swift exhilaration.
When I peek back down at the table, I notice something that sticks out. A driver’s license.
Picking it up, I read the name…
Thomas Webber.
My fingers twitch as I read his address, mulling it over. This plan .
“Leave a trail of breadcrumbs…” I mumble, my lips sloping into a smirk. “And he’ll have to follow it.”