Blood Mountain

by J. T. Warren

  So, show him that he can’t do that to you. Mom again. Show him you’re a real, tough bitch.

  The pain was hot flashes of bright lightning in a humid summer sky. Blood coursed over her lips and down her throat in a wave and she wondered if she could choke to death on her own blood. Of course she could. It wasn’t only flowing from her nostrils; it was gushing down her throat from inside where she couldn’t possibly stop the flow.

  Toughen up, you bitch! Toughen up! Hurt him! HURT HIM!

  Somehow she found the power to throw her hands at his face and in the darkness found the soft flesh of his cheeks where her nails dug in and then discovered the pulpy blobs that were his eyes and jammed her thumbs into both of them.

  His grip fell away and it was like massive rains that cooled a scorching day. She tried to pop his eyeballs, tried to push hard enough to get those jelly orbs to burst and gush over her hands, but she couldn’t do it and a moment later he was tearing her hands free from his face.

  The moon was still hidden behind a living cloud of black wings or maybe she was trapped in the dark abyss inside her mind where she had retreated to withstand the pain in her nose. What was left of her nose, anyway.

  Hands hot and wet (with my blood on them) groped at her throat. She stumbled back--the edge! the edge!--and felt her feet tangle together and slip forward. Those strong hands pushed her down, down, down, and she fell for hours and days, dropping through an eternal night and she couldn’t even scream, could only accept that this was it, this was THE END of her and how fucking tragic and pathetic was that?

  Then her back smacked the ground and she knew she had fallen only a few feet. Relief and horror gripped her with equal hostility. Her end was fast approaching but not as fast as it might have been.

  The hands were no longer around her neck. They were nowhere else on her body, either.

  She either opened her eyes or the dense flock (murder) of crows thinned out enough for the moonlight to streak through the flying shadows. Victor was gone.

  He had fallen over the side. She accepted it with gratitude and disgust. She wasn’t disgusted at having killed him; she was disgusted at having survived.

  “I’m sure glad that wasn’t me,” a man said behind her.

  Victor stood in the middle of the clearing on silver grass as the last few crows flapped past him like he was a messenger of evil. A demon summoned straight from Hell.

  FORTY-NINE

  Victor hadn’t even thought to stop Caleb from charging right past him. With any luck, he would run right off the edge. Instead, he had fought the girl, severely injured her and he had died. A true win-win.

  The final crow hovered before him for a moment but when Victor reached toward it, the bird flew off into the sky. They had given him all the signs he needed. The rest was up to him.

  “I want to thank you for taking care of him,” he said. “I would have done it myself, but it was rather enjoyable to see you battle him off. Unfair advantage, however. You knew where the cliff edge was and he had no idea. His death was more luck than skill.”

  Slowly, Mercy got into a crouching position. Her gaze was focused on him with potent severity, but her hands were caressing a softball-sized rock in front of her. She drew it closer to her, cupped it.

  “I hate to say it,” he said, “but I don’t think you’re ever going to get your good looks back. He almost ripped your nose clean off. Though I did give him some help there. Didn’t I?”

  “Fuck you,” she said in a garbled, phlegmy voice. A glob of blood slipped over her lips and down her chin. He thought of a wild beast raising its head from the latest kill. The thought only made him want her more.

  “No reason to be cruel,” he said. “You did your fair share of damage, too.” He held up his hand with the injured fingers. “They might have to be amputated, but that’s okay. I’ll make myself content with it after I amputate all of your fingers. That sound reasonable?”

  She had the rock gripped firmly in both hands just beneath her crotch. She could have been a trained monkey.

  “You’re not one to surrender, I see. I like that. But think first: will that rock be much of a weapon against this?”

  He slipped the work knife from his belt and held it up like a magic wand. The blade curved at the top and the inside was serrated.

  Through heavy panting breaths, Mercy said, “I guess we’ll have to find out.”

  She jumped toward him like a runner after the pistol shot.

  FIFTY

  For once, there were no thoughts in her mind. No extraneous voices. There was only the pain in her face and the hard rock in her hands. She was only vaguely aware of the large knife he held when she charged at him with the rock before her like the ultimate weapon.

  The rock was rough against her fingertips and heavy but as she hefted it toward Victor’s head, she feared the rock would fracture in half when it connected with his face. It would split like an eggshell and fall to the ground where Victor would crush it beneath his boots.

  He ducked as she approached and swung upward with the knife. Mercy twisted her body from the blade and let the rock pull her back toward Victor’s descending head and if she hadn’t released the rock at the last second should would have contorted into some grotesque back flip, sprained all kinds of muscles, and ended up heaped on the ground at Victor’s feet.

  But she did release the rock and heard it crunch against the back of Victor’s skull. The momentum of her turn and release almost toppled her but she managed to keep her balance and propel herself toward the evergreen trees.

  It was only a few feet to the trees and the path back down the mountain, but the seconds it took to clear that distance dragged interminably. Victor was up and coming after her with that knife. She would feel it slice into her back just as the prickly needles of the evergreen teased her fingertips and she would have a moment to think this was it, she was going to die, before the blade pierced her lung and she drowned in her own blood.

  The knife slice didn’t come. She ran through the trees and was on the dirt path, huffing at the air as if she had been underwater for several minutes, before she dared to stop, just for a second, and glance behind her.

  The tree was still. Crickets made their somnolent noise nearby and farther away, the crows were calling back and forth. Maybe they had found Caleb. Maybe he was still alive. Let the feast begin.

  She wanted to go back to the tree, peer through it. That was stupid, of course. She had evaded him with strength and luck and now he was on the ground wondering what the hell had happened but he wouldn’t stay down forever. If she didn’t get moving down this goddamn mountain, she’d never get off of it. How far could she press her luck before it finally ran out?

  Still.

  She stepped toward the tree. Victor’s groans were weak but getting stronger as if he had been knocked out and was now fighting back to consciousness. He was probably disoriented. At least unsteady on his feet. Maybe he had even fallen on his knife. She could wish for such luck, but she doubted it. Bad guys were never felled so easily. She had to take care of him herself.

  She parted a few branches of the tree and peered through. Victor was on his stomach, arms before him, and he might have been dead if not for the noises coming from his throat and the way his feet swayed side to side on the toes like windshield wipers.

  When her mother’s voice spoke up, it did not say what she expected. Now you can kill him. He’s practically helpless. Pick up that rock again and smash in his fucking head.

  She almost entered the clearing again. She saw herself slowly approach Victor, bend down to pick up the stone, cold on one side and warm on the other where it split his skin, and stand over his body, legs spread, and raise that stone high over her head.

  But she’d never be able to hurl it down at his skull. He deserved it, no doubt about that, but she couldn’t murder him. If it was in self-defense, she would find a way to deal with the emotional wreckage it brought, but to kill him when he was defenseless was
to reduce herself to his level.

  You’re already a murderer, her mother said. Have you forgotten, dear? Only moments ago, you threw Caleb off the mountain.

  “He was trying to kill me,” she said.

  And what’s Victor trying to do? Show you a good time?

  His arms pulled back, his body arched into a yoga pose, and he screamed. The sound was rage tinged with genuine pain. She had hurt him, perhaps quite badly. Maybe he would let her go.

  Of all the pathetic hopes, that one was the worst and she knew it even as she thought it. What the hell was she doing? Waiting for him to get up and steady his feet like a boxer who has been knocked down before resuming her escape?

  She turned from the tree and ran down the path into the darkness.

  His next scream was much louder and echoed through the trees as if his voice had taken on a life of its own.

  FIFTY-ONE

  Victor was asleep when his mother came into his bedroom for the last time. He was lucid and resting only lightly, so the faint squeak of the door hinges brought him fully awake.

  She had drugged him a few times, ground-up Tylenol PM in soda, he guessed, and he’d wake up in the middle of night with her on top of him and his thing buried inside her warmth. Or she would have it in her mouth or simply be caressing it. He’d try to fight his way free from the drugged stupor, but he never could. He could only let her finish, let her get what she wanted, and fall back into a dark world where his nightmares were preferable to his reality.

  He would never be able to objectively assess how years and years of this destroyed his mind, but he was aware that it molded him into something other than he could have been. In some other world, there was another Victor who never had sex with his mother, who never had to wrestle with the moral anguish those moments wrought upon him. That Victor knew nothing of abortions that killed children he was never meant to father. That Victor was happy. He would never know that Victor and for that, she had to die.

  She walked to the side of his bed, slipped off the silk nightgown she wore for these visits, lifted the comforter and eased beneath. Her skin was smooth and if he blocked out what was really happening, he could allow the sensation of skin against skin to excite him enough to give her what she wanted.

  Her hands slowly traced over his bare chest and down toward the edge of his boxers. Her hot breath teased his ear and she whispered so quietly that if he were drugged, the words would be lost forever. “You’re Mommy’s little angel, aren’t you?” she said. “You’re so special, Victor. Destined for greatness. I love you so much. It hurts how much I love you.”

  Her fingertips teased the top of his groin and he seized her wrist. He turned on her so quickly that she recoiled and would have fallen out of the bed if he hadn’t been holding her. Her breasts dangled toward the mattress like sagging dough.

  “No more,” he said.

  “I thought you were asleep,” she said.

  “No more.” He was breathing very heavily. He had thought about this moment at great length but now that it was here he couldn’t carry through with it. The carving knife was tucked between the mattress and the bedspring but he couldn’t stab his mother. No matter what she had done to him, no matter how damaged he was as a result, he would not be able to slice her throat and feel her hot blood splash across his face.

  “You’re Mommy’s little prince,” she said. “You love Mommy, don’t you?”

  “You can’t have what you want anymore.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “How dare you refuse your mother what she has a right to. I am your mother. You are my son. I love you more than any other person ever could or will. That is why I give you everything of me. That is why I want to be one with you.”

  “No,” he said through clenched teeth. “Please.”

  Her free hand touched the side of his face and gently caressed down toward his chin where she cupped it the way she used to do when he was a little boy. “My poor baby,” she said. “You need your Mommy. She’ll make everything okay again. I promise.”

  “No more,” he said again. “No more deaths.”

  “Is that what bothers you? Don’t worry about that, honey. I had the doctors remove my uterus. I can’t have any children. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “No. No more. Never again. Get away from me. Please.”

  She yanked out of his grip and got out of bed. She stood before him, hands on her hips, with her sex glistening in the faint light from the windows. “You are being a bad, little boy.”

  “I’m not a boy!”

  “So, you’re a man now? A man like your father? Is that what you want? I should have cut off his cock. You want me to cut off yours?”

  “Go away!”

  She shook her head. “You don’t get to tell me to do anything. I’m your mother.”

  “I wish you were dead,” he said.

  “Your father said the same thing but he couldn’t do it. He was just a pussy. He thought killing others would make him tough. Look what happened to him.”

  “Please leave me alone!” he screamed.

  She stepped back as if his scream had physically hit her, but her comeback was so quick and unexpected that Victor had no time to prepare.

  She seized the lamp on the nightstand and smashed it into his face.

  That bitch had knocked him unconscious.

  He woke in the dark. His crotch hurt. She had gotten what she wanted. If he didn’t kill her, she would keep taking it from him again and again. And if he couldn’t kill her, he would have to be like his father and put a gun in his mouth. The trigger would be as smooth as the insides of her thighs.

  The moonlight streaming through the window blinded him for a moment and his bed was cold and damp. But he wasn’t in bed, or even in his bedroom. He was outside on the grass. Where was his mother? Would she be back?

  No, he had killed her. He was sure of it. She wasn’t alive. She wasn’t on this mountain. She wasn’t--

  Blood Mountain.

  Everything came back and order reasserted itself. His mother hadn’t hit him in the head; it had been that other bitch. Mercy.

  He managed to get himself onto all-fours with minimal pain, but when he tried to take a deep breath, his chest hitched, something constricted his throat, and he gagged violently. He coughed out a glob of something. Two pieces of teeth shone in the mess of blood and mucus like jewels. He gently touched his lips, which were tender, and slipped his fingers beneath to the gums. Where his front teeth had been were two jagged fangs. His touch vibrated electric shocks of pain into his jaw and around his head to the back where that bitch had hit him with a rock.

  He sat back on his calves and waited for the dizziness to pass. He picked up his knife (he’d been lucky not to impale himself) and screamed as loud as he could. The sound reverberated all around him, might have even shaken the trees. The holler kept pouring out of him as if the floodgate to the reservoir of suffering within him had swung wide.

  More blood sluiced out of his mouth and his ruined front teeth vibrated with his scream. He was a wild beast proclaiming its intent to wreak vengeance and lay waste to those who had injured it.

  FIFTY-TWO

  After her second fall that tore open the knee of her jeans and the far more delicate skin beneath, Mercy wondered in some kind of abstract, not quite defined way, how much abuse the human body could tolerate before it finally collapsed.

  There were too many focal points of pain in her body for her to concentrate on any particular pain for longer than a second or two. Her nose was a mangled, throbbing hell, but her legs burned as if they might combust, and her crotch hurt, like really fucking hurt, as if someone had jammed a barbed branch, no, a whole goddamn barbed fence pole inside her, and her head radiated pain from what seemed like fifty different areas like earthquakes taking turns destroying various locations on the globe.

  None of these agonies took precedence and so none had the opportunity to cripple her. Combined, torturing her simultaneously, those pain
s might kill her within minutes, or at least paralyze her, but as it went, with the pain rotating, she could find the will to keep moving.

  The ability to stand once more and run down the mountain.

  Without the flashlight, she kept her view on the ground where the dirt in the trail was much lighter than the rest of the ground and almost illuminated. This tactic worked for a while until a branch protruding over the path at chest height knocked her down. That was the first time. Then she tried to keep a decent view of what lay ahead of her and she missed the tree root jutting from the ground like a petrified snake.

  She kept going. For that, she deserved a goddamn award. Best Performance by an Endangered Female. Most Impressive Struggle Against a Homicidal Maniac. Award for Unique Distinction During a Harrowing Calamity.

  The laughter came out before she could suppress it and the convulsions threatened to topple her again. Her foot twisted over a pile of sharp stones and the rotation of pain settled in that foot for several seconds until she screamed it away.

  “Tough bitch,” she said. “I’m a tough bitch.”

  That was the award, of course. Toughest Bitch Award. The winner by a landslide: Mercy Higgins.

  If she didn’t pick up her pace, however, she wouldn’t get a chance at the most precious award: Best Survival in the Face of Death.

  She fell into the large clearing and was running across it before she registered the two tents. And her father.

  He was halfway between the tent he had assembled, the one in which Victor had raped her, and the spot where she and Victor had spoken for hours this afternoon. Only the faint glow of hot embers remained in the fire. Her father was reaching toward it as if for salvation. Mercy thought of the guy in the desert and the oasis in the distance that he can never reach.

  “Daddy!”

  She tried to run to him faster. Her right hamstring tightened and gave out. She fell as if she had been shot. She clawed at the ground and crawled several feet before managing to get back on her feet and hobbled the rest of the way to her father.