CHAPTER SEVENTEEN #2
Thoughts and possibilities flare through my mind, slowly panning around the bodies scattered around and the animatronics standing idle on their stage in the dark corner. And the more I really, really think about it, only one big guy is coming to mind.
The man that needs to stay away from me just as much as I want to stay away from him now.
Junior.
He’s not in here. I’m looking. Not that I’d need to cup around my eyes to see his T-shirt clinging to his arms and chest like saran wrap. I’m just being observant in case he’s waiting somewhere.
I need to get the pictures. Preferably without Razor seeing them.
Fucking fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!
The boom in my sternum tightens my skin. I shift to Ora staring at me, her arms straight at her sides and her scrutiny breaking me up into little pieces for her third eye to sort through.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“Um, I…” Blowing a sigh through my lips, my eyes roam with the roll of my head, trying to figure out if I should tell her the truth since Gwen and Duse already know, or if I should say I have cramps and make a run for it.
“There’s been… I had… Oh, my God, brain come on.
” I palm my forehead, overfilling my lungs and heading toward the door.
“Bun, just tell me.” She follows me outside, gently placing her hand on my shoulder to get me to stop.
Okay, here it goes. My worst fear of being a nuisance.
“A cop was waiting for me in my tent last night. Not just any cop. A homicide detective.” I give her a moment, sharing a silent, heavy look of this desiccating, unknown doom.
“Yeah, it was pretty jarring and confusing, and I don’t know what he wants or what he’s already gotten.
But that’s the only one that comes to mind when I think of a big guy having collateral on me. ”
“Ohh, shit… Razor knows this?” she questions with wide eyes and paralyzed lips.
“Yeah,” I nod. “He fricking caught me coming out of my tent with the guy’s number.”
Her jaw drops, a dramatic gasp scraping like metal on metal down her throat. “Why would you get his number? How is he still alive? These are vital details you’ve been depriving me of!”
Her loud volume has me looking around, taking a step closer to avoid anyone overhearing this stuff.
“I didn’t ask for his number. But I wasn’t necessarily in a good position to put up a fight against Hulk.
And truthfully, I don’t know how he’s still alive.
Razor was pretty upset when I was honest about what all he said to me. ”
“Okay, um…” Bringing her vice to her mouth, she takes a sputtering hit and flicks her attention around before raising her hidden brows at me. “We need to go tell the guys he’s back and snooping.”
“For what? What are they going to do?”
“Honestly? Do you want me to be honest?”
“Yes, Ora. I’d love some honesty right now.”
She hangs her head to the left, waiting for the last of her candied smoke to dissipate between us. “They’ll probably kill him for being nosy and stressing you out.”
Swallowing down the incline of my heart rate, I rub the sudden itch on my nose, tensely reaching back to scratch my swamp neck. “Why… Why would you say that?”
“Oh, be so for real, Bunny.” She rolls her eyes and snatches my hand, tugging me into the steps she’s adamant on. “Those guys love all your fucked up bits and pieces. Because they have them too.”
“Wait!” I tug back, trying to procrastinate for just a moment longer so I can breathe and wrap my head around everything. “I don’t want Razor seeing that picture.”
“And I don’t want to see you shot up with a fucking sedative and dragged away! Or worse!”
“Why would he sedate me? What are you talking about?!”
She growls ferociously, huffing and looking away from me. “I’m giving you five minutes to look for this guy, then I’m sending the fucking dogs after him.”
I don’t need five minutes to find him. I know where he is. Or, at least, where he’s going.
Confusion scratches through the adrenaline, slipping ice through my veins and amplifying the discreet shakes I’m kicking off the pavement with.
Sedate? Sedate?! Why would I be sedated and dragged away?
Turmoil comes out as a whine, running through strobing lights and laughter.
My arms and legs are razors, slicing through the air, drawing out the warmth of my blood bubbling past the surface, my heart drilling an alarm that everyone here has me as the pawn in some sick game they snicker about in secret.
I’m not a joke. I am NOT a joke.
“Ugh, God! I’m not a fucking joke!” Swinging my stiff hands up, I barrel sideways through a group of guys standing in my way.
My eyes start stinging, and the swell that sinks me inflates my chest, making the pathetic idiot running look even dumber by scrunching my face with the emotions that are already draining down my thumping cheeks.
Making the last few strides past Scream of Hades, I choke, gulping back air that infiltrates my cry and knots my throat.
I hate this place. So much.
Others see a kingdom of fun. But it’s my prison. A claustrophobic, rotting cell that wants to see me fall limp on the floor and bloat to feed the maggots infesting dark corners.
I’m not letting that happen. I’m not.
I growl, using what feels like my last gust of burning air to drive my legs through the curtains of my tent, my sneakers tugging against the floor to slow my radioactive shakes.
Focusing through the tears staining my vision, Junior standing front and center on my stage, under the spotlight with a conniving smirk, has my teeth baring and my shoulders stiffening straight. “Give it back.”
“Give what back, baby?”
“I’m not-” stepping closer, my lip ripples “-your baby. Save it for your wife.”
His amusement slowly slips away, leaving realization to simplify his expression as he looks down at his bare ring finger.
He chuckles through a huff, jaggedly rolling his sinister smile and empty eyes back up to me.
“Should’ve known it was your heathen boyfriend that broke in through my window.
” He shakes his head with another laugh, quickly cocking it in tandem with a haughty pinch of his brows.
“Tell me, does he know you kiss other people when he’s not around? ”
It really was him.
Why is this big, giant creeper screwing with me?
Stopping a few feet from him basking in his own glory on my stage, I wipe the remnants of tears from my cheeks, abrasively drying my palms off on my shorts. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, really?” his brows jump theatrically. “’Cause it seems like a secret. Soo… You may want to come up here and make me seal my lips.”
“What do you want from me?!”
“I wanna taste how crazy you are so I know if I’m right.”
“Eww-ughh!” my face twists. Along with my stomach.
He jadedly rolls his eyes closed, huffing and opening them back up far off to the side.
Really, I can’t gauge whether I’m perturbed with the utmost disgust or chronically confused. A mixture of both, maybe. Because as he stands stiff like a chauvinistic pig, my heartbeat climbs my throat and trails of sweat leave distracting paths down the back of my neck.
I can’t think of what to say. My mind is a vacant room, resounding the thunder quaking my body. I haven’t even used the muscles to close my mouth yet.
Maybe that’s best. Because the movement my eyes are snapping to behind Junior is easily the most horrifying sight.
Razor still in his alter ego, drenched in sweat and shadows, moving out from the back of the curtains with inhumane calculation, his blown-out eyes equated to siphoning voids and his hands hidden behind his back, is clutching the last of the oxygen in my lungs and paralyzing me.
What do I do? Oh, shit…
“You know…” Junior sucks his teeth, completely oblivious to death reaping him.
This is an appropriate moment to cover my eyes. But they’re pinned wide open, fed off the terror of tracking Razor silently sneaking up behind Junior with a carnivorous target on his head.
All I can manage is a mute squeak that jumps my chest, numbing the sound of Junior’s droning voice complaining about something that has him rubbing down his face.
I don’t necessarily care about his life. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want his kid growing up without a dad or his wife to neglect motherhood from a broken heart.
I guess I’m just super messed up because I’m more concerned about witnessing a live murder. In my tent. On the busiest night we have yet to see here.
Rampant breaths spin my head, watching Razor take the final step he needs.
Then, everything surrounding us snaps to black, his ruthless double grip raising shiny metal attached to a long wooden handle, reaching the perfect, studied angle for the head of the axe to swing down into the side of Junior’s neck.
The loud hack of the blade separating skin and muscle, completely tearing apart his carotid and splintering his spine, rips through the air in the form of my own punishment.
My eyelids twitch, expelling drips that try to race down my cheeks. But my palm is slamming over my mouth to silence a yelp, causing the evidence of my discomfort to puddle along my finger and drain over the back of my hand.
It’s like I’ve seen this before, though. And not in a movie. I’m usually alone in my room when everyone sorts through the VHS tapes for a movie night.
It’s shocking, of course. And it twists my stomach to watch Junior’s lifeless face hang to the left with the weight of his head only being halfway attached.
But the blood that has sprayed back on Razor’s painted face is familiar.
The raw, animalistic thirst deepening his still expression is a memory.
One that I don’t have access to. Not in my own mind.
It feels like I don’t even have one right now.
There are no background noises to distract me, and the spotlight is swollen against the black I’m swimming in, only allowing me to retain one thing as Razor dislodges the axe and makes one more clean strike that sends Junior’s head rolling across my stage.
And that thought is I’m in love with a monster.
“Bunny, focus on me, baby,” he growls, stiffly lowering the dripping axe to his side and hanging his head back, exposing his prominent Adam’s apple.
I am. That’s the issue I’m having. I’m not screaming and vomiting and peeling my skin up over the decapitated head or the headless body collapsing heavily by his feet.
It’s just him. The water welled in my eyes is framing him, like my body is making an extra effort to remember how he looks in this moment, how rigid his muscles are beneath the tight, black long sleeve, how the mixture of crimson and scarlet enhance the golden hue of his irises… in case I lose this, too.
“No, I’m sorry,’’ I shake my head, my words hot and muffled behind my palm.
I quickly backpedal, willing myself to turn around and run before I can catch a glimpse of the ache of my rejection in his eyes.
It’s incredibly painful watching him do something like that and not hating him for it, not being repulsed or disgusted with his psychotic barbarism.
I only feel it for myself for romanticizing him.
Fetishizing, even.
Running out of the curtains, my arm trashes back to quickly close them and I grab the A-Frame chalkboard, lifting it up and hauling it over to the entrance with a pit in my chest.
I’m a monster, too.
Instead of yelling for help, I’m diverting people from entering and walking off—as if I didn’t just officially earn the title Final Girl in my own horror film.
I’m sorry for crying so much. And complaining. I’m just this annoying walking dunk tank, and under the right pressure, this big crash makes me spill over.
Like… it is right now.
I wipe my face, sniffling back my sinuses, and continue a laggard walk through the chaos of entertainment.
“Roslyn…”
The deep whisper stretching through my ear furrows my brows, adrenaline spiking through my heart and dropping the temperature in my limbs. I pivot, scanning faces that are coming and going. But no one’s close enough. And no one’s paying attention to me.