His eyes narrowed as I patted him on the chest and hopped up, running toward the cooler I had stashed under the kitchen table.
“Now. I was never a fan of beer, but!” I ended my sentence on a high note of anticipation, grabbed a bottleneck of the cheap shit he used to drink, and let out a satisfied sigh as I hopped up on the dining room table and cracked the beer open. “After a life changing night with the three amigos… I gotta tell ya, it really hits the spot.” I took a swig and swished it around. “Do you wanna try some, Luci?”
He lifted two fingers in a ‘I’ll pass’ motion.
He really wasn’t missing out.
“You’re not the first hussy I’ve shared a beer with,” Callen gritted out.
“Ah, yes. I will be the last though,” I said with a wink and tip of the bottlebefore feigning shock. “Oh my goodness gracious! You probably don’t remember it quite like this. How silly of me.” I smacked my palm against my temple. “That was howyoudrank the beer.”
The first traces of that age old wrath slipped through my sneer and I could see the predatorial recognition in his eyes. Takes a psycho to know a psycho.
I didn’t blink as I ran my tongue up the neck of the amber bottle before tipping it back. Fizzy liquid filled my mouth, eager to begin the race down to my stomach. I let the bottle sink deeper, the opening getting closer and closer to the back of my throat.
I didn’t stop there.
An ache of discomfort squeezed through my chest as I forced the bottleneck deeper until it was so lodged in my throat that I couldn’t move my head. The alcohol burned as it went straight to my stomach, my esophagus bulging to three times its normal size.
Hate. Disgust. Understanding.
A heavy string of saliva dipped between my mouth and the bottle as I pulled it out of my throat. When it broke, it fell on my chin, and I wiped it away with a devilish smile.
“Is this ringing a bell? Or am I still not the only hussy you’ve had beers with?”
“I’ll need another detail or two. There’s nothing really special enough about you to stick out from the others. Did you used to bag my groceries?” Callen tilted his head like he was a predator sizing up the prey he circled. “Or maybe you lived in one of those disgusting orphanages that my wife insisted spending money on. Yeah,” he nodded with narrowed eyes. Mocking. “You look like the type.“
Luci stepped forward and I raised a hand to stop him.
I can do this, I said silently.
I took a deep, steadying breath. He was trying to get under my skin but I was not the same girl he baited, tortured, and killed. I was a phoenix born from the ashes of the stake he left me to burn on.
Instead, I plucked Andrew’s head off of the candlestick and smoothed the thawing hair off of his forehead. “Andy here introduced us.” I turned the severed head to face Callen and, in my best Andrew impression, answered, “Iwas your best bro, remember? Don’t you remember me?”
I put the head back down. “He knew who I was the moment he saw me,” I reminisced. “I waited about ten years after you left me for dead to visit Andy. You know,” I said, matter of fact and hopping off the table to pace. “Of the three of you, I was the most angry at him. Just a stupid jock whose mommy and daddy gave him everything.”
“You sound jealous,” Calen quipped. “Is it because you were a street whore?“
“Actually, it’s because of a conversation I had with my friend Barb. See, she believes that people will go to the extremes when they’re bored. And I don’t mean you finished crocheting your blanket and don’t want to start another one bored. I mean the sort of boredom where money can buy you any manner of thrills. When people get that sort of bored, Callen, they start looking for the black market thrills. You know what I’m talking about,“ I huffed a sardonic laugh, “like raping and torturing a girl for hours, and then leaving her dead body on the road where anyone could find it, including the police, because the possibility of getting caught gets your dick hard. That was Andy. He had fun taking everything from me because he was bored.”
The intensity of that hate drove me to open Andy’s mouth, forcing the jaw past rigor mortis so that I could cram the beer bottle down until the tip stuck out of his neck.
I took a moment to breathe through the rising wrath, attempting to get it under control with a simple promise that it wouldn’t have to hold back at the end.
“And then,” I said, a little breathless. “There was Damien. Sweet, sweet Damien.”
The bottomless black where Damien‘s eyes used to be looked like open pits of despair. It brought me a sick sense of satisfaction every time I saw it.
“Hate isn’t a strong enough word for what he made me feel. It was more like… loathing.”
“You’re sick,” Callen spat.
“I disagree. Sick means overrun by bacteria. A virus. Cells that fuck like rodents and eat you alive. No,” I mused, picking up Damien’s head to study as I considered. “I’m simply a woman empowered by scorn who’s bold enoughto perk up her tits and get the job done.”
Damien’s skin sloughed as it thawed. A ghoulish frown melted down his chin in a disgusting display.
Disgusting to most people. I kind of liked it.
