Mean girl_A dark, disturbing psychological thriller

by Natasha A. Salnikova

  “I had to hit her on the head to knock her out, but it doesn’t matter. I did my research before doing it. I knew that she wouldn’t die before you came. She could suffocate from snot, but you have to take some risks.”

  “I ... I ... I thought ...” Corby tried to put into words her hope that he had changed his mind.

  “I always finish my plans, Corby. I couldn’t just drop this idea because you asked me to, especially when I’d thought of everything already.”

  “They’ll catch you.”

  “It didn’t happen to you, why would it happen to me? You are good at school, but I’m not an idiot.”

  “Jacob.” Corby swayed. The voices in her head drove her crazy. She felt sick and dizzy from what she’d seen.

  “What’s the matter, Corby? You’re so pale. Are you okay? Sit down.”

  Corby stopped his hand when he tried to help her.

  “You’re going to kill her?” she asked.

  “Of course! What else should I do with her and for what other reason would I bring her here?”

  Jane jerked and moaned more. Corby didn’t know what it was to keep a person tied and tell her that you were going to kill her. It was all a new and different experience.

  Corby couldn’t stand any longer and sat down on the floor, her back against the wall. She wanted to cover her ears so she would not hear Jane, but then the voices in her head became louder.

  “Corby.”

  “Jacob, I love you very much.” She said these words with difficulty. The words that didn’t have a drop of lie. But the words that were to follow, didn’t want to come out of her mouth. She put forth a lot of effort to push them out of her mouth, like a cork out of a bottle. “We should let her go.”

  Jacob stared at her and then shook his head. “What?”

  “Let her go. Please, Jacob.”

  “Are you crazy? Sorry.”

  “You’ve been thinking a lot and I’ve been thinking.”

  Jacob smirked.

  “Stop it,” he said. “You have a killer inside you.”

  “No.” Corby shook her head.

  Jacob sat down in front of her.

  “Corby. I know you. I know your inner self. I know what you want. Don’t turn your back on me now. This is what you wanted!” He pointed to the room. “We’ll kill her. Her blood will unite us forever. This is our secret. For life.”

  “You sound like a movie,” Corby whispered. Everything that happened to her before was real, but now she wasn’t sure that she wasn’t asleep.

  “This is reality.” As if reading her mind, Jacob spoke. “We’re experiencing emotions that few can experience. Very few.”

  “I don’t want these emotions. I want her to live. Jacob, you’re not a killer.”

  He stood up, looking at Corby, then he turned to Jane. He didn’t direct the flashlight to her anymore and Corby heard only a faint rustling on the floor. Jane was losing her strength and her hope.

  “River, you know that Corby and I have killed three people?”

  “That’s not true!” Corby cried and covered her face with her hands.

  “What is not true?” Jacob grimaced. “You mean that Bodroff died by accident? Who cares? It just means that this was going to happen. It’s fate. Karma. And River’s Karma now is to die for everything that she has done to you and me.”

  “She’s sorry,” Corby said.

  “Is she? She’s sorry that she didn’t kill you first.”

  “Please, Jacob.”

  “Stop it! Regardless, we can’t turn back now!”

  “You told me there’s always a way out. She won’t tell.”

  “You really think so?”

  Corby said nothing.

  “First of all, she would tell her parents and they would call the police,” Jacob said.

  “You don’t think the police will figure it out?”

  “I told you I thought of everything.”

  “How are you going to kill her?”

  “I’ll strangle her. Fast and clean job.”

  Jane began to move again in the dark room. Stronger now.

  “A murderer,” the voices whispered in Corby’s head. “A murderer. Jane will be with us and we will never give you peace. We’ll never shut up. You’re going to kill yourself.”

  “Jacob.”

  He reached Jane in three steps and Corby saw that he leaned toward her.

  “Don’t! Please!”

  He stood up and she saw his face illuminated with a flashlight from below. His head was as a bald skull.

  “Let me go! Right now!” Jane screamed.

  Corby gasped. He hadn’t choked her yet, but simply took off the gag from her mouth.

  “Corby what’s happening to you? You started all of this!”

  “You started all of it? You?” Jane yelled.

  “She killed Vera and Sylvia,” Jacob said in a calm and proud voice. “With her own hands.”

  “Stop it! It’s not true!” Corby shouted. “Stop it!”

  “Details, details.” Jacob waved his hand. “You would have never thought, right? And no one else would. Our poor Corby Mackentile. That’s what she is and I love her. Because she’s not like you. She’s not like anyone else. Weak people commit suicide, but she killed her enemies. You’re next in line.”

  “God, it’s just kids’ games!” Jane cried. “This is not serious! You’re not going to kill me for real!”

  “We are,” Jacob reassured her. “Say your prayers if you are a good catholic girl. Are you, River?”

  “But this is not right!” Jane began to cry. “I want to live. I’m only sixteen!”

  “So what?” Jacob asked. “Do you think people want to die at sixty? No one wants to.”

  “Glasgow, you can’t talk seriously about this. Untie me! Did you really kill Vera and Sylvia? You’re lying!”

  “She did. She killed them.”

  “Mackentile?” Jane hiccupped. “Is it true?”

  “Of course it is!” the voices screamed.

  Corby didn’t answer. She looked at Jacobs’s face-mask in the beam of a flashlight. He was always under the mask and no one saw his real face.

  “Just like you. You’ve always been under the mask too. Murderer.”

  “Don’t tell me that you regret it,” Jacob said threateningly.

  “I don’t care! Let me go! Mackentile ...”

  Jane paused and gasped when Jacob kicked her under the ribs. The flashlight mask of a monster disappeared.

  “Her name is Corby,” he said.

  “Why did you do this to me, Jane?” Corby asked, rising from the floor. “I didn’t do anything bad to you! I tried to stay out of your way!”

  “I know,” Jane sobbed. “I don’t know why we did it.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Jacob said. “You know. You want to be popular and to be popular at someone else’s expense is the easiest way.”

  “What’s new?” Jane asked. She didn’t stop crying. In the beam from the flashlight Corby saw liquid running out of her nose and mixing with tears. “It happens all the time. In all schools. Everyone selects the fattest, or the poorest, or the weakest, and bullies them. I have nothing personal against you, Mackentile. You started to exist for me as a person only after you started to lose weight and when you punched Payton. It made me crazy! I wanted you to know your place. But I don’t hate you! You have to understand.”

  Corby wanted to understand, but it was too hard. Only a second ago she was sorry for Jane and a moment later she hated her as much as before. As before, when she wanted to kill her.

  Jacob smiled when he saw her expression.

  “I knew you would be with me,” he said. “She will get what she deserves.”

  “Mackentile,” Jane whispered. “I mean Corby. What’s on your neck?”

  Corby touched the pearl pendant, but said nothing. She was going to answer that question, but not now.

  “Did you really kill Vera?” Jane asked.

  “No,” Corby replied qu
ietly.

  “Okay, too much talking. We don’t have time.” Jacob pulled out his phone and looked at the screen. “Wow, it’s late. I have to be home soon. My mom asked me to do something for her. It was nice knowing you River. See you in the next world.”

  And then Jane screamed. Corby had never heard such a scream in her life and she closed her ears with her hands.

  The scream didn’t last too long. Jacob stuffed Jane’s mouth again.

  “Idiot,” he said.

  “Jacob,” Corby said.

  “You can kill her.” He turned to her. “I know you’re strong. Or do you prefer a knife? It will be faster with a knife, but too many problems.”

  “Do you have a knife?”

  “Of course I do. I didn’t know how things would go.”

  He put his hand behind his back and pulled out the knife. The blade of it was hidden inside a plastic case. Corby’s dad had knives like this in the shop, but without cases.

  “Do you want to kill her?” Jacob asked. “We can do it together. Nothing will connect us stronger than blood.”

  Jane stirred on the floor, but Corby barely noticed her.

  “You enjoy killing,” Corby said. “You liked doing it.”

  “Don’t you?” Jacob grinned. “It had so much power. What’s not to like? The strongest feeling a person can experience is taking the life of another.”

  “They will catch us.”

  “Then we will die together. Corby, don’t think about it. Everything will be fine.”

  Voices shouted in her head, her head spun, the shape of the room and silhouettes became blurred. Then she detected two figures in the darkness. Vera and Sylvia stood against the far wall dressed all in white and watched her. They were waiting for their friend.

  Corby extended her open palm toward Jacob and he gave her the knife after removing the case.

  “I love you, Corby Mackentile,” Jacob said. His eyes sparkled, he smiled.

  “Do it,” Vera said.

  “You have no choice,” Sylvia added.

  There was the boy in front of Corby, she loved him more than anything in her life, and there was the girl on the floor, which she hated more than anyone in her life. The girl was in the way between Corby and her love. The love of her life. He had become a monster, but she loved him and she was a monster herself.

  “Okay. I love you Jacob,” Corby said with a sob. She walked over to him, brought her face close to his, and kissed him on the lips. It was a sweet kiss, the kiss of her first man, a kiss she would never experience again. Jacob, the most beautiful boy in school, the boy who loved her, a fat loser, who stood up for her. She felt like a human being with him and she turned him into a monster. She made him a murderer.

  “You turned him into a murderer,” Vera and Sylvia confirmed. “You’re both murderers.”

  “I read a lot, Jacob, I know a lot,” Corby said. “There is a maxim.”

  “Yes, dear.”

  “I brought you into this world and I can take you out of it.”

  “And?”

  “I love you Jacob. Forgive me.”

  The knife easily entered his body and Corby pulled it out then struck again. Jacob’s scream burst into her ears and she knew she would hear it every night until her end. He fell on his knees, staring at her in disbelief.

  “Why?” he whispered. “I love you.”

  A trickle of blood appeared at the corner of his mouth, he gawked at Corby for a few more seconds and then his eyes rolled back and he fell face down. Blood from under his body began to spread across the floor.

  “We are all meat! We are all meat!” Corby screamed.

  CHAPTER 44

  Corby stopped screaming, and just stood there. She didn’t lose consciousness and didn’t even get sick. She just stood there and didn’t move. The sounds around her disappeared. Before her, on the floor, in a pool of spreading blood lit by the flashlight, there was a person. This person was the boy who protected her, who loved her and whom she loved too. She loved this boy long before he noticed her and he was so good until she told him about her secret.

  “You helped this boy to become a murderer,” the voice said.

  Corby faltered, looked around. Sylvia and Vera disappeared. She looked at her hand and saw the knife. Blood dripped from it gathering in a small puddle at her feet. Corby dropped the knife and it hit the stone floor with a bang.

  And then she heard a noise next to her and looked at the moving, moaning stack in the darkness.

  “Jane,” Corby said quietly.

  Corby had to kill the boy, whom she loved and who wanted them to be together forever, because of this girl. He wanted the death of this girl to connect them forever and now she was alive, and he was lying in his own blood, with his beautiful face flattened against the cold stone. He was right. Jane was guilty in everything. If she were to kill her now, it would be over and no one would know.

  Corby picked up the knife from the floor despite the fact that its blade was coated in red and took a step toward the girl. Jane twitched and moaned again. Corby picked up the flashlight and pointed it at her face and her red, tear-stained eyes.

  “You know it’s your fault Jane.”

  While Corby walked to her and raised the knife, Jane didn’t stop for a second. She flounced like a fish out of water.

  “But I forgive you.”

  She stood over Jane and cut the ropes on her hands. Jane immediately pulled the gag out of her mouth.

  “I thought you were going to kill me!” she yelled, sobbing so loud that it hurt Corby’s ears. “You killed Jacob! You’re crazy! You killed everyone!”

  “He wanted to kill you. Who knows, maybe he would have killed me.”

  Corby spoke quietly. She turned to Jane’s legs and cut the ropes there. Jane sat up, then she jumped up, but apparently her legs couldn’t hold her and she fell back onto the floor, sobbing loudly.

  “You are a murderer! What have you done? He lied to me, trapped me here to kill! He said that you killed them! Murderer! Murderer! You’re a fucking murderer! I hate you! I hate you! My father will kill you! I hate you! Bitch! I hate you!”

  Corby stared at the hysterical Jane, at the tears that mixed with snot on her face as she smeared them with mud and cosmetics on her skin. Never in her life had Corby seen anyone more miserable. She looked at Jane for a long time and then made a fast step towards her and slapped her in the face with all her might.

  Jane stopped abruptly and her eyes bulged at Corby. Her eyes were small and swollen, her wet hair stuck to her skin. She was sobbing, grunting, darting, but didn’t say anything else.

  “He killed them both,” Corby said. “He told me just recently about it and said that he would kill me if I tell anyone. I didn’t kill anyone. He became confused in his mind. He started to say that he killed them because of me, because they hurt me and that meant for him that I killed them. Indirectly.”

  “He killed them because of you?” Jane said, but it was difficult to make out her words because of the weeping.

  “So he said.” Corby looked at the knife and threw it aside. “He said he killed that girl a few days or hours ago, I don’t remember, and cut her hair.”

  “No ... It can’t ... can’t be. He was a serial killer? They talk about him everywhere! I would never in my life ... You saved my life?”

  Corby didn’t hear the voices, but she knew they would come.

  “For me, it wasn’t easy,” Corby said. She wasn’t lying.

  Jane grabbed the edge of her T-shirt and wiped her face, leaving mud and tears on the fabric. Now, without makeup, she looked as innocent as possible.

  “So, Vera and Sylvia are dead. Did he kill them?” she asked.

  Corby nodded.

  “He could have killed me.” Jane touched her head, found something there, and rubbed it. “He hit me hard. When I woke up I was here already, couldn’t understand anything. Everything happened so fast and then he brought you. He killed Vera and Sylvia? Really? I knew something was
wrong with him.”

  “We need to call the police,” Corby said.

  “I don’t know where my phone is. He took it. You killed him, Mackentile. I would never do that.”

  “I’ll call from mine,” Corby said, watching as Jane observed Jacob’s body.

  Corby turned around and saw her bag on the floor. She didn’t even notice when she had lost it. She took the phone out and dialed 9-1-1.

  After a few minutes of explanations and after hundreds of questions from the operator, Corby hung up.

  “They are coming,” she said.

  “I’ll tell them exactly what happened,” Jane said. She wasn’t sobbing anymore, just stared at Jacob. “He was just a guy. I mean, he was cool, but nothing extraordinary. How could he do this? He’s really dead, right?”

  Corby nodded. To her, he looked pretty much dead.

  “He was a cool guy,” Jane said. “I can’t believe it. They shouldn’t arrest you, right? It was self-defense?”

  “I wasn’t defending myself.”

  Jane nodded.

  “He would have killed me for you,” Jane laughed. “Glasgow is a serial killer and Mackentile my savior. She killed him for me. Shit like this doesn’t happen in movies.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You are cool.”

  “I don’t think so.” But she did. She also wanted the police to come quickly. She didn’t want to be in the same room with Jane and Jacob, Vera and Sylvia, but she was afraid to go out alone, and her hands were covered in blood. She wanted to wash them, wanted to take a shower, but the water in this building was probably turned off long ago.

  “If you want, I will say that he attacked you,” Jane said.

  “Tell them how it was.”

  “I’ll say that he attacked you because you didn’t want him to kill me. Why didn’t you want to kill me? Why? I don’t understand. If I were you, I’d do that in a heartbeat. Well, maybe not in a heartbeat, but I mean … You know what I mean. I made your life miserable.”

  Corby didn’t answer. What should she say? That she wanted to kill Jane, but then changed her mind? That the ghosts of Vera and Sylvia frightened her? Or that she didn’t want Jacob to become bad?

  “You know, I’m so small,” Jane said. “I’m the smallest among all of you. My mother enrolled me in karate when I was six, so I could defend myself, because I’ve always been like that. My mother always taught me—better you put someone down than someone will put you down. I thought if I became, you know, nice, I would be bullied like you.”