by Amy Cross
"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. "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 and 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 away. 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. "Now it's time to show you the 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 sure 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 almost the seams, and the finger nail 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 you
r 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. "It shows that sometimes, the people in the most pain are the ones who show the least sign of anything happening". She stares at me, and we sit in silence as, slowly, drops of cold rain start to fall all around us.
Chapter Five
Today
"Do you remember the slugs?" I ask, staring into Samantha's furious face. I was prepared for her to be angry, but there's a degree of insanity in her gaze that's a little stronger than I'd expected. "Do you remember -"
"The what?" she shouts, trembling with rage. "Fuck the slugs! Look at me, you bitch! Look at what you did to me!"
I stare at the scarring on her right cheek. Even after all these years, the skin is marked and damaged. The worst part is the looseness around her eye socket, which makes it look as if her face has started to melt. It's weird to think that she could still look so bad, all these years after the accident, and that she'll most likely carry these scars with her for the rest of her life.
"That day you came to visit," I say, stammering a little. I'm keen to remind her of the events that led up to the scarring, though. Despite the ferocity of her anger, I want to breathe it all in. This is what I came for. "Do you remember how you dared me to eat a slug?" I add. "Do you remember when -"
"What?" She pauses for a moment, looking completely disgusted by the memory. "We bit the heads off them," she says eventually. "We didn't eat them".
"Still," I continue. "It was pretty weird. Sometimes I think I can still taste it. Do you remember how bitter they were?"
"Why are you rambling on about the slugs?" she asks. "What are you, Juliet? Are you mentally impaired? We were kids. We were fucking stupid little kids. That's the kind of things kids do. They experiment with stupid stuff and they bite the heads off slugs and pull the legs off spiders and all that kind of stuff. It's harmless. It's innocent. It doesn't leave huge scars! What you did was different, Juliet! You took things too far!"
"I know," I reply, backing away slightly, "but think about it. Don't you think it was kind of weird how we got on? Even if it was just for a few hours, we were friends".
"Friends?" She laughs as she steps closer. "Friends? Seriously? If that's what you call a friendship, Juliet, there's something seriously wrong with you". She stares at me for a moment, before a broad smile slowly spreads across her lips. "Oh God, tell me it's not true".
"What?"
"Seriously?"
"What?"
"Was I your only friend?"
I take a deep breath. This conversation isn't quite going the way I'd expected.
"Was I the only friend you ever had, Juliet?" she asks. "In your whole, miserable, stinking life, am I the only one? Did you never, in all of your pathetic existence, manage to make another friend? Not one? Am I the only one who could even be bothered to go near you?"
"I don't need friends," I reply. This is good. This is what I need her to say. I need her to provoke some kind of reaction in me; I need to know if I have any genuine emotions hidden deep down in my soul.
"It's a good job, really," she sneers. "Who the hell would want to be friends with a freak like you? I could tell from the first moment I met you. The only reason I even spoke to you was 'cause my mother told me you were a pathetic loser who needed to have her hand held for a little bit. And how did you repay me? You fucked up my face!"
"It was an accident," I say quietly.
"Bullshit!" She stares at me for a moment. "It wasn't an accident, Juliet. I saw your face just before it happened. There was a look in your eyes, like the mask slipped. You did it on purpose".
I open my mouth to argue with her, but there's no point. She seems so determined to believe the worst, and I'd probably only make her angry if I tried to disagree. Besides, she's absolutely correct. It wasn't an accident. It's pretty clear that Samantha has spent the past eleven years becoming more and more bitter, to the extent that she seems to have this coiled rage deep inside. When I came here today, I was expecting - and hoping - that she'd show some real venom toward me, but I never thought she'd have changed so much. To be honest, I'm starting to wonder whether I'm entirely safe alone in this room with her. I wasn't planning to get physically hurt today. Then again, why not? Maybe it's what I need.
"Why did you come here today?" she asks. "Did you think I'd be pleased to see you? Did you think there'd be even a small part of me that might forgive you for what you did to me? Is that why you're here? You want me to tell you that it's all in the past?" She turns her face to one side, so I can get a better view of her scars. "This isn't in the past, Juliet. I have to face this every single day. Every time I look in the mirror, I remember the look in your eyes. I remember the sound of my own screams. Sometimes I even dream about you. Does that make you happy?"
"You could get plastic surgery," I suggest.
"How the fuck am I going to pay for plastic surgery?" she screams. "Is that why you're here? To torture me some more? Unless you've got a few thousand dollars to pay for a surgeon, what the fuck are you doing here?"
"My father made me come," I say quietly, which is kind of true. I mean, it was definitely his idea. I wasn't keen at first, but eventually I realized that confronting Samantha again after all these years would be useful.
"Poor little Daddy's girl," she says.
"That's not quite accurate," I say, unable to hide a smile.
"What's so fucking funny?" she screams, lunging at me and pinning me against the wall. I try to get free, but she's too strong. "What the fuck's wrong with you, Juliet? Why are you smiling? Look at me!"
I stare into her eyes, but I can't wipe the smile from my face. This always happens when I'm faced with real emotions in other people; I get a stupid grin that makes it look as if I find the whole thing funny. It's some kind of instinctive reaction, and I have no control over when and how it happens; no matter how hard I try, I can't stop smiling right now, even though I can tell it's infuriating her.
"Nice," she spits, leaning closer. She's just a few inches from my face now. "You scar me for life, and then you fuck off for eleven years, and then you come back to gloat. To laugh at me. What a nice person you are, Juliet. Does your father know you're an evil little fuck?"
"It's not like that," I reply.
"Isn't it?" She stares at me. "Are you trying to tell me you're not evil?"
I take a deep breath. "No," I say eventually. "I'm not trying to tell you that".
"You're sick," she says.
I nod.
"You're the worst human being I've ever met".
I nod again.
"You should do everyone a favor, and go kill yourself".
I stare at her. Somewhere, deep in my heart, I'm starting to feel something. With a mounting sense of expectation, I realize I might actually start to cry if she keeps saying these things to me.
"Keep going," I say eventually.
"What?"
"Keep going. What about my mother? Say something about my mother".
"Are you serious?"
I nod.
"You know what?" She steps back, and then suddenly she grabs my shoulders, pulls me close, and slams her knee into my chest before pushing me to the ground. "Sorry, Juliet," she says as I struggle to get my breath back, "did that hurt?"
Barely able to breathe, I start getting to my feet, before Samantha kicks me in the side and sends me slamming into the side 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 want her to scream at me, to say thing that hurt me to my core, but physical violence is something else entirely.
"Does it hurt?" she asks, standing over me and staring down wit
h 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, 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. Please God, let me 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 a little 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.
"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".
