The enormous man straddles my body, reaching downand wrapping his hands around my throat. Even with a full rest, I’d be no match for Kenny’s physical strength, and certainly not with this exhaustion sizzling through every worn-out muscle.
As the man’s fingers tighten, a horrible realization washes over me. In the movies, strangulation always takes a while, drawn out in these overwrought moments of drama. The longer you hold the camera on someone’s face, the more emotion you can squeeze from a scene. Real life, however, isn’t like that at all. Within a matter of seconds, a large guy like Kenny will crush my windpipe and end it quick. I learned this on MovieTok.
I can see the guard’s shoulders reposition as he prepares to push down.
Crack!
Kenny topples forward, the dead weight of his unconscious body slamming against the concrete floor. Behind him stands Marlo, Noah’s baseball bat held awkwardly in her grip. She doesn’t quite know how to choke up, or how to leverage her body and create more power, but she apparently knows enough to knock someone over the head and get the job done.
“Oh my God, sweetie,” I start, struggling to push Kenny off and then scrambling to my feet. “You did so good.”
When I reach Marlo, however, the expression on her face is not at all what I expected. She’s staring at Kenny’s unmoving body, her breathing frantic and her face twisted into a terrible frown that I’ve seen a hundred times before. She’s about to cry.
“Hey, hey, hey,” I coo, wrapping my arms around her and struggling to soothe the impending flood of emotion. “It’s okay. You did a good job. You saved Mommy.”
Her overwhelmed body quakes hard in my arms.
“We can’t do this right now,” I press. “We need to go. Do you understand? We need to get out of here.”
I pull back a bit and look Marlo directly in the eyes, momentarily forgetting to hide my face. Her cheeks are already streaked with tears.
“We’re the ruthless ones, do you understand?” I continue. “We win.Youwin.”
Marlo pulls in one of her stuttering breaths and holds it, struggling to regain control of herself.
“We need to go,” I repeat, less instruction now and more command.
Marlo swallows, then closes her eyes and nods in confirmation. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a set of keys, handing them over to me.
“What’s this?” I ask, then notice the faint spatter of blood across a few of the little silver blades. I turn my head, gazing back into the break room where my friend’s hollowed-out corpse rests haphazardly against the back wall, the pool of blood that soaks the floor around him growing larger by the second.
Corpse.
That word feels weird.
Where his hollowed-outbodyrests haphazardly against the back wall.
That’s not it, either.
WhereNoahrests against the back wall.
I can feel a sudden rush of emotion pumping through me, filling me up and then hustling toward the exit of my tear ducts. I act quickly to deflect, clamping my mouth shut and turning away.
Instead of dwelling on Noah, I think about how strong Marlo is, how fast she acted in this situation that would emotionally annihilate anyone else. It would be too much for most other adults, let alone a five-year-old kid, yet here she is with a baseball bat and a set of keys, just in case we need them.
“Is Uncle Noah gonna be okay?” Marlo asks.
I hesitate, recognizing this moment for the crossroads it is. Never did I imagine a future where the shitty attitude of an ancient talking parasite—who also happens to be my dad—would hold weight over my parenting decisions, but here we are. I knowexactlywhat Eddie would tell me to say, and that’s a cycle I’m not interested in repeating.
I open my mouth, ready to speak with empathy and care, but before the words have a chance to escape my lips I stop myself.
“Mom?” Marlo presses.
Now isn’t the time for softness.
“No,” I tell her, scooping up the shotgun and climbing to my feet. I grab her by the hand and start pulling her along with me, heading back the way we came.
As we reach the bottom of the stairs I notice a distinct pink haze, dancing flecks of fuchsia dust confirming the motivation of Kenny’s sudden mood change. The fog givesme pause, and I push Marlo behind me. The two of us hold here for a moment, listening intently.
