Release(17)

“And I believe these things to be true as I think them,” she says. She wonders if they were.

Tony moved his thumbs to the base of her throat for a clearer grip, a harder one that made her gag, made her vomit into the small glimpses of airway she had when Tony moved. There was no breath now. Not a chance of it.

She could distantly see Tony crying.

I loved you, he wept, as he killed her. I loved you.

Did you? she had thought as the oxygen left her brain, as a kind of smouldering hole sunk through her consciousness, taking everything down with it.

All the goatmen, Tony said, bafflingly. Don’t think I don’t see them. Out there by the lake. And it’s gone when you look.

The fire spreads to the drug detritus littering the floor. It catches quickly, filling the room with smoke, but she does not notice.

She sees the vision of Tony leaning up from her body, his dumb rage slipping from him slowly, even with the meth.

Kate? he says. Katie?

She watches him fumble backwards, his movements slow, clumsy, a kind of idiot shock taking over his features. Shit, he says. Oh, shit.

She watches as he scrambles for his needle, takes another hit of meth, waits for it, checks her again.

She is still dead.

“But oh,” she says now. “Oh, oh, oh. That’s it, is it not? Oh, oh, oh.”

She watches Tony stand, watches him weep as he puts his hands under her arms, hefting her weight – so light, so frightfully light – over his shoulder. He weeps as he searches the cabin and finds one, two scavenged bricks to stuff into the pockets of her dress. He weeps as he steps through the flames that have become an inferno in the cabin and out the front door, carrying her body to the water.

“No,” she says now. “No.”

One wall of the cabin suddenly falls away, then a second, taking the roof with it. She watches as the third and fourth similarly fall, leaving her now on a burning foundation, at the centre of a fire she cannot feel and that does not touch the rags of the clothes she still wears.

She looks up at nothing. “I was not yet dead. I was alive when he put me in the lake.”





“Yes, my Queen,” says the faun, unheard, winded from the controlled destruction of the cabin. “And that is why you are in such danger.”





They were nearly finished with the guns. The actual pieces themselves were, of course, chained, locked, kept “safe”, with the ammunition stored in another part of the vast warehouse. Still, anyone with the will and half an hour could break in here and easily find enough for a medium-sized massacre.

Adam and Renee handled the double-key locks, while Karen leaned in the cages with the scanning wand, trying to get through them as fast as possible. For once, they had to be meticulous. If anything was missing, it was a police matter. Then again, it would also be a police matter if they found out three minors were doing this stock-taking, so it was all a bit of a grey area, really.

“I hate guns,” Renee said, again.

“We’ve got about six in the house,” Adam said. Renee looked up at him, wide-eyed. Adam shrugged. “My dad and brother both hunt.”

“But you don’t,” Renee said, more of an order than a question.

“Do I seem like the kind of son you want around if you’re trying to kill something? They left me at home after I cried the first four times.”

“Your family is messed up,” Karen said.

Adam sighed. “Found out this morning Marty got a girl pregnant.”

This stopped them both.

“At the super-Christian college?” Karen asked.

“Yep.”

“People with really stiff morals are easier to tip over,” Renee said. “That’s what my mom always says.”

“She’s actually a black girl,” Adam said. “Really, really pretty.”

“Oh, man, their babies are going to be beautiful,” Karen said, sounding almost disgusted. Marty’s physical attractiveness had a small legend status, even in the grades that had followed his graduation.

“Or really ugly,” Adam said. “Sometimes prettiness cancels itself out.”

“What are they going to do?” Renee asked.

“What do you think they’re going to do? Get married, have more pretty or ugly babies, preach at a church that thinks he’s really boring but still likes to look at him in the pulpit every Sunday.” He locked up the last handgun cage with Renee and they moved to the hunting bows. “Everything’s easier when you’re beautiful.”

Karen and Renee both mm-hmmed in solemn agreement. Neither of them had dated much, swearing they were waiting for college boys who’d “grown up a little”. He didn’t know how to tell them that the only college boy he knew in any depth was his own brother, and that didn’t bode well for their romantic years ahead.

Karen looked at her phone. “Ten minutes till you’re off, Adam,” she said. “You want us to slow down so you don’t have to talk to Wade?”

“I might as well get it over with,” he said, handing the keys to Renee. The bows and arrows didn’t have half as much security as the guns. “Thanks, though.”

“See you at the party tonight?” Renee said, again shyly.

“Yeah. Why do you ask like that?”