The man opens his mouth just as the trees behind me rattle. I whirl around, expecting to see one of the other Lost Boys, and instead, I’m met with the breeze blowing through the bottom branches, rattling them again and causing a few loose leaves to drift to the ground. My eyes narrow, and I blink, scanning the darkness one more time before I let myself settle back against the wall to peer in the half-open window once more.
The man’s mouth is moving, but his words are quiet as he directs a hate and fear-filled glare at Ezra. Even though Ashe is closer to him and Ezra is prowling the room, his eyes never leave the little psychopath.
It’s probably the safest choice.
I shrink away from the window when he comes close, barely hearing the questioning sound Ashe makes before Ezra chuckles and moves away once more, saying something that sounds like a soft, “I know, I know. I’m not going todoanything, Ashe.”
“If I tell you–”
“When you tell me,” Ashe interrupts the man, putting a foot on the front of the seat between the man’s thighs that are spread and trapped against the wood of the spindly chair legs. “There is noif. You’ll tell me what I asked about, and you’ll die. Those are the two certainties of tonight.”
“I don’t want that little psycho setting me onfire,” the man says, though his voice wavers, and I can’t help but think that he’s breaking awfully fast for someone who apparently tried to kill Ezra.
“And I don’t want to smell you burn,” Ashe agrees. “So pick your poison.” I can’t help but shiver at the cold, calculated tone of voice Ashe uses, his words never rising beyond the level of polite conversation and the threat never coloring his tone with anything other than mild annoyance and interest.
It’s…a turn-on, if I’m being honest. It’s also petrifying, but that’s a normal reaction I’m not interested in questioning.
I definitely shouldn’t be turned on by Ashe and Ezra circling their captive like wolves about to tear him apart, and I really shouldn’t be all but holding my breath as I wait for them to finally pounce.
Do Iwantto see them pounce? Fire aside, do I really want to see this man be torn apart by the Lost Boys?
Yes, a questionable, whispering voice says in the back of my mind.Of course, I want to see it. I want to see what they’ll do. I want to see what he’ll do. I want to see how long it takes for him to come apart mentally and–
I cut the thought off and grip my hands until my nails are digging into my palms. Those thoughts are definitely not okay, and I can blame it on the adrenaline that they’re there in the reaches of my brain at all. It’s probably natural to have insane thoughts when you’re in a situation that makes your heart pound against your ribs like it’s trying to escape.
I can be excused for my momentary insanity, I’m sure. Or maybe it’s the boys’ insanity rubbing off of me.Folie à deuxand all, only this time it feels more likefolie à trois. The madness of three, instead of just the madness of two.
“I’m done waiting,” Ezra announces in between the pants of the man on his back. I watch as he descends like a bird of prey, the lighter in his hand replaced with a switchblade that flicks open as I watch.
Is he really going to do it?
The man on the chair doesn’t seem to think so, not until the blade presses down between his collarbones. His gasp turns to a yell, and blood wells on his pale skin as Ezra continues topress.
And then he begins tocarve. The man’s shirt is quickly torn and pushed aside while Ezra draws the knife over the skin and through the black hair that litters the stranger’s chest in patches. Blood rises to the surface everywhere his knife curves and cuts, like a wake following behind him. It’s proof that Ezra is pressing down, though even to my untrained eye, I know that this is not enough to kill him.
“Who told you to come find us?” The blade pauses over the man’s hip, a few inches above the line of his dress pants. The man shudders but stares at the ceiling, lips pressed together like he’s making a physical effort to keep them shut.
“Who. Told. You?” Every word from Ezra’s lips results in the knife tip sinking another inch into flesh, and my stomach twirls inside me. I expect to feel nausea. I expect my body to rebel and tell me that it’s definitely time togo.
But it doesn’t, and I don’t. I can’t tear my eyes from the red blood welling on the pale skin or the way the knife just sinks in like it’s a heated blade going through butter. Ezra makes it look so easy, and I can’t help but wonder if it really is. If maybe it’s not as hard to sink a blade into someone as I’ve always thought it would be.
I blink, and my heart leaps to my throat; as it occurs to me, the knife is hilt-deep in the man’s side. He’s screaming, which I’ve somehow managed to ignore for the past few seconds, and the blood that pools in the wound sits there, quivering, reflecting the light from the cabin as it threatens to spill out of the dip in his hip.
“You’re killing me here,” Ezra says, and I don’t miss the quirk of his grin or the way his eyes flick up to the man’s face. “I’m trying so hard to be nice, but it would be so easy to slip and, well…” Suddenly, hejerksthe blade, twisting it until he’s rotating itinsidethe man’s body.
But still, I don’t feel anything. Or at least not anything that has my head spinning or my stomach threatening to lose the battle to keep down my light dinner of a sandwich and a pickle. Even when Ezra is freely twirling the blade inside the man and making an increasingly larger hole, all I can do is listen to the man’s chorus of screams and watch the blood streaming from his pale skin.
And I can’t help but compare it to when I tried to end everything notthatlong ago. It’s only been nine months since I was the one with blood cascading down my skin, and even though there’s a big difference between my arm and his stomach, the blood looks the same. The blood drips the same, running in rivulets that collide and separate before pooling on the floor below.
Unconsciously I grip my wrist, feeling the raised, smooth scar that runs down my arm almost to my palm.
Down the river, not across the stream. That was what kids had said in high school whenever the topic of cutting one’s own wrists was brought up.If you really want to end it, you go down the river and not across the stream.
I’d crossed the stream a lot before finally taking a knife and slicing down the river once and for all. I’d been found before I’d bled out and packed away by my doctor to a nice, soft rehab with horseback riding and casual Fridays.
Casual, as if we didn’t have a strict dress code that consisted of mostly sweatpants, t-shirts, and soft hoodies with the drawstring removed. Otherwise, we might hang ourselves, I supposed, though I couldn’t quite figure out how a two hundred pound adult was supposed to hang themselves with the equivalent of a shoestring.
I blink, drawing myself back to the present, just in time to see Ezra leaning on the blade, pressing it down between the man’s collarbones once again, causing more blood to well and seep around the surface of his freshly parting skin.