Terrorscape (4 page)

No
, she thought.
Wake up
.
Wake up!
“Hello, Valerian.”
Everything stopped.
He slipped out of the shadows, clad all in black.

“Back so soon?”

She couldn't speak. It wouldn't have mattered,
even
if
she
could.
His
lips
covered
hers
in
a
smothering kiss that stole her breath away.

He
cupped
her
through
the
bodice
of
her
nightdress.
This
wasn't
him.
Not
really.
She
understood that, on some level, she was being
suppressed by her subconscious fears and desires.

This was her doing.
Her, undoing each tiny mother-of-pearl button.

Her, sliding free the silk ribbon to reveal her illprotected heart.

 

“You let me control you, even in your dreams.”
His words were a string of frost and rime,
stinging her bare skin like a brand.

 

I hate him
, she thought.
I hate him
.
I hate him
.

His hands, under her tacit direction, began to
slide beneath the hem of her nightdress, rucking the
frothy fabric up around her thighs.

“Do you know why that is?”
Were her tears real? Did it matter?
No.
“I think you do.”

She felt his mouth, then. An oasis of softness
surrounded by a forest of chafing bristles. The perfect
balance, coaxing cruelty. When he kissed her with that
mouth, she lost all reason. When he used it elsewhere,
she lost her mind.

“Because I want to be controlled,” she gasped.
The sensations, while not exact, were just close
enough to reality that her body remembered—
“Because you need to be controlled.”

There was a light emphasis on the word
need
, and
she strained, grasping, for consciousness that was just
out of reach….

He pushed; her world fragmented into dozens of
sharp, cutting shards, shedding the salty blood and
saltier tears that ringed the bitter cocktail of her
despair. She was caterpillar and butterfly both, caught
in a cocoon of raw nerves and open sores; she was
insanity, wrapped up in the thin, transient layers of a
temporary lucidity; and she was afraid, because an
innate desire lay in the bottom reaches of her psyche
for the very poison that was killing her.

And then the dream exploded into a mental fog,
and Mary was shaking her, as pale as her dark
complexion allowed for, and Val was awake, and her
heart was like a cannon in her chest.

“Val—Val! Wake up! You're having a bad dream.”
Val heaved and wondered if she would puke.

Mary, clearly wondering the same, said, warily,
“Are you gonna be all right?”

“Yeah.” Val closed her eyes. “I'll be fine.” She
rubbed the ring on her hand her parents had given
her as a parting gift.
Supero omnia
. “Time to go?”

Still looking at her strangely, Mary said, “Yeah,
time to go. Come on.”

 

▪▫▪▫▪▫▪

Mary turned out to have three sisters—Florence,
Angelica, and Cherish. Each of them were as brightlyattired and effusive in greeting as their youngest
sister, and Val felt a bit as if she were being mobbed
by a flock of friendly tropical birds. They insisted she
call them Flo, Angel, and Cherry, respectively.

“Our mother reads too many romance novels,”
one of them—it might have been Angel, Val wasn't
sure—said,
causing
the
other
three
to
nod
in
solidarity. “That's how come our names are so—”

“—dramatic—”
“—cheesy—”
“—soap-opera-ish—”
“All of the above,” Angel said.
“Memaw likes her bodice-rippers.”

“Not just romances, but bodice
rippers
. There's a
difference, you know.”

 

“Oh,” said Val, who didn't know.

 

“She says they just don't write the love-scenes like
they used to,” Cherry said, rolling her eyes.

 

“'Cause they're not politically correct.”

 

“So we hear you're coming out to dinner with us
tonight,” said Flo. “Hope you like sushi.”

 

“I
love
sushi,” said Angel.

 

“Well, I wasn't asking you know, was I? I was
asking Val, here.”

 

“Sushi's…okay.”

“This sushi is better than okay. Have you ever
been to Tabemono before? You have to go to Japan for
better sushi. Or Seattle.”

“Val's not from around here,” Mary said. “This is
her first day—okay?”

“You're awfully pale for such dark hair,” Angel
said, “and those freckles! Girl, you are whiter than
chalk. Hey Flo, doesn't she look like one of them
china dolls?”

Flo squinted at her. “You ever consider dyeing it?
I've seen lots of girls try it, but you could totally rock
the redhead look, no problem.”

“Leave her alone,” Mary said, seeing Val's face
blanch. “She's going to think I'm crazy or something.”
“She should think you're crazy—you
are
.”

A friendly tussle ensued on the walk through the
parking lot. Mary cried out, “You're going to mess up
my hair!” but laughingly as braids were tugged and
arms were slapped.

Val, bringing up the rear, shoved her hands into
the pockets of her dress. She felt fourteen again,
awkward and unsure: an island of loneliness.

The food at Tabemono was delicious, but the
flavors seemed to reach her tongue through several
layers of rubber. She ate mechanically with her
chopsticks, nodding in all the right places and
answering all the questions directed at her. She didn't
need
to
do
this
often;
it
was
a
self-sustaining
conversation, and Angel, Cherry, Flo, and Mary made
only perfunctory efforts to include her in their banter.

Cherry had ordered for everyone since nobody
could agree on any one dish. Val had
miso
soup as a
starter, with floating seaweed and squares of tofu,
and
unagi
rolls fried in tempura and drizzled with
spicy cream sauce and bright orange
masago
. Her
stomach squirmed a little when she found out
unagi
meant “eel,” but since all she could taste were the
sauces it had been cooked in, she was able to convince
herself that she was eating really rubbery chicken.

Then the party platter came and Mary and her
sisters took turns daring each other to try the scarier
looking rolls, including one called the “spider roll,”
with tempura-fried shrimp tails sticking out of the
center like breaded tentacles.

Val was given one of each, which she managed to
choke down. This time, she abstained from asking
what was in them, and was all the more blissful in
ignorance. All five of them had green-tea
mochi
ice
cream for dessert.

It was hard to feel anything but full after such a
hearty meal. Val found her mood had lifted. She even
managed to make a few jokes, and when Cherry
reached over to muss her hair she felt as if she had
won an award.

“Thank you for inviting me out.”

“No problem.” Cherry undid the button of her
jeans and sighed. “We're just glad our little sis isn't
rooming with a psycho.”

“
Cherry
.”
“What? She's not. I'm just saying.”

Was I ever like that? Did I ever have that attitude?
That sass?

No. She had always restrained herself. Val felt a
pang of loss for what had never been—and now,
thanks to him, never would be.

Only half-listening to the conversation, Val pulled
her wallet out of her dress pocket.

 

“Don't you dare.”

She looked up, startled to see Angel glaring at her
as if she were in violation of some gross
faux pas
.
“What—”

“Put the wallet down, and nobody gets hurt.”
“Same goes for you, too, Mare-Bear,” Flo said to
Mary, who was in the process of reaching into her
bag.

“I can't—” Val tried to calculate the monetary
value of what she had eaten. Surely it had amounted
to thirty dollars a head, if not more.

“I have money,” Mary protested at the same time.
“Uh-uh. Mom told us to make sure you save all
your money for college stuff.”

 

Mary's eyes glistened. “Memaw said that?”
“She said college girls need skin on their bones,
so they don't have food on the brain.”

 

“Shopping's on her, too, so get whatever you
need.”

Val averted her eyes as they embraced. That
feeling of intruding had intensified. She felt like she
had just walked in on a private, intimate moment.

She couldn't remember the last time she had been
able to bestow affection—at least, the physical kind—
so freely. Even now, after years of therapy and
counseling, she could barely stand to be touched. Not
even by her parents. She hated the hurt in their eyes
when she flinched away from them, even though she
knew they both understood.

I wish Mom and Dad were here
.

They had her phone number, and she had theirs,
but Val had made up her mind that she wasn't going
to call them unless it was an emergency. Just in case.

Just in case he's out there, looking
.

Chronic loneliness didn't count as an emergency,
she didn't think, and what didn't kill you was
supposed to make you stronger, or so they said.

But it hasn't. It's made me weaker, so much weaker
.

He
had made her weaker—and for what? To
better suit her to his fantasies for power and absolute
control?

Goddamn you, you bastard, for ruining my life
.
“Val looks left out.”
“You guys ready to go shopping?”
The bill had been paid, receipts slipped discreetly

into pleather purses. The tip was lying smugly in the
black lacquered dish.

 

Val shook herself and answered, “Yes.”

 

▪▫▪▫▪▫▪

 

She had been ordinary, once.

Just another high school girl. Innocent. Maybe too
innocent. Maybe that had been the problem. Maybe if
she had been more streetwise, none of this would ever
have happened.

Or maybe it was unavoidable. Determinism. Fate.
(Can you feel the ties that bind us? Can you feel them
tightening?)

She couldn't remember when she had first laid
laid eyes on him, but she remembered that encounter
in the pet store where he worked as if it were
yesterday. When he had let her hold one of the costly
toyger kittens and the little creature had scratched
her. When he
had licked her blood from his fingers
.

But at the time, in her naivete, she had managed
to convince herself that it had been an illusion, a trick
of the light—anything but the truth.

And if I had known, could I have stayed away?

Sometimes, she thought yes, yes she could. But
now, standing in the middle of the aisle for school
supplies, lost to the sea of her own thoughts, Val
suspected this was wishful thinking on her part.

One look in those eyes, and all was lost.
“Are you finding everything okay?”

“Uh-huh.” Val nodded and turned away from the
salesclerk, hugging her shopping basket to her side.

Even after she had known about the blood that
stained his hands, the blood that hadn't even had time
to cool—even after she knew what he was and what
he was capable of and
why
he wanted her—she had
still wanted those hands on her. Inside of her. And he,
he had been only too happy oblige.

Until the end.
Something had changed at the very end.

When he saw that spark of defiance that he hadn't
quite been able to snuff, that last shred of moral
decency, he had decided to discard her in favor of her
flaws, ever the temperamental artist.

What could not be painted out must be destroyed.

And when he had tried to kill her, when she had
felt the water rush past the floodgates of her lungs
and the ache turned to numbness and her thoughts
turned to darkness, hadn't she felt as if she had been
justly accorded her due?

Hadn't she thought, “I deserve this”?
“Val?”

A hand
touched
her
shoulder.
She
jumped,
scattering packs of pens and pencils.

 

“Whoa, sorry. You about ready to go?”

Val looked down at her basket. School supplies
and foodstuffs were inside. She couldn't remember
placing them there. The only thing they had in
common was that they were all cheap.

“I think so.”

 

“Cool. We're all waiting up at the registers. My
sisters already finished.”

 

I am horrid.

Chapter Three
Peony

In
California,
summer
storms
were
all
but
unheard of, and people talked about them for
days
afterward. Here in North Point, so close to the
Olympic Peninsula, they were a common occurrence.

And a consistent annoyance.

Val hugged herself as she walked from her dorm
to the computer lab, shivering as the water melded
with the cold August morning.

Freshmen had to make their new school accounts
in the computer lab, before their accounts could be
linked
to
their
home—or
dorm—computers.
Val
hoped to sign up for her classes, as well, assuming
she could figure out the user interface.

The IT on duty was a boy who reminded Val of
Blake, with his fawn-colored hair and hazel eyes and
large, wire-rimmed glasses. Thankfully their voices
were nothing alike, or she wouldn't have been able to
stand it.

“Now enter this number,” he was saying. A name
tag on his striped shirt identified him as Pete. “That's
your assigned password. Change it to whatever you
want, just as long as it's easy to remember and
difficult to guess. Let me know when you're done.”

He pointedly averted his head as she began to
type in her new password. She found herself growing
annoyed by such unnecessary diligence.

“I'm done.”
Her account opened.
Klein, M. Valerie
.

“Good,” said the boy. “Now you should be able to
register for classes. Let me know if you need any
more help.” He got up to assist a girl who had been
waving her arm this entire time.

Wonder it didn't just fly off
.