Everyone Dies in the End #62
Susan
Blood erupted from the gash in Arty’s throat, soaking the tablecloth, splashing, actually splashing, on the hard wood floor, the blood’s coppery smell sickening Susan. Arty’s eyes went wide, as if they would jump out of their sockets, and his hands clawed feebly at the sodden cloth in front of him. But his struggles were brief…seconds, moments…Susan couldn’t tell, his wide eyes dimmed, the eyelids dropped, and he sank onto the crimson fabric.
“Son of a bitch,” the mother spat, “that tablecloth’s ruined.”
Susan collapsed. Not physically, her intransigent muscles wouldn’t give her that luxury, but her soul collapsed, the pain overwhelming her. Arty, Arty! She screamed, but she didn’t scream, she couldn’t scream, and she couldn’t move. Tears welled in her eyes, pooled and ran down her cheeks, splashing into pink circles in Arty’s rapidly spilling blood. He was dead. Her friend, her lover, dead. She felt her heart would burst, the pain would simply explode it and she too would die. But no! She could fix it, she could heal him!
“I bet that was a surprise, wasn’t it?” the mother laughed.
A new emotion welled in her heart, an emotion that Susan had fought her entire life to quell, but now she welcomed it. Now she would use it. Inside Susan the emotion grew, inside Susan’s heart railed with anger.
“Go get the others, Akasia.”
Again the mother’s face contorted in anger, “DO AS I SAY!” but as quickly as the words erupted, the beatific expression returned, “sweetheart.”
To her right, Akasia’s chair legs scraped across the hard wood floor, and out of the corner of her eye Susan saw her dart from the room. “Don’t start without me,” she called cheerfully over her shoulder.
The anger was white hot. Susan focused on that anger. Susan focused as the mother’s knife dropped to Todd’s arm. I can do this. I can save us. I must focus.
The knife bit into Todd’s arm, blood welling at the incision. “Nnnnh,” Todd growled, his eyes wide. The mother caressed his face with her free hand, the gesture painting Todd’s cheek with Arty’s blood. “Shush now, be still.” The mother pulled the knife back along the arm, as if slicing a thin piece off the top of a block of cheese.
“Stpppp,” Todd moaned, and his arm moved. Perhaps only an inch, but it moved.
She lifted the knife from Todd’s arm, a long thin piece of skin, dripping with blood, lifting with it. “Did the Sux make you deaf too, honey?” The mother’s voice was calm, sweet. “I said…” Thwack!
The knife stood tall, impaling Todd’s hand to the wooden table beneath. “Don’t move.”
“Ahhhhh….” Todd was screaming, as much as the Sux would let him. Susan could feel the anger working, amplifying her powers. She could heal, and she would heal. She could reverse the paralysis, just like she could reverse any other affliction, and then she would save Arty, and heal Todd. If only Arty wasn’t dead. Hold on, Arty! She knew the pentagram was burning bright. She only hoped the crazy woman wouldn’t notice. Under the table she moved a foot, and then the other, and then a leg.
“What’s a matter, honey? You want me to set you free?”
Susan froze, but the mother wasn’t talking to her, her eyes were on Todd’s face as she stroked his hair, spreading Arty’s blood through it. After a moment, she lifted the strip of Todd’s flesh and bit into it, closing her eyes as if savoring a delicacy. “Hmmm, now that’s good eating.” Her free hand continued to caress Todd’s hair. Beside Todd, Arty didn’t move.
Susan flexed her thighs. Almost, almost. The effort exhausted her, healing always exhausted her, but there would be time to rest later.
“Sure honey, I’ll set you free.” The mother reached behind her, tugging something from the apron. Her hand reappeared holding a hatchet, the head glinting dully in the candlelight. Casually she brought it down on Todd’s wrist, brought it down hard, severing his hand. “There you go. Now you’re free”
Air gushed from Todd’s mouth—the sound half moan, half sigh—his eyes fluttered, then closed. On the table, his stump pumped blood, adding to the lake created by Arty’s demise. The severed hand, still pinned by the butcher knife made small flexing motions. The mother took another bite from the strip of skin, and stroked Todd’s face with the edge of the hatchet. “That’s right lover, you rest for now.”
Susan was beyond feeling anything but the rage. Under the table her toes flexed, her legs moved. Above the table she felt the control returning, but dared not test that control lest she give herself away. Just a moment or two longer. That was all she needed. She raised her eyelids, praying that the mother was too engrossed in her sick cannibalism to notice. She was wrong.
“Oh, I see your coming around, huh?” She smiled, and gestured at the table with her feeding hand, Todd’s strip of skin swinging as she did so. “All this has you excited too, doesn’t it?”
Susan chanced a flex of her arm muscles. She had to know they would work. They did.
The mother raised the hatchet, Todd’s blood dripping from the edge of the blade, “You ready for some of this?”
“No thanks.”
Susan stood, pushing back her chair in one, smooth motion. She was weak, exhausted from the effort of healing herself, but she was moving.
“You…” The mother never finished, but Susan guessed the next word would rhyme with witch, a thought that struck her as ironic.
The .38 revolver was in her hand, pulled from the holster on her hip, and a second later one of its six bullets exploded the mother’s skull. She bounced off the buffet behind her, knocking Sunday’s best glasses in all directions, and then dropped to the floor with a thud. Susan shuffled around the blood-soaked dinning table with the .38 held in front of herself, hands trembling with fatigue. The mother was dead, way dead. Face and skull an unrecognizable mass of bone, grizzle, and hair, and Susan felt sick.
Comments