Toby’s suppressed chokes turn to gags and heaving, and I love the sound of it. Tears stream down his face, and his chest moves up and down frantically as he sucks ragged breaths in through his nose, obviously fighting the sickening feeling of having to swallow his best friend’s eyes.
Heather moves back from between Toby’s legs and strides towards my black backpack resting on the kitchen counter and pulls out the bottle of gasoline, and the small box of strip club matches from the front pocket.
“Are you ready?” she asks, walking towards me again.
I reach over and gently grip her chin, bringing those spectacular forest-coloured eyes to look at me. “I’m proud of you,” I praise her, because I am, more than she’ll ever know, and as I slowly begin to smile, her expression softens, and I can’t help but to lean down to kiss her ever so gently. “So perfect,” I murmur against her pillow-soft lips.
“Yes,” she replies, breaking our kiss. “You are.”
She steps past me after our brief display of affection and begins sloshing the gasoline on the dark wood floor. A stream of amber-coloured liquid flows from the opening as she douses the three bodies with a nefarious grin written all over her face. The pungent smell of the fluid—almost as quickly as it comes from the bottle—fills the kitchen with a strong, yet slightly sweet chemical odour.
We ignore Toby’s blood-curdling pleas as we back up towards the front door, Heather leaving a trail of gas behind us. And even though I’ve lived this same night so many times before, I don’t plan to let it play out the same way again.
Because this time, she’s not going to die in my arms.
Or worse, alone.
Gamma Nu was engulfed in flames by the time I got on the back of Ricky’s bike, and he hastily sped away from the large white building. Their high-pitched wails of helplessness lessened the longer we stood outside, waiting for the house to finally cook them alive.
Turns out human skin really does smell like bacon.
It was a pleasure to watch the blazing inferno as every room caught alight, and all the glass from each window of the fraternity house shattered from the heat blazing behind them. Black fumes billowed through the star-speckled night sky like deaths uprising, and the faint sounds of police and fire service alarms bled into the surrounding area as Ricky sped us away on his motorcycle.
After a while, Ricky eventually pulled up at the side of the road, pulling the key from the ignition and gently helping me off the back of the bike before both of us made our way towards the same lake where everything happened.
“What happens now?” I ask, looking out at the empty, dark water in front of me. The back of my head resting against hischest, his arms wrapped tightly around my waist as though he’s not ready to let me go just yet.
Ricky inhales a heavy breath from behind me, releasing it through his nostrils before pressing his lips lovingly to the top of my head. I know the answer, I just want to hear him say it.
He clears his throat gently before speaking. “Most of the time there’s a white flash and I wake up in my bed at my mother’s house. I’ll walk down the stairs and make my coffee the wayyoulike it.” I snort at that. “Which is like sludge by the way.”
“Fuck you.” I giggle.
He laughs along with me for a moment, both of us just enjoying the sweetness of the moment before he eventually continues.
“I take a shower, think about you the whole time, and—” He sighs so softly I’m almost sure I can hear the quiver in his breath. “And then I wait. I wait for my mother to come home, I listen to her talk about her day at work even though I’ve heard it so many times I could recite it by memory now, and when she’s done… I leave the house and go in search of you.”
I can hear the pain in his voice as he speaks, the ache of my unexpected death and what it’s done to him mentally… and physically.
“And every single time I wake up to my six a.m. alarm, every second my eyes are open, and my heart beats, I pray to whoever is listening that this will be the last time it happens… but it never is.”
I turn to face him then, sliding my hands up his chest and linking my fingers behind his neck. “If it happens again…” I chew the corner of my lip delicately. “Will you—”
“Always.” He raises his hands between my outstretched arms, the warmth of his palms cupping my cheeks, giving me goosebumps. And as he leans down to rest his forehead against mine, I close my eyes, and he speaks once more. “There willnever be a time where I won’t look for you. I’d suffer the agony of your life being torn from my grasp every moment of every day if it meant I had even five seconds of time with you. To see the look on your face when you finally remember who I am, regardless of your reaction to it. Because just knowing I haven’t been lost in a sea of darkness for no reason, and that you remember me in some way… is worth every torturous second without you.”
Hot tears rush down my cheeks when he finishes, and I’m unsure of anything I could say that could top such beautiful words. So, all I do is stick with three that I know well enough. “I love you,” I whisper, placing a gentle kiss on his lips. “More than—” The action happens so quickly I don’t expect it.
“NO!!” Ricky cries, shoving me out of his hold and towards the lake behind me. Everything after that… happens in slow motion.
The lurid, almost ear piercing shriek of a car horn splinters my ears as I tumble backwards. The bright, white light shines into my eyes as it pierces through the darkness of the night and momentarily blinds me as I scream and fall into the shallow end of the lake with a loudsplash.
Dirty, brown water sprays me from all angles, and I watch as a large black car crashes into Ricky, sending his body whirling through the air like it’s made of nothing. The sound that leaves my throat is non-existent… almost as though I can’t seem to get it out, like a lump stuck there, not willing to budge.
Every inch of me is on high alert, and the shiver that runs through my body brings on a sickening feeling to my lower stomach, the acrid taste of bile rising behind the lump in my throat, burning it. Shuddering thumps of my palpitating heart beat violently behind my ribcage as I scramble through the thick mud and water on my hands and knees, trying desperately to get to him.
When his body hits the asphalt, the cracking of his bones is audible and echoes around me like an orchestral symphony.Blood sprays from his open mouth the moment the back of his head cracks against the road, coating his pale face red. I fight to claw my way from the lake as sound begins flowing back through my ears, screaming his name with every ounce of energy I can muster as the blinking white lights of the car illuminate his shattered body.
“RICKY!!!”
