Page 129 of Deceit

We’re at a high school, how fucked up is that?

Pretty jacked if you didn’t clean the blood he’s going to be spilling off the oil-based polyurethane floor.

“Nah, I’m sure she was better looking,” Marty replies, then tosses an aerosol can at me. “Might be a little more satisfying.”

Motherfucker knows me like the back of his hand.

That, and he heard the story of my first kill.

A flick of a Zippo light illuminates at my side and Kyson is holding it, giving me silent permission to do what I want.

What I need right now.

If it hasn’t been apparent already, I’m not myself. I’m going through something. I feel disoriented and off-track.

My heart is breaking, there’s no other name for it. I can’t deny it or change it. I’m not able to let it go. I have to watch it until one of us leaves—Emmy or me.

“Listen...” Mad Dog squirms and Marty steps aside from him to keep from getting any of whatever the hell he gave me off his clothes.

Highly flammable shit—just like my wife and me.

We were fire, never quenched or sated but hungry for more. We destroyed and enveloped everything—each other, our feelings, the way we tried to keep away.

Now, it has to be smothered into embers and eventually die.

“Should we ask again?” Marty proposes.

“I don’tknow, man,” Mad Dog rants, jerking on his bindings. “We don’t give names. I just show up at a location that we’ve been holding for over a decade.”

“Funny,” Marty claims with his hands clasped behind his back. “You weren’t even born a decade ago.”

Mad Dog glares at him, confident that he won’t be ratting anyone out tonight, when a second scream fills the air by Kyson’s jagged blade.

He begins to peel away the skin at the shoulder of one of the other dudes that we caught along with him.

Mad Dog immediately snaps his attention to me, skin tone paling a tad, and—damn, I really fucked up his face.

Purple bruises are already forming under his eyes. His nose is still seeping blood and I busted his lips twice. From his nostrils down is a crimson veil of my actions, and it’s only about to get worse.

Snapping the sparkwheel, the spark from my Zippo light comes to life, and talking is beyond overrated at this point.

I shake the can in my hand twice and aim, spraying the strong-smelling substance in the air. Then I hover the flame underneath, creating my own flamethrower. The element reeks of WD-40, and once some of it gets on Mad Dog’s shirt, so do the flames.

He shrills out in horror and surprise, thrashing around to put the small blaze out of his clothes but I shower more...on his skin.

The smell of burning flesh fills my nostrils a moment later and Mad Dog’s screeching is so loud that it makes it even more annoying when it echoes off the gym walls.

I stop squirting to keep some of my flammable liquid and hold out a hand for Kyson.

“Arrow,” I say through our hood victim’s hollers and pleas.

Kyson holds the pointy tip and I spray it with my reactor, then light it on fire. My bow is handed over, and I step back, giving me more space to make my next shot something I have to focus on.

Inhaling a hit off Mills’s blunt, I hurl back on the cord of my bow. Mad Dog lowers his voice as he seethes air through his clenched teeth.

Then his eyes crinkle in challenge and I let it go, allowing the arrow to fly and pierce the top of his thigh.

He growls loudly, tucking his chin into his collar bone to attempt to keep his agony muffled.

---