Chapter Nine
Teddy
I don’t know why, but I find my feet taking me downstairs to begin the cleanup without thinking about it. It isn’t until I’m struggling to drag Bud’s body into a better position to cut up that I realize I listened to what Branson told me to do. I try to think back and remember the last time I had to clean up my own kill and realize it was before Jane and I ever left.
My motions slow, but I don’t stop as I start to remember bits of that time before, things I haven’t thought of in years. Even then, it was always Branson’s job to clean up, but I would sneak away from Jane and come help him, bringing him treats and telling him stories while we worked. Jane hated him even back then, though it obviously escalated over the years. Despite how she treated him, he was always the same toward me. He taught me biology, telling me about how the human body worked as we chopped up corpses together.
I remember how happy I would feel when I would remember a particularly difficult Latin name, earning one of his rare smiles. Those smiles I’ve only ever seen him give me.
I slow, then stop what I’m doing as I consider our history. Everything Jane told and taught me, the hate she instilled in me, seems so flimsy as it rolls through my mind.
I think of the expression on his face when I got back, after years of being away, and hurt him. The friendship, years of care, erased like it never happened. And I relished in it. Then I think of his blank, listless face from the past year. I look down at my hands, covered in blood as they are, and notice they are shaking slightly. A drop of water falls and I frown, looking up to the ceiling before realizing I’m crying.
Jane may have accepted my darkness, but I threw away something much more important without ever realizing it. Branson loved me, he was my best friend, and I fucking ruined and broke him. Now he’s becoming the man I always hoped he would, and he fucking hates me.
My mind races with ways to fix this, to get him back to me. For a second, I wonder if it’s the old ‘want what you can’t have’ but I push the thought aside. It's so much more than that with us.
What would he want?
I know he wants me, but he clearly hates himself for that. What I need is to find a way for him to get over that shit, get over our past. Give him a way to hate and punish me so he can love me.
I think I know what I have to do, but can I swallow my pride enough to do it, even for him?
My eyes drift to the dead whore’s corpse and I consider her earlier words.
“It’s a power struggle, a give and take.”
I’ve taken a lot, but maybe, just maybe, I can still give him something too.