by Ryan Schow
“Just screaming.”
“How did Mr. Giardino not see you when he came home?”
“I ducked down in the foot well,” he lied.
“But then you went, what…through the front door?”
In his mind, Brayden saw everything going down. Abby said she shot at Demetrius, but that she had a lousy aim and most of her shots missed. He charged her and she kept firing. One of her shots managed to hit him in the gut, but he kept coming. Eventually he overpowered her and beat her unconscious. The way she described it, Brayden envisioned it perfectly in his mind, even though these things had happened before he’d even entered the house.
“I don’t remember any shots,” he said. “And Abby said she didn’t fire the gun, but she was in bad shape long after I got to her.”
“You said Mrs. Giardino had a haunting look, can you describe it?”
“Terrifying. Goddamn icy. Like everything she held dear in her life…it was like I could see it no longer mattered to her. She looked vacant, Detective. Yet enraged, if that makes sense. I mean, she was glaring at her husband, as if she no longer saw him as a human. As if he wasn’t her husband but a monstrosity.”
That look bothered him immensely. Telling the detective the story, he hadn’t realized his eyes were wet, that so much moisture had built up behind them. Apparently the killings did a lot more damage to him that he thought.
“That’s not the story forensics tells,” Detective Bateman argued. “Blood spatter analysts would contradict most everything you said.”
He palmed his eyes dry, stood, walked to the window and lost himself to San Francisco’s midnight skyline. This conversation made him weak. He felt drained. “I could give a shit what your analysts say. I was there. I know what happened. We brought the video to wreck him, and Abby brought the gun for protection. But what happened after we escaped, however it all played out, Abby and I had no part of that.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?” the detective asked.
“We were scared. Abby was hurt. Bad. I mean really bad.”
“So you took her to the hospital?”
“After wiping away the blood, I realized her cuts were superficial, though I assumed she had a concussion. Which she did. That mother fu—that…that…God, I don’t know how many times he kicked her in the head, but until his wife turned Abby’s gun on her husband, he did not look like he was planning on stopping.”
“And you saw this directly?”
“This part, yeah. I saw it.” There was plenty of silence on the line. Was he writing this down? “Abby said she was fine, but the truth was, her father scares the crap out of me. More so than Demetrius, or the police. He’s influential, man. The big leagues. And not so nice when it comes to boys and Abby. That’s why I went to him first. To get his advice. But Abby…Jesus, her brains were jumbled. Still are. It’s really bad, Detective.”
“So Abby’s father knows what happened?”
“She said it was a car accident.”
“So she lied.”
“No, I lied to him.”
The detective seemed to consider this for a long time. The suspicious parts of Brayden’s mind imagined the man was trying to punch holes in the story. Thinking of Abby, how she was before she was killed and brought back to life, he was overcome with sadness.
He missed the before-Abby.
The before-Abby was the one who knew him, the one he fell in love with. This situation gave him a goddamned ulcer, and now he couldn’t escape. Perhaps that’s why he was throwing himself into Netty. And maybe that’s why he was sparring with the detective when what he really should’ve done was shut his mouth and call a lawyer.
“Off the record,” Detective Bateman said, slowly, almost with platitudes of disgust in his voice, “that man did things like that to a lot of girls. Not just Maggie. Evidently, from what I’m told, these are what are called ‘Rights of Passage’ in the entertainment industry. I guess it’s a lot worse in Hollywood.”
Something had changed in the detective’s voice. He wasn’t taking anymore as much as he was giving. Brayden took a moment’s solace in the change.
“Guys like that with power, or influence, they’re capable of the most heinous shit.”
“I’ll need an official statement,” Detective Bateman said, as if he were finally wrapping up the conversation.
Brayden felt exactly how much tension he’d been holding inside him, and then he felt it start to dissipate. “Of course.”
“In Santa Monica,” the detective said, “on the record. Unless you want to record one on the phone.”
“I can do that. On the phone, I mean. No disrespect, but I don’t think I’ll ever return to your city.”
“Oh, and Mr. James?”
“Just call me Brayden.”
“Okay, Brayden. Still off the record, you knew about the hard drive, didn’t you? I mean, for Christ’s sake, you hacked the FBI.”
There was a sort of breathless excitement in the man’s voice for the first time since they spoke. Could the detective be…an admirer? Or was this a multi-layered trap?
Brayden remained perfectly silent. The detective gave a little snort. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
“So what’s going to happen now?” Brayden asked.
“This is a high profile murder investigation. Which means initially it’s going to get a lot of press, but with the hard drive, with the list of victims reaching into the thirties, we’ll drag our feet a little while longer, and then we’ll do the best we can to let this unsolved murder die in the archives. This interview is more for formality than anything.”
“I think that’s a good idea.”
“Whoever killed this piece of shit, they were righting a tremendous number of wrongs.”
Again, Brayden said nothing.
“Time to record that statement,” Detective Bateman said.
“I’m ready when you are, Detective,” he said. Then he gave Detective Tyler Bateman his official statement, which was mostly one big fat lie.
Netty arrived a few minutes after he hung up the phone. He answered the door shivering, sweating, not sure how to contain all the energy, anxiety and excitement in him. He gave Netty a crooked smile, then tried to think only sexual thoughts of her as she wore her ruffle skirt (with no underwear, he would later learn) and a tight shirt with absolutely no bra. For a dumb kid his age, so overrun with boner juice and sex-soaked stupidity, seeing her looking the way she was slowed his mind to singular thoughts.
Like, oh my God.
Like, steal me from my life with sex for just a little while.
“Miss me much?” she said, her face so radiant, so expectant.
“You have no idea,” he replied.
5
The minute Quentin Russell fires the shotgun, time slows to less than a crawl. I do this. This slowing of circumstance and events, I realize it’s my mind controlling time.
Um…holy shit!
This, apparently, is another one of my abilities: slowing time, but not stopping it. If I could’ve stopped time, I would have been alright. But I couldn’t. Not this time.
The shot from the barrel of Quentin’s shotgun explodes into my face, a flash of light and searing heat, and the onslaught of dozens of pellets. The first half dozen pellets pulverize the top layers of my lower face, specifically my new nose, mouth and chin. My front teeth shatter. The bottom half of my face punches open in a ragged hole. My tongue becomes ribbons of flesh-stripped confetti.
Despite the carnage, my mind remains unshaken. I stop the forward rush of pellets, but only after they’ve penetrated skin and bone. It happens that fast. Quentin sees half the buck shot slow in thin air then drop onto the unblemished skin of my throat and chest. Then he watches in horror and amazement as the pellets that shattered my face back themselves out of me, as if time is rewinding itself and the pellets are tracing their paths in reverse. They shake loose of my face and fall into the glass canister I’m laying in.
My face, I know, is a caver
nous, blood soaked crater.
White blood cells rush to the damaged flesh; my teeth are starting to grow back, the layers of enamel forming and hardening, then forming and hardening, layer after layer after layer. And the inferno that starts inside me? We’re talking surface of the sun type heat.
Not that I’ll show pain.
Sensei Naygel said never show pain lest you betray your weakness. That’s why I keep my battered face neutral. Why not so much as a flicker of weakness forsakes me.
My ruined mouth spits out pieces of broken teeth, globs of blood and hunks of meat that were once my tongue. It’s a horror-show mess that splatters Quentin’s white button up shirt. I don’t take my eyes off his. Not for one second.
I am him; he isn’t me.
Being inside his head as I am, his fear spiraling out of control against his every horrified emotion, he’s trying not to piss his Boss brand trousers. I almost want him to wet himself. Then again, I’m tempted to make him release his bowels.
Can I do such a thing?
“You should not have done that,” my ragged mouth says. My voice is a garbled, bloody affair, so creepy sounding it’s unnerving even to me. Each word, it rolls over blood bubbles; it rakes across broken teeth.
It’s not a pretty thing, this face of mine.
I see me because he sees me, and I must say, I’m f*cking scary looking. Beautiful and different, but shot to shit and splattered red and totally psychotic in the eyes.
My eyes…
Oh, God. I see them. I really see them. And they’re a brilliant, wicked shade of purple.
Amethyst.
His paralysis breaks and Quentin racks another load. Using my mind to override his, to control him like a puppet, I tighten his hands around the rifle, then flip it so the barrel is tucked up under his chin. How I am him and me, I don’t yet understand, I only know that it’s possible because I’m doing it again, and it feels almost second nature to me.
“Pull the trigger,” I snarl, my voice a little closer to normal than before. So much healing is happening so fast. Still, I cough up ribbons of blood, which rope out over my rapidly healing chin. “Pull that trigger and it’ll be like the girl you killed in your house, except way more messy. The good news, however, is there will be nothing left of your brain or your heart to feel remorse for having taken her life. Or guilt knowing she died and not you.”
My words were hardly smooth. They still had that jagged, bumpy quality to them, like they were said in between the sickly swallowing of hot meat and warm, coppery liquid. Twice I felt thatches of skin trying to go the wrong way down my throat.
With the barrel of the shotgun jammed in the soft tissue between his Adam’s apple and the V-shaped bones of his jaw, he says, “How do you—?”
“Know about the girl?” I ask. He nods. “I know about her because you know about her.”
How he’s even understanding me I don’t know. How I can even speak confuses me, too. I sit up, drape my legs over the horizontally laying canister, level him with purple eyes, eyes so dark and so enchanting they can only be Arabelle’s eyes. A gift from Holland. One that nearly breaks my heart. I miss her already. Deep down—and maybe this is because I’m mourning the loss of her, my best frenemy ever—I feel the heat of my rage cooling to despair.
And this makes me spare the man’s life.
Inside, I move my tongue a bit, enough to know it’s almost all the way to normal. My God! How is this kind of accelerated healing possible? Before Dulce, these are the kinds of injuries that would have taken me days to mend! Weeks!
“Are we done with this game yet, Quentin?” my mouth says.
“We are,” he replies, his voice strained from the pressure of the shotgun barrel. With my mind, I tear the weapon from his hands, send it flying across the room where it lands with a loud clatter! in the corner. He lowers his head, rubs the reddening spot under his chin, then in a more down-to-business tone, he says, “I’m not playing a game, though. This isn’t a game for me.”
“You know what I mean,” I say, pushing myself out of the canister. My normal voice is returning, a miracle I dare not celebrate in front of strangers. Instead, I stand before him, not as a child, or a girl. And certainly not as an equal. I could end him. And we both know he can’t do a damn thing to stop me. “Holland said to kill us if something went wrong,” I say. “Something’s gone wrong, I assume.”
“Yes,” he says, his voice reverent, terrified. He refuses to look at me, as I am unclothed. In his mind, he sees staring at me as an impolite gesture that could get him killed, and he’s right.
“I’m going to put on some clothes, appraise this new version of myself, and then you and I will discuss how we’re going to fix this problem of yours. And maybe my face if that doesn’t heal right.”
He backs up, like I’m radioactive, like I’m on the verge of going nuclear, and he says, “Fair enough.” His eyeballs, they’re shaking in their sockets, and pointed everywhere else.
Staring at him, neither of us blinking, he risks a glance upon my face. I cock my head sideways, glare at him. His eyes finally come to rest on mine. In an icy yet almost poetic tone, I enunciate every word so nothing will be lost on him, so my message will not only be heard, but driven deep into the core of him and internalized.
“Can you imagine what it would be like having your body turned inside out? Bones and skin, sinew and veins and all? Just broken and wrenched apart and worked inside out, not all at once, but slowly to maximize the pain?”
“No,” he says, swallowing hard. He takes another involuntary step back, refusing to let his eyes dip even the slightest bit to what I hope are matching breasts.
“If you ever seek to harm me again, neither of us will have to imagine what that would be like. I’ll just think it, and it’ll happen. You won’t even have time to prepare.”
He nods and I almost feel bad for being such a bitch. My face is on fire though! And the purge, will it come again? I’m sure it will. Where else will all of this damaged flesh go, besides all over the floor at my feet in a drizzling mess, like it is now?
“Good,” I say, satisfied. “Now leave me.”
Rich People Problems
1
The next morning, Christian Swann slammed his phone down on the kitchen counter harder than he intended to. The screen cracked. Abby jumped at the outburst even though she’d been sitting at the kitchen table listening to everything. It was barely time for breakfast and already she knew the day was shot. A L.A. detective had called. Apparently there was a murder. And apparently the original Abby Swann was involved.
So, she mused, she’s not so perfect after all.
Christian turned and fixed her with a nasty glare. “At what point is all this…crap…going to stop?!” The fire in his eyes could have burnt wet forests to the ground.
“What do you mean?” she asked, knowing she was on thin ice.
“Apparently when you went to Los Angeles with Brayden, you witnessed a murder? Is this right?” The flaming disappointment in his eyes, how his skin seemed to quiver with rage, it made her think about running back home to her real mother and step-father. He looked like he wanted to choke her right now.
Shrinking back into herself, she said, “I don’t remember that, I swear.”
“That goddamn kid!” he growled, raking his hands through his hair, stalking hard around the kitchen, like some caged animal, or an adrenaline charged fighter. “Give me his cell number. Right NOW!”
“Brayden’s number?”
“Yes, Brayden’s number!”
She dug her phone out of her jeans pocket, swiped through the real Abby’s contact info, then read him the number. He punched it into his spider web-cracked screen, then pressed CALL. Any minute now and that perfect head of hair was going to ignite. When Brayden answered the phone, Christian’s posture changed and things went from bad to worse. All Abby wanted to do was disappear. She wanted to be back home, back in Nevada.
Not here.
N
ot with her fake father and her fake friends and all their rich people problems.
2
Brayden woke to the sound of a ringing phone. He pried open swollen-shut eyes, blinked against the crisp morning light. Netty groaned, rolled over and pulled the blankets with her. Rubbing his eyes, blinking hard to focus on his phone’s backlit screen, he frowned when he realized who was calling. Now he was wide awake. He took a deep breath, answered the phone.
“Mr. Swann,” he said.
“You have some explaining to do, and don’t bullshit me because if you so much as lie about a single thing, I will not only make sure you never see my daughter again, I will make it my sole mission to end you on every level.”
Brayden blew out a sigh, looked over at Netty, who was trying to pull the sheets over her pale, almost non-existent breasts. She looked like she was still half asleep. Brayden brushed strands of blonde hair off her face, which caused in her a slight, crooked smile, then he said to Christian in an almost disinterested voice, “I’m assuming this is about L.A.?”
“You know good and goddamn well it is,” he snarled.
“You sure you want the whole story?”
“No,” he said, his tone dripping with sarcasm, “I’m doing this for my health.”
“Well, we went to L.A. to kill a man,” Brayden said. And then he told Christian the entire story, including the deaths of the Giardino’s. He didn’t take it well. Before Christian could comment, however, Brayden said, “Before you get all pissed off at me and blow a blood vessel or something, understand I am not the problem. Your daughter is the problem and I’m only sticking around to keep her out of trouble.”
“You’re doing a terrible job,” Christian said, tones of resignation in his voice.
“No offense, but I’m not the one who signed her up to be one of Gerhard’s dolls. You did that all on your own, and you did that without telling her.”
“So you’re saying this is my fault?” he boomed.
“They don’t let stupid kids into Astor Academy, sir. I’m not stupid. I can follow a trail of breadcrumbs, and these breadcrumbs lead back to you, and back to Margaret.”
