Eve’s face is flushed and pale as we drive. A glance in my rearview mirror shows I’m not much better. I wet my finger with saliva and wipe smeared eyeliner and mascara trails from my face.
“Is this a dream?” Eve asks.
I release my grip on the steering wheel to take her cold hand in mine. “I don’t think so.”
We ride the rest of the way to my house in silence, through streets that are strangely lacking in traffic. Though it’s Saturday morning, only a car here and there dot the usually busy roads. When we pull up in front of my house, my heart pounds. Everything is wrong.
I tuck Suki into her holster at my hip, and Eve makes sure Jesse’s safety is on before slipping it down into her purse and snapping the flap shut. We exit my Vandal and hurry up the front walk, while I dig my house key from my purse. My hand shakes as I stick it in the keyhole, only to find it dead-bolted. I bang a few times, then put my ear to the door. Corbin’s crying. After a minute of no other sound, no footsteps, panic sets in.
“Open the door!” I bang again, then peek through the blinds. Eileen’s plaid pajama pants shuffle toward the door, and I breathe a sigh of relief. The door opens to her yawning, holding a puffy-faced, sniffling Corbin.
“What’s wrong, Grace?” she asks.
“Oh, nothing, I . . .” From my peripheral, a police cruiser turns down our street. I take Eve’s arm and we push past Eileen, closing the door behind us.
“Are you in trouble again, Grace Anne?”
I shake my head, do my best to offer a genuine smile. “No, we were checking on you guys. Some shootings happened nearby last night, so I—we just wanted to make sure you were okay.” I start down the hallway toward the kitchen. My mouth is sandpaper.
“Well, that was . . . sweet,” Eileen says from behind us.
“What?” I twist on the faucet, gulp from the stream. “You act like I’m a heartless bitch or something.” I fill a glass and offer it to Eve, who drinks nervously.
“I didn’t say that.” Eileen sets Corbin down and he toddles off toward the living room. She follows him, leaving Eve and me alone in the kitchen.
“Where’s Henry?” I call out to her.
“He ran to MegaMart about fifteen minutes ago. He’ll be home soon.”
Corbin whines about something, and we leave the kitchen, headed toward my room.
“Daddy will be back with the new TV soon, sweetheart,” Eileen tells him. “Then you can watch your show.”
I stop in my tracks. “New TV? Why, what’s wrong with the old TV?”
“Not sure.” She sits with Corbin on the rug by a pile of blocks. “It made a strange beeping noise this morning—kind of like the weather alert—and we had to unplug it to make it stop. Weirdest thing ever. And before that, it shocked us both.”
My body grows numb again, and fear swims in my chest. I back through my doorway, speechless, and sink down onto my bed. Eve sits beside me and we stare at the floor for a long time. It’s a nightmare we haven’t woken up from yet. It has to be. None of this makes any sense. And when I try to put the pieces together, I feel as though I’m losing my mind, my grip on reality.
Eve takes my hand. “What’s happening?” she whispers. “Did we do this?”
“I don’t know. I hope not.”
“I have a horrible feeling something else tragic is about to happen.”
I squeeze her hand. “I do, too.”
FOURTEEN
“Wake up.”
I wake to Eve nudging me, and my alarm clock beeping.
“Holy shit, what—what time is it?” Disoriented, I shut my alarm off. “It’s eight a.m.”
“Saturday?”
“Sunday, I think. We must’ve slept through all of yesterday and last night.” I sit up, my bladder pounding against my abdomen wall. I stumble to the bathroom, to the sound of Corbin chattering away, his regular Sunday morning cartoons playing in the background. Only as I relieve my bladder, to the telltale stench of MDMA in my urine, do the events of the last forty-eight hours click into place in rapid succession.
I strip my filthy clothes, snatch my black, silk pajama pants from the floor and tug them on. I yank a black tank down over my filthy stomach—scratched from the rooftop we camped out on for hours—thinking about how much I probably need a shower. Nothing compares to that morning after a roll, or a trip, when reality’s filter had been stretched back so thin that it finally snapped, and now it’s all too much. Too bright, too loud, too soft, too dirty, too clean, too everything. I want to shower as much as I don’t want to be wet. I want to stay awake as much as I want to sleep.
“You okay?” Eve asks.
“Yeah.” I grab another pair of pajama pants from the shelf, and a T-shirt, close the closet door, and meet her gaze.
“My phone’s dead.” She holds it in a limp hand before tucking it into her pocket. “I need to check on my parents.”
“Here, why don’t you put on some clean clothes first?” I hand her the two items.
“Okay. I gotta pee, too.” She slips behind the bathroom door, and I cross the room to my mirror. Once I’ve cleaned my face, I throw on some mascara and lip gloss, brush my tangled hair, and tie it up into a low ponytail. That’ll have to do today.
Eve emerges from the bathroom with my clothes on and shuffles to me. She sinks into my arms for a moment before looking up at me. “I love you.”
I kiss her lips, hold her tightly for a few seconds before letting go. “I love you, too.” I lean to pick up my phone from my bedside table and find it also dead. “You can use Eileen’s. Come on.” I take her hand and lead her to my bedroom door.
When we leave my room, we’re met by the sounds of vomiting from the couch, and Henry holding Eileen’s hair out of the way as she pukes in a wastebasket. He glances over at us. “How do you two feel? You’ve been asleep for eighteen hours almost.” On his forehead is a glossy sheen, and his skin is pale.
“We’re okay,” I say. “But you two aren’t.”
“Sissy.” Corbin toddles over to me from his mess of toys, arms raised.
I pick him up and set him on my hip. “Is he sick, too?”
“Nope, thank goodness.” Henry holds a finger up, then jerks forward, puking into the wastebasket. When his stomach stops lurching, he speaks again. “Would you mind helping keep an eye on Corbin today? Hopefully it’s just a bug that blows over soon.”
“Sure. Can Eve use a phone? Ours are both dead.”
“Mine’s on the table,” Eileen says from the couch, her voice no more than a rasp.
I head to it and Corbin wiggles to be free. “You sound terrible, Eileen.” I set him down and he scampers off.
“Here ya go.” I hand the phone to Eve.
She takes a seat at my kitchen table and dials her mom’s number, holds the phone to her ear while chewing on a nail. After a few seconds, she shakes her head, hangs up, then dials again. After no answer for the third time she sets the phone down. “I need to go check on them.”
“Okay. I have to take Eve home,” I tell Henry and Eileen. “Will you be okay with Corbin until I get back?”
Henry nods. “We’ll be okay. Be safe.”
As soon as we get into my car, I take my pipe from my pocket and spark up the half bowl remaining in it. I hold the hit in and pass it to Eve, who inhales until the cherry fades and turns to ash. I crack the windows and we expel the smoke, and I hand Eve the cellophane with the rest of my weed in it. I can think of no other way to soften the sharp edges of just breathing right now.
Eve goes to work loading another bowl while I start the car and begin to drive. The streets are dead; not a car or a soul inhabit them, or the sidewalks. I take a right onto Oakland, past Riverbend, and shiver when the only three cars in the parking lot are police cruisers and a stalled car that’s been there for weeks.
Eve takes a hit and passes me the bowl. “Fuckers.” She exhales, blowing the smoke through the cracked window.
I inhale until my vision sways and I’m ligh
theaded, then release it in a steady stream out through my window. All around us, cars are parked and people stand beside them, vomiting on the ground or out of doors and windows.
“This doesn’t look promising,” I say.
“Ophelia, if we did this . . . could we undo it?”
I set the pipe in the console and take her hand. “I don’t think we did this.”
“But the spirit board—you saw what happened with the candles, and the cold room when I put my blood on the board. Nothing like that has ever happened, right?”
“No, never. Not even with Aislynn. But her first rule with the board was . . . never your own blood.”
“What? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I—I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting you to do that, and it just happened so fast—”
“Do you remember what I said?” She peeks up at me, tears glistening. “I said: give them all the death they deserve, and give us life. I wished this upon the world, and then I gave the spirits my blood oath. Maybe I should’ve been more specific?”
“Well . . . let’s hope this is all just a coincidence. Maybe the injections made people sick, but it’ll pass, you know?”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
We pull up in front of her house, and she takes the pipe from the console, ducking beneath the window to get one last hit before heading inside.
“Want me to walk you in?”
“No, it’s okay.” She checks the perimeter for foes before tucking Jesse down into her purse.
“All right. Plug your phone in as soon as you get inside.”
“I will.” She leans over to hug me and I kiss her nose. “I love you.”
“I love you, too. I’ll call you later.”
“Okay.” She blows me another kiss, then opens the car door to get out with her bag. She shuts the door again. As she hurries up her front walkway, there’s a rock in my gut until she opens her front door, pokes her head inside, then out again to smile and wave.
See, Evie, everything’s fine.
I exhale, and return her wave and smile.
And I know I’m lying to both of us.
FIFTEEN
When I get home, my neighbors are throwing up in their yards. Across the street, a couple sits, and another man lies on his side in the grass. When I get inside, Henry and Eileen are both asleep on the couch, with Corbin nowhere to be found.
“Corbin?”
I follow his babble to the guest bathroom, where he plays with one of his toy boats in the toilet. “Sissy, I pay. Boat?” He holds it up to me, dripping water.
“Yes, it’s a boat, but you shouldn’t be playing in the toilet. It’s nasty.”
I walk him to the sink and up the step stool, squirt soap into his hands, and as I’m washing them, a body appears in my peripheral.
“Eileen?”
She charges toward us, arms outstretched and mouth wide open, with a snarl so shocking that I slam the bathroom door and lock it on impulse. She rams it from the other side, claws at it with her fingernails, and Corbin screams. My hand shakes as I grip Suki in her holster.
There’s another wham against the door, and a different set of snarls—male, this time—and it could mean only one thing.
“What’s wrong with you guys!” I pick up Corbin, hold him against me.
The snarls and banging grow louder, and the doorframe rattles. I cover Corbin’s mouth. “Shh, baby boy. Sissy’s gonna hide you, but you have to be so, so quiet, so they don’t hear you, okay?”
He nods, whimpering in my arms.
I crouch down and open the cabinet under the sink, moving aside toiletries to clear a spot for him. I pry him off, push him inside, and he cries again, but I place a finger to my lips. “I’ll be right back to get you, I promise.”
He hides his face in his hands, knees pulled to his chest, and I close the cabinet, pivoting toward the door. I take out my phone to call the police, but remember it’s dead.
“Tell me what’s wrong with you guys,” I say, “or I’ll—I’ll have no choice but to shoot if you try to hurt us. You know that . . . right?”
At the sound of my voice, the scratching, banging, and snarling grow louder. I take Suki from her holster and aim low. I don’t want to kill them.
My last ten years here flashes before my eyes. When they adopted me, they’d been trying for years to have a baby with no luck. I remember that day perfectly, though it’s been a long time since I’ve thought about it on purpose, without trying to push it away.
I’d never known what it was like to be happy, loved, and whole. I was always in pieces, missing pieces. So when I finally got a home, a family, I erected a wall, so that if I ever lost them, it wouldn’t hurt me.
Never get too close.
Never let them all the way in.
And when Corbin was born . . . that perfect little bundle who’d never know what it was like to be unwanted, unloved . . . I wanted to hate him, but never could. He was perfect in every way, even in his messy imperfection, and I resented him for it.
So why am I protecting him from the people who love him most?
“I’m sorry.” I press up against the door. “I never told you guys enough that I—I love you. I never thanked you enough for wanting me. For choosing me. For giving me a family.”
They respond with a jolt, and this time, there’s the crack of wood at the doorframe.
“You’d want me to do this.” I wipe my cheeks and nose, and raise Suki to firing position. With finger to trigger, I inhale, then exhale, pushing away emotions that tell me not to.
And then, there’s another smash into the door and it swings open. I shoot Henry in the shoulder, but the shot doesn’t stop him. His eyes are black and dead, and yellowish-green mucus spills from his mouth. Eileen charges past him, a banshee straight from hell, and I scream, shoot her in the leg, but it doesn’t faze her, either.
So with a prayer for forgiveness to the Goddess, I deliver my loving parents a killshot each to the skull. They drop in a bleeding pile in front of the cabinet where their son hides, so I hurry to retrieve him, shielding his eyes from the sight.
“I’m so sorry, little brother,” I cry, rushing from the bathroom with him in my arms. “I’m so, so sorry.”
SIXTEEN
With my phone plugged in, charging, I dial 911 for the thirtieth time. Busy. Sirens blare all around us, and I try my best to control my breakdown because when I cry, Corbin cries, and I can’t bear to be the one to hurt him more than he’s already been hurt today.
“Mama, Dada?” Corbin asks me, whimpering.
I set my phone on the table. “Momma and Daddy are . . . real sick, Corb.” Seeing his terrified innocence, I kneel, take his hands, and get choked up. “They had to . . . go to the doctor.”
“Docto?” He sniffles.
“Yeah, little guy.” I hug him for a moment, my own body heaving in silent sobs. What did I do? What did I do . . .
I dial Eve and she picks up on the first ring. “Ophelia, thank God—”
“Are you okay, Evie? Are your parents . . . sick?”
“Yeah, they’ve been throwing up, both of them.”
“Get out of there, Evie. They’re not safe.” I sob into the phone.
“What do you mean, Ophelia? What’s wrong?”
“Eileen and Henry, they . . . something happened to them. They tried to attack me and Corbin. I locked us in the bathroom, and they beat the door down, and . . .” My tears spill as I watch their son stare off into space, dazed, probably traumatized. “I shot them, Eve. They’re dead.”
“Oh my fucking God, are you serious?”
“Yes, and listen to me: get out of there. Or hide somewhere. Lock yourself in your room with Jesse until I can come get you.”
I jog to the front window and peek out through the blinds. People wander through the streets and yards, aimlessly, as if they weren’t aware. Screams down the street make them run, and a young girl is ripped from her pink bicycle by two of them. They tear into her flesh,
her face, her tiny body, now reduced to pieces. I cup a hand over my mouth, frozen in shock and horror, as everyone surrounding charges toward the scene, slamming into, and scrambling over each other to get to her, now a bloody mess on the ground beside a pink bike.
Our neighbor, Mike Seymour, in his usual attire of worn, blue overalls and white T-shirt, snatches the hair of the one eating the girl’s face and yanks him up so he, too, can join in the carnage.
“Oh my God, Eve, hide. Don’t go outside. Do you hear me?”
“Yeah, why? What’s happening?”
“Please, you have to go. Now.”
“Okay, I’m here. My parents are lying down in their room.”
“Is Jesse loaded?”
“Yes.”
“Pack a bag. As soon as I figure out how to get out of here safely with Corbin, I’ll come get you. Make sure you stay away from the windows.”
“Why?”
“They’re in the streets. Everywhere. They ate a little girl right off her bike.”
“What the f—ate?”
“Yes.”
And now she’s joining my sobs.
“Those vaccines did this, Eve. I don’t know if it was on purpose, or an accident, but they did this to everyone. They made them into monsters.”
“I looked outside,” Eve says. “Dozens of them. Covered in blood.” And then she screams.
“Eve, what’s wrong?”
“They banged on my door!”
“Be ready to shoot, okay? They’re strong. They can break that door down. Shoot to kill.”
“But they’re my parents, Ophelia!”
“They aren’t anymore, sweetheart. They’re sick. And don’t think like that or they will kill you.”
There’s a click, then silence, and I realize my phone died. “Shit!” I plug it in and curse until it comes on again. Eve’s number rings four times then goes to voicemail, so I call again, and when it goes to voicemail again, I drop to the floor. Corbin toddles over to me, and I fold him up into my lap, rocking us both back and forth. How could our lives change so drastically in less than forty-eight hours?
Dysphoria and Grace Page 7
