Bad Little Girls Die Horrible Deaths: And Other Tales of Dark Fantasy

by Connolly, Harry

  Now she had this connection to him for no reason at all, and she had no idea how to break it. Would she have to kill him? Because she would. If that’s what it took to be free of this horrifying wet vein, she would do that without hesitation.

  Carly stalked around the registers and saw him standing there right behind the deli counter. As she marched toward him, he glanced up and looked at her. His eyes went wide and he turned on his heels. He didn’t run through the double-swinging door into the back of the store, but it was close.

  The customer he’d been helping threw up her hands in exasperation. Carly suddenly had an awful feeling about what she planned to do: the store was packed even in the middle of the afternoon. What would people think of her if she made a scene next to the quinoa salad? If she were a guy, they might take her seriously, but…

  Fuck it.

  “DAVID!” she shouted, making everyone near her jump. “DAVID, YOU GET BACK OUT HERE! DAVID!”

  “Excuse me!” A commanding woman in a green apron rushed toward her, her expression making it clear she was going to take no nonsense. “You can’t just—”

  “David abandoned me in the desert,” Carly interrupted. If they thought she was going to be intimidated, they were wildly wrong. “He left me in the middle of nowhere. I was lucky to find a road and to get a ride home. I could have died out there and David drove off with my purse, stranding me. In case you didn’t know, it is very very August right now.”

  “Okay,” the woman said, still trying to be commanding, “but you can’t just—”

  “DAVID!” Carly shouted. She moved along the counter, looking for an opening or a gate she could go through. “David, you creep! Come out here now with my purse!” She couldn’t talk about the prank or the weird hallucinations he’d given her somehow, not in front of these strangers… Shit! The refrigerated counter was an unbroken barrier. There was no way to follow him into the back.

  “Okay!” the woman said. “Okay, you stop that or I’m going to call the police. Do you understand? I sympathize, honey, but you can’t keep on like this. Now, I will go back there and talk to him. I’m sure he’ll be willing to come out here and straighten things out in a quiet, civilized manner. Yes?”

  She stared at Carly, waiting for her to agree. “Yes. Fine.” The woman lumbered through the swinging door that David had fled through.

  Silence. Carly folded her arms across her chest—a habit she’d broken when she started college, she’d thought—so she forced herself to hold her hands at her sides. Almost everyone around the counter was carefully not looking at her. People who weren’t near the counter, especially the cashiers, craned their necks at her. Even the little red-haired homeless woman loitering near the cafe tables glared at her as though she was thinking of murder.

  The last employee behind the counter, a willowy older woman with black-dyed hair, turned to the customer she was helping and said: “Did you want a full sixteen ounces or…?”

  Just like that, the world started up again. Customers began chatting on their phones or milling around the glass case looking at the pastries, salads and sandwiches inside. Only occasionally did they glance warily in her direction.

  Carly felt a sudden rush of anger at all of them, not just because they were judging her but because they were involving themselves in her life. Did it make sense for them to be thinking about her when she’d done nothing more than raise her voice in the grocery store? Seriously. What if all that thinking created another revolting black strand?

  The little homeless woman was still staring at her as though she could read Carly’s thoughts. She was creepy, dirty, and sort of androgynous in an unfashionable way. Behind her were a half-dozen nobodies sitting at little round tables tapping at their laptops.

  Carly had a sudden vision of them on the internet, their machines all connected to a modem set high on a column as though by faint silver clouds. Just the thought of it was like a knife twisting in her guts. All that text and image, all moving from one person to another like greasy whispers. She could suddenly see machine connections all around her—bluetooth, phone signals, flowing electricity—pressing against her like a crowd on an elevator—

  “Carly? Miss, are you Carly?”

  The vision disappeared like a popped soap bubble. The woman had emerged from the back. Carly met her the end of the counter where they could talk in low voices without being heard. “I’m Carly, yes.”

  “Okay,” the woman said, her voice low. “David… he said some crazy things.”

  Of course he did. He was dumb enough to think people would believe him just because. “Like what?”

  “Crazy things. He also said he called the police on you. And he quit.”

  “What do you mean he quit?”

  “He told me he’d call with an address to send his last check and he walked out. Said he was leaving the southwest all together. Said he hates the desert. I’m sorry, honey, but—”

  “What about my purse? My credit cards were in there!”

  “I’d go home and cancel those suckers right away. I’m sorry, honey—”

  Carly pushed away from the counter and started toward the exit. She wanted her purse, absolutely, but it wasn’t the most important thing. What she really cared about was that her connection to David was broken. When that black web reappeared—and she knew it would—she wanted to have cut at least one cord between her and other people. Would driving him out of town do the job? Why was it so hard to know how all this worked? And why was she still so thirsty?

  Carly felt herself seized by an urgent compulsion. She turned sharply toward the cafe, then slid a chair against the column where the modem had been mounted. Hefting a second chair—they were not as heavy as they looked—she leaped onto the first chair and swung, shattering the modem into a hundred plastic shards.

  She leapt down to the plastic tile floor, letting the clatter of the dropped chair drown out the pained moans of the patrons who had just lost their connections. It felt so incredibly good—

  A hand clamped down on her forearm. Carly was so surprised she cried out. It was the homeless woman with the almost-shaved red hair, and god, she smelled like a goat. She also had a grip like a steel handcuff.

  The cafe manager was actually sprinting toward them both when the homeless woman said: “Hold still.” She slapped a block of wood on the fat part of Carly’s upper arm.

  Immediately, black steam and iron-colored sparks blasted out of the design. The charging cafe manager cursed in surprise as he dodged out of the way.

  The homeless woman actually smiled then. It was a bloodthirsty expression, and the secret subconscious part of Carly’s brain that she’d decided she ought to trust urged her to run like hell. She yanked her forearm downward, breaking the little woman’s incredible grip—surprising both of them—then sprinted toward the door, shouting and pointing behind her.

  David’s car was gone from the lot but Carly’s purse was just sitting on the asphalt like a turd he’d left behind. The bakery keys were inside and so was all her cash and credit cards. Fine. He was a creep but he wasn’t a thief.

  The homeless woman hadn’t followed her into the parking lot, and neither had the cafe manager. Probably, they were scared of the desert heat; that homeless woman was too pale to be homeless in Vegas.

  Carly got into her car and roared out of the lot. Someone had almost certainly called the cops and she did not want to have to explain why she’d freaked out in that cafe. She also didn’t want to empty her wallet paying for a new modem. With luck, they’d blame the crazy chick with the toy fireworks. Carly was glad she lived across town; she never had to go in that place again.

  At the first red light, she noticed that her hands had aged somehow. Brown spots had appeared along the back. God, she was only twenty-five, too young for this. Although it would have been just her luck on this most perfectly shitty day.

  Carly dug her phone out of her pocket and dialed Shelly. Today she’d become a wild scofflaw, smashing shit in
Whole Foods and talking on her cell while driving. Next she would water someone’s lawn. When Shelly answered, Carly asked if she was home and could she come over to talk. Shelly was and Carly could. She hung up and tossed the phone aside. Her connection to David was gone. She wasn’t sure how, but she could feel it. She was never going to see him again and that was fine, just fine.

  But David wasn’t the only person she was connected to.

  * * *

  Shelly’s place was actually a unit above a garage. The house was a rental, too, and she’d lived through three different families moving in and out, with the fourth still yet to arrive. It meant that, for now, Carly could park well off the street in the little driveway. She didn’t know if the police were looking for her but it seemed smart to play it safe.

  The door swung open even before she reached the bell. “Hurry in, hurry in,” Shel said, and Carly hurried up the last few steps. God, she was unbearably hot and thirsty. She suddenly realized she wasn’t sweating. That couldn’t be good, could it?

  Shel’s apartment was a cool 75 degrees; after a lifetime in the desert, that was almost punishingly cold. Carly asked for water then had to force herself to drink it. Shel had brought home the box of wine and was slowly killing it.

  When Carly sat on the couch, she woke Watson from a nap. The old cat hissed at her and ran into the bedroom.

  “Weird!” Shel said. “Watson loves you.”

  “Nobody loves me today.”

  “Oh, sweetie.” Shel knelt on the couch and gave Carly a long hug. She’d missed the tone of that remark; Carly ached for loneliness. The idea of it soothed her. For maybe the first time in her life, she did not want to be loved.

  “Oh, sweetie, you really liked that guy, didn’t—whoa.” Shel pulled away slightly. “What happened to your hands?”

  The brown spots had spread, growing even darker. They were almost the color of that prank corpse.

  Suddenly, Shel’s computer lit up like a flood lamp, a silver cloud appearing around it and connecting it to other devices in the room: her tablet, her phone, her Fitbit… even the phone in Carly’s pocket.

  And just as she shuddered at the sight of all that machine connection, the black web appeared around Shelly, too. Dozens of shining-wet black cords were right there, shooting through the walls of the apartment into the city. One pointed toward the bedroom, and Carly realized she could use it to find Watson.

  One emerged from Shelly’s abdomen and entered Carly’s.

  No no no no no this was awful. Carly had not come here to be connected, she’d… It occurred to her that she’d actually come here to say goodbye. It was time to leave Vegas and never see her old friends again. She and Shelly had been through so much together but the memories of those times had become a burden. They just made her feel crowded.

  But break off with her former best friend? There was only one way for that to be permanent.

  With the same ease she’d found in cutting the leash or breaking that crazy woman’s incredible grip, Carly mentally took hold of the black cord connecting her to Shelly and began to draw life from it the way a vampire would drink blood.

  Shel’s expression went blank for a moment, then her eyes slowly closed. She didn’t collapse, but she did slowly sink down onto the couch cushions like an old expiring helium balloon.

  Carly clasped Shelly’s hands, feeling all of the power that connected them draining away from her former friend and into her. What’s more, the strands of the web was growing thinner, too; Carly wasn’t just emptying the connection between Shelly and herself, she was draining all of them.

  And god, she had so many. Cutting her off from the world was like trying to stand beneath a waterfall and drink every plummeting drop.

  But Carly was the one who could do it. She drank it all down, taking every connection into herself the way a black hole would swallow light. The revolting black web strands became thinner, then crusty dry, then grayish, until they finally popped like the crazy woman’s fireworks, floating upward in a way real dust never could.

  Carly expected that to be the end but there was more vitality to be had. She drained Shel to nothing, until her former friend began to lose distinguishing features. Slowly, she transformed from a normal human corpse into something like a silhouette cut out of gray paper. Finally, that too popped, and there was nothing left of Michelle Read Donovan but a big pair of yoga pants and a Doctor Horrible t-shirt.

  “God!” Carly said, almost shouting. “I feel great!” Almost immediately, Shel’s phone began to ring and her computer began to ping out Facebook notifications. A quick glance at the screen showed that her friends and family were checking in because they “had a bad feeling.” Interesting! So many of them could sense what Carly had done in exactly the same way. She’d have to remember that for next time.

  Shel’s damn phone kept ringing so Carly carried it into the bathroom—holding it like a dirty diaper—and dropped it in the toilet. The computer had a long yellow cable that connected to the modem so she unplugged it at both ends. It wasn’t enough. She smashed the modem. It wasn’t enough. She wedged her hands under Shel’s oak desk, lifted it—it was not as heavy as it looked—turned it over, then dropped it onto the floor.

  The noise it made was amazing! Carly could just imagine it echoing out into the neighborhood, especially through the empty rooms of the unrented house just across the yard.

  Her own phone began to ring and she didn’t even have to look at it to know it was a police detective. She flipped it over and extracted the battery. Better but not enough.

  Carly stared out the window at the darkened house for a long moment. It was sealed up, which meant it would be stifling inside, but that didn’t matter. Could she go there and rest? Break the front walk with a sledge, snip the phone and electrical wires, block the water and sewer…

  No, that wasn’t feasible. She understood, suddenly, David’s friend Bill’s urge to dig a furrow in the gravel path that led from the road, but she didn’t have time to make this space comfortable, not before the end. Plus, the cops might be able trace her phone here.

  If she let them arrest her, she’d be taken to a public institution. There would be no privacy there. She couldn’t allow that.

  Carly hurried back to her car and got back onto the road as quickly as possible. Other drivers and the extremely rare pedestrians she passed all had wet black webs of their own. It was disgusting, really, but she was getting used to it. As she drove through the streets, she and her car passed through the strands like ghosts.

  If only stupid David hadn’t called the police, she could have driven back out to the private estate where they’d gone hiking. God, how perfect that place seemed now: secluded but not so secluded that a shriveled up old corpse wouldn’t be discovered at some point. If only she could return to that little cluster of yucca plants. She could stretch out on the ground, close her eyes, and lie in wait.

  Too bad. She had to find someplace new and to do that she had to break with her old life. There were still connections holding her in place and she would not be able to rest and build her power unless those were destroyed.

  And what the hell was the matter with Shelly anyway? Since when does she go out in the middle of the day? Carly dropped by her place all the time; she was always home doing her design work. What’s the point of inviting your friend over if you’re just going to bug out before they got there?

  Unless something bad had happened to her.

  Carly took out her phone to call Shelly but the stupid thing was dead. How was she supposed to check on her friend now? She cursed it and tossed it onto the passenger floor. Who’s idea was it to make everyone carry phones all the time, anyway? Phones suck.

  With a note of surprise, she realized that the brown spots on her hands had vanished. She must have imagined them out of guilt, like Lady MacBeth, although she couldn’t imagine what she had to feel guilty about.

  A cop car sat at the curb outside her apartment, but there was nobody inside.
A quick glance as she drove past her building showed that two officers were standing at the top of her stairs, banging on her door. She sympathized with anyone who had to be outside in this heat, but not enough to wave and catch their attention. She drove to the end of the block and parked in front of the Ramirez house, which had been abandoned three years before during the housing collapse.

  The deadbolt lock on the front door opened easily for her and she slipped into the dark and the quiet. Immediately, she could sense that the power, phone, and water had been shut off long ago. The sewer lines were still there, obviously, but those would be easy to plug. The front walk was just a line of stones; she could dig those up with the pry bar in her trunk.

  The cop car pulled away. Carly slipped out the back, then snuck into her apartment. There was a post-it across the door asking her to call a non-emergency police number but she’d already decided she didn’t like phones any more.

  It was well after dinnertime but she wasn’t hungry at all. That Roghan Josh she’d barely eaten must have been damn filling. She wasn’t even sweaty from the heat. A little thirsty, maybe, but that was natural in the desert.

  The first thing she did was rush to the little dish and tear up Marie’s phone number. It felt good. Very freeing. This was it. Moving time. She’d spent her whole unbearable life in Vegas. Now, she was going to find freedom. What did she need? All those clothes? A TV? Her phone?

  The tossed her phone onto the couch and instantly felt two hundred percent lighter. Her Facebook and contacts were useless now. Why had she ever worried about them?

  All she needed was money. Cash money. She could take her credit cards to the bank, withdraw the maximum cash advance, and vanish. After that, she would be free. No more friends. No more mother. Free.

  She hurried out of the apartment and raced down the stairs. If the cops were watching, she wanted to be already moving when they started to get out of their patrol car.

  It wasn’t cops who were waiting for her. It was her neighbor, and he was pissed about his stupid dog.