42. No Matter What
No Matter What
I’d like to say I kept calm as I rushed home through the woods the long way to the house.
That this new… untested thing clogging my throat had stayed in place.
That pure panic and adrenaline hadn’t made me sloppy.
In truth, terror, ripe and agonizing, gripped me fully.
The December night sending my breaths up around my mouth in ragged puffs of white.
I would make it.
I promised her.
I won't break her heart again, the thought awful and confusing. My knees and thighs are protesting as I pound them into the untried frozen dirt in the woods. It’s ten minutes from the police station to Bell Funeral Home, but the path is unfamiliar in the dark.
Will you be there, puppet? Will you be at our home?
Did you run from me?
Nausea swells deep in my gut at the thought as I sprint, a downed branch catching my polished shoes, making me stumble, two lifetimes accumulating in one moment.
It’s overwhelming, damning until the soft melody of music finds me in the dark.
I’m muddy and everything that I’ve never been before all at fucking once.
Panicked, scared, hurt, dying as I bolt from the woods.
The World We Knew by Frank Sinatra blaring from the record player my father deemed too heavy to bring along and too tedious to sell before we moved.
Our homes are lit, like beacons in the dark, our own section of Swindon deadly in its quiet coldness, save for her music.
Audrey set both houses alight so I could find my way home, my perfect girl.
My feet hit the gravel of the circle drive, rounding the haphazardly parked hearse.
The front doors of the funeral home stand open, my heart battering the walls of my chest. I pass my father in the foyer, avoiding his pained eyes as I search for her frantically.
The desire to call out is robbed by the rough, breathless ice shards in my lungs.
Sweat drips from my brow as I find it empty, fumbling into my father’s office; he follows me in.
The single revolver is cold in my hands as I open the action, spinning the cylinder and flicking it closed again.
The sound inside the house is deafening, but I turn the music louder before heading out past my mother on the porch, watching, silently gnawing at her fingernails as I pass.
Do they know?
My steps are hurried but slower now, calmer, because the silhouette in the window of her house comforts me, quiets me as it always has.
How many nights since I was a child did I sit out there in the woods watching her?
Seeking her warmth and her adoring eyes from the outside in the cold.
That’s how it has always been. Me, the unrelenting cold to her unwavering warmth, to know I dimmed that in the end.
My vision blurs, my eyes stinging as I enter the living room, locking the front door behind me, her figure gone from where it was seconds before.
Her father watches me from her side in the kitchen, his gruff face resigned.
Knowing.
Standing as a tragic sentinel.
For the first time in eighteen years, I understand Audrey’s fear of ghosts and my mother’s fear of my broken mind.
She sobs softly in her pretty dress, hunkered over the sink, Krissy tucked in her arms. And I go to her, because I will always go to her.
Even if I have to drag myself from the pits of hell, I would come home to her.
Because never, not for a second, have I forgotten the way she looked up at me, head bloody, lying in the dirt in our grove that first day.
How… intoxicating it was that this helpless tiny person needed me.
Not for me to go away, not to shame or hide from me, but wanted me.
Audrey Fisher wanted me that day in the woods, and I’ve been hers ever since.
Sirens bracket off the mountains faintly, but here as I wrap her and Krissy in my arms.
Audrey jumps, her head snapping up as much as she’s able to look at me before a relieved sob leaves her throat. “Oh my god, Gideon, I was so worried. I-I burned everything. I got rid of the tapes. I—"
My eyes flick to the canvas on the dining room table, a frayed rope the only thing visible under the layers of fresh black paint.
“Shhh. Hush now. I’m here.” I force her head around.
As badly as I want to see her sad hazel eyes, I refuse to let her see mine.
I pick her up, carrying her toward her bedroom, holding her tighter as her eyes fall closed and she leans into my warmth.
She’s beautiful in the dress I made for her, her sunshine hair spun into ringlets like her dolls.
So perfect, always so perfect. Emotion clogs my throat, making my next words come out jerky and thick.
Not missing the frenzied beams of flashlights outside the windows in the living room.
“I remember them, you know, our vows that day. Do you?”
She laughs, but the sound is miserable, scared as I reach into my waistband, the revolver heavy in my grip. “Yes.”
The click of the hummer lets loose the thin tether holding my emotions at bay.
Her small child-sized form huddled under the blankets of her bed, pretending to be asleep so I’ll cuddle her.
The small Audrey watches us, tears in her eyes, and I want her to know it’s okay to cry.
I want her to know how sorry I am that I made her afraid.
I want her to know that I can see it now, behind her bright, warm smiles, that she always was. That I scared her and she chose to love me anyway.
“I, Gideon Bell, vow to take care of Audrey Fisher for the rest of her life and kill anyone who tries to hurt her,” I repeat, my voice cracking.
“And I vowed to be your best friend, forever and always,” she offers, sniffling. Red and blue fill the room, peeking from behind her curtains, but her eyes are closed. Frank Sinatra’s voice mixed with sirens. It takes me a moment to realize that, like me, they went to the wrong house first.
“I’m sorry, Audrey,” I choke out.
She smiles, a silent sob wracking her body. “I know, Gideon. I meant it that day in the cemetery, what I said. All I ever wanted was to be your best friend. I want it more than anything.”
The first of many pounding fists find the front door of her home. “Gideon Bell, come out now!”
“What was that?” she asks, opening her eyes for a moment.
My hand trembles, my heart shatters, buried deep somewhere inside her as I push Krissy deeper into her arms, keeping mine tucked tightly against her as they pound again on the door. “Nothing, Audrey. You don’t have to worry about anything. Right?”
“Right.” She sighs, her cheeks raw from tears in the dark room lit only by the dim lamp on her bedside table. My eyes fall to the burned section of her hardwood floor, from her Easy-Bake Oven, as I lift my arm. “I love you, Gideon Be—"
The shot rings out deafening as hot vital fluid splatters on my face.
“brEACH, brEACH, brEACH. SHOTS FIRED.”
A strange, broken sound rips free from my throat, gnarled and vicious.
Pained. It gives me pause for a second, but only one, and only because it’s the first of its kind.
There’s so much that I got wrong, even more than I got right choosing Audrey.
Like leaving her behind. There are things I know for certain, like I fell in love with Audrey Fisher on that very first day, that it took me too long to realize, to admit that I was my very own duality.
That I’ve loved her every second since. That someone who only ever managed indifference and hate was in fact capable of love, but only a sickening kind.
The kind that leaves no survivors. I know that while I doubt the existence of a god or any higher power, I could be wrong.
That if there is one, no salvation waits for me.
That she and I will go to very different places, so I hold her tighter than I’ve ever dared.
The muzzle of the gun is still hot as I wedge it under my chin, forcing the hammer back again.
Cradling the most perfect girl in the world in my arms, the front door bangs open with a rush of violence that I won’t live to see the end of.
I take the barrel away, but only for a second, to press my lips to the top of her bloody, matted hair, still warm and coppery.
“I love you too, of course I love you.” My words are broken by sobs, but as sure as they’ve ever been.
A love, an obsession, like this is about inevitability. We were inevitable.
“GIDEON BELL, PUT THE FUCKING GUN DOWN.”
“CALL THE AMBULANCE UP. WE’VE GOT A FEMALE VICTIM. GUNSHOT WOUND TO THE HEAD.”
“Oh god, help me, it’s Audrey,” Officer Braylon yells, retching violently. “Maynard, God, forgive me.”
I can hear Altman ordering them to take him out, his screaming the loudest in the room. Aside from perhaps mine.
If Audrey’s ghosts are real, I wonder if they are still here. If the death that’s passed through the house across the street has lingered.
“GIDEON, PUT THE GUN DOWN NOW. YOU DON’T GET TO DO THIS. YOU DON’T GET TO TAKE THE EASY WAY OUT, YOU SICK PIECE OF SHIT.”
The easy way? Another muffled sob leaves me, filling the room with static. But it comes out more like a guttural scream as her blood soaks my suit.
I did this. I fucking did this.
It’s a split second, less than eight muscles required for me to pull the trigger. To keep my vow to Audrey Fisher. To kill the person who hurt her, who loved her worst of all.