Chapter 23 #2
He bellows like it’s the greatest honor ever bestowed upon him, before grabbing one of the survivors from the fence, and slamming his forehead into it. Seeds spray across the blanket. Juice dribbles down his chest. The fire spits sparks in approval.
I collapse backwards onto the grass, screaming laughter into the night sky. “Bonehead! Bonehead! Bonehead!”
Skully is doubled over, laughing so hard he can’t breathe, eyeliner streaking from his tears. Marrow actually chuckles—a quiet, velvet ripple that makes me want to eat him alive.
I sit up, hair sticking to my face, cider splashing down my wrist, and declare, “Best drinking game in the history of the universe. Somebody put me on TV.”
The pumpkins grin wider. The fire crackles higher. My boys laugh and drink and smash, and for a blessed stretch of minutes, the tick-tock is gone.
Only noise. Only us.
The blanket is wrecked with shot cups and pumpkin seeds, the fire spitting little sparks into the night like applause. My throat is raw from laughing, my skin sticky with cider and pumpkin juice, but for the first time all day, I’m not vibrating with panic. I’m vibrating with them.
I flop sideways across the mess, stretching until my head lands heavy on Bonehead’s chest, my legs draped over Skully’s lap, my hand finding Marrow’s knee. My boys. My monsters. My idiots. My saints. They smell like smoke and sugar and the sharp, metallic underbite of October air.
For a while we just breathe. Crackle of fire, hiss of fog, the soft drip of pumpkin guts sliding off the stones. I let the tick-tock knock faintly in the background, but I don’t invite it in. Not yet.
Bonehead’s hand, massive and warm, cups the back of my skull like he’s keeping it safe. He doesn’t say anything—he rarely does when it matters—but his thumb strokes in slow arcs that make me want to crawl inside his ribs and live there.
Skully taps ash off the end of his cigarette into the grass, watching it glow like a dying star. His smirk is softer now, like sarcasm melted around the edges. He rests his free hand on my thigh, thumb idling back and forth in a rhythm I almost mistake for the clock until I realize it’s him.
Marrow sits upright, spine perfect, his arm draped loosely over my waist where I’ve half-tumbled into his lap. His touch is reverent even in stillness. His pulse beats calm under my cheek when I shift to look at him.
It’s Skully who breaks the silence, voice low, like he’s not sure he wants to ask but can’t not. “Your mom, back there…earlier. She said something about your dad.” He flicks his lighter, open-shut-open, nervous tic. “What’d she mean?”
The cider goes sour in my gut. My mouth tastes like smoke I didn’t inhale. I laugh once, ugly, not a joke at all. “Oh, that. Yeah. That’s the fun trivia question of my life.”
Bonehead’s arms tighten like a cage around me, his chin digging into my hair.
I don’t look at any of them. I look at the fire instead, because flames don’t flinch. “My dad wasn’t just a deadbeat. He was a dead-maker. People—women—went missing. Mom didn’t ask questions. I did. I was nine and nosy and I found things. Knives. Polaroids. Souvenirs that weren’t his to keep.”
Skully’s lighter clicks, open-shut-open. He’s watching me now, eyes narrowed, flame jittering on his knuckle. “Jesus, Baby.”
I grin sharp enough to crack. “Yeah. Jesus wasn’t in our house. Just Dad and his box of nightmares. And when he caught me snooping, he decided I was next.”
The fire pops, spraying sparks. My chest tightens, but I keep going.
“He chased me through the living room with a knife. He really thought he could pin me like a butterfly. He missed. I laughed so hard he got angrier.” My throat closes around the memory, but I force it out.
“He never got another chance. Because I stopped pretending not to see.”
Bonehead makes a sound I’ve never heard from a human throat, low and violent, like the growl of a storm about to eat a coastline. “Smash,” he rumbles, his whole chest vibrating under my cheek. “Smash him. Smash forever.”
Marrow’s hand is on my ribs, steady, pressing just enough for me to feel the shape of myself. His voice is velvet stretched tight. “And your mother—she blamed you for surviving him.” It’s not a question, it’s a diagnosis.
“Of course she did.” My laugh breaks sharp. “Her husband the monster, her daughter the witness. Easier to call me a liar. Easier to pretend it was my noise that ruined the house than admit he was already rotting inside it.”
Skully curses under his breath, voice raw. “No wonder you’re fucked up.” He squeezes my hand harder, bones grinding. “No wonder you’re perfect.”
The silence that follows isn’t empty. It’s thick, full of their bodies holding me down, keeping me tethered. The fire crackles. The pumpkins leer. The fog crawls across the grass like it’s trying to eavesdrop.
I tuck my face into Bonehead’s chest, greedy for the heat, for the smell of smoke and cider on his skin. My voice comes out muffled, shaky. “So yeah. That’s what she meant. That’s what she’ll always mean. Dad was a monster, and I didn’t die for it. She’ll never forgive me for that.”
Bonehead kisses the top of my head with a clumsy reverence, muttering again, “Smash.”
Marrow’s mouth grazes my temple, whispering, “Survivor.”
And Skully, voice breaking in half, says, “No wonder you scare the shit out of me, Baby. You were laughing at monsters before we even showed up.”
I breathe them in. Fire and fog. Hands on my ribs, my thigh, my hair. For once, I let myself just exist. Surrounded. Alive.
The fire snaps, spits another spark, and for once no one flinches. We just sit in awed silence. My body is a bridge thrown across them all—Bonehead beneath my head, Skully stretched under my legs, Marrow’s palm steady at my waist like he’s claiming a country.
Bonehead cuts through the silence, his voice thick as bread dough. “Carnival good. More rides tomorrow?”
“God, no,” I groan, pressing my face into his chest. “If I see another Tilt-a-Whirl, I’ll vomit blood and sugar.”
Skully smirks, flicking his lighter open-shut without lighting it. “Hot.”
Marrow tilts his head, solemn as a judge. “I found the ferris wheel sublime. Suspended between earth and sky, your hair in the wind—”
“Shh.” I jab him in the ribs. “You’re not allowed to poetry at me while I’m sticky with pumpkin guts.”
He smiles faintly. “Then I will simply think it.”
I roll my eyes, but it feels good. It feels stupid. It feels like a place where people can just…talk.
Bonehead scratches his jaw, seeds still stuck in his hair. “Favorite candy,” he blurts, like he just remembered a test he forgot to study for.
“Reese’s pumpkins,” I answer instantly. “Seasonal superiority. They taste better than regular cups because they’re festive.”
“Wrong,” Skully says, smug. “Candy corn. Underrated masterpiece.”
I sit up halfway just to glare at him. “I eat it religiously, but only because it’s required. Candy corn is wax with an identity crisis.”
“Exactly.” He grins like he just proved a point. “It’s punk.”
Marrow folds his hands, thoughtful. “Caramel apples. A sweetness encased, hardened. Fragile to teeth, resistant to time.”
Bonehead’s eyes light up. “Jawbreakers! Smash for hours.”
I laugh so hard I fall back across them, arms flailing. “This is the dumbest argument I’ve ever loved.”
The fog machine wheezes, like it’s agreeing.
Bonehead is still arguing that jawbreakers are “smash candy, best candy” when it happens.
The shift. The turn.
One second we’re a tangle of limbs and laughter, the fire spitting, the pumpkins sneering their carved approval. The next…it’s quiet. Not the scary kind. The holy kind.
Marrow’s thumb is still drawing those slow, steady arcs at my waist. Skully hasn’t let go of my hand, even though his lighter’s been forgotten in the grass. Bonehead has me clutched to his chest like if he lets go I’ll float straight up into the smoke.
And suddenly, the clock in my chest is louder than the fire. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
“I hate it,” I whisper, surprising myself. “The sound. The knowing. That tomorrow, it shuts. That you-” My throat chokes itself off.
Bonehead’s growl is low and instant. “Not leave.” His breath huffs hot in my hair. “Never leave.”
Skully laughs once, broken. “Baby, if stubbornness could bend the veil, you’d have us forever.” His voice cracks. He swallows. “But…fuck. I don’t want to stop hearing you. Not ever.”
Marrow bows his head, his lips brushing my temple. “If the clock devours us, let it choke. We will make the night too full for it to swallow.” His voice is wrecked velvet. “We are with you. Always. Here. Now. Until the last ember dies.”
The dam doesn’t just break. It explodes.
I kiss Bonehead first—messy, hot, his hands cupping the back of my skull like I’m something holy. Skully crashes in next, biting at my lip until I gasp, then swallowing the sound with a groan. Marrow follows, reverent and desperate, his mouth claiming mine like a benediction.
And then it’s chaos.
The blanket is a battlefield, and my body’s about to be the flag planted on it.
Bonehead drags me down first, because of course he does.
He doesn’t know how to wait. His big hands scoop under my thighs and suddenly I’m on my back, robe falling open, cool air licking my skin while the fire heats everything else.
His mouth covers mine in a bruising kiss, clumsy and worshipful, his tongue advancing like he’s trying to drink me whole.
Skully growls from beside us, tearing the robe wider, palms skating up my ribs. “Greedy bastard. Save some for us.” He bites at my neck, hard enough to leave a mark, and I arch into it, laughing and moaning in the same breath.