by K. Webster
And when I wake up, it will never have happened.
“Kady Bug?”
The warm voice is right there in my ear but I don’t dare open my eyes.
“I’m Officer Joe. Are you okay?” he asks. The man sounds nice. I wish he’d hug me and promise me Mommy will be okay.
“N-No.”
“You’re safe now. He can’t hurt you anymore.”
I want to believe the nice man. “Where is Daddy?”
“He’s going to jail for a long time.”
Peace settles over me knowing we won’t have to fear Daddy anymore. Mommy will be safe from his hits. Me and Bones will be safe from the bad stuff he does. And Grandma will be safe too.
“Have you seen Bones?” I ask, still too terrified to open my eyes back up.
He lets out a sad sigh. “Bones is scared too, Kady Bug.”
My entire body quivers. Soon Grandma is back at my side hugging me to her. I don’t dare open my eyes because I want this nightmare to be over. I’m ready to wake up and eat Grandma’s yummy pancakes. To argue with Bones over what Saturday morning cartoons we’re going to watch. I want to wait by my window until I see Yeo riding down the street on his bike.
Warmth.
This warmth is familiar and I’ve missed it dearly.
“Where were you?” I demand.
Bones curls up behind me. His body quivers. “I was hiding from him.”
“Why? We needed your help!”
Bones starts to cry and it makes me cry too. “Kady, I’m so scared of him.”
I swallow down my anger and let sorrow flood through me. I’m so scared of him too. “Don’t ever hide from me again,” I hiss.
He sniffles. “I promise on all the bags of Cheetos in the world.”
A smile graces my lips. At least I know he’s serious.
Kady. Kady. Kady.
Black and then screams.
Black and then commotion.
The thick scent of cigarette smoke and cheap beer permeates the air around me. I’m confused and disoriented, still lost in what ended up being a reality and not a nightmare. But it’s like my daddy is still here. Like he isn’t in jail at all.
“I’ve got this, Kady.”
Bones. Bones. Bones.
His whispered words come at exactly the right time. Bones may have abandoned me that night but he’s never done it since. He senses my terror and comes in ready for a fight.
“I love you, Bones.”
He doesn’t have to say it back because I know.
And on that thought, I delightfully check out.
* * *
Bones
I’m trapped between reality and the subspace of Kady’s mind. Black and white. Two different windows opening back and forth. I’m straddling the fence on a hunt for that sick fuck. I can smell him. His pungent stink sickens the hell out of me. The child within me has the urge to run far off into the dark shadows to hide from him. Just like when he hurt Kady’s mom. When I’d pussied out and left her on her own.
Not this time, asshole.
Unlike the dick who’s in prison serving back to back life sentences for the murder of her mother, this alter—as that grandpa dressing fuck calls us—is not the real Norman. The persecuting alter who haunts the dark space in her head is not the man who raped me as a child.
Breathe, Bones.
You’ve got this.
“Kady!”
Yeo.
On one side of the fence, Yeo is pleading with her. I’m not sure what for exactly and I can’t focus on him no matter how fucking sexy he is in his baby blue dress shirt. I can’t focus on his parents or Dr. Dweeb who sticks out like a sore thumb in his gay-ass pink shirt.
My focus is on the other side.
Where I know Norman lurks close by. He’s practically foaming at the mouth to take over and fuck up her world. In the past, when he’s taken over, it’s been because I was too much of a pussy to keep him from doing so. I’d relied on Yeo and Officer Joe to help keep him at bay. But now I know, it’s all up to me.
I got rid of Kenneth and Pascale.
It’s time to take out the rest of the filthy trash.
“Well, if it isn’t the pussy boy who likes a good pounding in the ass,” Norman growls, his voice sounding like something demonic. “I bet you still think about my cock inside you.”
Bile rises in my throat. I clutch my weapon. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Officer Joe has Agatha and the others hidden away safely. Everyone is afraid of Norman.
“I’ve had bigger. And I’ve certainly had better,” I throw back at him. I’m trying to sound unaffected but my voice holds a slight quiver.
His laughter is evil. It sends a chill rattling through me.
“BONES!”
Yeo’s roar jolts through me and light blinds me. Fuck! I almost had him. Back to the darkness I go.
I don’t have to see Norman in the shadows but I can feel him within inches of me. There’s no time. I’ll have to make my move now. It’s the only chance I’ll probably ever get.
“Aunt Suzy!” I holler. “Play my jam!”
Sabotage by Beastie Boys screams all around me. Memories of the past where he took so much from Kady and I swirl around me like a furious fog. Red and hissing and fucking angry as hell. I allow the rage to consume me.
I will annihilate him.
“Time to go to hell where you belong,” I snarl.
I’ve still got the steak knife in my grip from dinner. Before the fucker can escape, I stab at him. The blade tears through the muscle in his chest. Ripping and crunching as it inches deep inside of him. I yank it out and plunge it harder into him this time. The music blares around me.
I will kill him.
He won’t hurt my family anymore.
“You stupid fuck,” he bellows. “What have you done?”
And then it’s light. He’s switched sides but I’m on his heels. The knife feels solid in my grip. Real. Heavy.
I plunge into him again.
Yeo attacks. Why the fuck would he try and stop me from killing Norman? After all the talks we’ve had about ending him. Why stop me now?
“No!” I roar.
Norman and I are back into the darkness. The knife is light again. Over and over and over again I stab at the abusive motherfucker. Blood splatters the blackness and paints it red. It’s like the time I dipped Kady’s paintbrush in the red paint at school and flung it at the other kids. It splattered everywhere and made such a pretty mess.
“Oh, Bones,” Agatha chides. “What have you done?”
Reminds me of how Ruth had spanked me when the note came home from the teacher. I’d made such a mess. Just like now. I miss Ruth. But that’s why we have Agatha now.
“Bones!”
Presley’s sobs in the dark confuse me. She never cries. The little girl is always so happy.
“Why is everything so heavy?” I ask.
The music has stopped and everything goes silent. Five faces peer over me. How the fuck did I get on the ground?
They’re all crying.
Officer Joe. Aunt Suzy. Agatha. Presley. Whiskers.
“Where’s Norman?” My voice is a whisper. Kady loves whispers.
“You did it,” Officer Joe says gruffly, his voice hoarse with emotion. “You got rid of him.”
And then they’re hugging me.
The black is fading.
Dark grey.
Muted grey.
Pale grey.
Off white.
Bright white.
“Bones,” Yeo chokes out. “What have you done?”
He’s holding me to him. In front of Dr. Dweeb and his parents. I can hear them frantically shouting but my focus is on Yeo.
“You’re so fuckin’ hot, Kitty Muncher,” I whisper.
Tears. Yeo never cries. Yet, tears are spilling down his handsome face.
I raise a shaky hand to swipe them away. My fingers are soaked in blood. Confusion threatens to steal me away fro
m him but I hold onto clarity.
“What happened?”
His jaw clenches and he shakes his head. A loud sob ripples through him as he draws me to him. He presses kisses all over my face. I’m vaguely aware of a pain in my chest. It’s as if someone is trying to cut my heart away.
“Yeo…”
He’s crying too hard and his cheek is pressed against mine. His mouth whispers a thousand and one lovely words. I like his whispers.
“Bones, I love you.” Then he lets out a roar so loud I think the windows may burst. “WHY DID YOU DO THIS?!”
I love Yeo’s roars.
My eyes close and I finally manage to piece together what I’d done.
I stabbed Norman.
But I also stabbed me.
Which means I stabbed Kady.
Fuck.
When I open my eyes, he’s staring down at me. His black eyebrows are pinched together. Those almond shaped eyes are bright red from tears. The stick straight hair on his head is bloody and pointing in every which direction. His full lips are parted. I watch in fascination as the tears streak down his face and slip into his mouth. I bet he tastes salty.
“Why?” he sobs, his dark brown eyes probing mine for answers.
I let out a hiss of pained breath. “Because I had to, Kitty Muncher.”
* * *
Yeo
I work at a knot forming between my neck and my shoulder. The chiropractor I’d visited last week told me it was stress. That I needed to relax.
With Kady, I can never relax.
With Kady, my life is a constant roar.
With Kady, nothing is easy.
My eyes become fixated on the dried blood beneath my fingernails. I’d half-assed washed my hands upon my mother’s insistence a little while ago. Now, I wished I’d have scrubbed all of her blood from me.
Jesus, what had Bones been thinking?
I knew something was wrong when Kady stood up from the dinner table. It all happened so fast. The fear in her eyes. How her body trembled as tears rolled down her cheeks. And then, per usual, Bones swooped in to save her. His determination was intense. But he seemed to flicker like a bright light in the woods. On and off. Off and on. In between, it was Norman spewing vile things about his daughter that had my mother gagging. I knew they were struggling for power.
Bones got confused.
The lines became blurred.
And the knife Kady had been holding became a weapon of destruction. In his effort to destroy Norman, he destroyed himself.
He stabbed my Kady.
“Still no word?” Evelyn asks my mom.
They’re all here. My entire family and Kush. All wearing matching somber faces. All here because they care.
“Not yet,” Mom tells her in a hushed voice. “Kadence is still in surgery.”
Earlier, Dad tried to assure me that no news was good news. That if they were still working on her, then she had a chance. My heart hangs delicately in the balance, ready to crash to the floor and shatter into a million pieces at any moment. I’m waiting on a few spoken words that will tell me if my life with Kady will continue or if it ends tonight.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Kush whispers to my dad. “It was remarkable to see the struggle between the two alters.”
I’m not a fan of whispers right now.
“Kush,” I grumble. “I love you, man, but now is not the time to analyze shit. Please.”
Our eyes meet and he gives me a clipped nod. I bury my face into my palms. While I wait on fate, I let my mind drift to the past.
“It ain’t good,” Bones tells me over the phone. “I’m telling you, Kitty Muncher, she’s lost it.”
Ever since I found out Ruth had passed away, I’d been making arrangements to get back to Morgantown. The funeral is tomorrow but I won’t get into town until late tonight. I’d hoped to spend time with Kady but from what Bones has told me, she’s been scarce.
“What’s going on?” I question. “Be straight with me.”
He lets out a sigh. From the sound of it, he’s tired. Guilt washes over me. I’d left because Kady made me leave. But when I left her, I left him too.
“We got someone new walking these halls…”
I freeze at his words. “Who?”
“You’ll see.”
“Kady?” I call out when I step into her house. One quick scan lets me know that Ruth is most definitely gone and that Bones has made a fucking mess of things. “Bones?”
I step over Cheetos bags littered all over the living room floor and stalk toward the staircase. Footsteps creak upstairs so I take the steps two at a time to find the source. Hers and Bones’s rooms are each empty. When I hear humming in Ruth’s room, my heart rate picks up. I haven’t seen Kady in a year. I’ve been away at college. She refuses to talk to me. So I talk to Bones about her. It’s the closest I can get. At least their voices sound the same. And if I pretend hard enough, I feel like I am talking to Kady.
“Kadydid?”
The humming stops and I rush through the door before she can hide, throwing Bones in her place. When I push through the door, I do a double take. Kady sits in the rocking chair her grandma used to always sit and read in. Ruth’s bifocals sit perched on the end of Kady’s nose. Her long brown hair has been pulled up into simple bun. Ruth’s perfume permeates the air—something old and florally. Kady dons one of Ruth’s nightgowns and is wearing her old-as-dirt slippers.
“Uh, Kady,” I whisper. Something tells me it’s not Kady. And Bones wouldn’t be caught dead wearing that shit.
She looks up from her Agatha Christie book and smiles sweetly at me. “Hello, pumpkin. What’s your name?”
Disappointment surges through me and emotion grips my throat so that I can’t speak. In this moment, I want to scream at the entire world. To yell at God or whoever created this scenario where I could have the girl but she’d be lost inside her own head. That I’d spend my entire life playing hide and seek with her.
I’m exhausted.
Yet, I’m still here.
I’ll always be here.
Love doesn’t make any goddamned sense.
“You must be the Yeo I’ve heard so much about. Bones told me you were handsome,” she says in a friendly tone. “I’m Agatha.”
Her hand reaches for me and I automatically go for it. It’s Kady. Somewhere beneath all the old lady garb is my girl. Hiding. Always hiding.
“I’ve lost my manners,” I tell her hoarsely. “My mom would skin me alive. Yeo Anderson. Pleased to meet you.”
She takes my hand and it’s soft. So fucking soft. I wish I could pull this complicated woman into my arms and draw her out of her own head. That I could whisper her name over and over again until she came crawling from the darkness back into my arms.
“Strong grip for a strong boy,” she says with a chuckle. “What’s got you so sad, pumpkin?”
My shoulders fall in defeat. I skim the room and my gaze falls on a picture of Bones and Ruth. I know it’s Bones in the picture because his face is orange with Cheetos residue. “Bones tell you Ruth passed away?”
My gaze reverts back to hers and she frowns.
“Kady is devastated.” Tears well in Agatha’s eyes. She waves her book to dry them. “Come sit, kiddo.”
Agatha, this new persona dressed in Ruth’s clothes but looking so much like my Kady, instantly crawls her way inside my heart. I fall to my knees at her feet and hug her middle. She doesn’t hesitate to hug me back. I inhale her. Ruth mixed with Kady. Neither scent is off-putting. Both scents remind me of happier times.
“Where’s Kady?” I ask her. “Why won’t she see me?”
Agatha strokes my hair and hums a song I remember Ruth used to hum around the house. Finally, she lets out a sad sigh. “I don’t know, pumpkin. I really don’t know. But I’m glad you’re here. You obviously love her. She may be hiding from love,” she tells me. “But love will eventually find her.”
A painful ache in my chest drags me in
to the present. I have to quickly blink back the tears. Those years away from Kady had been fucking awful. At first I’d kept up with Bones to keep track of her. But then, every time I turned around, she had a new alter I needed to add to the book. They just kept popping up over the years. Bones, Whiskers, Officer Joe, Agatha, Norman, Kenneth, Presley, Aunt Suzy, and Pascale. I never knew who would answer the phone. It was impossible to predict who would be at the door when I came to visit on my free weekends home.
Bones became more emotionally volatile than he’d ever been. Sometimes he’d tell me to go fuck myself for no reason. Other times, it was like he hung on my every word and practically begged me to sleep with him. I know deep down they were Kady’s feelings shining through. Everything got so complicated.
“How you holding up, son?” Dad questions as he sits beside me. He hands me a steaming mug of black coffee.
I shrug my shoulders. “Holding on by a thread to be honest.”
He regards me with a grim smile. So many times he’d asked me to stop obsessing over Kady. He’d always sensed that something was wrong with her. The rumor mill in our town was strong and that only fed his opinion of her.
She’s crazy.
Her daddy cut her momma’s throat right in front of her.
The girl needs to be put in a mental institution.
She talks to herself all the time.
Have you seen how she traipses around half-naked sometimes pretending to be a boy?
It’s just so sad when she dresses in her grandma’s or her momma’s clothes. Someone ought to get that child some counseling.
“She was getting better,” he murmurs, mostly to himself.
I sip the coffee and revel in the way it scalds my tongue. I wish it would scald the pain right out of my heart too. “She was.”
“What exactly happened at dinner?”
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I let out a huff. “Norman tried to ruin her night. Finally showed his face again. Bones was on a mission to eliminate him like he’d done Pascale and Kenneth. But…”
“Something wasn’t right,” he states. “She didn’t seem all that lucid.”
