Prologue #3
She doesn’t float now, she stomps and jingles, then drops to her knees at my side, muttering empty promises into the wind.
“Okay. You’re okay. Let’s see, uh …” She slips the huge bag off her shoulder and upturns it.
Its contents spill out around her, and she combs through the mess.
“Right, we just need something to stem the bleeding, that’s all.
” She picks up a tube from the pile and holds it up to the light.
“Eyelash glue? No, not strong enough. Okay …” Another small package glints under the light.
“I’ve got Band-Aids, but they’re for, like, blisters and cuts, not … ” Her gaze shifts over my stomach.
“Stab wound,” I grunt.
She freezes, and for a second, fear threads through her perfect features, but when her eyes climb up my torso and lock with mine, her expression changes shape, and I don’t fucking like it.
I’m used to being regarded with fear. It’s familiar and comforting. The sickest part of me almost enjoys it. But now she’s got the same strain of pity in her eyes as my mama had every time she’d watch me limp down the driveway at dawn.
“Who did this to you?” she whispers.
Mama used to ask me that too. And like it did then, my father’s voice scratches my inner ear.
Rule four: If it happened in the dark, it didn’t happen.
But as with my mama, silence doesn’t satisfy her.
“What did he look like?” she presses. “Or she,” she quickly adds, clamping her hand to her mouth.
“Sorry, that was so sexist of me. Would you recognize them if you saw them again? If he—or she!—is still out there, we need to tell the police immediately so they can catch them. Can you describe them to me?”
Irritation rises within me, and it hurts more than the gash splitting me in two. “Go away,” I mutter. I’ve never been in the business of asking twice, let alone three fucking times. I’m starting to sound like a broken record.
But she’s not even listening, let alone looking as though she’s about to fuck off. Instead, she goes back to mumbling to herself, picking up objects, tossing them down. Rinse, repeat.
I grit my teeth and squeeze my eyes shut. The voice that was so sweet just moments ago is now grating.
Guess my father was bang on the money with rule five: A Villain never dies peacefully in his sleep.
I always thought it meant I’d be tortured to death, not slowly bleed out in a sea of beauty products under the watchful eye of an annoying angel.
“Hey—don’t close your eyes,” she demands. “You’ve gotta stay with me, okay?”
I force an eye open to make sure she doesn’t touch me again. But it’s worse. She pushes up off her heels, sucks in a shaky breath, and slams her hands down on my torso.
The pain is excruciating. It zaps through my body like a lightning strike, shocking every cell, nerve, and muscle. I writhe and shake and groan, trying to buck her off me.
My thoughts are nasty, and they’re all pointed at her. If I had even a fraction of my usual strength, I’d snap her fucking wrists, every finger and knuckle too.
But the angrier I get, the more she apologizes and tells me to just breathe, as if I’m getting a fucking Brazilian wax or something and it’ll all be over in a moment.
Her voice is breathy and restrained as it cuts through the ringing in my ears. “I’ve got to apply pressure to the wound, but my hands are too small. I’m going to have to sit on you.”
“No—”
Too late. Pinning her dress to the backs of her thighs, she shifts sideways onto my stomach, like she’s sliding into a diner booth.
I’d think I was hallucinating if the pain wasn’t so fucking visceral. I can feel its pulse, taste its minerals. But before I can let out the scream to accompany it, it wilts in my throat.
She’s touching me again. Skin to skin. The fingers I desperately wanted to snap now rest on the hollows of my cheeks. Her thumb tracks over the same two inches, dipping in and out of my beard in an unfamiliar, soothing, stroking motion.
Her gaze locks with mine, and for a split second, the world dies instead of me. It drains of color and light. Even the wind has stopped breathing.
“That feels better, right?”
The pain returns, but it’s dull and misplaced. My torso throbs a little less, but now it hurts where she touches, a slow-moving burn seeping through skin and bone and bloating every cell between.
No, it doesn’t feel better. It feels worse than dying.
Rule six, my father warns from the treeline: the most successful villains aren’t the ones who have nothing to lose, but who have nobody to lose.
He didn’t just speak that one into existence, he beat it into me with the hard crack of his belt during the summer my balls dropped and I realized blood rushed to my dick every time a pretty girl walked past in a tight dress.
Not that it mattered, of course. Just because I looked, doesn’t mean they were brave enough to look back. And even if they were, they never looked at me like this girl is gazing at me now.
She regards me with this wide-eyed concern, as though she’s seeing the worst of humanity for the first time and is certain she can fix it. Not an ounce of reservation or fear swims in those ocean-blue eyes. Judging by how she’s sitting on top of me, touching me, there’s none in her brain either.
Annoyance darkens my edges. She shouldn’t be out here, at this hour, looking like … that. She’s an angel with broken wings, and I couldn’t count on both blood-stained hands the number of men I know who would snatch her off these streets in half a heartbeat.
“What are you doing out here?” I grunt, rolling my head away from her touch and eyeing the contents of her Mary Poppin’s bag. There’s a lone flip-flop, a jumbo pack of crackers, and enough lip glosses to stock a beauty store.
“Saving your life, what else?” she replies flippantly, checking her cell for signal again.
My annoyance burns hotter at her smart-ass answer. “Do you stop and chat to every strange man you meet on a dark road?”
“When they’re bleeding like a waterfall, sure.”
“Well, you shouldn’t.”
Her gaze falls to mine, sparkling with amusement. “But aren’t you glad I did?”
I study the smugness puckering her lips, and disbelief trickles through me. “You realize I’m going to die, right?”
She tuts. “Well, you will with that attitude.”
I let out a frustrated groan. Great. Not only does she not understand the concept of personal safety and personal space, but to top it all off, she’s a fucking optimist.
When The Middle began, I soon developed a hatred for all the positivity in the world because I’d seen what the dark side of it looked like.
My brothers were oblivious, happy kids, and it never seemed fair they got to wake up every morning and laugh over breakfast while I’d spent the night before in Hell’s seventh circle.
I’d tried to show them the dark side too. I’d bring home roadkill with the hope the corpses would haunt their nightmares, and hold their heads underwater until they grew limp, just so they, too, knew what dying felt like.
And when that didn’t work, I started carving the dark side into the church doors instead.
Looking up at this girl now, I’m overcome with the same childlike spite I had back then.
I want to shake the light out of her. To peg her eyes open and force her to watch my life flash before them too, if only to make her realize the world isn’t all sunshine and rainbows and she shouldn’t walk around late at night in it.
But I couldn’t shake her even if I tried. My arms and legs are growing heavier and melting into the earth.
As though she feels me dissolving beneath her, she rests a light hand on my chest.
“Don’t worry, it’s nearly dawn.”
“So?”
“So, a car will pass by soon.” She cranes her neck and squints down the long stretch of road ahead. “You’re going to be fine, we just need to get you to the hospital.”
“Yeah. A couple of stitches and a lollipop, and I’ll be right as rain.”
“That’s the spirit.”
Christ. I really must be the number one player on God’s shit list.
We linger in stiff silence for a while, only my wheezing breaths and her little puffs of impatience polluting the air.
She keeps glancing down the road. Then she tugs at the hem of her dress and shifts her weight on me.
As she reaches up to smooth down her bangs, she stiffens.
Slowly, she turns over her hand and inspects it under the light, as if seeing it for the first time.
Then her gaze falls to her coat, dress, legs.
Blood. It’s everywhere. Soaking into all her pink, dripping from the tips of her wings, staining her the same shade of black as my soul.
Good. Bitter amusement washes through me as the realization drains all the color from her face. I can practically hear her little bubble of delusion pop. Maybe now she’ll fuck off and leave me to die in peace.
But seconds scratch by, and she doesn’t move. She just stares, blank-faced, at a lone red droplet snaking down her thigh. It dribbles over her knee, along her calf, and disappears into the instep of her boot.
“Blood’s a bitch to get out,” I say, only to twist the knife further.
“Only if you don’t know how to clean it.” She dabs at the red trail with the cuff of her coat and flashes me a limp smile. “Nothing hydrogen peroxide, enzyme cleaner, and a little elbow grease can’t handle, honey.”
My eyes narrow. What the fuck does she know about getting blood out of clothes? A river of curiosity runs thin beneath my skin, but then common sense gives me a weak kick. My view of the world is so skewed that I’d forgotten normal people clean for cleanliness’s sake and not just to hide a body.
Letting out a labored breath, I finally give in to the weight of my eyelids.
Rule seven, my father hisses from between the trees: The Villain never taps out.
Yeah, well. Here I am, old man, finally tapping out.
I’ve fought my whole life, and I’m tired of it. I don’t even care to make it to the church anymore; I just want to go home.
There’s nothing left to do now, apart from watch The Middle bleed into The End.