Page 194 of His Pretty Little Duet

Max squats slowly, hovering over Dustin. A shadow cast over the crippled body of his enemy.

He reaches down and tears a piece of Dustin’s shirt, removing a strip of soiled fabric. Dustin comes to with a hazy groan as Max shoves the ash-covered material into his mouth, muffling the guttural sounds that rumble out.

Dustin begins to choke, the smoke and soot filling his pulsing throat, provoking it to contract and fight for air.

“I don’t like his eyes,” I say in Sicilian, holding the trembling body of my sweet girl, only further driven by her sorrow. Further angered by his effect on her.

Max’s smile widens.

Dustin gapes as the shiny blade approaches the first glistening orb, his black pupil darting to follow the skew just as it connects. Sliding in with ease, the blade spears the brown eyeball straight through the centre.

A few twists later and Max has the first orb impaled and plucked from Dustin’s skull.

He flicks the wet ball to the dirt, where it lies on its side, sizzling in the charred dirt, wide and watching as Dustin vomits around the cloth. Muffled rasping sounds curdle within his clogged mouth and throat. His body shakes with horror.

Max leans in for the second one, slowly lowering the blade closer and closer until the tip dips into the fluid coating Dustin’s last eye—the last one that looks like Fawn’s.

He plunges in slowly.

A fraction at a time.

Then he slams the knife down until only the handle can be seen bobbing and swaying with the eye it has impaled.

My brother is not a man of words, but he still hisses by Dustin’s ear, "No eyes. You must reallyfeelthe Butchers all around you now… And a Butcher is the last thing you will ever feel."

Fawn

The webbingof trees makes a near-black tunnel that envelops the car as Clay drives us from the campsite, from the dead bodies, ash, and debris. From the executions.

Everything happened so fast.

As though I had only just whispered, “Hello,” to my dad moments ago, then someone hit fast-forward, a blur of events flashing behind my eyes in an instant; the vision of Max taking a bullet for me, of Clay dragging me beneath him. Of bullets flying. Of people dying. Of flames and smoke and ash, and then it stops. And I am dropped into this seat.

In this gliding car.

Where everything is still: the glass blocks the smoke, the tyres roll gently on the windy road, and the man beside me is as cold as stone, but my heart?—

My heart is still on fast-forward. Still mirroring the events that have somehow ended just as they began.

I look down at my body. Belt on.

When did that happen?

When did I get in the car? In this suspended space between the first hello and the last death, I sit, experiencing my body as though it’s been detached.

I feel—the adrenaline.

Feel my heart jumping into my mouth, feel everything inside me moving at a million miles an hour while nothing but the car moves… My body is still back there.

Hands shake.

Legs tight with fatigue.

Skin hot and sweaty.

A growl that should seem otherworldly but in this tunnel of fire only fits the ominous scene, screams passed our car. I barely flinch. More bikes join the thunder. Riding them, Clay’s men and the Butcher brothers break away from us.

The three motorbikes howl up the narrow road like bats out of hell. The only light comes from the eyes of each headlight.

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