“Fuck,” I murmur as I stand.
My legs fail me, and I drop harshly to the floor, my shin smashing into the sharp edge of the bed frame, splitting it open. “Son of a bitch,” I yell, holding my knee to my chest and examining the cut on my shin as blood pools in the crack and trickles down my leg. “Grr,” I grumble as I rock back and forth, covering the cut with my palm before forcing myself to a stand. My weak legs shake as I hobble to the bathroom, warm blooddripping down my shin to my foot, and sit on the edge of the tub. A blood trail dots the floor, leading from my bedroom into the bathroom. I reach up, slide the sage green hand towel off its ring and press it into the cut, keeping the pressure steady.
The cabinet beneath the sink creaks loudly on its hinges as I yank the door open and pull out the black wicker basket underneath with medical supplies. I paw through the pile of random wound care products, looking for the first-aid burn cream and Bacitracin I swiped from my parents’ house when I visited last. My dad always has an ample supply of these things since my mom is clumsy as hell and always burns herself.
After successfully harvesting all the stems from an aloe within a month, my father decided to buy a supply of cream to keep on hand instead of further torturing the poor plant.
I dump the wicker basket by my feet and frown. I’m all out of burn cream. The scorched skin inside my mouth dangles from the roof, and my tongue stings with every bit of movement as I open and close my jaw. I guess it’s ice chips and cold milk for breakfast.
My eyes flit to the living room visible through the open bathroom and bedroom doors. Sitting on the altar are the skinless remains of the Grim Reaper, his chest and stomach torn wide open. How kind of Mastyx to take all his skin off and remove his vital organs. All I have to do now is dispose of the meat-covered bones. I sigh heavily, peel open a large band-aid with my teeth, remove the tabs, and smear Bacitracin inside before sticking it over my cut. The wrappers crunch in my hand as I ball them up and toss them in the direction of the trash can. They float over the can, landing behind it in the corner. I shake my head. So, this is how my day’s going to go?
I use the sink for leverage, stand and gasp at my reflection in the mirror above the vanity. My lips look like a child in the winter who’s been licking them too much, and now they are red,blistered and peeling around their perimeter. A blistered red ring with purple bruises circles my neck, like a piece of jewelry, compliments of Mastyx’s choking tongue wrapping around it, and the front of my chest is an angry shade of red from the heat of his body, scorching it slightly.
Damn it. I open the medicine cabinet, pull out the bottle of Percocet I was supposed to dispose of for my mother, toss a couple of the pills into my mouth, and turn the faucet on, sticking my mouth under the falling water to wash the pills down. They scrape their way through my swollen throat and land harshly in my empty stomach. I step back into my bedroom and examine my body in the full-length mirror.
My entire body is covered in first and second-degree burns. I turn around and peer over my shoulder. The back side of me looks similar to the front, except for a deep gash across my ass from Mastyx’s tongue lashing it. I didn’t realize how deeply the sharp edge of his tongue penetrated my flesh until now.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I’m going to have to go to the emergency room for that one. I can’t exactly treat that with superficial cream, even if I had any. Thankfully, I took the week off from my job as a deli manager, so I have time to recoup.
I need to come up with a good cover story. How do I explain the burning gash across my ass? Did I back into a hot gas grill? That might work. It’s not like I owe anyone an explanation. My eyes lock in on the aloe sitting nearly empty on my nightstand. I’m going to need to buy that stuff in bulk. I remove my plush robe from the hook beside my mirror, slide my arms in it carefully, and pull it over my shoulders before tying it loosely around my waist. My legs tremor as I enter the kitchen, reach under my island cabinet and get out the meat saw and a few heavy plastic drop cloths.
After spreading the drop cloths around the altar, I plug the saw in, grab the wrist of the Reaper, and make my first cut. Just over an hour later, I have the hands, feet, jaw, legs, which are each cut at the knee, and the arms ready for my beetle colony. The rest will go in my freezer for when my bug babies need feeding again. Removing most of the flesh speeds up the cleaning process.
I fold the plastic around my first round of beetle food, grimace as I hoist it over my shoulder and carry it to the room that’s supposed to be the pantry off the kitchen. Once inside, I pull the chain of the red bulb dangling above me, sending a soft, red glow into the room. The beetles don’t care for bright lights; they startle them and make them less inclined to eat. I remove the screened lid from each of the two massive plastic containers on the floor and slowly set the jaw, hands, and feet in one container and the legs and arms in the other. They scatter at first, then converge on their meal, diving in as it’s been a week since I fed them last. I fill their quencher bowl, so they have plenty to wash down their meal, close their lids and head back to the altar. I drag the heavy torso through the kitchen and onto the back enclosed porch, where I keep my padlocked chest freezer. I unlock it and heave the skull-tattooed torso inside. I’m exhausted and my skin begs for treatment that I don’t have, but I have to finish cleaning before I leave, so when I get home, I can collapse into a coma.
Another hour later, I’m partly pain-free, out of my robe, dressed in black sweatpants and a Metallica t-shirt, standing by the front door, staring into the living room where the altar glows before a low-burning flame from my fireplace. Everything appears clean and in order. It’s not like I have any company; I never invite anyone here unless I plan to kill them. But just in case my parents come to visit unannounced, I want the house to look its best. They’ve given up on wondering why I nolonger have any furniture in my living room, just my Wiccan and‘massage tables’. I tried to explain to them that having four barstools at my kitchen island is more than enough for entertaining. I wouldn’t want anyone to get too comfortable. As far as they know, I do massages for extra cash at home, and that’s why there are candles everywhere.
Satisfied, I lock my door and head to my car, where I climb inside and flop carelessly behind the wheel. My ass leaves the seat quickly as the stinging pain of the cut on my bottom, no doubt splitting open a little, sends a quick reminder. I swipe my butt with my hand, and a smear of red covers my palm when I look at it, the wound seeping through my sweats. I squeeze the steering wheel, whitening my knuckles and gritting my teeth as I lower my ass back down gently this time. A bead of sweat races down my temple and lands on my breast as I take a deep breath and blow it out, scattering dust particles across my dashboard.
The car glides backward down my driveway. I blindly back up into the street and flash a quick smile at the neighbor who’s now staring at me with her dog in her arms from the sidewalk. Her horrified face tells me I almost ran her and her tiny terror of a Chihuahua over as I backed up without checking my mirrors first. I don’t apologize, why would I, after all, being as she lets her little troll from hell shit in my yard and never cleans it up.
When I arrive at the emergency room ten minutes later, a screaming toddler’s cries pierce my eardrums the minute the double doors open, and I step inside the crowded waiting room. The child’s face is beet red, and she’s pulling on her ear as big crocodile tears soak her face on her irritated mother’s lap. I’m sure she’s been waiting for hours.
I step up to the window of the reception area, where a woman, wearing all purple with a body resembling McDonald’s Grimace, peers over her readers at me. “Can I help you?”
A nurse exits another set of doors holding a clipboard and shouts over the wails of the child, “Bianca Tremble.”
The mother of the toddler sends a quick prayer to God at the ceiling and shuffles quickly across the speckled tile floors over to the nurse as the toddler throws herself backward, and the mother nearly drops her.
“I said, can I help you?” Grimace asks in a huffy voice, drawing my attention back to her.
Her glasses now dangle from a multicolored bead chain around her neck, stopping between her sagging boobs. I frown at her and say, “Yes, I have some first and second-degree burns I need to get medicine for and a wound I need to be checked out.”
The woman stuffs a set of papers and clips a pen to the top of a clipboard, practically shoving it into my hand as she says, “Fill this out and bring it back to me when you’re done.”
I lean against a wall off to the side, as far away from as many germ-ridden patients as I can, and fill out the forms. It gets to the question of how the injury occurred, and I stop writing. Well, I can be honest, or I can lie as I planned. Fuck it. I’m sure they’ve seen a lot worse in this place. I write my answer neatly in cursive, excluding the part about my dominant being a demonic, sadistic incubus, sign my name at the bottom of the consent to treat, and take the clipboard back to the woman behind the glass. I slide it beneath the partition separating us, and she takes a quick look at it before setting it in a green sticker-marked holder on the wall to her left, color-coded by urgency, no doubt.
“Take a seat,” she says to me, waving at a patient standing behind me, dismissing me and calling them to her, “Can I help you?”
Four hours later, a petite nurse, with a hint of amusement in her brown doe-like eyes, finally calls my name, “Contessa Salavatori?”
I never cared for my full name, especially knowing my parents chose it after a romantic trip to Venice, where I was conceived. Maybe if they had never told me that part of the story, I wouldn’t mind, but knowing they named me an Italian name after a wild night in Italy made me cringe. Parents shouldn’t tell their childreneverything.
When I stand, the nurse waves me into a sterile, clean-smelling room. She shakes her head, noticing the red ring around my neck that I hadn’t bothered to hide, as she takes my blood pressure and checks my pulse before handing me a gown. The curtain clanks closed behind her as she exits without a word, giving me privacy. I kick off my black Nike sandals, carefully slide down my sweatpants, underwear, and all, and toss them on the bed in front of me. I don’t need to remove my shirt, because my issue is mainly from the waist down, but what the hell, I was already honest on the forms, I might as well let the doctor see everything.
Chapter Thirty
