Scary Out There (22 page)

It even distracts me through Sid. Through the shouting. Through sitting at the dinner table with his bloody
Eurovision
tapes blaring in the background, eating crap bacon sandwiches he made with the single knife in the whole place, his on a normal plate, mine on paper,
and if I have to hear those minging Swedish tarts and their pop song one more time . . .

So we go back. Tash doesn't even ask about the bruise on my cheek. I ain't exactly Houdini with makeup, but I think I covered it up all right. Still, I see his eyes catch on it, and the look I give back says:
Don't ask.

And he doesn't.

Guess I shouldn't have complained about the perky Swedish girls and their stupid song.

We make it upstairs that time. I wander the bedrooms. This was a nice family, I think. The parents kept the little paintings and art projects their kids had done, didn't just toss them in the bin like my dad might. There were two kids, seems like, a girl and a boy. I stand in the boy's room for a long time while Tash rummages somewhere else. There are Manchester United pennants on the wall and shelves with DVDs, video
games, poetry books, a Bible, Superman comic books. It gets too strange again and I have to go, right then, and that time I run down the stairs and hurl myself out the broken window.

I don't care if Tash thinks I'm lame over it—people lived there and now they don't, and while I can't stop thinking about it, I want to. God, I want to.

The next day we go back. It's like I can't stop myself—can't stop
him
. I've started doodling on my assignments in the margins, little theories, little stories. . . . What if they were witness protection? What if the mob put a hit out on them? Carbon monoxide poisoning?
What, what, what?

That day Tash says we should check the basement. So we do, and I can tell the second the door opens and the cool underground cave air comes rushing up to meet us that this room is different. I go down, slowly, one awful step at a time. The threadbare lightbulb dangling above the stairs. When it clicks on, even the air in my lungs feels cold.

It's . . . empty.

Tash eases by me and goes to stand in the halo of pale white light pooling under the bulb. Just concrete. Smooth, very smooth cement, like glass.

“Something's weird,” I tell him, afraid to put even one foot on the too smooth concrete.

He gives a single pained laugh. “Something's always been weird. You didn't just figure that out, did you?”

“Course not. But . . . Dunno. Thought maybe I could piece
it together. But there's nothing down here, just that old dryer.”

In the far right corner was a single dryer unit, the matching washing machine nowhere to be found.

“Lauren,” he said, and when I looked at him his black eyes had gone all electric and intense again. “There's something I want to show you.”

“Go on.”

He nodded toward the corner with the dryer. “Move it out from the wall.”

“
You
move it. Lazy.”

Tash snorted. “You move it, Lauren. I can't.”

“Weaker than you look, mate,” I joked, but like the empty basement, like the smooth concrete, it was all wrong. But I went anyway. Had to. What's that word? Compelled. It's like that, like I could feel his eyes moving me across the floor, lifting my hands and bracketing them around the dryer. Like it wasn't even me wiggling that heavy piece of shit out from the wall.

But I did. He didn't need to say what he wanted to show me. It was there, the only wonky bit of the concrete. Something stuck out, round, almost white, a knobby dark dent at the end reminding me right away of . . .

“Shit. Shit.
No
.”

I don't know what Tash did, but I ran. Not out of the house. Why not out of the house? Compelled. I just couldn't go, because the answer was right there. It was right there in
the concrete or maybe in that look Tash kept giving me. When I looked up again, I was in the boy's room, sitting on the bed, trying to catch my breath.

Tash followed, quiet as you like, and leaned on the doorframe, waiting or, I don't know, watching.

“That was bones we saw,” I muttered. Sweating.
Christ
. I was sweating like mad now. “Bones . . . Tash, what the
hell
, mate?”

He came and sat next to me on the bed and lifted his hand. I flinched. Sorry, but, instinct. Habit. But he wasn't taking a swing at me. His knuckles almost touched the patch job I'd done with Rimmel.

“He hit you,” Tash says softly.

“Yeah.”

Bones
.

“He's
awful
.”

Actual human bones.

“Obviously.”

Area's gone to shit.

“A monster.”

At that, I go quiet for a long time. Tash stares at me, and it's not scary this time, just gentle. I finally look back, and it's like I can see in his brain. It's dark in there, terrifying, but I don't want to look away. He waits for me every day after school. For the first time in, like,
ever
, I want to touch another person, touch a
man
.

I lie down. I want to do it, and Christ I hope he lies down with me because otherwise I'm going to look stupid. But he does, and I can see how difficult it is for him to swallow normally. The same thing's happening to me. It's so, so quiet and for five minutes? Ten minutes? We just stare at each other, sometimes he smiles and I smile back, other times I don't know what my face is doing.

“Tash, what did I see down there?”

“You trust me, don't you, Lauren?” he asks, and I do, so I nod. “You had better, yeah? You're lying in my bed with me.”

Even if I knew it deep in my chest, still stings to hear it. We laugh. You have to, right? You have to laugh when a thing like that is said, when a thing like that is the truth. I lean in to kiss him, and I lean right through his beautiful face. I'm shaking, Christ am I shaking, but he's still there, letting me do it, letting me have it all sink in.

“Your uncle's a builder,” he murmurs, and it's like he's kissing my ear, my cheek, my lips . . . I can't move, I can only nod, only shake. “Lauren, he isn't a person. He's a monster, yeah? He's a monster.”

It's like I'm suspended there, stuck, like the air has turned to ice around me, freezing me in place on my side. But time is moving, and I can hear everything Tash is saying. When I close my eyes, I see the white bump in the concrete. His hand moves over my shoulder, and it doesn't feel like anything but cool air, cool air turning colder, turning frozen. His hand is
on my stomach, going lower. I'm going to let him. I would let him.

I
would
like him to.

“You have to make this right,” he whispers, kissing me again.

“I have to make this right.”

Tash touches his lips to the bruise on my cheek, and the little spark of cool feels nice. When I look again—really look—those two black coals for eyes of his are gone.

•  •  •

“Right, um, I'd like to report a murder.”

So here we are, back at the beginning.

“Could you repeat that?”

It's easier to say the second time around. “I'd like to report a murder.”

“Start from the beginning,” he said, resting his elbows on the desk.

Christ, where to start? It was easier telling you lot. My hands are throbbing then, hot, hot, too hot and needly. Pricked all over. I hold my hands up for the cop and let him get a good look. I couldn't get all the blood off, or really I just gave up trying. That's probably what feels so weird and hot.

“There's only one knife in the house,” I say, which is weird, because that's not a good place to start the story. But I'm laughing—it's funny, isn't it? It's all too unbelievably funny, when you think about it. “Left it on the table. Right in the
open. Shouldn't be hard to find, and that's your job or whatever.”

The cop's eyes are getting big now, and he's listening. He's listening good and proper.

“I had to make it right, you see,” I tell him, like I'm telling you. “The area had gone to shit. It really had. Sid made it shit. He's a monster, yeah? I had to make it right.” He's coming around the counter now, eyes big and nervous, and he's putting his hand on his belt, like reaching maybe for a weapon, something to subdue me. That's fine. I'd like to be subdued for a while.

I don't put up a fuss. I don't fight back.

No, I just keep my hands up and smile, maybe laugh again. Can Tash see this? He's probably laughing too.

“He was just a piece of shit,” I tell the cop, and the word “piece,” the way it sounds, the way it slides out of my mouth, makes me remember the knife going in, smooth as silk, smooth as that perfect concrete, right into his lumpy belly. I shiver, because putting the knife in didn't feel good, but it did feel right.

“Just slow down, little miss,” he says, hemming me in against the counter.

“No, it's fine now,” I tell him, like I'm telling you. “It's all fine now. I made it right.”

Madeleine Roux
is the
New York Times
bestselling author of the Asylum series. She received her BA in creative writing and acting from Beloit College in 2008. In the spring of 2009 Madeleine completed an Honors Term at Beloit College, proposing, writing, and presenting a full-length historical fiction novel. Shortly after, she began the experimental fiction blog Allison Hewitt Is Trapped. Allison Hewitt Is Trapped quickly spread throughout the blogosphere, bringing a unique serial fiction experience to readers. Born in Minnesota, she lives and works in Seattle, Washington.

Website:
madeleine-roux.com

Twitter:
@Authoroux

Facebook:
facebook.com/madeleinerouxauthor

LUCY A. SNYDER

Scary

There are a trillion things about being teen

to scare the devil out of you. Or maybe
in
.

It's basic: TV people say this must be your best

time ever, but these months are lumps of misery

in a gruel of boredom. And a queasy terror

that TV might be right: Life won't get better.

It's scary, so scary out there.

You can't stop puzzling grim possibilities,

turning the future over like a cube to solve:

What if all the tedious crap of adulthood

is a burden that breaks you like a straw?

What if you sprint to meet your dreams

but crash in a stinking welter of failure?

What if nobody ever really loves you

so you die alone, broke, old, forgotten?

It's scary, so scary out there.

It's more fun to fear fictional monsters:

possessive devils, snap-jawed aliens,

howling wolves, snarling madmen,

ravenous dead, tentacled abominations.

Cue up the movie, crack open the book

Gasp and shriek and forget the world.

It's scary, so scary out there.

Dangerous

“Oh, Johnny, it's dangerous outside,” Mama cried

When good friends tried to take you caroling one December.

“Just stay in here where you'll be safe and dry.”

You couldn't wait to ditch her drab little town when she died,

Tried to forget her in that coffin, but still you remembered:

“Oh, Johnny, it's dangerous outside,” Mama cried.

Nobody in the city would hire a kid, no matter how you tried

Homeless, shamefaced, you panhandled, growing thinner

Hitched back to her old house; at least it seemed safe and dry.

The floor is warped, the windows crawling with flies

And their relentless buzz calls you a loser, a sinner.

“Oh, Johnny, it's dangerous outside,” Mama cried.

You tried to visit your good friends but they'd always hide,

Whispering, pretending you were nothing but a ragged stranger.

You burned when you spied them at the prom, so safe and dry.

Dogs found their bones in the woods; you weren't tried.

You rock yourself in her rotting house, mind an ember.

“Oh, Johnny, it's dangerous outside,” Mama cries.

“Just stay in here where you'll be safe and dry.”

turnt

let's get turnt, says the heartbreaking boy

i wanna get crazy, lose my mind tonight

smile, girl, shake what ya mama gave ya

the stereo rattles his Kia's tinted windows

hungry, you shake your head, say it's late

but he grabs your wrist: just one drink?

his Marlboro's burnt down to the filter

he's sweating smoke and his whiskey

smells so sweet. you take a long draw

he says Whoa girl you got a hollow leg

and your heart is pounding skin itching

ancient genes singing pupils constricting

he says Hey that cost me twenty, ease up!

but you know drink's not your demon tonight

it's the only solution to snuff your appetite

but your cheap date's pulled the bottle away

you're still so famished you can't even think

and before you can say Stop you're turning

pulse hammering inside the secluded car

skin splitting over hairy muscle, scarlet claws

and he's screaming, wailing like he's burning

your mind is a feral void of rage and need

and this boy you hoped to please is meat

booming bass muffles the crack of bone

conscience returns; you see what you've done

stare at sticky hands, know you have to move

again. avoid boys, endure your life alone.

it's dark outside; the night's your mother

shielding you, soothing your shame

so you quietly walk yourself home.