Last Rites

by Danielle Vega

  My throat closes, making it impossible to speak. I gasp for air, but I can’t seem to get it into my lungs. My chest feels tight, like I’m back in solitary, a thick strip of canvas strapping me down. I grasp at my chest, like I’m trying to pull the bindings away, but my fingers close around nothing.

  “I’m a little disappointed, Berkley,” Sofia says, too calm. “I gave you every chance to come clean, to admit your sin, and you’re still hiding behind these bullshit excuses.”

  “Tayla and I were friends,” I say. I think of how Tayla and I used to build forts out of the sofa cushions when we were kids. How we borrowed each other’s clothes so often I could never remember which tops were hers and which were mine. “If I’d known what she’d . . . I wouldn’t have . . . I’d never have . . . I didn’t mean to kill her.”

  Sofia rips the fitted sheet off her mattress and starts twisting it between her fingers. “Good, Berkley. Very good.”

  Tears cling to my eyelashes, making everything blurry. “What?”

  Sofia ignores me. She crosses the room, yanking the sheet off my mattress, too. Her movements are jerky, almost mechanical. She ties the sheets together.

  “What are you doing?” I ask. “Are you going to hurt me?”

  “Don’t worry. We don’t hurt our own.”

  Sofia climbs onto her bed. She tosses one end of the sheet-rope around the pipe jutting across our ceiling. I watch her fingers tighten, testing the knot. I can’t look away.

  Once it’s secured, she gathers the other end in her hands and ties a loop.

  All the hair on the back of my neck stands straight up. I push myself to my feet. “Sofia—”

  But she’s too quick. She has the noose around her neck before I can reach for her. She steps off the edge of the bed—

  The rope pulls tight. Sofia’s neck snaps, and her head drops forward, chin smacking into her chest. Her arm twitches—muscle failure. I ball a hand near my mouth, fighting back a scream.

  Then she goes still, her body swaying in small circles. The only sound in the room is the fabric groaning beneath her weight.

  I don’t have to press my fingers to her neck to know that I’m not going to find a pulse. Her skin has already taken on a pale cast, like spoiled meat, and thin, blue veins are crawling up her neck and cheeks. Her eyes bulge from their sockets, the whites already turning bloody. The sheet-rope digs into the skin on her neck, making her head look puffy, like a balloon about to burst.

  I take a step closer, lowering a trembling hand from my mouth. “Sofia—”

  Her head jerks up. Her eyes are burning red, lit from some fire within. The sound of my scream echoes in the small room.

  Her mouth falls open, and black smoke pours out. It seeps in through my nose and mouth and eyes. It feels . . . dark. Heavy. Like something unfurling inside me.

  Something that burns.

  I swat at the smoke, but it keeps coming. I try to scream, “You crazy bitch . . . get off of me . . .”

  Sofia’s dead body smiles. Her voice echoes through the room.

  “Hold still.”

  CHAPTER 29

  After

  The poliziotto pulls his gun out of its holster. “Miss, I will need you to come with—”

  I feel my strength return to me, and I grab him by his wrist. My fingers curl around skin and bone, tightening until I hear something crack. The sound echoes through the room. His hand flops to the side.

  “Troia,” he chokes out. His fingers are still curled around the gun, but his wrist is broken and he can’t hold it straight. Pity. He falls to his knees, horror etched across his face. “Diavolina . . . what did you do?”

  I should let go. Surely he’s learned his lesson by now. But there’s something inside me that can’t do that. It’s a sick, hungry feeling, and the more I lean into it, the more it seeps into me, stretching through my arms and legs and into my fingers, my toes, my brain.

  He deserves this. He deserves everything I do to him. He’s hurt people, I know it.

  I twist, relishing how flimsy this big, strong man’s wrist feels beneath my fingers. Harper and Mara have started shouting. I’m vaguely aware of Francesca pulling at my arm, nails digging into my skin, screaming.

  I keep twisting until the poliziotto’s hand is folded back against his wrist, his knuckles brushing the top of his arm, fingers stretched up toward his elbow. Bones snap and rip through skin, the jagged white shards glistening with blood and sinew.

  The gun drops to the floor. The thud of metal hitting wood sounds strangely heavy. I toss the hand away.

  Harper shrieks and stumbles backward as the hand slides toward her feet, fingers still twitching, blood streaking along the floor behind it. Mara doesn’t move. She looks paralyzed. The poliziotto drops to the floor, sobbing.

  Francesca lunges for me, her eyes like lit coals. She steps into the pool of her brother’s blood, and her foot slides out from beneath her, sending her crashing to the floor. She grabs for me as she falls, tangling her fingers in my hair, and I go down with her.

  We’re a mess of arms and legs. Blood coats our skin. Francesca’s skin is slick and wet. She’s hard to hold on to. She wrestles me to the ground and slides one leg across my chest to straddle me. She holds me down by the shoulders.

  “You are evil!” Spit flies from her lips. “Look what you did!”

  I squirm, tugging one arm free. There’s not much I can do to her from this position on the ground, so I grasp desperately for anything I can sink my fingers into. I manage to catch the edge of her cheek, my thumb hooking into her eye socket.

  Her face goes slack with fear. She tries to pull away, but I hold fast, digging my thumb into the soft tissue of her eye. It gives easily, like a grape. I hear a squelching pop, and then blood is pouring down her face. She jerks backward, falling to the ground with a thud that sends her head whacking into the floor.

  She’s still screaming, but no words come out. The sound isn’t human. She clutches for her face.

  I lean over and grab the gun from the floor, aiming for her chest. Calmly, almost lazily, I pull the trigger. The firecracker pop of a gunshot explodes through the room. Francesca collapses to the ground, her body seizing before going completely still.

  The poliziotto is screaming now. “Please. I am begging you . . . please . . . stop . . . I have a family . . . children . . .”

  “Stop!” Harper shrieks. “Please, Berkley, just stop.”

  Mara’s face has gone white. She keeps shaking her head, her eyes unfocused. “Oh God,” she murmurs. I don’t know if she realizes she’s speaking. “Oh God . . . oh God . . . oh God . . .”

  They’re acting like I just killed some beloved pet and not the girl who tortured me for hours.

  “You’re sick,” Harper sobs. “Please . . . you’re sick!”

  “I’ve told you a thousand times”—I aim the gun at the poliziotto—“I’m fine.”

  I pull the trigger, releasing another pop. The poliziotto’s eyes go dim. He stumbles backward, then falls to the floor as blood blossoms across his chest and spreads, seeping into the cracks and crevices in the floorboards. Already, it’s starting to smell.

  People don’t realize how much blood reeks, how it has this sharp copper and meat scent. When there’s enough of the stuff, the smell hangs in the air like fog. It clings to the inside of your lungs when you breathe it in.

  I wrinkle my nose as the blood creeps under my toes, all sticky and warm. I tilt my head to the side, examining the dead man’s face. Eyes look so different when there’s no life behind them.

  “You . . . you killed them,” Mara whispers. It isn’t until she speaks that I realize she and Harper have finally stopped screaming. “How could you do that?”

  I lift my face, catching her eye. My veins burn hot beneath my skin, liquid fire running through my body. Mara flinches and looks away from m
e.

  I say, “Your hands aren’t exactly clean.”

  The girls go still. There’s something in the air between us now: the heavy weight of a secret.

  “What are you talking about?” Mara whispers.

  “You haven’t forgotten about Tayla already, have you?” I ask.

  Harper says, under her breath, “We promised we’d never talk about that!”

  Of course they did.

  “No,” I say. “The two of you made Berkley promise. Remember? You knew she felt shitty about what happened, so you said that if she told anyone what you all did to Tayla, you’d ruin her. That’s how you put it: ruin.”

  Harper’s voice rises a few octaves. “Why are you talking like that? You’re Berkley.”

  “God, you’re easy to fool. I’m not Berkley, but I know the truth.” I lift my foot, drawing circles in the blood with my big toe. “You dared Berkley to take that video of Tayla, and then you made sure everyone in school saw it.”

  “What do you mean you’re not Berkley?” Mara says, her voice panicky.

  “Trying to change the subject, Mara? Can’t you stand hearing about your crime? Tayla lost her boyfriend and her place at school because of that video. All her friends stopped talking to her. And then she killed herself. All because of your funny little joke.”

  Harper is suddenly between us, baring her teeth, her fear giving way to fury. “No one made you do anything. You’re just as responsible for Tayla as the rest of us.”

  She doesn’t get it. Neither of them do. They still think this is about Tayla and Berkley. They still think they can walk away.

  “All I wanted was another chance to live my life. To be normal.” I twirl the gun around my finger like it’s a toy, and Harper stumbles away from me, swearing. “My whole life, I lived by the rules, and look where it got me. All my friends betrayed me. My boyfriend turned his back on me. My mother died . . .”

  “Your mother’s not dead,” Mara mutters. “Why—”

  She trails off, her eyes widening in horror as my face starts to change. The bones shifting and morphing beneath my skin is a weird sensation—a wrongness, but not painful. Something warm rises inside my chest, and I inhale, lifting my face to the ceiling as I allow it to overtake me. When I lower my face again, I catch sight of my reflection staring back at me from the mirror on the wall.

  My real reflection.

  “You’re not Berkley,” Mara whispers.

  “You’re that girl,” Harper chokes out. “That crazy girl in the hospital.”

  Crazy girl. Fury pulses through me like a second heartbeat.

  “My name is Sofia.” I step over the dead poliziotto, trailing bloody footprints behind me. “Or didn’t Berkley ever tell you?”

  Harper and Mara don’t answer. They grasp for each other, fingers intertwining as they inch toward the door behind them.

  “Berkley didn’t deserve her perfect life,” I say. “But at least she felt some remorse for what she did. You bitches don’t even care. You’re partying in Italy like you didn’t slut-shame a girl into committing suicide last year.”

  “Berkley told you?” Mara whispers, horrified.

  “No one had to tell me anything,” I say. “The devil always knows a sinner.”

  Harper reaches behind her back, fingers curling around the doorknob. She turns it. But it doesn’t budge.

  “I’m going to enjoy killing you,” I say.

  Harper is the first to run. She pushes off the door and darts into the kitchen, yanking open a drawer beneath the sink. The clanking of metal tells me she’s looking for a weapon.

  I close my eyes, letting the heat overtake me. It stretches through my arms and legs. It curls into my toes and fingers. I open my eyes again, and they feel like lit matches.

  Something starts to hiss. Harper freezes, one hand still poised above the open drawer, fingers twitching. Slowly, she turns toward the sink . . .

  A dozen poison-green snakes crawl up from the drain, hissing and wriggling over each other in a tangled mess of muscle and scales.

  Their pink tongues dart out from their tiny black mouths. Their beady eyes reflect Harper’s horror back at her.

  She stumbles backward, kitchen utensils clattering to the floor around her. She screams.

  The snakes quickly fill the sink. They slide over the edge and tumble onto the floor. They’re too knotted together to separate from one another. They slither toward Harper in a single grotesque unit. She races out of the kitchen, pushing past me to get to the apartment door. She curls both hands around the knob and pulls desperately.

  “Let me out of here, you bitch!” she shrieks.

  A snake pokes its head beneath the crack in the door. Harper spots it and jerks backward, screaming. Another follows, and another, until the snakes pour in from every crack and crevice, the sound of their hissing like white noise.

  Harper’s screams echo around us.

  Mara doesn’t think I’m watching her. She’s been edging toward her room at the back of the apartment, slowly at first and faster now that she thinks I’m distracted. I watch her from the corner of my eye, relishing the look of relief that covers her face when she makes it to the hallway.

  I crack my neck to the left and then to the right, the sound of popping joints drowned out by the hissing snakes. As though on cue, the glass in every framed picture in the apartment shatters, filling the air with razor-thin, cutting shards.

  The glass pricks Mara’s arms and face, leaving long, thin red lines along her perfect porcelain skin. She screams and covers her face, but the glass slices into the backs of her hands. She’s crying now, thick baby tears that leave her gasping and snotting. Blood pours down her arms.

  Harper has kicked most of the snakes away, squealing each time her foot comes into contact with scales. She tries the doorknob again, and this time it opens easily.

  “Do you know how they get rid of demons here, Harper?” I snap my fingers, and Harper’s teddy bursts into flame. “They burn them.”

  Harper swats at herself with both hands desperately, her eyes reflecting the flickering red of the fire. The fabric melts into her body, making her skin bubble and blacken. She drops to her knees.

  I crouch in front of her, snakes slithering around my legs. I feel the heat behind my eyes, and I know they’re glowing bright red.

  “You deserve this.” I lift a hand to Harper’s cheek. Her skin is cool to the touch, even as fire dances up her hair. “You killed a girl, and you felt no guilt. You refused to confess. Now it’s your turn to die.”

  “No.” Harper starts to sob, her tears reflecting the red-orange flames dancing in her hair. “Please. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “I was friends with mean girls once,” I tell her, standing. “Things didn’t end well for them either.”

  Harper collapses to all fours, smoke quickly overtaking her. The fire burns the skin from her bones, eating away at her hair and her pajamas and her once beautiful face. After a few moments, all that’s left is the charred, black husk of who she once was.

  Which leaves Mara.

  Mara is trying to crawl away, but there’s too much blood. It coats her palms and pools on the floor. Every time she inches a hand forward, it slips out from beneath her, sending her face slamming into the floor.

  “Poor Mara.” I step over the bodies to reach her, walking slowly so she’ll think she still has a shot at escaping. Her sobbing inches up a notch, and her hands have started to tremble. She clumsily pushes herself back on all fours and struggles to move forward.

  “Did you really think you could kill a girl and there wouldn’t be any consequences?” I ask, kneeling beside her. “I thought you were supposed to be the smart one.”

  Mara collapses onto the floor, a bloody heap of skin and hair. She covers her head with both hands.

  “Please,” she be
gs. “I didn’t know. I didn’t . . .”

  “You didn’t know that taking a sex tape of Tayla would convince her to slit her own wrists?”

  “I’m sorry,” Mara says. She’s cradling her face in her hands. “So sorry. So, so sorry.”

  I wag my finger at her. “You’re not actually sorry.”

  “Please . . . don’t . . .”

  “But that’s why I’m here.” I snap my fingers, and the knife Harper pulled from the kitchen flies across the room, embedding itself in Mara’s back. She releases a wet, muffled gasp and collapses on the floor. “To make sure you die sorry.”

  Mara opens and closes her mouth a few times, her eyes clouding. A bubble of blood forms on her lips and then pops, speckling her face with red. The light in her eyes dies.

  The heat bubbles up inside of me, hotter and hotter, until it’s all that I can feel. My fingers twitch, and my lungs grow hot—they’re practically boiling. I stand, stretching my arms out to either side.

  It’s happening.

  Flames erupt from my fingertips. Little orange flowers licking at my nails. They travel through my fingers and over my wrists, carving lines up my arms. When they reach my head, they pour out of my eye sockets and nostrils and mouth.

  The flames feel good. Like I’m being cleansed from the inside out.

  Like redemption.

  The fire leaps from my body to the thick rugs covering the wood floors. It crawls up the sides of the furniture and curls into the art hanging on the walls. It eats away wood and fabric and curtains and carpets. The apartment fills with roiling black smoke.

  I start to laugh. The laughter is like medicine, ripping through me, tearing away all that is sinful and making me whole. This is a good death. A clean death. This is nothing to be ashamed of.