by Jack Lothian
Looking away from her broken reflection, she scanned the group. The man on her right was an insurance salesman named Tom Ofstad who used to love driving around town in his “vintage car,” a rust-orange Ford Pinto. The woman on her left was Elaine Fischer, a substitute teacher who routinely had a group of foster kittens in her home. She was a dedicated member of the Beth El Synagogue before it was torched, its holy bones turned into barrack reinforcements, the concrete foundation a place of extremist battle. In front of her stood Rick Stephens, a sandy-haired mechanic who always had a bright handkerchief sticking out of his coveralls. Charlotte used to see him at his auto body shop during her morning walks, bent over the open hood of a car, his handkerchief blowing in the breeze behind him like a jellyfish floating undersea. Today he was wearing his new uniform, a black jumpsuit with gold lettering on the chest. A member of the True Cross Mechanical Team, his required outfit bore the words:
Deus Lo Volt
God Wills It.
He had also lost a parent, his father, in the First Battle, when the Agents had come and bled the community of threats. Tom had once fought against them, and now was one of them, indentured to fix the killing machinery that filled the streets. The faint tributary of a scar ran down his cheek, a reminder of the world before, when it was worth fighting for.
Near him was Kaitlin Spencer, a rail-thin, tall brunette who wore the same cardigan every day, and was trained as a dental hygienist. She used to love watching the kids in the dental office choose a little toy from the bucket after their visits. Now, she attended to men returning from battle, their mouths black and broken. The librarian, Addy Penford, was shaking near the Gorgeous Man, wracked with tears and fear. Despite her position in the circle, Charlotte couldn’t help but feel most awful for the kids in town who were going to lose their librarian, even if the reading material was regulated. Standing near the door was Jason Foster, a shithead known for his nightly performances starring whiskey and a bad temper. Tall, with dark curly hair and green eyes women write poetry about, he was a reckless beauty. Once at their local dive, Charlotte had watched him knock back eleven drinks in a row, then go outside and howl at the moon, hands curled into C’s, his breath heavy in the cold air. The militia didn’t outlaw alcohol (with the sickle, winemaker, and the wrath and all), but they were known to inflict serious punishment for public intoxication.
“Now, you all know the rules,” said the Gorgeous Man, once the knives were handed out. Tucking his (handle first) under his arm, he scanned each group member, forcing eye contact with each as he spoke. “No leaving the mobile home. No helping one another, and no hiding the whole time. This is an exercise in action. And no slasher show off scenes, okay? This isn’t some bullshit, low budget, torture porn movie.”
Charlotte wet her lips. Her throat suddenly felt like a tunnel, the vehicle of her breath rushing toward a shrinking pinprick of light. Tom turned his knife in his hand, his eyes glassy like a doll’s. Elaine’s hands shook, the blade catching the light from the barred windows and filling the room like a disco ball. The Gorgeous Man cocked his right hip out and raised his arm, sticking his thumb out like a hitchhiker. “We get in, we gut out.” He roared with laughter, bending forward so the blade of his knife caught the light, a beacon in the yellow room. The group shifted uncomfortably, looking at one another. Elaine had tears streaming down her face. Charlotte guessed she would die first.
Straightening up, he tapped his watch. “We’ve got one hour. Scatter off, beauties!” he shouted, running toward the hallway.
For a moment, Charlotte considered breaking out the kitchen window behind the yellowed shade. But then she remembered the guards, and the lines of them on each end of the property. They had stretched down the road for miles, twitching on Adderall and clicking the safety on and off their guns, with all the time in the world.
Snap. Click. Snap. Click.
There had once been rows of lilac trees on that road, lavender and kind. They reminded Charlotte of her childhood farm, where the lilacs filled the air with their sweet scent next to mulberry trees that dotted the lane. Back before those colors were outlawed, and the flowers were torn out of the ground, left to die in pale clumps. Before the world went mad.
She squeezed the handle of her knife, and ran toward the east end of the mobile home.
10:12 a.m.
Barely ten minutes into the hour, Charlotte watched with horror as her prediction came true: Elaine was hacked to death. She had run around the corner of the kitchen counter, hysterical, her knife pointed toward the floor. An easy target. From her hiding place behind the refrigerator—fuck the rules—Charlotte could see the sweat standing out on Elaine’s face, beading and cascading like a river churning over her skin. Charlotte bit her lower lip to control her breathing, crouching behind the counter, her spine creaking like a tree in the wind. Out of nowhere, Tom ran around the corner of the kitchen and face first into Elaine, bawling as he plunged his knife over and over into her torso, the way you might puncture a sweet potato before microwaving it.
Charlotte could barely control the screaming in her own skull. No, no, no, no, no.
Elaine’s shrieks drowned into gurgles. Her eyes bugged outward, looking as though they would rip from her skull and fling themselves into orbit. Even as she slumped forward over the knife, Tom kept howling, kept stabbing. The knife slid easily in and out of Elaine’s body, like a spoon through a stick of butter. Once the dam of her body was broken, her blood ran like streams down Tom’s arms, rushing toward his elbows and coagulating into wide smears as her torso was shredded.
Charlotte squeezed her eyes shut. One down.
10:15 a.m.
Pieces of Elaine dotted the kitchen floor as Charlotte ran for the bathroom. She slammed the door, turned the lock, and backed away quickly. You did not want to spend too much time against walls or doors here. Brittle cedar would change to the consistency of cotton candy when a knife was slammed through.
Charlotte could almost visualize the knife handle through the door as Tom tapped on it a few seconds later.
Tap, tap, tap.
“Please,” he whispered, his voice sliding down the door like a deflating balloon. “You’ve got to let me in.”
Charlotte didn’t move. Her arms felt separate from the rest of her body, one hand gripped against the sink, the other wrapped around her knife.
The taps stopped. Silence.
The crash that followed bent the door just slightly. In the tiny bathroom, it sounded the way a doomed jet would upon impact with the ground, changing from solid to liquid and screaming with the impact of bodies, smoke, and fuel.
Tom threw his weight into the frame, bellowing as he landed blow after blow. “Let me in! I know you’re in there, Fucking let me in!”
Charlotte leaned against the sink, feeling the cold press of ceramic in the small of her back. The door cracked and splintered, the hinges moaning. “You fucking bitch, I know you’re—”
His voice stopped, with a hollow sound a stone makes after being dropped down a well. Shivering with adrenaline, she crawled under the sink, pressing her hands against her face. Over the pumping of blood in her ears, there was a sound like a shovel piercing dry earth. It reminded Charlotte of her mother in their garden, during summer days where the loudest sounds were the thwack of her hand shovel near the tomato plants, and the wind dancing in the trees. Closing her eyes under the cave of the sink, she half expected to hear the evening cicadas as they vibrated like tuning forks against the trees, camouflaged so well that it seemed the branches had voices.
In the darkness behind her hands, she saw the roses.
The smell of summer, the canopy of trees, the way the shovel cut the earth, tossing dirt along the edge of the garden, the sounds of slicing, cutting my fingers on the wild rosebushes near the barn, the life and brightness of petals, of blood, the taste and smell, watching as it dripped down my fingers, feathered around my shirt sleeve, watching as it grew and bloomed on my body, my body the garden, remembe
ring the rose garden never ended it never—
A wet moan, then silence. There was a crack, and the sound of a blade being pulled from something heavy. The door buckled under the next thump, a body slapping against the wood grains.
Charlotte’s eyes snapped open and she pressed her hands in a prayer.
Two footsteps fell outside the door.
Tap. Tap.
10:23 a.m.
Charlotte was relieved to hear screaming outside the door. The taps stopped, footsteps crashing into a run that faded down the hallway. A distraction for the time being. Her throat burning, she crawled out from the sink and stood carefully. She turned the tap on and bent under the faucet, still hearing the muffled chaos outside the door. The water tasted warm and grainy, like licking a piece of limestone. After she turned the tap off, she could hear movement inside the bathroom. She whipped around, holding her knife at chest level.
“Who the fuck is there?”
There was a sob from the shower. Charlotte pulled the curtain aside. In the tub cowered a dark-haired woman.
Kaitlin.
“Please don’t kill me please don’t kill me, oh God please don’t kill me…”
Charlotte lowered her knife.
“What are you doing in here? The rules say no hiding.”
Kaitlin was curled in a ball, her knees drawn up below her chin. Her dark hair looked wet. She sobbed violently. Charlotte noticed her fingernails were torn to shreds, traced with dark blood.
“I can’t go out there. I can’t kill anybody. Why do we have to do this!?”
Charlotte put her knife on the sink counter and sat on the edge of the tub. Shreds of wood from Tom’s collision with the door spotted the linoleum like scattered straw. She turned to Kailin.
“Because if you don’t, they will kill you in here, like a trapped animal. They will kill you, because this is the way the world is now.”
Charlotte's voice dropped.
“And we allowed it to get this way.”
Kaitlin pulled in one long sob, exhaling with a bark. Charlotte locked eyes with her. The helplessness in the room was another presence, insidious and needy.
“It’s everyone for themselves here. If you want to survive, you have to fight.”
Kaitlin nodded, sniffling wetly and began to move out of the tub. Charlotte stood and picked her knife back up, the handle cool from its recess. She grabbed the doorknob and paused.
No sound from the other side.
She pulled the door open, hearing nothing but her own breath and the gentle aftershocks of Kaitlin’s whimpers.
Tom’s body was face down outside the door, his back torn open. Among the branches of muscle, his vertebrae glittered in the pale hallway lighting, like new railroad tracks. Kaitlin let out a low cry, the sound clattering over her teeth in a hurried exit. Charlotte looked at his body, disconnected from her own in a haze. All aboard for the Number 3 Train to the brain stem! Charlotte bit her lip to keep from laughing out of pure horror. She thought of her own spine, and the way it twisted in the valleys of her back.
What will it look like when it’s torn out of me?
They stepped over the body, into the humid hallway. Kaitlin reached out and touched Charlotte’s hand. Charlotte turned to her, the smell of sweat and death rich in the air. Kaitlin’s eyes were hollow, peering from the black ringed sinkholes in her skull. Charlotte felt a rush of coldness at Kaitlin’s sick, wide smile, as comforting as a clown’s in a horror movie. She had changed from bathroom to the hallway, like she had put on a mask.
“Everyone for themselves,” Kaitlin said softly, gesturing toward Tom, sweat beads shining like jewels on her arm. Her eyes were wild.
Sick with fear, Charlotte managed a weak nod. They split off toward the hallway.
10:35 a.m.
From her hiding place behind the bedroom door, she watched the Gorgeous Man sing as he pulled his knife from Jason’s temple. The blade was slick with brain matter, matted and muddy like the bottom of a pond. The struggle hadn’t been much. Jason wasn’t as graceful with a knife as he was with a shot glass. The Gorgeous Man had cornered him in the bedroom and handled him like a matador, elegantly swinging his hips back and floating his arms as Jason clumsily jabbed his blade toward him. A few minutes into the performance, without dropping his arms, the Gorgeous Man delicately turned his wrist and struck, burying the blade in Jason’s skull.
“Bullseye!” he screamed, twisting the handle, the blade making a sound like a man sucking a juicy peach. Jason’s right eye closed, his lips drawn up like he had put on a pair of headphones with the volume all the way up. The Gorgeous Man swayed as he cranked, dancing as the knife twisted more easily, lubricated by blood and brain.
“Another one bites the dust. Ohhh another one and another one—”
Involuntarily, Charlotte let out a cry. His head snapped toward the door as Charlotte slapped her hands over her mouth. In one motion, he pulled the knife from Jason, the body flopping to the floor. She could see the Gorgeous Man through the crack, his eyes blazing through the hinge like blue searchlights.
He wiped the blade on the leg of his pants. Raising it in front of his chest, he slowly walked toward her.
“It’s still warm, it’s still warm, darling,” he whispered, his lips curling in an awful, snarling smile. “It will feel so nice, so nice when it slices you open…”
His eyes rolled like sharks in the surf. He was now pressed against the slit of the door, his lips moving quickly, spitting as he spoke faster and faster. Charlotte hitched her breath, trapped.
She barely had time to move as he shoved the blade through the opening, blood and brain drying in light strokes along the edge, just missing her face.
“In a second it will be so warm in you, it will be so warm and feel so good, come out and get a taasttee…”
Years ago, when the door had been made, a factory worker noticed a tear in the grain. Deciding against scrapping the door, he had marked it as complete, turning it face down on the delivery truck. This tear was deep, creating a valley in the door with one slope taller than the other, and razor sharp. After it was purchased by a real estate company, a sign was placed over the disfigurement, and it was forgotten. The sign had been taken down recently by the Agents as they removed any reminders from the time before. And that factory worker? He died nine years ago of a heart attack while sitting in lunchtime traffic, his Italian club rancid in the sunlight, filling the truck cabin with a salty, oily smell.
Because of his laziness, that fat bastard saved Charlotte’s life from the Gorgeous Man.
She slammed the door forward, knocking the knife out of his hands. He bellowed as the wood connected with his head. The tear in the door bit hungrily at his forehead, devouring the fleshy wrinkles from his surprised expression like a thick piece of cake. His blood and hair smeared across the grain. The Gorgeous Man screamed and fell to the ground.
Her adrenaline boiling hot, she lunged forward, kicking his knife away and using her own as she sliced a horizontal slit across his shoulder. The gash spread across his skin quickly, like a flame devouring paper. He howled in pain, his forehead bleeding, thrashing on the floor. The injuries were enough of a shock to keep him on his back. One hand covered his forehead, the other his shoulder. She stepped over him and raised the knife, fist over fist, moving too quickly to feel her own body.
With one shuddering scream, she slammed the knife into his clavicle, feeling the twigs of his ribs give way, the canvas of his skin tearing. His arms jerked down and she saw the madness of his eyes, one partially hidden by the long strip of skin that hung over it, and the other a dazzling sapphire, the reptilian pupil dilated into a pinprick. Hysteria swirled from his face like the Great Red Spot of Jupiter and she felt excruciatingly dizzy. He reached up to grab her but it was too late, his grip was nonexistent as she screamed with him, screamed and stirred his lungs like a soup, until his faded into silence.
10:57 a.m.
When the Gorgeous Man was dead, Charlotte
was sure it was almost over.
It’s almost eleven, we’ve got an hour, we’ve got an hour…
But after an hour, what then? What happened when the ringleader was dead?
She remembered the very last line of her letter:
Ephesians 5:15-16: Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.
She was struck by cold nausea.
They only give us an hour, because we are agents of the wrath of God, to lollygag is to sin. We are pigs, raised in a slaughterhouse on a schedule. To fight is to waste time.
The pain in her back slithered down her legs, wrapping around her hamstrings and twisting into her butt. She rubbed her lower back and winced, standing like a person might after weeding a garden all day. But she had been killing this day, the Gorgeous Man’s lungs sliced into smooth, pink pieces in his chest, like a nest of newborn mice. Her head began to throb and her throat screamed for water. I can’t do this much longer.
She headed for the laundry room.
11:05 a.m.
As Charlotte’s knife sliced through the woman’s collarbone, she thought again of the yellowed shade in the main room, the only color in the entire place, besides the blue pools of the Gorgeous Man’s eyes. Kaitlin had found her here, as she struggled to move the washer from the wall to hide behind for a quick break. Kaitlin rushed her, powerful like a horrible wave, screaming with joy and panic. And victory.
“The rules say no hiding,” she shrieked.
