by Logan Fox
There’s no pain, just tightness. I’m stretching for him, and the sensation’s both glorious and frightening. I know I want him, but I don’t know if I want him inside me like this. Would it be going too far? Couldn’t it just be enough without this?
“Jo, I—” I cut off when his fingers touch my clit. “I don’t know if I want—”
“Shh,” he murmurs against my mouth. “I’ll go slow.”
His breath is hot against my lips, and his body quivers as he tries to go deeper. I push against his chest. “Please, just…give me a second—”
He kisses me. Massages my clit with expert fingers. And stays buried just that single, enticing inch inside me.
“You’ll love it,” he whispers, sounding frantic with need. “Let me split you open and make you bleed. It’ll feel so good, after.”
I shudder at his words, and sigh out against his lips. “Slow,” I say. “Please, go slow.”
He groans deep in his throat and pushes his face into the crook of my neck. His teeth graze at my throat as he runs his fingers all around my stretched out slit.
“Hurt me, if you want,” he murmurs. “If it makes it easier.”
I’m already sinking my nails into him when he forces himself in another inch. I’m aching and throbbing as I stretch to accommodate him, as he tries to go deeper.
The pool house phone starts ringing again.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” he pushes away from me, pulling out and leaving me wrecked and aching. My tensed-up body sags, and I let out a sob of part frustration, part relief.
I wasn’t ready.
This time, the universe heard me.
Josiah stomps over to the phone against the pool house’s wall, his cock bobbing angrily in front of him, and snatches the receiver from its cradle.
“What?” he barks, glaring back at me over his shoulder with such raw hunger in his eyes that I close my legs and hug myself with shaking arms.
His body goes slack, and his eyes widen. “Diana?”
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Josiah
“You’re breaking up.” Candy folds her hand over the microphone and turns to me, her blue eyes filling her face. She nods a few times, and then frowns hard. “Mom, I can’t—” A few more nods.
As soon as I’d heard Diana’s voice on the other end of the line, I knew we wouldn’t be in the pool house much longer. I’m half-dressed already. All I need is to find my shirt…
“Okay. Okay. Yeah, I’ll put it on charge now. Okay. Bye.”
She sets the phone back on its cradle and holds her hand over it for a moment before slowly turning back to me. I drag my eyes over her naked body, drinking in the sight of her curves, the marks I’d left on her hips.
“She’s in Ohio.”
“With her brother?”
Candy shakes her head. “Victor. He’s…they dated for a while a few years ago.”
“She up and ran back to an old flame?” I cross my arms over my bare chest. “And what about you?”
As if realizing she’s standing there stark naked, Candy mimics me. Her gaze drops as she starts scanning the floor for her clothes. She shrugs as she steps into her pants. “She’s been trying to get hold of me. Guess my phone’s off or something.” Another shrug. “I can go there, I suppose, but…”
She pauses with her back to me, and then tugs her shirt over her bare back. I don’t blame her for not hunting for her bra first—I’m still trying to figure out where I tossed my shirt.
“But you’d rather stab out your eyes?”
Candy lets out a dry huff of a laugh. “With a blunt fork.”
I come up behind her before she has a chance to turn around, and wrap my arms around her. She stiffens, and then relaxes into me with a soft sigh.
“I’ve got a better idea,” I murmur into her ear.
“I’m all ears.”
I grab her chin and turn her face, so she’s staring up at me. “You stay.”
“Here?” She laughs, and her eyes flicker away from mine. “And what, get sent back to Happy Mountain?”
“I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.”
“Then what, Josiah?” She pins me with her gaze. “If we stay here—”
“Not here. You stay…with me.”
“And where will you be?” There’s a laugh in her voice, but at the same time, desperate hope floods her eyes.
I turn her in my arms and hold her flush against my body. “Does it matter where we go?”
She shakes her head. “Long as it isn’t Happy Mountain.” Her lips curl up into a trembling smile. “Long as I’m with you.”
“I know just the place.”
Candy licks her lips. On purpose? Maybe, because I’m sure by now she knows I can’t resist. I duck my head. Our mouths meet in a soft, warm kiss that leeches all the tension from my body.
If there’d been time, I would have undressed her again, but I’d rather not be here when Dad comes back. I can’t handle another confrontation—not after Candy just agreed to fuck off out of this place with me.
I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve. Except…I already know what’s under the tree.
Candy doesn’t.
But I know she’s gonna love it.
Just me, and her, and—
There’s a dull thump inches from my face.
Candy slips from my arms.
Confusion forces open my eyes. I blink like someone waking from a deep sleep as Candy crumples to the floor, revealing my father standing behind her. He’s holding a half-full bottle of tequila in one hand.
For some reason, I fixate on the bottle of booze. When it slips from his hand and shatters on the floor, spraying him, me, Candy with tequila, my head turns to follow.
I immediately realize my mistake. But by then, it’s too late.
He’s already beside me.
His arm around my throat.
Squeezing.
Stars flicker at the edge of my darkening vision.
Choking me out.
Something warm touches my foot. My eyes move, and get stuck on the puddle of blood inching between my toes.
Candy’s warm, sticky blood is the last thing I see.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Candy
The flames dance for me. Hypnotize me. Mock me. They’re so free, so spirited. Not like me. Nothing like me at all.
Everything that moves blurs.
Everything except those flames. Strange, that. Perhaps it’s because they don’t move like regular solid objects. Flames…they…
The flames dance for me.
I would rock to and fro if my body wasn’t a lame piece of shit. My chin is on my chest, but my head’s too heavy for me to lift.
Heavy, lame, warm, numb.
Oh, sweet salvation.
This is the oblivion I was craving when I played Truth and Dare with Josiah in the pool house. Except, I was never going to find it. My drink lacked an essential ingredient—one Mr. Bale always made sure to include.
Wayne’s gone and put me in checkmate again, hasn’t he?
“I always did love that laugh of yours,” comes a deep voice from nearby.
Pressure on my chin. My head tilts back, and I stare at an upside-down version of Wayne.
Alice down the looking glass, through the rabbit hole. One pill makes me smaller, the other turns me into a fucking doll.
But I’m not quite a doll anymore, am I?
“He ffffucked me.”
Is that slurring voice mine? Who am I talking about?
Josiah.
My eyes move away from Wayne’s face, scan a piece of the ceiling, the mantel.
My head snaps to the side. A dull aching pressure starts up on one side of my face. My mouth fills with liquid, and it tastes like warm pennies.
“Such a dirty little slut.”
Where is he, my Josiah?
The last thing I remember is kissing him. How I wished that moment would never end. I’d been filled with hope, and love, and everythi
ng good in the world.
I’d never, ever felt that before.
Not until just then.
Of course, it couldn’t last.
I don’t know why, but I’ve never deserved to feel love.
And the universe was only too quick to balance the scales.
“I liked it.” Blood oozes from my mouth. I can’t feel it, but I know it’s leaving out the front because I’d be drowning if it was running down my throat.
My head lolls forward, and then there’s nothing but that copper-penny taste in my mouth.
I wish I could spit. I’d hack up everything and dirty up Wayne’s devilishly handsome face with a spray of blood and spit.
“Let’s play a last game. You up for that, Candy?”
He moves my head for me, positions me just right.
The world resolves into a fireplace, a chair, a coffee table, and a chessboard.
I blow a blood-bubble when I laugh, and that earns me another backhand. I don’t know if there’s more blood this time—my chin is on my chest, and it would all be running down my chest anyway.
“Wha’ ya gi’ me?” I mumble with numb lips.
Wayne’s body eclipses the fireplace. “Candy for my Candy.”
We laugh together, because that’s what we used to do. It’s coming back to me now, as if I could only recall these memories when I was in the same state as when they were created.
The present merges with the past, and it’s as if I’ve never left that moment. Drunk on hope, high on desperation…
I’d do anything to be this person, to keep living this life. I’d never had it this good, and it still rankles me that I’ve had to suffer like this.
It’s not just unfair. Unfair is when you lose your balloon at the carnival, or your ice cream succumbs to gravity, or a bird shits in your hair, or your cat gets hit by a car, but it doesn’t die immediately, and instead, it slowly wilts in front of your eyes until you have to say it can’t live anymore because it’s too much too bear.
It’s a motherfucking conspiracy.
The world had it out for me from day one. Whatever governing body sorts out who goes where, it decided I’d get the worst card of the shittiest hand. It birthed me from a mother who already wished I was dead.
And yeah, things only got worse from there.
After nearly two decades of persistent torture, the world, the universal fucking mind, decides to tease me with a glimpse of what could be.
The ghost of Candy future was the most exhilarating, enticing thing I’d ever experienced. And yes, I was ready to sell my soul for the pleasure.
But I showed my hand too soon.
Should have kept that poker face till I’d known the game was won.
Because cunning, putrid, disturbed Wayne saw right through me.
He’d obviously read the desperation in my eyes that first night when I met him. The night I shook his hand, when I couldn’t take my eyes off his handsome face and his hand-tailored tuxedo. Maybe he caught me leaning in to catch a whiff of his expensive cologne, and knew that this little fish would bite anything he put on the hook.
There’s a clink of glass against glass. My eyes swivel in their sockets. With a massive struggle, I move my head the inch it needs so I can focus entirely on the chessboard.
“I’ll start,” Wayne says.
The fire pops.
He doesn’t flinch. But neither do I.
It’s a stalemate.
The referee crackles and spits on the hearth as we wage our pathetic battle of wills.
“Pawn to E4,” he says, moving his piece. Then, “Pawn to E5,” as he moves mine. There’s a tingle in my hand as if I’m trying to reach through my paralyzed body to make my own move.
He whistles through his teeth. “Clever girl.”
Clink.
Clink.
My toes start tingling too.
I’m regaining sensation.
Whatever he drugged me with, it’s wearing off.
“Still not sleeping, Candace?”
I glance across the beige carpet and lock eyes with Winona. We’re in her study—a room that wouldn’t have been so cramped if she hadn’t filled every wall with framed pictures of the various rejects and delinquents that roam these figurative halls.
It doesn’t help that most of those frames are just ever so slightly askew.
“Nope.”
“Hmm…” Winona ducks her head and makes a note on the creased page of a notebook that looks like she sleeps with it shoved down her panties. “Did you try those breathing exercises I recommended last week?”
“Yeah.”
I tilt my head, but that just makes those pictures that are level seem skew.
“Candace, dear, please can you look at me when we’re talking?”
This isn’t talking. This is a therapy session. But I’m not supposed to know that, not supposed to be wise enough to figure out that everyone in this place is either crazy or well on their way to insanity island.
I turn my attention to Winona. “I told you what I need.”
She sighs. “Someone your age shouldn’t need sleeping tablets to fall asleep at night.” She shifts in her chair, pursing her lips in silent judgment of my insomnia.
Back in her day—
“We have to uncover the underlying issue.”
“Fine.” I flip my hand idly, and go back to staring at the pictures. “I’m sure, eventually, I’ll just pass out from sheer exhaustion.”
She doesn’t say anything, which is unusual. When I look at her, she’s practically steaming.
“I’ll up your dosage.” It’s as close to a mutter as I’ve ever heard from her. Then her eyes snap up to stare at me. As close to a glare as I’d ever seen. “Are you sure you’ve never taken sleeping tablets before?”
“Why would I?” I shrug. “I’ve never had trouble sleeping until I got here.”
The ghost of Candy Present takes over, and that memory dissolves into the fireplace’s glowing embers.
I guess all the drugs he’d been feeding me, combined with the meds and the sleeping tablets at Happy Mountain, had turned me into a good ole junkie. He doesn’t realize it, but my tolerance is sky-high compared to what it used to be.
Clink.
Clink.
The flames dance—silently reproachful of my bad habits.
Clink.
Clink.
“Aw, would you look at that?”
I make sure to only move my eyes. Wayne takes off his glasses and sets them down beside the chessboard. Then he stands and smooths his hands down the front of his button-up shirt.
That gesture is familiar to me now. I’m not as fucked up as I should be—as he thinks I am—but according to my mind, I’m still in Wonderland.
He did this every night we played chess.
He’d drug me, play chess, and win.
“Checkmate, Candy Cane.”
The game was over. Now came the time for the victor to claim his spoils.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Josiah
Jo!
My eyes open to darkness and a low-key rumbling that I can feel as well as hear. When I breathe, there’s an ache in my throat. There’s a horrible, chemical taste to the air. A fierce headache thumps on the inside of my skull as I try to focus on something, anything.
My brain takes precious seconds to figure it out. When it does, panic floods me like a dam wall breaking.
I’m in a car.
In the garage.
That smell in the air?
Exhaust fumes.
My body tenses, but I can barely move more than an inch. Why is this so difficult? I grit my teeth, but even that gesture barely bunches my jaw.
Have to get out.
Have to breathe fresh air.
Or is it too late already? I feel like I’m underwater.
Carbon monoxide. It’s already filling my veins.
Candy!
No, I can’t think about her right now. I’m already on the
cusp of succumbing to manic terror.
Calm.
I need to focus. Think this through.
Terrible thing to ask of a brain that’s slowly dying.
Can I move?
I concentrate all my effort on moving my hand away from my thigh. After a few seconds, it jerks to the side.
Yes. I can move.
My eyes are adjusting to the dark. I’m in an old Porsche Boxer that my dad keeps meaning to sell but never gets around to.
Just like he never got around to putting up a pool cover. Not that that would have stopped Emma, but—
You have to focus Jo.
I don’t know how much CO2 is in my system, or how much more I can handle before I cash out.
Candy’s dead.
But what if she’s dead already? What, exactly, would be the fucking point?
I don’t know that. But I know I’m running out of time. We’re running out of time.
The window is closed on my side. He’s run a garden hose through the opposite door’s window, leaving just a crack where he wedged it in. There should be fresh air outside the car, but to get to it, I have to wind down the window or open the door.
Opening the door makes more sense. I could fall out of the seat and crawl away.
But…opening the door requires more energy than just lifting my arm and pressing down on the button that’ll open the window. If I get it wound down enough, I could stick my head out and breathe fresh air.
While I’m trying to figure out what to do, I try lifting my arm up enough so that I can slide it onto the ridge where the door handle and the window button sits.
Even that seems too big a task.
I’m sweating icy bullets. Nausea lays like dirty oil in my stomach. Slowly, the fierce prickling in my fingers and toes starts dying.
Looks like the rest of the players have all folded, Jo.
Just you and Dad.
Winner takes all.
Christ, it’s already too late.
Then it comes to me like a ray of light breaking through a gap in the clouds.
Turn. Off. The. Ignition.
