I don’t hesitate as I rush over to the door, throwing it open. The paramedics pile in, gear slung over their shoulders, assessing the scene as they move in. I motion for them to follow and hurry toward her. They drop to their knees beside my mother. Their training takes over as they check her vital signs and start an IV, moving with practiced urgency. All I can do is stare. Then they slide her onto a stretcher, rushing toward the waiting ambulance. I catch snippets of their words like “Quick, we have to go!” and “We are losing her!” as they disappear out the door.
As they load her into the back of the ambulance to take her to the nearest hospital, I know that she won’t be coming back. That she is gone despite their effort to resuscitate her. I stare out the window, watching as my father leaves with them, escorted by police, no doubt gathering further evidence of what they witnessed.
What lies will he spin? Will he tell them the whole truth, partial truth, or all lies? I know better than to expect honesty. He’ll save himself, no matter the cost. At that moment, I make a silent vow to learn the skills necessary to assist those who cannot help themselves. I never want to feel this helpless ever again, standing and watching instead of acting.
Something shifts inside me. It’s as if my very molecular composition is rearranged, reprogrammed into someone else—no, something else—that is colder and harder. I feel detached from my body. A cold numbness replaces everything I once felt. Through the window, I watch the ambulance disappear into the dark. Its red lights become engulfed by the awaiting claws of the hot, humid night.
I turn away. Back in the kitchen, I crouch, staring at the crimson splatter on the otherwise pristine porcelain flooring that my mom had mercilessly cleaned time and time again. She was always on her hands and knees, keeping the house clean for him. I drag my finger through it, feeling the blood, sticky between my fingers, and watching it smear like paint along the floor. The blood that was once flowing through my mother's veins is still warm, now left poikilothermic on this cold, hard surface as a stark reminder of what happens to those who can’t fight back.
I rise from the spot steadfast and reborn anew. That’s when I see her watching me.
THREE
DANI
18 Years Old
Victor Flores has been my everything since I met him as a scrawny fourteen-year-old boy. Not yet a man, but growing into a body he was trying to navigate. He was all long limbs and a squeaky voice. His hair had a ruffled appearance, like he couldn’t be bothered to comb his tousled locks. He was my first friend when we moved to this rural town in Texas. He became so much more as we evolved.
Our friendship is twisting into something deeper between us that can no longer be contained by innocence. An inevitable bond that possesses my mind, body, and soul, until love and obsession become indistinguishable. Maybe that’s why I cling to him so completely. I’d spent too long learning what it felt like to be left behind.
After my parents’ divorce, I never heard from my dad again. He had a new life, a new wife, and a brand-new family. I didn’t fit into that. I pretended that it didn’t sting. Being dismissed so easily by someone who used to care for me was a bitter pill toswallow. Now here I am, in a different town with a new life, watching this amazing boy grow into a man. Except now he isn’t just a man—he’s a killer. I watched it happen before my very eyes. I watched what was always bound to happen.
Right now, I know what’s going through his mind. He's reliving that moment two years ago when he witnessed his father kill his mother and walk away free, protected by a successful legal defense and the convenient explanation of his mother’s history with depression. In his withdrawn state, he drags his finger through his father's blood as he paints circles along the flooring like a finger painting. I flinch at his clinical detachment, but I’ve known Vic and watched those same fingers that wiped away tears from my eyes, or touched my face so tenderly after he made love to me in the witching hours of the night.
“Vic,” I call out his name, and that seems to snap him out of his trance. He blinks slowly, looking around and then up at me. A question on his face as if to say, “What happened?”as I stare at his blood-covered hands. That’s when he becomes aware of exactly what happened as the events start flooding in. He scoots away from his father’s dead body with urgency and sits with his back against the wall, his hands shaking in front of him as he takes in the scene before him. He’s vanished inside himself completely in a self-preservation mode.
I approach him cautiously, much like a wounded animal in need of urgent medical attention. If you move too fast, they will get spooked. So with the utmost restraint, I glide quietly across the kitchen floor, careful to avoid the blood around his dickhead of a parent’s corpse. I can’t say I’m sorry that he’s dead, and I need to convince Vic that it’s all going to be alright.
I kneel in front of him and take hold of his wrists. His bloodied hands drip, and as I raise them toward me, a small drop of blood lands on my white blouse. I watch it hit the fabric and spread out across the threads, soaking in, taking root, bloominginto a larger circle of destruction. Vic watches it all with transfixed horror, like he doesn’t want to taint me. However, the truth is that like attracts like. I am tainted inside in more ways than he can imagine. He doesn’t scare me. In fact, I’m more drawn to him than ever before.
I bring his hands up to my face, mere inches from my cheeks. They hover there, and he stares at me, his expression on the verge of panic. I turn my head to one hand and kiss it, then I repeat the same action on the other hand. I smile at him as the blood stains my mouth, soaking into my lips. It’s coppery, and the metallic smell almost repulses me—not because of the blood, but because of the man it belonged to. The sufferingmyman has gone through at the hands of his father is unfathomable. My father just left, and that hurt, but this unholy abomination physically hurt Vic and killed his mom. I wanted him dead for so long. Vic could have been the next victim if he hadn’t been strong enough. This time, his mistake would cost him everything.
“I love you,” I say as I close the space between us. My words reach for him, drawing him back from some desolate place within himself. I try to coax the half of him that still remembers how to feel. He stirs from the sound, yet what returns is the other half of him that was lost when his mother died. That was the night he was remade into a boy stripped of innocence and consumed by the grief of seeing her die in such a way, and being forced to carry a burden too heavy for his years. And now, standing before me, I see both men I love—the scarred man, and the boy who will never fully escape the memory of that moment.
Yet, despite that, he moves, meeting me the rest of the way. His lips touch mine in a frenzied kiss. It conveys all the emotions I have for this strong, resilient man, whom I will love, regardless of the atrocities he may commit. We pull away, our blood-stained kisses lingering, splashed on like battle paint.
“Listen,” I tell him. “I need you to trust me, okay?” He nods, searching my eyes for answers. “I have to call the police. I want you to follow my lead. Do you understand?” He nods again, and I smile at him, placing my hand on his face as he leans into my touch. I pick up the landline and call the police.
Minutes later, I see the lights before I hear the sirens coming down the road. The echoing sound of multiple doors slamming outside the window makes my heart race. I look at him and extend my hand to help Vic up from the floor. I guide him over to a chair while I go to get the door. I turn back to see Vic sitting there with his head in his hands. I know he thinks he's being taken into police custody, but I'll do everything I can to prevent it. I wipe my mouth, smearing the blood, and start crying, letting the tears flow, not for the crime he committed, but for the suffering he endured when no one bothered to help him.
Then I let the police into the house. EMS was called, too. Little do they know that no help is needed. They just need to take his father’s dead body to the morgue. If the bastard wasn’t dead, I would have seen to it before they got here, just to be sure he isn’t around to hurt him ever again. I told the police what happened, how Vic saved my life.
His father got away with murder that day his mom died, but I suspect they all thought he was guilty despite his award-winning performance at the hospital. I shake, I cry, and none of it is an act. I was scared shitless when I walked into this scene, and it all comes pouring out in the play’s final act. The police have the body removed. They call Vic a hero, and he shakes his head, not understanding how they are not arresting him. How could they? I was his witness. His alibi. No one will miss his father, especially not me.
I help clean up the mess, and Vic and I shower, removing the blood that has now dried and caked onto our flesh. We scrub each other clean, and I peer up to find Vic looking downat me through hooded lashes. Water droplets lay along his long eyelashes like unshed tears. When I don’t think that he is going to say anything, he speaks.
“Why?” is all he says. I understand. He wants to know why I lied for him, became his accomplice in murder, forever tethering me to him through this necessary act of violence.
I sigh, looking up at him, needing him to understand the depths I would go for him. “I will always be your alibi. Your accomplice in life. Your partner in crime,” I pause, afraid he might pull away, but I continue, “should you need me.” He smiles down at me. He kisses me softly.
“Thank you.” He pulls me close. “I love you” are words whispered against the hollow of my neck in the darkness of his room when we don’t bother to dry off after the shower. I shiver as he leads me through his bedroom, but it’s not from the cold. And when he takes me to bed, it’s not tender. It’s impulsive, fueled by primal desires. It’s a desperate plea falling from his lips as he enters me in one quick thrust, taking my breath away, echoing throughout a house that has now gone quiet except for the sounds of our slapping skin. I arch beneath him, my fingernails scratching his back, leaving my marks on him like the jagged runes of a spell cast under the full moon’s light. We hold each other, and for once, he sleeps peacefully. No monsters that keep him awake at night, because that is what we have now become, whether he realizes it or not. He’s a temptation too dangerous to resist.
It’s in that pensive silence, then, that I know that I would do anything to take away his pain. Not just for him, but for others if I can. I make a promise not to tell him the truth I suspect today. I won’t hold him back. I vow to ensure that he doesn’t have to put someone first anymore and pursue his dreams, even if it means letting him go and becoming a ghost he won’t mourn.
FOUR
DANI
