Deeper into Darkness

by Maria Ann Green

  I’ve searched, I’ve skimmed, I’ve read.

  And all of it has gotten me worried, freaking out just a little more with each headline that piles onto the rest.

  “Brian Dunne reports,” I scoff, “what a stupid name. He sounds like a rapist.” Shaking my head, I try to dislodge the memory. “Dunne reports the woman who brutally attacked him…god, what a disgusting—”

  “Stop,” Aidan yells. It’s so abrupt and so loud I jump, dropping my phone to the floor between bare feet. “You’re going to make yourself crazy. Reading the headlines won’t change anything.”

  “But the more we know…”

  “Knowledge is good, but can we take a break?” He stresses the last word—only as much as is necessary; we don’t need it all right at this moment. In other words, I’ve been going overboard.

  “I get it, but…”

  “No buts. Take a break. It’s enough for now.” He’s firm, but not harsh. I know he’s right, but something inside wants to pick a fight. I successfully resist the instinct, lifting my butt and slipping my phone into my pocket. It’s not comfortable sitting back down onto it, but then the reminder is there, the reminder to look again later.

  In an effort to calm down, I reach in the back seat and grab a book I bought from a spinning metal rack several hundred miles ago. It’s not great, but the plot is good enough to get me through.

  Or it had been.

  Right now I don’t think I’d be able to focus on a masterpiece. After a few minutes, I throw it back among the dirty shirts and empty chip bags.

  “How about we talk strategy instead?” Aidan tries after another while. “Maybe it’ll help you feel better, more prepared—like the articles were meant to do, but without the fear. With a solidity instead.”

  I nod, then smile a little, opening my mouth to start.

  ***

  It did help. Talking out all that’s happened, what we did wrong and what mistakes to avoid now, it calmed me. Discussing possible issues we may have, and what to do about them, it was reassuring, soothing. It made the miles slip by quicker, and the itch to grab my phone faded away.

  “How about we find another couple?” he says, and it takes me too long to realize what he means.

  “To kill?” I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean to swing with.

  “Obviously.” He pulls a face as he says it, making me laugh for the first time since, since I don’t know when, for the first time in a while. “I mean, why not? We need it—we need new identities.”

  And it makes sense.

  “Okay.” I smile.

  I can see the sparkle in his eye even from the side, and it feels so good. It feels like the old us, back to what’s always made us good, made us strong together. It feels right.

  “We’ll be smart…plus, it’ll be fun.”

  His smile is wicked, curled in all the right spots and full of something I can’t quite name. It gets me excited. So we start planning, bouncing ideas off each other, and altering as necessary. Eagerness falls from our mouths, our chests, our eyes, and it bounces off the walls of the car before bounding back, amplified.

  We talk it out probably more than necessary, going over a few alternate ideas and what-if scenarios. It feels great and lasts over an hour before we both eventually quiet.

  We keep driving after we finish.

  And keep driving.

  And keep driving.

  I take a turn, but it doesn’t last long before I’m asking to switch again. I can’t focus. I don’t dare grab my phone and go back to the black hole of the internet, so all I have as an option is to stew in my own thoughts, which is rarely a good idea. I watch Aidan’s profile, the curves of his face, and try not to cry as the sensation of it all, how much I love him, hits me like a puncture to the lungs.

  “What?” he asks, catching me staring.

  “Nothing.”

  I turn, having gotten caught, quickly redirecting my eyes to something else. He laughs and turns up the music, giving me something else to occupy my mind. But in the next moment my stomach is turning, and I’m not sure why.

  The muscles cramp, twisting in on themselves. I try to breathe through it, loudly inhaling through my nose and slowly pushing out with puffy cheeks.

  “You okay?” Aidan asks, concern in his voice. “Hangover stomach?” It’s a stupid question, though; I can’t still be hung over, so much later. I don’t answer right away, giving myself time to breathe more. And it works; I do feel a little better.

  “Motion sick, probably. We’ve been in the car for so long now,” I say finally.

  Aidan nods.

  I watch his chin bob up and down one moment, and in the next I’m leaning over and throwing up between my feet. It was that sudden, no warning of return, and it’s over almost as quickly because I only heave twice.

  The only plus to the whole surprise is that I feel instantly better afterward.

  “Oh my god.” The words pop out of my mouth, quiet and apologetic. I can feel the horror etched into my face, my mouth wider than it was when I had vomit streaming from it, my eyes more watery too. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Are you okay?” Aidan has concern radiating off him in waves. His look paired with his words have me crying then. Though, it probably has to do with the smell as well, the sharp and sour stench. “Bumble Bee, it’s okay. Shhhhh,” he says as he turns the wheel to get off at the next exit.

  I don’t stop crying right away, and it takes a minute or two after we’re at a gas pump.“I’m sorry,” I say again.

  He shakes his head, saying, “Let’s get you cleaned up,” before he leaves the car to run inside.

  While he’s away I strip off my pants, not really caring about too much skin showing right now, and before I even have time to wonder how the hell I’ll take care of the puddle at my feet he’s back with paper towels, several bottles and a jug of water, and crackers. He even got me new shoes so I have some to wear while the others dry.

  “Thank you.” It’s all I say, because I don’t know what other words to add to it. First he left and now he’s cleaning me off after planning another murder with me. I’d have whiplash from it all if I thought too hard about it.

  Together we clean me off then the car, and we rinse my shoes and pants before putting them into a plastic bag.

  I give him a weak smile, but it’s the best I can do before squeaking in wet flip flops over to the bathroom to do a better job with my legs and hands. He whistles as I go—I’m wearing nothing on my lower half but my underwear—and I wiggle a little on my last few steps before opening the bathroom door.

  It’s sort of gross inside, and it smells, so I hold my breath to keep from gagging again.

  I’m in and out quickly, as quickly as I can be, the whole time thinking about Aidan waiting for me at the car, knowing our honesty has gotten us over the divide and back to this place of harmony—where he can talk about murder and puke in the same hour.

  ***

  “I’ll drive again,” Aidan says when I get back to the car, still not wearing pants. He tried so hard not to laugh at me when I strolled out, but his shoulders shook with the effort.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Laugh it up.” But I smile too, not really annoyed. “You can drive all night. Take me somewhere new, lover boy.”

  We get back inside and soon we’re on the road again. I nibble on crackers and sip the water but make sure to go slowly. Soon, though, I start to nod off. I resist at first, until Aidan puts a hand at the back of my neck and rubs small circles with the pad of his thumb.

  “Get some sleep.”

  So I do.

  But it’s fitful.

  I dream of our getting caught. I dream of being chased by flashing lights and pointed guns. I dream of evidence coming back to bite us—literally, biting us with sharp teeth and drawing blood. I dream of dead bodies, and severed limbs, and of never seeing Aidan again.

  Twice he has to wake me, shaking my shoulder until my eyes flutter open, to interrupt some awful scene playing
out before my closed eyes.

  It’s not good sleep, but at least I sleep.

  ***

  “Bumble.”

  I struggle, having a hard time and feeling like I’m coming from the bottom of the pool, where the surface of the water isn’t rushing to meet me fast enough.

  “Hmmm?”

  I hear my own voice in response. It’s not as muffled as the other—it’s much louder—but it’s equally as fuzzy.

  “Baby, we’re here.”

  I feel a hand on my shoulder, and it’s gentle. There’s no shaking or pressure, so I’m eased into the light until I’m blinking my eyes.

  Aidan. “Hey there, sleepy head,” he says with a faint and crooked smile. “I got us a motel. Let’s get into bed for a while.” I jolt a little then, realizing what he’s said. “I paid cash,” he adds, understanding my alarm.

  “How long have I been out?” I ask, my voice hoarse and a hundred miles away, left back just outside the damp gas station bathroom where I last used it.

  “About ten hours.” Aidan grabs a few of our bags, only what we need to stay the night, then leans back down to kiss the corner of my mouth.

  No way did I hear him right. “You can’t be serious,” I protest. “I’m still tired,” exhausted actually, “I can’t have slept that long.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  And Aidan walks inside, leaving me sitting half in the car, my feet on the pavement, with a frown on my face. But I am exhausted, and I want to lie down instead of sleeping in a curled-up ball, so I get up and follow him inside.

  My eyes still feel heavy, and my feet are uncoordinated, so while Aidan asks a question at the front desk, I sit on the ugly orange chair in the lobby. My brain’s foggy with sleep, heavy despite what Aidan says, like I’ve woken up after only fifteen minutes and in the middle of REM.

  I wonder what ID he used to check in, what card they have on file, how the heck we have a room without identities, but I don’t have the energy to ask, and I leave it. I know one question will lead to five more, and I’m just too tired.

  When he’s finished—I don’t even notice until he’s pulling me up from my chair—we head upstairs to our room. I almost sit down in the elevator, but I resist, sure he’d call me a child if I did. When it opens, Aidan has to drag me to the room, my hand firmly in his, or I swear I’d have slept inside it, riding up and down for the next few hours.

  But we make it into the room, my eyes barely open any longer, and he steers me to the bed where I promptly flop down onto it.

  I don’t bother to take off my clothes or use the bathroom, I just drag the covers over my body and throw a second pillow over my head to block out the light while Aidan does all the normal things to get ready for bed.

  Right at the moment of my falling, falling to sleep falling off a cliff falling into myself, Aidan opens his lips and speaks softy near my ear. “Are we okay now?”

  I don’t say anything out loud. Actually, I picture myself speaking, answering with a resounding, “Please yes,” but nothing comes out. I just continue staring at the back of my eyelids, breathing slowly and listening to him wait.

  “Bumble, are we done fighting?” he asks, then waits. “Are we out of the woods and on the other side together? Are we going to be alright?” The sound of his voice strikes against something inside me then. It lights me up like a cloudless night sky in the middle of nowhere, and I’m awake. But I still don’t answer him.

  Well, I do, but not in so many words.

  After moving the pillow from my face, I part my lips and lean up into him. When we meet, I answer his questions with a kiss. It starts slow and protective, but quickly it grows into something more. It changes into the kind of kiss we normally have after we’ve killed.

  A fire sparks in the room, starting at the corners and slowly making its way to the bed, lighting all of the fabric in the path, sending ashes into the air. It’s hot, and beads of sweat form at my hairline right away.

  Soon he’s on top of me, moaning my name, and I’m somewhere floating past the atmosphere and on my way to the moon, past the moon. It’s the kind of sex I have trouble describing, the kind I can’t stick enough description to. It’s the kind of sex we have when we’re electrified, after seeing blood. It’s that kind of sex, but better somehow, even more.

  He brings me full circle, to the edges of the page and to the end of time, then pulls me back into him—the cycle completing before starting again. It’s everything. He’s more than everything. It’s amazing. He’s amazing. We’re everything and amazing, and I don’t think I could ask for more.

  ***

  “I guess you can say we’ve made up,” I say, laughing out the last two words, after we’re breathless and finished.

  “Thank fuck for that,” he returns.

  “Don’t pretend it was all on me.”

  “I’d never.”

  Aidan rolls his eyes, wiping all believability from his words, but despite myself I laugh. It feels good, and soon he’s laughing too, all of it sounding sweet and cathartic. When we’re finished, both with the sex and the laughter, after all the sound has faded from the room like a setting sun, I stir. I know I won’t be able to sleep, and the knowledge makes my hands restless.

  “Turn on the tv?” I ask, trusting that it will help lull me toward dreams.

  Aidan reaches for the remote and flicks it on, bathing the room in a sickly, pale blue glow. I don’t care what we watch, so I don’t say anything else. I just snuggle beneath his arm, into the crook of his body, and I listen to the beating of his heart, still thumping a little harder than normal against my ear.

  He’s home.

  I’m happy; we’re happy, and I’m thankful for how far a cry it is from what was miles and hours ago, another one-eighty.

  Aidan turns down the volume to somewhere between too-loud-to-ignore and too-soft-to-even-hear, and my eyes slip closed. I try to sink into the mattress, into him, but sleep still feels so far away. Thoughts poke at me, good thoughts but persistent ones nonetheless, like how I’ll keep working on my writing, what to get for breakfast—nothing I can deal with now.

  I sigh.

  Hearing Aidan’s breathing turn shallow then regulate itself into a steady rhythm, I think about tomorrow, next week, the rest of our forever. I have no idea what will happen next, where we’ll go or what’s in store, but at the moment, I realize, it doesn’t matter that much. As long as we’re together we can fight our way out of any corner, I’m positive. It’s not perfect, I know, we’re still running away, but it’s about as good as it can be right now.

  As the television screen fades into yet another commercial, I can’t help but think about how our happy ending has left a wake of dead bodies along the way. And I smile into the quiet room. It’s true—we’re lucky at making others unlucky. Yet still, through the mess of it all, we found our way back to each other, to the spoils we deserve, to the greener grass. We did it despite everything trying to prevent us. We overcame the obstacles; we turned the drawbacks of our unlikable character traits into advantages. And in the end, those other people, those dead bodies behind us, didn’t matter anyway.

  And, really, it’s nice to fall into the happy ending no one else thinks we deserve.

  How dumb, how completely moronic could I be—thinking everything was perfect, that we’d settled into the beginning of our happy ending.

  Ha.

  Nothing freezes into forever. Life isn’t a polaroid, stuck in one static state. It changes; it rots.

  And yet, stupidly, in that hotel room the other night, I believed.

  My legs start to prickle from the inside. They’re going numb, but I can’t get my brain to make them move. I can’t get my brain to do anything other than stare straight ahead. I am that polaroid, frozen, not in happiness or static, but in sheer disbelief. In panic. In monumental, life-altering incredulity.

  I sit.

  My eyes remain fixed.

  The tile on the walls used to be yellow, I think. But
now they’re more of a mold color, spotted and suspect. It all blurs right before each blink as my eyes dry out, but then it comes back into too-sharp focus. I focus on the tile. I focus on the tile, because I won’t focus anywhere else.

  In another gas station, I’m not even sure where, in another bathroom that reeks of a thousand other bodies, I sit. My pants already on, and my hands already washed as best they can be in here, I sit on the toilet. And I continue sitting.

  It’s dirtier in here—black grime coating the floor and water, god I hope it’s water, on every surface—than the bathroom I cleaned up in last time, after puking. It’s smaller too, not even a stall but one toilet and a sink that I’m almost positive is only days away from detaching itself from the wall.

  I can’t sit forever, though. I can’t keep looking around for something new to be disgusted by, letting this stretch out even longer. I just can’t. So finally, I sigh, getting ready to move. Aidan waits in the car.

  But first I look to my hand, to the prophesizing plastic waiting there, to the two lines sealing my fate. I look once more before tossing the pink, would-be eight ball into the trash.

  I shake my head, stand, and get ready to walk back to Aidan.

  I stuff it down, every feeling every question every hint of knowledge or spike of fear. I shove it so far I almost forget it’s there. But then just as I push open the door, tasting the fresh air, my stomach drops again.

  Nausea washes over me, and I have to pause just a beat in order to will it away.

  My next movement is a misstep, uncoordinated and miserable, but eventually I find the right pace, corrected and covered up, and move toward him. My hands shake, so unsure of everything I’m not even sure what I’m unsure about, and I swallow.

  I don’t think about the words already forming in my mouth, and until they pop out I have no idea what I’ll say. But then my tongue is lifting, my lips are parting, and sounding surprisingly calm and sure I say, “Ready to go, baby? Let’s move on.”