by Amy Cross
"I used to have a rotten cat corpse," I say, "but my Dad threw it out."
"That would have been cool," she replies. "I've never seen anything rotten, but I've thought about it a lot. I'd like to see a maggot."
"I had a maggot," I say, starting to actually enjoy the conversation. "My Dad killed it."
"Your Dad sounds like a jerk," she says.
"He is." I pause for a moment. I'd expected to spend the afternoon hating Samantha, and now suddenly it's as if I've found a kindred spirit. I'm completely at a loss, and I have no idea what we should do, but for the first time in my life, I actually feel as if I'm enjoying hanging out with someone properly. I don't want to get too carried away, but I can't help wondering if this is what it's like to have a friend. My father wanted me to spend time with someone 'normal', but it seems he's accidentally introduced me to someone just like me.
"Wait here," she says, turning and running back into the house. She emerges a moment later with the salt shaker from the kitchen table. "Do you have any slugs?" she asks.
I frown. "I guess so."
"Let's find some," she says, hurrying past me.
"Why?" I ask, following her toward the bottom of the garden. I suddenly feel as if I'm caught up in someone else's whirlwind; it's like I've spent years trying to think of things to do when I'm alone, and suddenly this fascinating person has turned up and is offering a whole load of new experiences.
"Haven't you ever put salt on a slug before?" she asks.
"No. Why would I do that?"
"Don't you know anything?" She stops as she reaches a flowerbed, and we both get down on our hands and knees. "There's one," she says, reaching out and picking up a long, dark brown slug. "Isn't it disgusting?" she asks as the slug slowly crawls across the palm of her hand, its antennae slowly turning as it tries to understand the sudden shift in its environment. "Do you think slugs feel pain? Do you think a slug can scream?"
I take a deep breath. I feel as if I'm slightly out of my depth. Samantha seems to know everything. In many ways, she's kind of amazing, and I want to just spend time with her and watch the things she does.
"Let's see," she says, suddenly placing the slug's head in her mouth. "It feels weird," she says as the slug's antennae probe her teeth. Suddenly, Samantha bites down hard; she pulls the tail of the slug out, ripping off its head, and then she spits the rest out. "It didn't scream," she says, spitting out some brown goo. "Didn't taste very nice, either. Cold, like goo." She drops the remains of the slug's body, and plucks another live specimen from the mud. "Your turn," she says, holding the new slug out to me.
"You want me to eat it?" I ask, my eyes widening.
"You don't have to eat it," she says. "Just do what I did."
I stare at the slug. "Is it dangerous?"
"What do you think it's going to do?" she asks. "You think it's going to bite you? It's just a slug. It hasn't got any diseases." She pauses, clearly waiting for me to prove that I'm able to do this. "If you bite it, I'll show you something really, really cool," she says eventually. "Like, the coolest thing ever. But only if you bite it."
I take the slug and instantly bristle at the feeling of its cold, slimy body. The last thing I want to do is put this thing in my mouth, but at the same time I can tell that I need to do this if I'm going to impress Samantha. If I chicken out, she'll probably just think I'm some kind of coward.
"What are you waiting for?" she asks. "It's not gonna magically turn into a potato chip if you leave it long enough."
Taking a deep breath, I place the slug's head in my mouth. It's the most disgusting thing I've ever felt, and my gut instinct is to throw it away; I force myself to keep going, however, and I remind myself that I need to do this if I'm ever going to get Samantha to like me. For a moment, it occurs to me that I've gone from hating her to wanting her approval, and that this entire change has taken less than ten minutes. Am I really that weak-minded and stupid? Feeling a little anger stirring in my heart, I bite down on the slug's head.
"How does it feel?" Samantha asks, staring at me with wide-eyed wonder.
I try to pull the slug's tail away, but the body is chewy and it takes a moment before the head is completely ripped off. I feel the antennae still twitching against my gums, although that's probably just a reflex action as the slug dies. Eventually I spit the top part out, and I'm left with a cold, gunky and bitter taste in my mouth.
"Well?" she says.
"It was disgusting," I say, trying to clean my tongue against my teeth. I spit some more gunk out, and it feels as if I might never get rid of the horrible taste. "Why did you want us to do that?"
"Do you only do things that aren't disgusting?" she replies. "You can't just go around doing things you want to do. You have to try other things sometimes."
"Have you bitten a slug before?" I ask.
She shakes her head. "That was the first time. But now it's time to show you the really cool thing." She searches through the flowerbed and eventually finds another slug. This one is bigger than the others, and darker. "Look at him!" she says enthusiastically. "He's a monster!"
I smile, hoping against hope that this 'cool' thing doesn't involve that slug going anywhere near my mouth.
"So you've never put salt on a slug before?" she asks as she carefully places the creature on the ground between us.
"No," I say. "Does it make them taste nice?"
She laughs. "It's not about that," she says, taking the salt shaker and holding it above the slug. "What do you think happens when I do this?"
I shrug.
"Watch," she says, tilting the shaker. A shower of salt falls onto the creature. At first, nothing seems to be happening, but eventually I realize that the slug is starting to twist and shrivel, with pieces of goo erupting from its sides. We sit and watch for a couple of minutes, until finally the slug has changed completely.
"What happened?" I ask.
"The salt makes it die," she explains. "Its body turns inside out. All the inside, the guts and stuff, come onto the outside, and I suppose the outside goes to the inside. It's because the salt makes all the liquid parts come to the surface." She pauses for a moment. "I've often wondered whether, if you had enough salt, you could do the same thing to a person. Give me your finger." She starts unscrewing the top of the salt shaker. "Juliet, give me your finger."
"Why?" I ask, although I'm pretty sure I already know what she's planning.
"I want to see," she says. "By the way, you didn't answer my question. Do you think the slugs felt pain when they died?"
"I don't know."
"They didn't scream."
"They don't have mouths."
"Good point," she says, holding the salt shaker out to me. "Put your finger in there and hold it in place for twenty seconds."
"Why?"
"Because I want to do an experiment."
I pause. "Why don't you put your own finger in?"
"Because I'm the one doing the experiment, silly." She smiles. "I have to watch."
I take a deep breath. The thought of my finger being turned inside out is horrifying, but at the same time I know it probably won't happen. The most important thing right now is to show Samantha that I'm like her, and to make her see that we can be friends.
"Okay," I say eventually, slipping my finger into the salt shaker. As soon as I've got the finger all the way to the bottom, surrounded by salt almost up to the knuckle, I start to feel something strange. It's almost as if the salt has already begun to suck the moisture out of my flesh. I remind myself that this can't possibly be happening, and that it's all in my mind, but as the seconds tick by, I'm more and more convinced that my finger is turning inside out.
"Ten seconds," Samantha says, her eyes focused on the shaker.
I start holding my breath, determined to just stay calm a little longer. I want to pull my finger out immediately, but I know I'd lose Samantha's respect forever.
"Five seconds," she says.
It's happening. I'm sur
e of it. I can feel the flesh of my finger starting to burst, and the muscle and fat is rupturing through the sides; I can even feel the skin tearing along the seams, and the fingernail being sucked to the inside.
"Three seconds," she says. "Two. One."
Letting out a brief scream, I pull my finger out of the salt shaker and scramble away. My heart is racing as I look down and see, to my relief, that the finger looks completely normal. I swear, I felt it turning inside out, but I guess that was all in my mind.
Nearby, Samantha is laughing.
"I knew it'd be okay," I say breathlessly, trying to ensure that she doesn't think I'm an idiot.
"Whatever," she replies, still laughing as she screws the lid back onto the shaker.
"I did!" I insist, raising my voice a little. "I was just joking!"
"It's weird, isn't it?" she continues. "The slug went through an agonizing death, but it didn't let out a scream at all. Whereas you just stuck your finger in some salt, with no pain at all, and you screamed."
"Why's that weird?" I ask, still examining my finger for any sign of damage.
"Just is," she says, smiling as drops of cold rain start to fall all around us.
Chapter Five
Today
Barely able to breathe, I start getting to my feet, before Samantha kicks me in the side and sends me slamming into the end of her bed. I reach down and feel my chest; I'm not certain, but I think I might have fractured a few ribs.
"You want more?" she asks, walking toward me.
I shake my head, unable to get any words out. I never expected her to become physically violent. I knew she'd be angry, but this definitely wasn't part of my plans. I wanted her to scream at me, to say thing that hurt me to my core, but physical violence is something else entirely. Has she had all this rage and anger simmering for more than a decade, waiting to take it out on me?
"Does it hurt?" she asks, standing over me and staring down with a look of pure hatred.
I nod.
"Too bad. It'll pass. It's not like you'll be permanently scarred." With that, she places the heel of her foot on my hand and pushes down. I try to get free, feeling my fingers start to bend. At the last moment, just as I'm convinced I'm going to feel the bones break, I manage to pull away.
"Where are you going?" she asks, grabbing my hair and pulling me across the room. I fight to get free, but it's no use. My only option right now would be to scream for help, but there's no way I'm going to give Samantha the satisfaction of letting her know how much pain she's causing me. Besides, the last thing I want is for everyone to come running upstairs and bursting through the door. I guess I just need to soak up the pain. The physical aspect of this encounter might have been unexpected, but it could still be useful. I need to cry. I want to cry.
"Fuck!" I gasp as Samantha yanks my hair and slams my head into the side of her dresser.
"I don't care if it hurts," she says, fiddling with some equipment nearby. It sounds as if she's plugging something in to a wall socket. "You think I give a fucking damn about whether you're in pain? You think I'm gonna stop because I feel sorry for you? Dream on, bitch."
I try to crawl away, but she kicks me in the side and I drop to the ground. Feeling short of breath, I start to wonder if she's planning to seriously hurt me. Rolling onto my back, I stare up at her and see that she's still standing over me. From the look in her eyes, it's almost possible to believe that she might try to kill me. My heart is racing, but I'm too weak to fight back. Still, I guess this is what I came for: I wanted the raw thrill of her anger, and that's what I'm facing right now. Every superhero needs an arch-villain.
"I never planned to hurt you like this," she says. "I was quite happy to just ignore you, Juliet. I wasn't going to come and track you down or anything like that. I was just going to let things rest. To be honest, I think I'd done pretty well. I'd managed to take my anger and contain it, but then you came waltzing in here today with that stupid smile on your face, and I just..." She pauses for a moment, and I can see from the look in her eyes that she's planning to cause me more pain. "You can call for help," she says, her voice suddenly sounding strangely blank and calm. "Hell, you can even call the cops and tell them what I've done to you. I don't care."
Looking over at the top of the dresser, she grabs her curling iron. "There," she says, holding her hand against the device for a moment. "Nice and hot. It seems only fair that I should get to burn you. After all, you burned me all those years ago."
I stare at the curling iron and imagine it burning into my skin. Still a little short of breath, and with the pain in my ribs getting worse and worse, it's clear that I've got little chance of fighting her off. For someone who looks so dainty and cute, Samantha seems to have some surprising reserves of strength. Determined not to scream, I realize I might have to just let her do whatever she wants. After all, I guess I deserve this. She's right when she says she had to live with the consequences of what I did to her face. If she'd never met me, she'd have been able to live a happy, normal life, instead of festering like this and becoming some kind of monster.
"Don't worry," she says, kneeling next to me. "It'll be quick, and it won't be nearly as painful or as devastating as what you did to me. It'll hurt, sure; but after a while, the scars will fade." She holds the curling iron closer to my face. "Are you ready, bitch?"
"Do it," I whisper.
She smiles. "Is that your attempt at reverse psychology?"
"Do it," I say again. "You're right. I burned your face, and now it's time for you to do the same thing to me."
"Exactly," she replies, moving the hot metal closer to my cheek. "It's only fair. Think of it as some friendly reciprocation. I promise I won't go too deep. I'll just press the element down onto your skin and wait until I can smell your flesh burning. Doesn't that sound reasonable? You'll know what it's like, and then we'll finally have something in common. Wouldn't you like that?"
I close my eyes waiting for her to make her move.
"Eyes open," she spits. "I want to see your expression."
Opening my eyes, I stare up at her. Somehow, this feels totally right. Why shouldn't I go through the same pain that she suffered? Why should Samantha have to live the rest of her life with horrific burns, while I get to walk away without any kind of injury at all? In some strange way, the pain is exciting. It's as if this is going to be the first real thing that I've felt for a very long time.
"Do it!" I hiss at her.
She smiles, and then she slams the curling iron down against my right cheek, the bridge of my nose, and my left eye.
Chapter Six
Eleven years ago
"We should go inside," says the voice of the imaginary normal girl in my head. "Normal people don't sit out in the rain."
"We should go inside," I say, turning to Samantha. "Normal people don't -" I pause, realizing there are some parts of my internal monologue that would be best left unspoken.
"In a minute," Samantha replies. "Don't you like being out here?"
We're sitting on the porch at the back of my father's house. A light rain is falling, accompanied by a cold, persistent wind. Although Samantha and I are under the cover of the porch, we've both got our legs dangling over the edge, and our knees are getting wet. If someone happened to walk past and see us, they'd probably think we're pretty weird, but it's actually kind of fun. I've never met anyone who likes doing this kind of thing before, and I'm hoping we can sit here for as long as possible before my father eventually tells us to go back inside.
"Normal people don't eat slugs," says the imaginary normal girl.
I smile.
"What's so funny?" Samantha asks.
"Nothing," I reply.
"Then why are you still smiling?"
I shrug. "It was weird with those slugs," I say eventually.
"You never done that before?"
I shake my head.
"I do stuff like that all the time," she says. "Normally I do it by myself, though. Most of my f
riends just want to play with dolls and watch videos. That's fun, I guess, but I like doing other stuff." She smiles. "I didn't think you liked weird stuff, Juliet."
"I do," I say eagerly.
"What other stuff do you like?"
I take a deep breath. "I like finding dead things and watching them rot."
"Cool."
"And I like keeping maggots as pets. I don't have one at the moment, but I'm planning to get one soon."
"Even cooler. Can I come and see it when it arrives?"
"Totally," I say. "You can even help me find it, if you like. We just need a dead animal, like a dead bird or something. Anything'll do. I'm pretty sure maggots turn up in all sorts of places." I pause for a moment. "His name was Harry."
"Whose name was Harry?"
"My maggot?"
She laughs. "That's a cool name for a maggot."
I laugh too. "I know." Glancing over my shoulder, I see the old barbecue sitting idly in the corner. "Have you ever had a barbecue in the rain?" I ask.
"No," she says. "Does it work?"
"I guess," I reply. "It's part electric, and it's under cover, so I guess we just plug it in and wait for it to get hot. Then we can get some burgers from my father."
"Cool."
We both get up and wander over to the barbecue. It takes me a few minutes to find the plug and put it into the socket, but eventually the red light is shining and I can feel the plate starting to heat up. "It's pretty amazing," I say. "It gets hot real fast, and then you can cook pretty much anything. Most people think you can only have a barbecue when the sun is shining, but I don't see why you can't do it when it's wet."
"Totally," Samantha says. "We can even barbecue a slug!" She laughs. "I was joking! You should see the look on your face!"
"I don't mind barbecuing a slug," I say, slightly defensively.
"Relax," she replies. "I'm not obsessed with slugs or anything like that. Anyway, the most fun thing you can do with a slug is cover it in salt." She pauses for a moment. "Is your finger okay?"
I nod.
"It hasn't turned inside out or anything?"
