“Bo …!”
Rose felt the dog’s breath for an instant, the damp heat of it against her face, and then he had his jaws around her throat, pressing her downward, cutting off her air. I’ll go back, she thought, screaming the words inside her head. Somehow, she knew this was the key that would free her: I’ll go back! I’ll go back! I’ll go back!
Instantly, Bo let her go.
The owner was there—panting, flushed, sweaty. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” He grabbed Bo’s leash, gave it an angry, belated tug, his hands visibly shaking. The dog was cowering, hunch-shouldered. A crowd had gathered, a little clot of wide-eyed bystanders, staring at Rose, at Bo, at Bo’s owner, who kept giving those angry tugs to Bo’s leash: “He’s never … Jesus … I’m so sorry … Are you—?”
But Rose was on her feet now. She was in motion again, and she didn’t look back when Bo’s owner called after her. She was running with her wounded hand cradled protectively against her chest—running west, running for the apartment.
* * *
The dogs were sleeping in the back room when Rose returned. She took a hot bath, scrubbing one-handed at her vagina, her wounded hand tied up in a plastic bag, to keep the bandages dry. After her bath, she swallowed another of the painkillers and dropped into a drug-heavy sleep on the couch. The sun reached the living room window in the early afternoon, and it fell on Rose with enough vigor to rouse her into a murky half-consciousness. She thought to herself: Maybe I can kill them. She wasn’t confident she could manage it with the knife—especially not when it came to Zeus. But what about a gun? Shouldn’t she be able to buy a pistol somewhere? Take a train outside the city, get off in one of those small, NRA-friendly towns upstate, find a—
“You realize we can sense what you’re thinking, right?”
Rose lifted her head. Jack was lying under the window, watching her.
“If there were a way to avoid doing what you need to do, don’t you think Daniel would’ve thought of it?”
Rose lowered her head back onto the couch’s cushion, shut her eyes. She might’ve slept some more then, or maybe not—it was hard to tell—but Jack’s voice kept coming, and either she was dreaming it, or it was real. Some part of Rose’s mind was struggling to decide if it mattered which was true, dream or reality; a little engine inside her brain was assiduously chipping away at this question, but somehow never managing to reach a conclusion. Dream or reality, Jack was offering Rose arguments she could use, if arguments were what she needed.
“Would you kill a cow for us? Because that’s what you did when you put those steaks down on the floor. There was a dead cow in the pipeline that led to that particular moment, and you bore some responsibility for it, didn’t you? And if that’s okay, doesn’t it seem like it should be okay to actually kill the cow—with your own hands? Not only okay, but maybe also more honest? And if it’s okay to kill that cow with your own hands, why isn’t it okay to kill a human? Doesn’t that seem like a slightly self-serving moral scale you folks have developed for yourselves? And can you understand how from our perspective—Millie’s and Zeus’s and mine—there’s no difference whatsoever?”
Rose could smell urine, and she realized she hadn’t taken the dogs out since the previous evening. Now the day was slipping away from her, the sunlight shifting slowly across the floor, then departing altogether. Without the sun, the room grew chilly. Rose thought of moving to the bedroom, burrowing under the covers, but this would necessitate finding sufficient energy to rise and walk, and she worried her legs might not cooperate in such an endeavor, so she just rolled over instead, pressing her body up against the back of the couch, feeling as if she were about to start shivering, but then not shivering, not yet.
“We saved your life. Have you factored that into the equation? If we hadn’t warned you, Daniel would’ve cut your throat. And now? When it’s time to pay us back? Look how you’re acting. You’re a week late, Girl. A week and a day. You don’t see a problem with this?”
There was a noise behind her, a creak in the floor, and she rolled over to find Zeus standing beside the couch, his huge shaggy head only a few inches from her face. Rose tried to tell herself this part was definitely a dream, but she could smell the big dog’s breath—a rotten-tooth heaviness in the air—and was that really the sort of detail that occurred in a dream? She stared at the dog, waiting to see what he was going to do, and feeling too weak to thwart whatever it might be; then the floor creaked again, and Zeus turned and walked from the room, taking his smell with him.
“Think of someone hateful. That usually helps with the first one. Someone you’d like to stab.”
Rose was hungry. She had to pee. Her hand felt as if a great weight were lying upon it: an immense slab of steel, vibrating slightly.
“Come on, Girl. Everyone hates someone.”
A terribly cold slab of steel—or maybe terribly hot? Rose couldn’t decide which; she knew only that it was one extreme or another. And not vibrating: it was bouncing. Or no, not bouncing either: it was hammering. Her painkillers were in her purse, and her purse was on the far side of the room. She stared at it, trying to will it closer, but it didn’t work.
“If you can’t think of someone hateful, think of someone weak.”
The room was dark when Rose finally forced herself into a sitting position. It was almost eight o’clock. From sitting to standing, from standing to walking—each transition posed its own challenges. She brought her purse into the kitchen and filled a glass of water at the tap and drank the water, swallowing another painkiller in the process. She was only supposed to have one pill every twelve hours, and this was already her fourth. She supposed it was probably a bad idea, but she also knew this wasn’t the worst thing happening in her life right now. She wished it were.
If she didn’t do anything to stop them, the dogs were going to attack her again that night. Rose was certain of this.
She ate a peanut butter sandwich and drank a glass of milk and changed her clothes, and by the time she left the apartment, a little after nine, she had something almost like a plan in mind—or no, maybe not a plan, but a destination at least, which felt like the next best thing.
* * *
Rose had gone through a six-month stretch, just after she turned eighteen, when she’d thought she might like girls as much as boys. While exploring this question, she’d stumbled into an on-again, off-again entanglement with a friend of hers named Rhonda. And it was Rhonda who had first taken her to a lesbian bar in the village called the Cubbyhole.
Even without her wounded hand, Rose had worried about bringing a guy home. She wasn’t strong—she was skinny, and physically timid—and the idea of engaging in a life-or-death struggle with a man filled her with dread. She’d have the knife, of course, and she’d have the element of surprise, but it still didn’t seem like enough to guarantee success. So her plan, if you could call it that, was to sit in the Cubbyhole, and hope a woman would decide to pick her up—a petite woman, preferably—the smaller, the better.
If you can’t think of someone hateful, think of someone weak.
Rose sat on a stool at the bar, sipping a tequila-and-soda, which started out seeming like a brilliant choice, but then began to feel more and more misguided with every sip, and twenty-five minutes passed in a slow drip, and she thought to herself: This isn’t going to work. She’d go back to the apartment unaccompanied, and Zeus would rape her again, and Jack would bite off another finger, and Millie would scurry about on the bedroom floor, licking up the blood, and Dr. Cheema would stare at her with those tired eyes and purse her lips and cluck her tongue and stitch her back up again, and Bo would be waiting in the park—
“Is this stool taken?”
The baited hook, the cast line, the long, drowsy wait … and then that sudden thrill when the fish strikes.
Her name was Amber. She was too tall, too lean, too fit—a beautiful girl, in her early twenties, with a full mouth, and green eyes, and red hair down to the middle of her
back. She was dressed in jeans, cowboy boots, a sky blue hoodie. She had a tiny stud in her nose—it looked like a diamond—and Rose had to will herself consciously not to stare at it.
When Amber asked about her bandaged hand, Rose told her she’d caught it in a car door. Amber winced and leaned forward to touch Rose’s wrist. “You poor thing,” she said, and she was looking at Rose, truly looking. Rose tried to remember the last time someone had offered her this gift. The doctor hadn’t looked at her, not really, and her Craigslist dates had never ventured it, and her mother—
“Another round?” the bartender asked.
Rose didn’t resist when Amber offered to pay. She twisted on her stool to get a better look at this stranger. Amber’s hair wasn’t just red, it was thick and curly; maybe it had something to do with the painkillers and the tequila, but Rose wanted to touch it, wanted to take big handfuls of it and press them against her face. The two of them held eyes for a long moment, and then Amber started to laugh. “You’re an odd one, aren’t you?” she asked.
Rose took a swallow from her drink, draining half of it, and then she leaned forward and kissed Amber, and Amber didn’t flinch: Amber kissed her back. Her mouth tasted of cinnamon. Rose buried her un-bandaged hand into that luscious red hair; she grabbed a fistful and held on tight, feeling lonely and frightened and sad. She never would’ve imagined herself to be a terrible person, but it turned out that she was, because just look at the unforgivable thing she was about to do. This girl wasn’t hateful. And she probably wasn’t weak. But she was kind—and Rose despised herself for sensing that this might be enough.
She pulled away from the kiss, leaned to whisper into Amber’s ear: “Will you come home with me?”
* * *
The gray door, the three locks, the panting, whimpering dogs …
“Holy shit,” Amber said. “Look at these guys! You didn’t tell me you had dogs. I love dogs.” She crouched to pet them, bending to let Millie lick her face.
“Oh, Girl,” Jack said. “She’s perfect. We knew you’d come through.”
Rose remembered Daniel, his sense of urgency that night, his nerves, the way he’d hurried her down the hallway to the bedroom, just like she was hurrying Amber now, kicking free of her shoes, pulling off her clothes, tumbling the girl onto the bed. Amber laughed: “Easy there, hustler.”
It wasn’t just her mouth that tasted of cinnamon; her skin did, too. Her vagina was freshly waxed, and for a moment Rose couldn’t stop herself from thinking of the dolls she’d owned as a child, the hairless fold between the legs. She was drunk, and overmedicated, and she only half-knew what she was attempting—just enough to be certain that she was being too rough, and too fast, doing everything to Amber that she’d hated when guys had done it to her, and Amber kept grabbing her hand and trying to guide her, and Millie was right beside the bed, panting and pacing, and saying: “Fuck her! Fuck her good! Use your mouth!”
“Is she okay?” Amber asked.
Rose stopped what she was doing, lifted her head: “What do you mean?”
“That panting and pacing. Is she hungry? That’s what my sister’s dog does when she’s really hungry.”
Rose heard Jack give a little laugh. He and Zeus were in the doorway to the room, watching. “She’s all right,” Rose said. “She’s always like that.”
“Stop talking!” Millie’s voice had taken on a pleading, whining quality inside Rose’s head. “Keep fucking. Fuck the bitch! Fuck her good!”
Afterward, once Amber had come, maybe for real, and Rose had done her best to fake it, and they were lying there in each other’s arms, Rose arrived at a decision: she couldn’t do it—she wouldn’t do it. Her hand had stopped hurting for a bit, but now it was making up for this dereliction with a compensatory vengeance. Rose plucked the pill bottle off the night table, took another painkiller.
“What are those?” Amber asked.
“Oxy,” Rose said. “For the pain.” And she held out the bottle. “Mi casa, su casa.”
Amber laughed again—she had a pretty laugh. “I knew I liked you.” She presented her palm, and Rose tapped a pill into it.
This had been part of Rose’s almost-a-plan, which she was now certain—or nearly certain—she couldn’t (wouldn’t) follow through on.
They turned out the light.
Rose counted to sixty in her head, and then she told Amber that she needed to use the bathroom. This, too, had been part of the plan that she couldn’t (wouldn’t) follow through on: she would go to the bathroom and wait for the girl to fall asleep, and when she came back, she’d quietly ease open the night table drawer, lift out the knife, and do what needed to be done.
Rose tiptoed from the darkened room and headed down the hall. Millie followed her, panting ever more heavily: “Where are you going? Get the knife! Stab her! Cut her up!”
Rose shut the bathroom door on the little dog. She sat on the closed lid of the toilet and tried not to feel the pain in her hand, tried not to feel anything at all, in fact, thinking couldn’t and wouldn’t, and can’t and won’t. At some point, she began to lose track of time. Her head kept dipping—she’d drunk too much tequila, swallowed too many pills. It seemed as if she must’ve waited long enough by now: Amber ought to be asleep. Not that this mattered, of course (because of couldn’t and wouldn’t, because of can’t and won’t).
Rose pulled open the door, stepped quietly into the hall. Millie was gone; she’d returned to the bedroom. The light was on in there again, and Amber—inexplicably—was still wide-awake, sitting against the headboard, staring at Rose, who stood in the doorway, hesitating. Millie was dozing in the armchair. Zeus was asleep at the base of the bed. Jack was beside him, his head on his paws, his eyes shut. It was odd: the dogs were never all asleep—not out here, at least, away from the back room, especially not Zeus.
Thinking this, Rose knew what was about to happen.
She should’ve turned and sprinted for the door. It was all reflex from this point on, though, and Rose’s reflexes had never been the best part of her.
The dogs began to bark even before she was in motion.
She was running for the bedside drawer.
But Amber—kind, green-eyed Amber, with her long red curls, her cinnamon-flavored skin, her Barbie doll vagina—Amber, that lovely girl … she got there first.
AUTHOR BIOS
NATHAN BALLINGRUD: I was born in Massachusetts in 1970, but spent most of my life in the South. I studied literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at the University of New Orleans. Among other things, I’ve been a cook on oil rigs and barges, a bouncer at a strip club, and a bartender in New Orleans.
My first book—North American Lake Monsters: stories, from Small Beer Press—won the Shirley Jackson Award, and was shortlisted for the World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Bram Stoker Awards.
Now I live in Asheville, NC, with my daughter in an apartment across from the French Broad River. Freight trains pass by my window at night.
DANI BROWN: Born in Oxford, UK but raised in Massachusetts, USA, Dani Brown is the author of Dark Roast and Reptile out from JEA. She is also the author of My Lovely Wife, Middle Age Rae of Fucking Sunshine, Toenails, and Welcome to New Edge Hill out from Morbidbooks. She’s the person responsible for the baby blood bath that is Stara out from Azoth Khem Publishing. She has written various short stories across a range of publications. There’s always more coming soon. Upcoming releases to include “Night of the Penguins” and the first in the Stef and Tucker series.
She’s a bit of a party girl, which is weird because she isn’t much of a people person, but her adventures often end up with her at a party doing something stupid. Cats aren’t very fun at parties. Cats are better than people. If something sparkles, she loves it, unless it is a vampire. Her jealous, spiteful cat sometimes wears a sparkly collar. She tries her best to be a Placebo fan girl, but fails at it, somewhat miserably.
OCTAVIA CADE has sold stories to Clarkesworld, Shimmer, and Asi
mov's, amongst others. Her creepy novella, The Convergence of Fairy Tales, was published by The Book Smugglers and won best novella at the Sir Julius Vogel awards, and her food and horror columns have recently been published as a collection. She attended Clarion West 2016.
DANIEL MARC CHANT is an author of strange fiction. His passion for H. P. Lovecraft & the films of John Carpenter inspired him to produce intense, cinematic stories with a sinister edge.
Daniel launched his debut Burning House in 2015, swiftly following with the Lovecraft-inspired Maldicion. His most recent books Mr. Robespierre, Aimee Bancroft and The Singularity Storm and Into Fear have garnered universal praise. He has been featured in the anthology collections Cthulhu Lies Dreaming from Ghostwoods Books, Death By Chocolate from KnightsWatch Press, VS. from Shadow Work Publishing, Bah! Humbug! from Matt Shaw Publishing, and The Stars at My Door from April Moon Books.
Daniel also created The Black Room Manuscripts, a charity horror anthology & is a founder of UK independent genre publisher The Sinister Horror Company.
You can find him amongst the nameless ones on twitter @danielmarcchant, and at facebook/danielmarcchant.
He doesn’t bite.
Much.
TIM CURRAN lives in Michigan and is the author of the novels Skin Medicine, Hive, Dead Sea, and Skull Moon. Upcoming projects include the novels Resurrection, The Devil Next Door, and Hive 2, as well as The Corpse King, a novella from Cemetery Dance, and Four Rode Out, a collection of four weird-western novellas by Curran, Tim Lebbon, Brian Keene, and Steve Vernon. His short stories have appeared in such magazines as City Slab, Flesh&Blood, Book of Dark Wisdom, and Inhuman, as well as anthologies such as Flesh Feast, Shivers IV, High Seas Cthulhu, and, Vile Things. Find him on the web at: www.corpseking.com
DOUGLAS FORD lives and works on the west coast of Florida, just off an exit made famous by a Jack Ketchum short story. His weird, dark fiction has appeared in Dark Moon Digest, The Horror Zine, and DarkFuse Magazine, as well as other small press publications. He lives with his wife who gives him loving support and four cats who merely tolerate him.
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