by K. C. Hamby
It’s why I’m so terrified of Burning. More than the fight with the Monster, having flames on my skin again is enough to make me want to bury myself alive.
“I think it gets better, though,” I add after pulling myself from the thoughts having a strong chance of making my mental stability spiral. I park in a spot in the parking lot and turn off my car. I keep my hands on the steering wheel and stare out of the windshield into the night. “Nina told me it just takes time and a lot of self-love and understanding.”
Eddie nods, smiling a little from the corner of my eye. “Your wee Mate is a smart one.”
“She really is,” I agree, sending love to Nina through the bond. I can tell she’s asleep by the fog around her mind, but I want her to know she is loved even when she is dreaming. “I obviously suck at taking the advice because I beat the hell out of myself all the time. But I think as long as you’re trying, you’re healing.”
She stays quiet, just staring at her hands in her lap. For once on this trip, they aren’t shaking. They are steady as a surgeon’s.
She reaches inside her jacket and digs in the hidden pocket for a second. “Here,” she chirps suddenly and throws something at me.
I luckily catch it before it hits me right between the eyes. A well-used tin canister about as big as my palm is cool and worn when I rub my thumb against it. It’s paint. Blue assassin paint.
“Ah, come on. You know I don’t do colors.”
“Stop your whinin’. You’re like a wee bairn.”
“I’m a barn?”
She groans. “A bairn. A wee babe. A tiny little, cryin’ human.” She throws her hands in the air and looks at me like I’m the stupidest person she’s ever met.
“Oh. A baby.” I nod before her insult really hits me and squint. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. I am not.”
“Then put on the paint,” she challenges and pulls down on the visor in front of her, exposing the lighted mirror. She swipes the paint across her face and runs her fingers from her forehead to the bottoms of her cheeks, smearing the paint down her skin.
I roll my eyes and swipe on the paint, slightly weirded out by what the color does to my irises. They pop more, I guess. One bright amber and the other foggy gray. I jerk on my hood again and get out of my car, following Eddie into the darkness of the trees on the side of the street. When I look over to her for direction, her eyes are glowing fire.
“I’m about to shift, lass. Back up.”
I do, even though it’s not like I’m scared of her. It’s the fire I’m not fond of. But I appreciate how she listened and kept in mind my trauma.
It is…nice of her.
She bows her head before her skin catches on fire. I flinch away, putting my hand over my eyes. The heat briefly rolling over my skin has my blood burning with fear.
“I’m done,” she breathes after a second or two, and I drop my hand after swatting at my damp, painted eyes. Her hair has glowing strands of smoldering ash and her skin shimmers when she moves in certain ways. Her ears are pointy and so are her teeth.
She moves down the street without saying anything else and I follow, albeit at a little more distance than I want to admit.
She stops in front of a small house, brick and well taken care of, it seems. Wouldn’t it be nice if the houses looked more like the stories inside them?
Thunder rolls across the sky, seemingly in agreement to my thought.
“A’rite. This is the place. We will go in through the back. Stay blended to shadows and let me handle it.”
I nod and she begins moving to the backyard. She’s so quiet, if I didn’t see her right in front of me, I wouldn’t be able to tell Eddie is here at all.
I nearly run into her tense back when she stops and turns her head toward me. “Thanks. For earlier I mean. Nice to ken I’m nae the only one.”
And, just as abruptly, she keeps moving.
I smile to myself a little, the corner of my mouth twitching up for a moment. I helped. Nina would be proud of me.
Hell, I’m proud of me.
The darkness hugs me like a friend as I blend with a slight smile still on my lips; it’s happy to conceal me and Eddie and aid in our murderous endeavors. We weave through neglected patio furniture and past a metal fire pit with nothing but cigarette butts in the ashes before climbing the steps to the back door. Eddie pulls two bobby pins from her hair and picks the lock faster than I’ve ever done.
We push into the house and I’m immediately assaulted with powdery scents, artificially enhanced to spread over the space of the house. It’s overwhelming and disgusting, but as my nose adjusts, I understand the need. The chemical scent of alcohol floats on the air, nearly hidden, but never destroyed.
I softly let air push from my nostrils, hoping to expel at least a few particles of the cacophony of fuckery assaulting my nose. It’s thick enough to make me dizzy.
Eddie slinks through the house as a whisper, moving gracefully past chairs and weird little cat statues placed in random spots along the edges of the dusty brown carpet.
I swear the eyes of every cat statue follow me as I creep along after Eddie.
We make it to a door in the kitchen with light shining in the crack between it and the floor.
Eddie turns the knob gently, not making a sound.
The door leads to the garage with the offending silver car in the center, still sporting a dent the size of a child’s head on the front bumper. A worn couch sits in front of it, holding a man wreaking of vomit and cheap beer. He has a beer gut, but one that could be easily concealed beneath clothes. His hair is cut short, but it’s greasy, probably from not washing it for a week or however long this current bender has lasted. An amber bottle of beer is balanced in the hand he has pressed against his chest and it comes precariously close to tipping over with every intake of rancid breath.
He is sleeping. Or passed out from an alcohol induced stupor.
Time for a wake-up call.
“Hi there, Alec,” Eddie growls.
My eyes widen. Her voice is different, more haunting and powerful. It’s eerily familiar with the same power I hear as the Monster talks to me.
Alec doesn’t move at Eddie’s greeting. She glances at me and rolls her eyes before rearing back and slapping the shit out of his face.
The snap of her skin on his face makes my nerves flinch.
This definitely makes Alec move. He springs into a sitting position, catapulting the beer across the garage where it smashes into the wall before hitting the floor in a splat of foam and piss-colored liquid, glass tinkling as it falls to the cement.
“Who the fuck are you?” he slurs and locks his lazy eyes on Eddie. He senses danger. I can see it in the way he suddenly stiffens. “What do you want?”
Eddie just crosses her arms over her chest and walks to the side of the car. “Bad dent you have here. About the size of a kid’s napper, dinnae you think?”
He slowly stands, swaying and tipping before catching himself on the couch arm. A burp bursts from his mouth as his right eye twitches. “You don’t know nothin’ about that dent, woman. Now get the hell out of my house.” He points in a random direction.
I don’t think he truly knows where he is.
Drunk moron.
“I know you hit that wee lad with your car while you were drinkin’ and, because you’re a coward, you fled. You threatened your wife when she found out. Do you ken how fuckin’ sick you havetae be to kill someone’s child and still carry on the ruse of the friendly neighbors? You looked at the grief in those parent’s eyes kennin’ you killed their boy and you dinnae care.”
He moves to pass Eddie and flee from consequences yet again, but she shoves him on the sofa with as much effort as swatting an annoying fly. Alec falls in a heap and I can hear the alcohol swirling in his stomach, destroying his liver little by little.
He attempts to stand again, but he is caught in the cushions, struggling like a turtle flipped on its shell.
“I’m gonnae need you to write your wife a let
ter, lad,” she snaps and throws paper and a pen at him she grabs from a dusty shelf on the wall behind the couch. “You’re gonnae say you cannae live with the lie anymore. You’re gonnae write down what you did and you’re gonnae say goodbye.”
Odd.
“I ain’t goin’ anywhere,” he insists, but Eddie squats in front of him and smiles.
“Oh, you are.” She leans in like she wants to whisper in his ear. “There is a special place in hell for you.” Her hand flies out and catches his throat. He gasps and claws at her arms. “Now, get to writin’, you fuckin’ wankstain.”
***
After three failed tries—one where Alec called Eddie a demented, Scottish whore, another where he wrote ‘deez nutz’, and the third where he called me a scarred demon—we finally get a decent letter.
By decent, I mean it says what Eddie commanded, but the writing is so awful it could almost be another language.
“That’s a lad,” Eddie praises, patting the drunk on the head. She folds up the paper and walks around the garage, looking for something with eyes glowing and twitching back and forth.
“What are you trying to find?” I ask, watching Alec with vague annoyance.
He smells horrible and his eyes are red, crusty, and a bit yellowed with years of alcohol abuse. If Eddie didn’t have to handle him tonight, I’m sure death wouldn’t be far behind anyway. He would go into liver failure, his body a toxic wasteland that eventually kills him.
“A rope,” is all she grunts in answer.
….oh.
It clicks into place for me. The note, rope…she’s going to stage a suicide for our dear friend Alec.
She finds an old rope hidden in a cobweb-covered corner. With a victory sneer, she throws it over a sturdy pipe hanging from the ceiling, quickly fashioning a noose at the end. After adding a bucket to the ground below it, she walks over to Alec. Her hand wraps around his neck before she hoists him up and onto the makeshift stool. His feet fumble around because he is drunk off his ass and can barely keep his balance.
“Now for your pretty little necklace,” she whispers as she wraps the noose around his throat. Pulling it tight, she stands back and admires her handywork. “That’ll do. Any last words?”
Alec just gazes at her with weary drunkenness. He shrugs. “I was drunk when I hit the kid. I don’t remember much, so I can’t say I have any feelings toward the matter in general.”
“Nae even remorse?” Eddie snaps. “You murdered a child.”
He just shrugs again. I don’t think he really knows what’s about to happen to him.
“Burn in hell,” Eddie roars and kicks the bucket out from beneath him.
He makes a horrible choking sound after he is stopped from falling by the rope. His neck snaps and his body twirls while he kicks to no avail. His face turns red, and his eyes grow like they may pop out of his skull any moment.
Eddie and I move to the door of the garage after she softly places the note by his feet. She turns around, holding her hand out…
“Back up, lass.”
Immediately, my feet move backwards and away from the door leading to the garage.
“As katharísei fotiá,” she whispers.
Let fire cleanse.
The entire garage catches on fire.
“What the fuck?” I yell, but Eddie elbows me, giving me a ‘shut the fuck up, you moron’ glare.
After a minute, the fire stops and…nothing is burned. Nothing other than my fucking nerves.
“What did you do?”
“Cleansed the place with fire. Burned away any evidence we were here. Including the marks I left on Alec’s neck when I choked him myself.”
We both look at him and, sure enough, it only seems like he hung himself. A pathetic drunk filled with guilt for murdering his neighbor’s kid who decided he couldn’t take it anymore.
He kicks one last time before stilling, drool dropping from his purple lips.
Eddie gasps beside me and slams her back to the wall like she was shoved by an invisible hand. Her eyes flutter a few times before she keeps them shut. Something rolls over her as she shakes like she is withdrawing from something bad.
When she does open her eyes again, they are glowing, but different than before.
Before they were hellfire. Now, the gold is that of stories about running into a beast in the forest, seeing nothing but hungry eyes before getting eaten.
“Well, shit,” I finally say, feeling the urge to say something about how bad ass the whole mission was, but Eddie doesn’t look like she’s in the joking mood. She looks like she’s in physical pain.
She groans, taking her creepy eyes from my face, and bends over. “We havetae go,” she mumbles.
“What…”
“The Frenzy after a kill, Falen.” Her eyes flash brighter when she looks up at me. Killer eyes. Crazy eyes.
“Oh, shit, right.” I pull the keys out of my pocket. “Let’s go.”
***
“But she said it seemed like it was happening here,” I tell Eddie, wrapping up Nina’s vision as the ferry pulls in beside the dock on Olympia.
Eddie swallows hard and clenches her fists by her sides. I have to say, she’s acted like someone has a hot poker shoved up her ass the entire trip back.
“Well, I ‘spose we will needtae tell the Council,” she pushes through gritted teeth. “I’m sorry, lass, I’ve gottae go.”
She leaps over the railing of the ferry and books it to the apartments without saying bye.
“Okay, cool. I’ll just…” I look around at the empty dock as I step off the ferry. “I’ll just fuck off, then,” I grumble.
I shove my hands in my pockets and shuffle off the dock and in the direction of the apartments. It’s late, anyway. I should head home too so I can snuggle up close to Nina.
The thought alone brightens my spirits a bit.
“Decided to get your thick head out of your ass, yet?” is growled in my ear and my knife is immediately in my hand. “Oh, what are you going to do, stab yourself?”
The Monster strides next to me with a giant smirk on her annoying fucking face.
I didn’t realize my face was so goddamn punchable.
“Leave me alone,” I mumble and walk faster after shoving my knife back in my boot, needing to put distance between us for my sanity.
Maybe if I ignore it, it’ll go away.
“Not likely,” the Monster chides, answering my thought and keeping pace. “And calling me an ‘It’? How rude.”
The night grows darker, everything tilting out of focus as if I’m watching a movie with broken film. My surroundings skip to the next scene without proper transitioning and I’m sure I’ve missed something. My mind spins and I stumble.
It’s like I can’t focus.
The Monster’s face is mine as she steps in front of me and smiles, but there is something lurking deep in the amber depths. Darkness. Malice.
Evil.
“What do you want from me?” I ask, stopping to stare at myself, at the Monster.
I’m tired of this. I’m completely over fighting with her about the state of my soul and who it belongs to. Why can’t anything be easy for once? Why can’t she leave me alone?
“What a question to ask yourself,” she laughs. “What do you think I want?”
“To get on my last goddamn nerve and make me think I’m going crazy.”
“Aren’t you crazy, though? Who are you actually talking to?”
Despair grasps my heart and I feel helpless. I am helpless. Why did Hecate do this to me? Why did Hades?
Didn’t he torture me enough?
“Apparently I’m talking to myself,” I snap, trying to hold back the feeble tears rising in my eyes. “But the fucking annoying part.”
“You really need to watch your mouth,” she growls, getting right up in my face. She is mere breaths away, staring me down, daring me to submit. “And who’s to say you’re not the annoying part?”
I blink and take a step ba
ck, ready to tell her to fuck off, and she’s right in front of me again. I trip backwards and land on the ground as she continues to cackle.
“Is your mind alright?” She takes a step forward, squatting in front of me and cocks her head to the side with a smile. She’s studying me as if I’m an experiment she’s invested in. “Are you sure the rot of darkness hasn’t taken you, bound and afraid, down far enough for the light to be merely a speck in the distance of your thoughts?” she asks, pointedly glancing down at my arms, and disappears with a sinister laugh trailing after her. Shadows dance on the ground in her wake, crawling to my own feet.
I back away from them.
She’s right, though. Who am I talking to? She’s not real, is she? She is me. The Monster is me, so am I talking to myself?
And…is my mind alright? It sure as hell doesn’t seem like it. And what the hell is this rot she keeps talking about?
I look down at my fingers when a burning pain crawls up my arms.
“What the actual fuck…” I whisper as, well…rot crawls up my fingers to my palms. It’s black and hot, exposing muscle and weakness as it tears through my skin. The smell of decay is overpowering.
Am I decomposing even though I’m alive?
I rub my hands together, losing the breath to scream, and it’s gone, flaked off like rust from an old ladder.
I need to tell Nina about this. I’ve waited and dealt with this on my own for long enough. I need her help.
She’ll never believe you, the Monster whispers.
I run from the voice as fast as I can and nearly tear the door off the hinges when I rush into our apartment. It’s dark as the cool air hits me and I bolt into our bedroom.
“Nina, I...” I start, but I shut my mouth in an instant.
She’s sleeping so peacefully. Her white hair is a nest on her head and her face is so relaxed. I can’t wake her. Especially not after her vision she had earlier today. She must be exhausted.
I let out a measured breath. I can wait to tell her tomorrow.
Can you? I can’t.
I grit my teeth against the voice in my head.
I think I can wait.
Chapter 31
Edelina
