Gant
BANG!
“Why did you close it?” my father barks at the hasty funeral director.
The elderly man blinks at me as if I’m the answer. “I’m sorry, sir. I was told it was a closed casket funeral considering…” His eyes drop to the casket where I know my mother’s mangled remains are now hidden.
He’d been sure to hide her the second he saw me in tow.
“For the public,” my father says icily. “But the family hasn’t had their viewing yet.”
The director’s eyes trail to me again. “But sir, the boy—”
“Is sixteen. A man now,” my father says, beckoning me to come closer with his cane.
It isn’t enough that I’ve already seen her before I blacked out in the accident, but I know better than to argue. Each click against the hardwood floor pounds in my ears in tune with my heartbeat as I move, standing shoulder to shoulder with my father over the casket.
“Very well.” the director nods at his assistant, who’s standing quietly in the corner of the room, but his eyes are fixed upon me pitifully.
He could just open it.
My father could just open it.
But someone else has to bear the blame for traumatising me.
Me.
“Open it, Gant,” Bart says, halting the shuffling assistant.
The director wants to protest and so does the assistant, whose worried gaze moves from his boss to my father to me. But neither say anything. They’ve been paid too handsomely to question their top client of the decade.
I don’t want to prolong the inevitable, so I reach for the heavy lid, quietly draw a breath and heft it open.
Despite my internal bracing, my knees buckle and I recoil, right into my father’s shoulder.
“What?” he asks, feigning innocence and knocking me hard, so I stand up again on my own. “Don’t you want to say goodbye to your mother officially?”
Somewhere in the distance, I can hear the retreating footsteps of both workers as they ease from the room, but my attention is fixated on the mangled meat staring back up at me.
It feels more than cruel to put something so unrecognisable into such a charming box. A beautiful illusion of what may lie inside.
She should be cremated, but then, how could I ever see her for what she truly is–was–according to my father?
“That’s not my mother,” I rasp, trying to stop my stomach from convulsing, but the contractions prove too painful and I double up, falling beneath the casket.
I choke as my collar is grabbed and I’m strangled, but when the pressure of the fabric against my throat is relieved, I gag again at what I’m met with face to face in the casket.
I turn my head, but Bart swipes the cane beneath my chin and forces me to look left, to look at it.
What isn’t mangled on the corpse is mottled, layers of skin rising and separating from each other. Splotches of yellow that look like chicken fat hover beneath the surface. Patches of blood long turned a dark purplish blue still stain her skin. The only thing that’s recognisable is her face and her eyes that peer up at me open and dry. One orb split open, revealing its innards. Her hair is still caked in remnants of blood and glass, and her fingers clasped over her concaved chest are broken.
“I didn’t bother with any sort of preservation,” my father says. “I wanted you to remember the cunt you covered for as she truly was. Her insides finally made her outer.”
“I-I didn’t,” I wheeze, trying to pack away but Bart’s grip on the back of my neck shoves my face closer so that I’m merely a breath away from the broken teeth.
“You went to that studio every week and you mean to tell me you never suspected what your mother was up to?”
“I didn’t.”
“Yet you had the video.”
“I told you I was hacked! I didn’t film it. I didn’t.”
The cane comes across my back with so much force I don’t have time to react as I fall to my feet, hitting the casket so hard that it sways on its strand and the assistant, just in the hall, rushes to capture it as it lurches forward.
The corpse, for it’s not my mother, begins to fall out, its broken arm stretching toward me as if begging me to help, to stop the slaughter of someone already mutilated. But how could I?
“Liar! You have made this family the laughingstock of the entire town while they sympathise with the monster who started it all. Making ballet montages of who they think, no, thought, was so beautiful. Do you think she deserves to still maintain such a reputation? A reputation she never deserved, but one I meticulously made sure she held?”
I don’t answer.
“Get your phone out. Now.”
“Why?”I pull out my phone with shaking fingers, puzzled as to what he wants me to do.
“I want her image to be as spoiled as she’s made mine. That’s what she looks like now. Spoiled rotten. Film her,” he motions to the casket.
“W-what?” I shake my head, no. She was vulnerable. She was fucking dead.
“You love leaking intimate moments. Now, you’re about to leak another.”
I try to pivot, to flee the room, but another blow hits my stomach so hard, that I double over and finally feel the bile leave my throat and spew from my lips, sprinkling the corpse.
“Still protecting her,” he tsks, snatching the phone from my grasp and hitting the record button with the audio muted.
“Stop!” I lunge for him, but he’s already stopped the recording as quickly as he’d started it.
It doesn’t take long to scan a corpse, and I know exactly why he’s made it less than five seconds. So anyone viewing it will inevitably watch it on a loop, trying to get a good enough look. A good enough screenshot to feign horror while passing it around to all of their contacts.
I freeze and watch in horror as he pulls up my email list and sends the video to everyone.
Just like Eloisa had done.
“There, they can add that to their ridiculous montages at the end.”
I can only blink. “How could you do that?”“How could you? Remember, you did this, Gant. You cover for her, then you tell the world.”
Fury flames in my heart like that red-headed bitch that was the cause of everything. Someone else has to die, and it’s going to be her.
I gasp for breath, taking in my surroundings. I’m still in the forest, but I’m wet. Soaked.
The spring.
I turn around in the water and reach for a cluster of tree roots, but I can’t pull myself out. My limbs feel too numb.
“Zoi?” I call hoarsely before trying to whistle. I can’t. “Zoi?”
Zoi always helps me. I know that’s why Bae lets him loose on nights like this.
If I could just hold him. If I could just feel his beating heart and know that he’s alive and warm, I can suck some of that life back into me.
“Zoi?”
I just need to think about something, anything, to forget that bloated, deformed corpse.
It wasn’t my mother.
It wasn’t.I try to think of Hale and his club, but the corpse creeps into every corner of the mottling lounge.
Instead, I try to think of last year’s Easter trips, where Bae got his neck covered in tattoos. Or last summer, when étienne and Aria got us all invited to a random French fashion show. Or when Zedd and Stassi won regionals last year. I try to remember the swish of Stassi’s vibrant pink fringe dress, and the blinding whiteness of Zedd’s smile as he grinned ear from ear. That’s the most I’d ever seen Zedd smile. That was before he became the fatherly prude, Zaddy Zedd.
But soon Zedd’s happy face warps. His teeth break, and suddenly he’s her, who’s not her. He’s the corpse.
No.
NO!
I think of Elle’s green eyes that sparkle like two emeralds, and her long curtain of red hair. I can practically feel it tickling my cheek. I can smell the faint aroma of vanilla and honey that she washes it with. I can see the freckles on her cheeks, and the little heart formation beneath her left eye.
As she wraps her arms around me, it’s like she’s really here.
“Gant?” she whispers.
I reach for her, pulling her flush to my chest and instinctively she wraps her legs around me. I can’t believe how real she feels, her chest pressed to mine. Everything else is so fuzzy, but she’s completely in focus.
“Dove,” I whisper into her hair, inhaling her scent. “Don’t fly away yet.”
Her breath is warm against my ear. “Okay.”
“Don’t leave me.”
“I won’t…”
“I don’t want to be alone.” I feel frantic, manic, as I squeeze the air from her lungs, pressing her so tight against my chest that I swear our hearts merge into one massive heartbeat that clangs through my head pushing the macabre images aside.
“You’re not,” Elle says soothingly. “We’re together. In the forest. In the spring.”
Right, the spring.
“You’re afraid of water,” I say, but my voice sounds so distant.
“I am.”
“But you’re in the spring.”
“I am.”
“With me.”
“Yes,” she whispers.
“Are you real? Or just another dream?”
“As if you dream about me.”
“Always.”
She blinks. “I’m real, Gant. All of this is real. Not a dream. Not a game.”
Over her shoulder, two golden eyes glow down at us.
“Zoi.” I reach a hand to stroke his snout and he nips my finger, using it to pull me closer to the edge, in an attempt to get me out of the water.
“Hold on to me,” I tell Elle even as I squeeze her so hard, I’m afraid I’ll collapse her lungs.
With my free hand, I pull on a root and lift us both out of the shallow water before following Zoi back to the greenhouse where I sleep on nights like this.
I’m not afraid of the creatures inside because they understand me. They leave me be and they have no judgments.
I lift Elle onto the table, grab a blanket from the rickety cupboard and shake it out before covering us both from the outside world.
“Look at me,” I say, peering deep into her eyes.
“I am.”
“Don’t look away. Your eyes are so green. So different. But I can see her sometimes if I stare hard enough. Not a memory. A remembrance. As if I could ever forget.”
“Gant.”
“Don’t blink. Just look at me.”
She strokes my cheek. “Okay.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Are you staying? Are you listening to me? I can’t stop you…”
“You’re already down. I don’t get satisfaction out of kicking a lame dog. Out of spitting into eyes that are already drowning in tears.”
“You’re above it all. Better?”
“I never thought it was possible to be better than someone. But I am better than you. Better than your minions, even better than the staff.”
“You’re not shy to ride that high fucking horse, are you?” But there’s no snark in my voice. It’s hollow.
“If you can call a miniature pony high. I’m merely decent. At a school like Beaulieu, I thought you had to be exemplary. Every day amongst your kind makes me see that being decent is to be exceptional here.”
I curl around Elle’s smaller body and she gently runs her fingers through my hair while Zoi keeps watch over us.
“You can sleep,” Elle says after we’ve stared at each other for an eternity. “It’s okay to give up control and give in sometimes.”
“You really won’t leave?”
“You deserve it. You deserve to lie in this filthy place all alone and rot, but I said I won’t leave you alone.Despite what you think, I’m not a liar. Dolls can’t lie and I’m your little doll, remember? Just hold on to me. I’ll take away all your bad dreams.”
* * *
I wake up to the skin-crawling sensation of cobwebs strewn across my face. It doesn’t startle me as it should. I’m used to it, given my constant sleepovers in the greenhouse. But as I blink my eyes open in the dim sunlight, I can see that it’s hair. Long red hair.
Elle.
My Elle.
Last night’s memories come flooding back to me.
So she wasn’t a hallucination.
She was real, and she’d spent the night in my arms.
I should shove her away for that reckless shit she said to piss me off about Zedd and Hale’s dicks, but I can’t waste this opportunity to be near her. I love it when she fights, curses, and runs, but I can’t help the comfort that overcomes me at just having her warm naked body relaxed and pressed against mine.
I stroke her hair away from both of our faces, revealing her peaceful expression. She’s so fucking beautiful. Painfully so and she doesn’t even know it. She has no clue about the amount of power she wields over me in her tiny little palm. The power to piss me off so badly my eyes bleed red. The power to make my cock so hard, I can cum without touching myself. The power to relax and calm me, syncing our hearts and breaths and grounding me back to earth when it feels like my spirit is ready to flee with my mother’s.
I tuck a strand behind her ear and she stirs, burrowing her head deeper into my chest.
How much of my breakdown did she see exactly? How much of it was internal? How much of it had I reenacted in my dreams?
How bad was it?
Sometimes it was bad enough to disturb étienne, and that said enough in and of itself. Had I frightened her? If I had, it clearly hadn’t been enough for her to leave, not that I would’ve let her. Not if I was manic enough. I’d fought étienne and Bae before. I’d given them black eyes and knots on their foreheads.
For a second I begin to panic at the thought, but as I gaze down at my baby, she looks perfect as always. Untouched.
I cradle her closer, knowing that as soon as she rises, she’ll want nothing to do with me. So I watch her, counting every sparse freckle on her cheeks, every eyelash, every twitch of her lips until she stirs and blinks, her eyes adjusting to the light, then to me.
Immediately she shoves at my chest, but I keep a firm lock around her waist. I should let her go, but I won’t.
“What…what’s going on?” She looks around the greenhouse frantically, then at me again. In seconds I can see the realisation blooming in her eyes before they squeeze shut. “I’m so fucked. We’re so fucked. Ms. Trix—” She tries to get up, but I pin her to me like my little doll she said she was. My safety blanket I’d held all night. Rolling over, I pin her hips with my cock and use her tits as a pillow.
“Let me go! I bet half the school’s looking for us!”
“Bae and étienne will cover for me. Aria will do the same for you,” I say calmly.
“How are you so sure? I don’t have any besties here like you,” she huffs. “You made sure of it. Let go of me. I have to get back.”
“Stop bucking against me or I’ll return the favour,” I say, pressing forward so her sweet pussy kisses my head. Immediately she stops squirming, growing as frigid as a board. “What’s done is done.”
After a long minute, she asks, “What happened to you last night?”
So she hadn’t witnessed that much.
“I saw a ghost,” I murmur, and it isn’t too far from the truth, but she pinches my ass.
“Your mother?” she asks tentatively.
I nod, jiggling her tit beneath my head. Without thinking, I lick her right nipple that’s even with my mouth and suck on it. With her holding me in the cradle of her thighs, her pussy soaking my head and her hard nipple pacifying my tongue, I’ve never felt calmer.
Elle is my calm, my peace, and my torment.
“Does she haunt your dreams regularly?”
I release her nipple with a pop, burying my head in the crease that separates her breasts. It’s so warm.
“It depends.”
I don’t elaborate. In fact, I’m surprised I’m sharing this much at all.
The last thing I ever wanted was to talk about my mother with Elle. I wanted to make her pay. I wanted to transfer my pain to her entirely. I didn’t want to share it.
But that’s exactly what I’m doing because things are different now whether I want to accept them or not.
One, my mother hadn’t found goodness in Jarett.
Two, Elle had been hit with the same car as us on the same night. The same car that’s been MIA for two years. The same car I knew was dark green, but the analyst experts swore was black.
Three, Elle had confirmed that I wasn’t mistaken. She’d confirmed what I knew to be true for two years.
Four, she just wanted to free her mother. I wanted to free mine.
Five, we both coped with ballet.
Six, we both didn’t cope at all because Elle recorded her nightmares like some horror diary and I’d heard them all through her phone’s speaker when she had no idea I was listening. And me, well, she now knew I had them too.
“The drowning incident is the most prominent nightmare I have. For you, I think it’s the car crash and the viewing,” she says softly.
I don’t respond, flicking her nipple with my tongue again.
“You talk in your sleep,” she says softly. “Bart’s your father, right?”
We could talk all day about her father, but I’d already shared what I wanted to about mine.
I tense at the question, ready to pull away, but she takes me by surprise, locking her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck.
“You already know that I call my father by his first name too,” she whispers, her fingers travelling into my hair and softly massaging my scalp just like she did last night. I can’t help relaxing into her, my cock pressing into her soft belly, my cheek resting on the swell of her breast. “My friends dreamed of vacations at the beach and theme parks, and dresses and makeup. I wanted those things too, but I never dreamed about them. I dreamed about getting away from Jarett. I didn’t care if he died or if he simply abandoned us. I just wanted him gone by any means. That’s what I thought. Now that I know what happened to Madame, I realise how selfish ‘by any means’ really is. I only cared about my family and destroying it. But after I sent the email, I never paused to think about the fact that it could destroy yours, too.”
I tense again, but she continues stroking me, keeping my head pinned over her heartbeat.
“I had a Jarett to contend with, but you have a Bart you’re still stuck with.”
I say nothing, but she continues.
“You reenacted an entire conversation with him at your mother’s viewing. My father isn’t that calculating, manipulating, gaslighting with his words. He doesn’t have the vernacular, so he’s blunt. He’ll just say how he feels outright, like when he wishes I was never born.”
Instinctively, I pull her tighter. The thought of Elle not existing sends a stab straight through my heart. I’d never met Jarett but I was sure I hated him even more than she did. He helped to take away my mother and dared to threaten the one good thing he put out into the world.
Elle is goodness.
Just her staying with me in this dark place proved it.
I wouldn’t have done the same.
…
Would I?
I latch onto her other nipple and listen to her heartbeat as she continues.
“I know it’s not the same, but I do understand the patronising. I was patronised in a lot of ballet classes and it made me feel crazy. I preferred it when it was outright like with Mistress Benoit. It’s humiliating, but no one can pretend it”s something else. I bet that’s what your father does. Pretend he’s only trying to make you better, stronger. Instead of the truth, which is that he’s shredding your spirit into pieces.”
“Then there are our mothers. You asked why I wanted to protect my mother when she never protected me. But you wanted to protect your mother too. Even though she wasn’t protecting herself by being reckless.”
“Elle—”
“It’s the truth. Both of our mothers didn’t really care about themselves. Your mother, not in that moment and my mother ever. Perhaps because they were both trapped in loveless marriages. Whatever their reasoning, I’m slowly realising that it’s not our responsibility to take care of them. In your sleep, you blamed yourself for the leak even though it was me. Even though it was you who took my phone. Even though it was your mother who had sex in public. Even though it was my father that consented to it. Even though she was unhappy, we can go on forever.”
“So what are you saying? No one’s to blame.”
“No. Our parents are to blame. There are a lot of factors, but ultimately it’s our parents. The fault doesn’t lie with us.”
I was already subconsciously shifting the blame despite placing it on my shoulders and Elle’s head for two years.
“I think you’re right.”
She looks surprised at that.
“And I think you’re wrong too.”
At her inquisitive gaze, I lean up on my elbows and peer down at her.
“The driver’s also to blame because I know the same person that gave you this scar,” I say, stroking her side, “is the same person that killed my mother. The description is just too similar. The car too unique.”
She swallows, her eyes wide. “The green car is the same car in the video?”
I nod.
“The cameras didn’t capture the model, but I did. And it’s just like you described. I’m going to find it.”
“And I’m going to help you,” she says firmly. “Your mother deserves justice. You deserve peace. I deserve peace.”
Something stabs at the backs of my eyes and it takes me a second to realise they’re tears. I thought I’d run out of them at my mother’s funeral.
“You care even after she was horrible to you?”
“She wasn’t horrible to you, and that means far more.”
This girl…
After everything…
She’s growing a soft spot for me? Not just a spot of lust?
Isn’t that what you’ve wanted from the start? How else can it hurt if it’s not tender?
Her fingertips brush my cheek and I sink into her palm.
“I know you worry about her not forgiving you before her passing, but I know you have nothing to worry about. She was angry with you, furious, but she didn’t die hating you, Gant. She couldn’t.”
“How do you know?”
“In that moment, when you were hit, were you angry at her for the tape? For cheating? For causing an ensuing storm with your father?”
“No,” I whisper, suddenly hoarse.
“What did you feel?”
“Sheer panic.”
“In your sleep, you muttered, Gant. The voice you used…it sounded so different. Was that the last word she said to you?”
I nod.
“Because she was so worried about you. Not herself. You were her last thought.”
I’d replayed our last moments over and over again, and not once had I ever thought of that.“Everything you’ve said about her being a good mother, about the way you care for her so deeply in comparison to your father, says a lot. She must’ve shown you grace and kindness. I’m sure she did in her last moments too, internally.”
“She was a horrible wife. Friend. Teacher…depending on the student, but she was a good mother… don’t look at me like that, Dove. I know what you’re thinking.”
“That you’re so mannerless you seem to be raised by wolves and not a human mother?”
“I never said I was a good person. I said she was a good mother.”
“And I believe you. You don’t have to convince me.”
The silence stretches between us for a long moment.
“Gant?” she reaches out a hesitant hand to cup my face. “I’m sorry for the pain you went through. Maybe one day you’ll explain it to me, but that doesn’t have to be today. I can recognise pain when I see it and I’m sorry you’re still living through it. I’m sorry that I contributed towards it and I’m sorry for whatever horrible things you’ve witnessed because of it. I wouldn’t wish these types of nightmares, or reminders, on anyone. They’re truly horrible.”
I hate the pity swirling in her eyes. Not because it’s there, but because it makes me feel too much. I don’t want to feel anything. I haven’t felt anything until she came back into my life.
“Are you actually apologising to me instead of demanding one from me instead?”
“I always wanted to apologise. You weren’t ready to hear it.”
“Still? After everything?”
“If I’ve wronged you with my actions, I owe you an apology regardless of your own actions. I can only control myself. Not you.”
I let that sink in.
“But to be clear, I don’t want an apology from you because it’ll be in vain. You aren’t sorry. You felt justified and vindicated. Undoubtedly, it made you feel better. But it was fleeting. Last night gave me the tiniest glimpse into your life and you’re fucking miserable. Torturing me doesn’t give you any relief. Not for long anyway.”
“I don’t need you to feel sorry for me,” I say, unable to keep the venom from my tone.
“I don’t. Having sympathy is different.”
“Then what? You think this is my karma, then?” I ask, gesturing to the blankets and greenhouse. To what she witnessed last night.
“No, I think it’s your prison.”
The silence festers between us, but still, she keeps her legs wrapped around me.
“I could help you with a release.” It comes out raspy, deep and so fucking sexy.
“I’m not fucking you yet,” I say even as I work her entrance, letting the tight ring of muscles envelop the head of my cock and choke it before I ease out again.
“Why not?” she whimpers.
“What’s a pussy if it doesn’t contract in tune to your heartbeat that’s racing with—”
“With what?”
“Affection. It’s just a dark, greedy hole. I can find that anywhere. I won’t settle for it with you.”
“You’re delusional.” She sighs softly.
“I know my worth, and I know I’m worth your heart.”
She’s momentarily stunned. “After all you’ve done to me, you truly believe that?”
“I never said I deserved it. I said I’m worth it.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
I ignore her. “I’m unrelentingly selfish. Spoiled. I always get what I want.”
“Then maybe I’ll be the first person to tell you no.”
“Your lips will. Your heart won’t.”
“You’re so fucking arrogant. Do you even hear yourself when you speak?”
“Do you see yourself?” I ask seriously. “Look where you are. Breaking all the rules just to be here in my arms, in my creeping, filthy lair, pinned beneath my cock. Now keep trying to tell me I’m the crazy one. We both know you’re only trying to convince yourself.”