Apeshit (12 page)

They go downstairs into the living room where the screams

are coming from. It is Desdemona. She’s in her pink bra and

panties. Her face is dark red and her eyes are flooded with

water, makeup running down her cheeks. Rick is holding

her in his arms.

Crystal goes to Desdemona but stops before she

reaches her. Something else has grabbed her attention.

She turns to her right and sees the body. Then she screams

herself.

“Holy shit!” Crystal cries. “What the fuck?”

Stephanie’s body is limp on the sofa, the barrel of the

gun in her mouth. The wall behind her is covered in blood

and chunks of meat. A large section of her skull is missing.

“Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod!” Crystal cries,

shaking her hands at the air.

“I can’t fucking believe she did it,” Rick says.

“What the fuck happened to her?” Desdemona says.

After a few moments of panic and then a few mo-

ments of silence, Crystal pushes Jason.

“This is all your fault,” she says.

“Me?” Jason cries.

“You made her feel bad,” Crystal says.

“No, it’s my fault,” Desdemona says. “I embarrassed

her right before she did it. Big time. It wasn’t that major of

a thing, but I think it was the cherry on top that pushed her

over the edge.”

“It’s none of your faults,” Kevin says. “You all know

why she did it.”

Everyone pauses. They know she has abusive par-

ents. Not physically, but mentally abusive. They also know

about her brother. It now seems obvious to them that this

kind of thing was bound to happen sooner or later. They

wish they would have been better friends to her.

“What are we supposed to do?” Desdemona says.

“We have to call the police,” Rick says.

“Fuck that,” Jason says. “We’ve all been drinking.

They’re going to arrest us. Or, worse, they’re going to blame

us for her suicide. They might even think we killed her.”

“Then what do you want us to do, bury her in the

woods?” Rick says.

“Why the hell not?” Jason says.

Stephanie leaps off of the couch and screams out in

agony. She grabs Jason by the arm and shakes globs of blood

onto his bare chest.

“What the fuck!” Jason says.

He rips his arm out of her grip and she falls back onto

the couch.

“She’s not dead,” Crystal cries, going to her friend’s

side.

Stephanie is hyperventilating and her body is jerk-

ing. She stares straight ahead but it doesn’t look like she can

see anything.

“What do we do?” Desdemona says.

“We need to get her to the fucking hospital,” Crystal

says. She turns to Jason. “You have to drive her there.”

“I’m too fucked up,” Jason says. “Call an ambulance.”

“Our cell phones don’t work up here!” Crystal says.

Kevin takes out his cell phone and double checks.

“Yeah, there’s absolutely no signal on this thing.”

“We’re going to have to get her there ourselves,”

Crystal says.

“I’m not that drunk,” Kevin says. “I can probably

drive.”

“Let’s get her into the van,” Crystal says. “Quick.”

Crystal and Rick carry Stephanie by her shoulders.

Desdemona and Kevin hold her up by her feet. They

can’t see where they are going as they stumble drunkenly

through the woods, trying their hardest not to drop the

wounded girl.

“How the hell is she still alive?” Kevin says. “The

back of her fucking head is gone.”

“People survive shots to the head all the time,”

Desdemona says. “Even people who put shotguns in their

mouths survive from time to time, even when their face has

been blown off.”

“If she survives,” Kevin says, “she’s probably going

to be brain damaged.”

“Let’s just focus on her survival right now, okay?”

Crystal says.

They place her carefully into the backseat of the van,

on top of empty beer cans and candy wrappers. Pork rind

crumbles stick to the open wound on the back of her head.

Crystal brings her hand to the brainy mess to brush away the

crumbs, but stops short, worried that she might get the blood

or greasy food on her hand. She decides to let the doctor

handle it, even if the pork rinds get rubbed into her head dur-

ing the drive down the mountain. Stephanie wheezes and

spits mouth foam as they close the door on her.

“We’ll be back soon,” Crystal tells the others.

“What about me?” Desdemona says. “I want to go,

too.”

“Stay here,” she says. “You’re all too fucking drunk.”

Rick pulls Desdemona back. “Let’s stay.” But De

breaks out of his grip.

Kevin pulls out the keys and rushes to the drivers

side door, then notices something on the ground.

“Oh, fuck,” he says. “How the hell did this happen?”

“What?” Jason says.

The van has a flat tire.

“Must have ran over a nail or something on the way

up here,” Jason says.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Crystal says.

“We’ve got to change it,” Kevin says.

“There’s no time,” Crystal says. “Just drive on it.”

“We’ll never get down the mountain with this flat,”

Kevin says. “It’ll be way too dangerous along that cliff.”

“We’re going to have to try,” Crystal says. “All we

need to do is get down the mountain far enough to use our

cell phones.”

Kevin doesn’t argue. He gets into the van and starts

it up. Rick, Jason, and Des stand there, watching as the van

backs slowly down the hill. They wait there until it is out

of their sight.

“There’s no way she’s going to make it through the

night,” Jason says.

Desdemona furiously rolls her eyes at him and

walks away.

“Give it a rest,” Rick tells Jason.

Something is watching them from the bushes as they

walk through the woods back to the cabin. It sees Desdemo-

na in her pink underwear, Rick in his sweat pants and t-shirt,

Jason in his whitey-tighties and muddy gym socks. It creeps

in closer to them, following them, listening to them argue.

“If she dies you’re going to feel like such a dick,”

Desdemona tells Jason.

“I don’t care if I’m a dick,” Jason says.

“Don’t you think of anyone but yourself?” she says.

“That’s not how I was raised,” Jason says.

“Then how were you raised?”

“To be a man,” he says. “With no fear and no

attachments.”

“I have to pee,” Desdemona says.

“Cool,” Jason says, flipping her off.

Desdemona pulls down her pink panties as she squats.

The others keep walking.

“Hey, aren’t you going to wait for me?” Desdemona

says.

“No, thanks,” Jason says. Jason is the kind of guy

who prefers to pretend that girls never actually go to the

bathroom.

“Rick!” Desdemona cries.

Rick groans and turns around. He walks back to her

and waits for her to pee. Jason goes back to the cabin by

himself and cracks open another beer.

While she’s peeing, Desdemona says, “We’re never

going to forget this night for the rest of our lives.”

While he watches her pee, Rick says, “Yeah.”

Desdemona thinks about how Rick has to pee sitting

down from now on. However, she kind of remembers him

peeing off of the balcony early that night. She wonders if he

has one of those funnel things that make it possible for girls

to pee standing up.

“Des,” Rick says. “You know . . . I don’t think we

should be together anymore.”

A wave of diarrhea hits Desdemona while in the mid-

dle of peeing. She tries to hold it in after hearing what Rick

just said, but it splashes out of her without her control.

“I’ve been falling out of love with you for a long

time now,” he says. “With your tattoos and your mohawk.

You’re just not the Desdemona I used to know. Something’s

happened to you.”

“You’re breaking up with me
now
?” Desdemona

says. “After what happened to Stephanie? While I’m in the

middle of taking a dump?”

He didn’t realize she was shitting. He just heard

splashing noises and thought she was only peeing. His nos-

trils cringe at her.

“You’re dumping me while I’m taking a dump?” She

almost wants to laugh at that, but she’s not in the mood.

Stepping back to avoid the smell, he says, “After

how you reacted to my operation I realized that you’re not

somebody I want to be with anymore. I think I just want to

be alone with Kevin for awhile.”

“Does Kevin know about this?” she asks. “Is he

dumping me, too?”

“I haven’t talked to him, yet,” he says.

“You can’t dump me without getting his approval.

This is a threesome relationship. He’s my boyfriend just as

much as he is yours. How do you know he doesn’t want to

stay with me and get rid of you?”

“Because I’ve been together with him longer than

you,” he says.

“Not really,” she says. “You were only friends with

him for longer. If you remember correctly I was his lover

before you were.”

“He loves me more than he loves you,” Rick says.

“He doesn’t love you more,” Desdemona says. “He’s

not even gay.”

Rick gasps like she had just knocked the wind out of him.

“He’s not attracted to you,” she says. “He never

wanted to be dragged into this relationship with you in the

first place. The only reason he started sleeping with you is