Pretty Dead City It felt new to have an idea, one so clear and pretty, but there it was. "Lance," he said. "We need to get back."
"Where?" Lance said.
"To the party."
There was a silence, and then Lance's hand fumbled for his. "You think that'll help?"
JC hadn't moved; only to slump against his shoulder. He was shivering. Chris shoved at him with his free hand and he stumbled back.
Lance said, "Okay. We can probably just do what we did before. I guess." He lifted their clasped hands and opened his. The wound was almost closed.
"How are we. Look--" JC said and lifted his head, slowly, like it weighed more than he could really bear. "Last time you just forgot everything. What if it happens again?"
Lance blinked and glanced over them, and everyone's eyes followed helplessly. Chris had read a lot of horror novels, and they always claimed the corpses' eyes stared 'accusingly'. Justin's eyes were just dead and not asking for anything.
"It won't," he said. "We'll stick together." It sounded stupid. They'd stuck together so well in the past, hadn't they?
"Okay," JC said. The fight had been leached out of him and he just looked cold and tired and numb and naked, like a survivor after a flood.
Chris looked around for his shirt, but it was gone. That was no surprise. "Hey, Joey, shirt."
"Gotcha."
Joey's shirt seemed to be made of an entire bearskin, and JC looked fragile and childlike inside it.
JC didn't protest when he took his hand.
"This won't hurt a bit," Chris said and cut. JC shivered and bit his lip, but didn't say a word.
Joey held out his hand in silence. Already, he seemed larger and hairier. Chris looked up and saw that Lance's eyes were glowing, glass-bright. "It's working," he said.
"It is," JC said. The skin on his face was exquisitely pale now, the dirt just fading smudges. Chris squinted and thought he saw a nimbus of light surround him. It was working, all right. He could hear music somewhere, light flurries of chords, voices, laughter.
"Wait, wait, wait--" he said, spun around. There were colours coming together in the air, gaining form. "We have to--"
JC was quicker, light on his feet. He slipped in the blood on the floor - still concrete, but changing already - skidded and fell to his knees.
There was no time to be squeamish, and Chris had lost his desire to lose his lunch. He joined JC, dropped to his knees. The blood, cooling already, soaked into his pants. The concrete was cold.
There was a silence, the room holding its breath.
"What do we--?" Joey mumbled next to him, but Lance hushed him. JC moved nervously. Chris' knees ached from the cold. His hands ached; even the right one, and he realised he was holding Lance's Leatherman in a white-knuckled death grip.
Places like this, he thought. You work on gut instinct.
He put his left hand on Justin's limp right hand, the one with the cut. It was cold; not as cold as the floor but getting there. His eyes hurt, that kind of prickling under the eyelids that wanted to become tears, but there was no time for big emotional scenes here. The silence was taking on a breathless, anticipating quality.
He straightened out Justin's fingers and pressed the hand flat against the floor. Gut instinct, okay. He lifted the knife.
He stabbed, and somehow he must have expected Justin to jump and scream at him; instead, all he heard was JC letting out a soft, pained whimper and Chris was surprised at how bitter the disappointment was.
He left the knife in the wound. There was no blood other than his own, spattered over Justin's fishbelly-white palm and underarm.
The silence was over and the music flooded in. It tugged at him, playfully, gently, soothingly. He heard laughter and it all came together like it'd never left; magnificent dresses and beautiful faces and all in a swirl of tempting, tempting colour.
Pain in his hand, and he saw JC clutching it tightly, and Lance took his other hand and he saw Joey cling to Lance's other hand. He looked down at Justin and reality - whatever that was - bounced back and clocked him in the face.
He squeezed their hands and closed his eyes.
"Can I just give you some advice?" someone says; just a thick whisper that makes the short hairs at the back of his neck shiver upright.
He doesn't turn around, but now he sees that he's standing behind a thick, black curtain. Someone has stuck a broad swath of painter's tape across it and written HOME on it.
He doesn't speak, but the voice goes on anyway. Like he knew it would. This isn't a voice that will be shut up.
"Everything you know is wrong. Everything you believe is wrong. You have no idea what you're doing."
He reads the text again. Broad strokes in magic marker. HOME. HOME. HOME. He thinks, fervently, If I click my heels together three times, will I be able to push the curtain aside and just go home?
"I've had quite the time watching you and your friends stumble around like blind turkeys."
He reaches out for the curtain and it's thick and heavy under his fingertips. He's looking for the edge, scrabbling over glossy fabric.
"Aren't you forgetting something?"
It's there, the edge, and he pushes it aside and there's light on the other side - of course, that's not a surprise. Light and warmth, classic stuff - but before he pushes through he turns his head, and they're all there; a tableau of frozen figures - Justin lying still and pale on the floor, JC kneeling by his head, Lance's hand on JC's shoulder, Joey's arm around Lance's waist. They're not looking at Chris, like they've already given up on him.
The sunlight - because it is sunlight, lovely, warm Florida sunlight - heats the side of his face. The rest of him is freezing.
It's a trick, he thinks. This is all just a trick.
Of course it is. Disembodied voices, nightmares; bullshit, all of it.
"Fuck you," he says and lets the curtain fall back.
He turned around. There was still music in the background, but the room was still bare concrete. There was a shadow in a corner, though, one that couldn't really be accounted for.
"Him," he said and pointed. JC didn't let go of his hand when he did, so they both pointed together.
"Who?" Lance said and looked, too. "Oh."
|
