5. Left For Dead
5
LEFT FOR DEAD
REMIEL
I thought I’d be better in a crisis. I grew up here, witnessed more horrific shit than anyone should in one lifetime, and know how to thrive in fear.
But this isn’t fear. It’s a morbid fascination that’s rooting me to the spot and rendering me useless. Because although I’ve seen a multitude of dead bodies, I’ve never seen the moment of death. I should go over there, figure out where all the blood is coming from, and try to support her twisted neck until emergency responders get here. But I’m not doing that because the rattling inhale of her lungs has drawn all my attention.
“I give her six minutes.”
He steps out from behind a tree, his black mask with a purple face is lit up by the moonlight coming through the canopy of leaves. I’m so enraptured by the dying girl that I barely even stiffen at his arrival.
I don’t recognize her as a local, but the glowing stamps on her skin mark her as a clubgoer from The Neon Demon. She’s dirty, as if she was dragged through the forest or thrown down an incline. Her head is cracked open somewhere, spilling all that blood, and her body is covered in gashes. How did she get here?
“What do you think she’s thinking about?” he asks.
Her lungs rattle again, and then her leg twitches, and I don’t know which one to focus on.
When he shifts, I finally startle, but my feet still don’t move. I don’t know if I recognize his slightly modulated voice, but his presence seems familiar. A smell I can’t place but feel nostalgic about. Maybe it’s because of last night, or maybe I know who hides under the mask. From the corner of my eye, I can see his black clothing and the glow of the purple spotlighting the space next to me. His boots don’t crunch the leaves, and he’s otherwise still, but a waft of weed clouds the air in front of him when he exhales silently, the mouth hole in the mask wide enough for smoking.
“Six minutes isn’t a lot of time when you think about it,” he says, watching the disaster in front of us, not doing anything about it either. “Barely a drop in the time of her life. What do you think, she’s nineteen? Twenty, maybe? All that life comes down to these six minutes.”
That should jar me. The reminder of life and death and the six-minute expiry date she has on her should get my feet moving, rushing across the forest floor to staunch all the blood. At the very least, comfort her in her time of death. Logically, I should call the fire department and try to keep her alive long enough for their paramedics to get here.
But my hands stay at my sides, and my feet stay in place because, again, I’ve seen a dead body, but never a death. Does she feel anything, or is her neck completely broken?
“Wanna look?” he asks.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Shock? Am I in shock? Would I know if I am?
I don’t answer him, but when he takes another inhale from his joint through the hole in his mask, moving just enough to jolt me into motion, I take a step forward. He follows.
It’s the early hours of a new day, this girl probably only living ten minutes tops of the first day of September. The night is cool but wet, rain hanging in the air and a fine sheen of mist dampening my clothing. The moon peeks through the leaves every few steps, but it doesn’t show me anything worth latching on to. I don’t know why I’m so... calm.
“A blond,” the guy says. “Tsk. Can never trust a blond.” There’s a mocking cruelty to his voice, but I can’t tell if it’s directed at me, the situation, or the girl herself. I’m a dirty blond…
I can’t see her face, but her neck is bent at an angle that defies the natural movements of her skeletal system. Her hair really is blond, but only in some sections. The rest is bright crimson and dripping, or dirty and tinted from her fall. Her dress, a cocktail-type thing in a golden hue, is ripped open to expose the side of her hip and most of her stomach. More blood. Her knees disgust me, so I don’t look at them, letting my eyes shift down to her calves and ankles. High, dainty, strappy heels in the same tone as her dress, if the random moonlight can be believed.
“Why would she be wearing heels out here?” I ask no one. It’s the least logical question for the situation. “One of the club’s games?”
He doesn’t answer, but I don’t care because the girl takes another rattling inhale. Again, this should jar me into upset. I should bend down, check her vitals, move her hair from her face to see if her eyes are open. I should stop whatever is bleeding and hold her head steady so no more damage occurs to her cervical spine.
Instead, I’m intrigued by the rattle of her lungs. Are they failing, slowly shutting down, full of blood and drowning in it? Or are they simply not getting enough strength to properly work as a muscle? Maybe her diaphragm is damaged, and that’s the reason her lungs aren’t expanding fully.
“What do you think she’s thinking?” the man I gave my life to asks again, a cloud of smoke following the jittery words through his mask in my peripheral. “Regrets? Do you think people really see a highlight reel of their lives in their last moments? All the good parts, and all the things they regret?”
I’d never thought about it before. I am now. What would I regret? Everything, probably. Everything and more.
Her leg twitches, drawing my gaze. Was she dancing? Sent out here by the club’s owner to complete a fun task that put her in harm’s way? On purpose? There are always miscreants in the cemeteries at night.
“Maybe she’s incapable of thinking,” I find myself saying, obliging his questions like they actually matter. “Like her brain is shutting down.” Why am I engaging with this in the middle of the night while a dire situation unfolds and I do nothing about it? Where is my panic? Where is my fear?
His inhale is long and slow, but it comes out a little shaky. “Shame.” His voice is strained, choked, almost. It nearly draws my attention more than the dying girl, but then he says, “Are you going to help her?”
I stare at her, wondering why I’m not helping her. Is it worth it? How many of those six minutes have ticked down? What would I even do if I could move?
“She’s going to die anyway, right?” I ask. “Her time is almost up.”
“Why don’t you comfort her?”
“Why don’t you?” I turn my head, but he’s facing away from me. His hood is up, covering his hair, showing me nothing but black. “What are you even doing out here? We were supposed to meet at my dad’s plot.”
He flicks the ash from the tip of his joint before pinching the glowing tip off. It falls to the ground, hissing for a split second in the foliage’s dampness before it disintegrates into nothing. Whatever is left of it disappears into his pocket.
“I could ask you the same thing. Something draw you into the trees, Remiel?”
Yes, the girl’s rattling lungs. I heard them and… walked here in a daze.
He steps over the girl’s body, using a stick to slide her hair to the side. I gasp when her face comes into view. Partly because I recognize her, but mostly because she’s purple and puffy. Strangulation? By what or who? Maybe her broken neck. The column of her throat is slender, but it’s twisted in a way that looks horrific, splotched red. If the moon was brighter, I bet I would see all the burst capillaries in her skin and eyes. Which are open. Staring at the guy standing over her body.
Is it me, or does fearful recognition flash in her dying eyes?
“Ophelia Hargrove,” I whisper her name. “She’s in my sister’s psychology class.”
“Probably goes around campus trying to psychoanalyze people, calling them sick when she doesn’t know shit,” he says harshly, but I can’t tell what the harshness means. “Can’t trust a blond,” he repeats. “Come here.”
I don’t know why I do, but I move towards him. His request is more motivating than the twitch of her calf or the rattling of her lungs. Maybe I want a closer look, to see the moment life leaves her body and death consumes it, and he just gave me an excuse to get nearer.
Thunder cracks overhead, but it doesn’t startle me. The clouds are thickening, blotting out the stars and moon. Stepping next to him, wedging my socks and Crocs between where her small hand and her hip are, I peer at her from above.
“Does she turn you on?”
I splutter at the question, trying to look at him. But before I can even turn my head, his hands push on my shoulders and I’m kneeling in the mud, crushing her hand beneath my knee.
“Let go!”
“Look at her,” he demands, voice right next to my ear. Dark and daunting, ominous but playful. “Is your dick hard, Remiel?”
Finally jarred by something, I panic. My palms sweat more and my fingertips go numb, all my blood and energy rushing to the vital parts of my body as my survival instincts kick in.
“Why would you ask?—”
“Mine is,” he says, pressing the front of his crotch against the back of my head. His cock is as hard as iron, and the hand he fists in my hair makes me a slave to the sensation of it. “So fucking hard for this shit. What do you think that says about me, Remiel? You were a psych major, weren’t you?”
I was. A long time ago. Yet another thing I started and quit.
On first instinct, I’d call him a sadist, but I don’t know enough, or anything, about him. I can’t think about that right now because the numbness that blanketed me when I found this girl is gone, replaced by a panic so strong my bladder feels loose.
“Spit on her,” he says. When I don’t, he rubs his cock against the back of my head, yanks on my hair, and growls, “Spit on her.”
“I can’t!” Because DNA and crime scenes and my lack of helping this poor girl are finally catching up with me. “I can’t! Please!”
“I can lay you down next to her with a twin injury, if you like. The media will eat it up. Lovers Pact: Union in the Afterlife. Moros takes another pair of young lovers. What do you think?”
Ophelia’s body jerks, spasming slightly. My eyes prick with tears, but I restrain them, refusing to let them fall on her. Am I crying for her or for myself? I’m selfish, so probably myself.
“Please. Let me up so I can call 9-1-1.”
He laughs wickedly. “Oh, now you’ve found your morals?” He grinds against my head. “Too bad her six minutes are up, hero. Her brain is gone, and her muscles are relaxing. That’s what the twitching is.”
My exhale is shaky and terrified. “We should call someone to come find her. Direct them to the body.”
A sharp blade presses to my throat, nicking my skin and turning me to ice. Warmth spreads from the crotch of my pants, darkening my jeans to pool around my knees and Ophelia’s body. I don’t even have the dignity to feel embarrassed about it.
“Oh, no.” He clicks his tongue. “Still want to call someone? Your DNA is all over this crime scene, hero.”
I’m crying fully now. Tears fall down my cheeks and urine soaks the ground beneath me, making me sink into the earth with a dead girl’s body. It’s poetic, in a sense. In her time of death, I failed her, and now she’s dragging me down with her. My life is over. Whoever this psycho-sadist is, he’s going to either kill me next or pin this murder on me. But that’d be breaking our deal, right?
I’m in my final six minutes. The clock is ticking.
“It’s regret,” I tell him.
“What is?” he asks, still holding the blade to my throat.
“What’s going through my head right now. In my moment of death.” I swallow, cutting myself on his knife. “It’s regrets.”
“Hmm,” he muses, making my breathing turn into hyperventilating. “And what do you regret?”
“Everything.”
“Be more specific. If you pique my interest, I’ll sweeten the pot.”
I don’t say anything. I keep my eyes on Ophelia’s dead ones, my knees sinking with her body and my neck against his knife. Do I want to die? What if I just lean forward a bit? Turn my head really fast? Could I slit my own throat? Would it be considered suicide if his hand was the one holding the knife? Have I always been so morbid?
“Tell me something real, Remiel Sauder, and I’ll let you live till sunrise.”
I hate that it takes me a minute to decide if spilling my regrets is worth my life. When did I get this dark? Until he forced me to my knees, I’d been feeling numb and lost for... years. Now I’m vividly scared, wishing for the situation to end. It scares me more that I don’t have a preference on how.
The honed edge of his knife digs into my skin, and I watch as he removes it from my throat. Holding it above Ophelia’s body, a crimson drop of me falls, splattering against the centre of her forehead.
Urine. Tears. Blood. Probably spit, skin cells, and hair. So much of me is already here despite how absent I feel. When I say nothing, I’m shoved from behind. He thrusts his hips against the back of my head so hard that I brace my hands on Ophelia’s hips. Her dead eyes stare straight into mine, pulling secrets and sins from the chamber I locked them in. I can’t look away.
Until I’m forced to. A hand in my hair cranes my neck up, but instead of being behind me, he’s in front of me now. I can’t see his face from the shadows and the mask, but the whites of his eyes glint at me from the depths of the purple.
“Open your mouth, hero.”
“Please, let me go,” I beg without gumption.
His snarl is impatient. “Open.”
My painful scream parts my lips for me. With his hand in my hair, my neck damn near breaks with the force of his tug.
“Do you want the twin injury, or are you going to give me your regrets? Your six minutes are winding down, Remiel.”
“Okay,” I gasp. “I’ll tell you.”
I choke and scream together when he buries my face in the crotch of his pants. He holds me there, and I’m completely helpless to move. Suffocating against his erection, my regrets become clear.
“Speak.” He frees me.
I cough. “Having no fucking idea who I am. Following the path of my family. Never being good enough.”
“So boring. Most people have those regrets.” His zipper is loud, intensifying my panic.
My hand braces on the dead girl’s thigh when he parts my lips a second time. This time, the hard flesh of his cock is forced inside, ramming into the roof of my mouth. I cough again, trying to scream. But he doesn’t contain the remorse required to let up. A sadist, I remember. Not that it matters anymore.
“Give me something real.” He fucks my face, making me drip drool and tears all over the corpse.
My throat burns and my eyes bulge. I sputter and gag, almost vomiting as the tendons in my neck strain, when he finally pulls out. My lungs rattle almost as loudly as Ophelia’s when I force them to inhale. The assault of oxygen brings a moment of clarity. As if he’s summoned my biggest regret by choking the lies from my vocal cords, I shout, “Not stopping my brother from killing himself! My own death by suicide because it should have been me!”
“There we go,” he purrs darkly. “Weren’t such a hero then either, eh, Remiel?”
I get no chance to answer, even though I don’t have one. His dick jams between my lips, and even the brutal scrape of my teeth doesn’t deter him. He fucks my throat with no remorse, no gentleness, and no enthusiasm. A motion. A domination. A fear tactic. It hurts, but the terror is worse.
“You bought your life,” he says to me, but I barely hear it over my blood rushing in my ears and my sobs around his dick. “You will swallow. If a single drop of cum lands on her body, I’ll do worse than kill you.”
All I can think about is getting through it, surviving it.
My eyes squeeze shut and my fingers dig into Ophelia’s thigh. This nameless monster takes no mercy on my inexperience, instead feeding on my fear. His hips don’t change tempo, his breath barely quickens, and the only sign I get that he’s about to come is the increased firming of his cock in my mouth.
My gag at the first spurt almost ends my life. His release coats my lips as I cough, and some part of me must want to live because my hands come to my face, ensuring that it all stays in my mouth. He doesn’t moan or groan, fucking me through his orgasm, and when he finally slows, I swallow what I can without choking it back up. My raw throat stings, but I force my lips shut around him, sucking him clean all on my own because I’m afraid of what is worse than death. I’m afraid to let a single drop spill.
I’m realizing that the verbiage of our bargain isn’t clear. Until he frees me could mean anything. Freedom could be death, and I stipulated nothing within my deal to protect myself. I’ve never felt like more of a failure.
When he pulls out, I use my fingers to slide the dripping cum up my chin and against my tongue, swallowing it down with another gag. I’m panting, falling forward, trying not to land on the dead girl.
“Your life is in my hands now, Remiel. You aren’t the hero.”
Something slams into the back of my head, and the last thing I see is Ophelia’s dead-eyed stare as I fall.