Page 52 of Rot

Oh, the howls and the cries that left my mother after that were beautiful. The frantic pleadings that escaped her as she, I assumed, tried to magically bring her mother back to life. They were music to my ears, and I closed my eyes, a smile on my face, as I memorized them and filed them away for later.

My father had the right idea, I think. There was something addicting to being the one to end someone else, something so beautiful in being the last thing they saw. An unstoppable force of nature that nothing and no one could bring down… until your luck ran out, that was.

After a while, my mother stumbled out of the room, her hands covered in blood. Her eyes were wide, and she was slow to turn her head toward me. A look of horror sat on her face. Horror, shock, confusion. She stared at me not like a mother would to a daughter. No, she stared at me like I assumed she’d stared at my father that night.

I knew what she was thinking, and she was right, of course.

My grandmother wouldn’t be my last victim.

Chapter Seventeen

I didn’t waste time after Jordan collapsed. I set the rock down on the ground, positioning it so the part that hit his head faced the sky. I put my shirt back on, and then I went to roll Jordan’s body on top of the rock. His head, rather.

His body was like dead weight, and I struggled to move him, but I managed. The moment his head lolled around on the rock, I took a step back, a familiar scent in the air. His pants were down, his cock still a little hard in his boxers. A dark gray wet spot had surrounded his crotch, meaning he’d pissed himself.

His eyes were open in slits, pupils dilated as he stared up at the sky, motionless. He didn’t blink, nor did his chest rise and fall with any air in his lungs.

Jordan was dead.

I went to the large branch I’d seen off to the side, using the bottom of my shirt as a grip as I pulled it over to Jordan’s feet. I positioned it right by his feet, and then I worked to hide the line in the dirt that showed it had been moved. I did the same thing where I’d dug out the rock from the ground.

Only when the rest of the forest floor looked undisturbed did I allow myself to straighten out and turn to look at Jordan’s lifeless body. Well, his body and the staging I’d done. If I said so myself, it looked perfectly natural. No one would ever question it or me, not when I told them the story.

My ride had left me at school. Jordan strong-armed me into going with him. I couldn’t say no. I didn’t have anyone else. He’d driven us to the middle of nowhere and refused to drive me home unless I went with him into the woods. He tried to do what he’d failed to do at the party—get with me. The pants around his ankles were enough proof of that. I’d pushed him off and he’d tripped and fallen backward, unfortunately hitting his head on a rock and killing him on the spot.

Now Elias would see he had nothing to worry about when it came to Jordan, just like Dana would finally understand that I didn’t play children’s games. No, my games were strictly life and death.

I pulled out my phone and dialed nine-one-one. I didn’t take my eyes off Jordan’s body as I rattled off the moment someone picked up the call, “Hello? I need help. Police or an ambulance or something—I think… I think he’s dead.” I acted like I was having trouble breathing, air hiccupping out of my lungs, sounding frantic.

“Who?”

“Jordan. He offered to take me home from school, but… he brought me to the woods instead. He tried to hurt me but I—” I sniffed loudly, to sound like I was crying. “—I pushed him off me. He tripped and… and now he’s not moving. Please hurry.”

The person on the line asked where I was, and I told them the truth: “I don’t know. I don’t know if we’re still in Blackrain or not. I don’t know where he drove us.” I had to look on my phone’s map to see the nearby road to give them a generic location.

Of course, the person wanted to wait on the line with me, which was fine. It was a woman, so she was trying to calm me down. I assumed that meant my act was a believable one. Once the police and ambulance got here, they’d take one look and know I wasn’t lying.

I mean, look at me. I was barely five feet tall, weighed about a hundred pounds. There was no way I’d be able to overpower and purposefully kill someone as athletic as Jordan. It was just one terrible, terrible accident.

The police were the first to arrive. Two squad cars. A man and a woman. By that time I’d managed to squeeze out a few tears from my eyes, pinched my cheeks so they’d be extra red. Oh, being an actress like this just came natural to me, thanks to the rot.

The rot was useful for a lot of things, it turned out.

When the ambulance came, I told them I didn’t need to be checked out. That’s when the woman cop took me to the station to get my statement. I didn’t need a parent with me since I was eighteen, which was fine; my mother would be useless in a situation like this. As it was, once she heard about this, she’d want to leave town even more… but I couldn’t let that happen.

One thing at a time.

Since I was still in high school, the police did call my mother to come get me after they’d taken my statement. Imagine my surprise—or, my un-surprise—when it wasn’t my mother who showed up, but my aunt, instead.

Blackrain’s police station was a tiny building with old-fashioned cubicles, so I saw Aunt Maggie when she walked in. I got to my feet the moment she saw me, and she rushed over to me, her arms extended in a hug. Before I knew what was happening, she was sweeping me into her arms and hugging me tightly… something a mother would do.

“Oh, you poor, poor girl,” Aunt Maggie was busy saying. She wore smocks; if I had to guess, I’d say she left work to get me, which meant my mother was one very useless person after all. She let go of me after that, smoothing down my hair, her eyes extra watery. “Are you all right? Are you sure you don’t want to come with me and get checked out at the hospital?”

“I’m okay,” I whispered, sounding frail when in reality I was the opposite. “I just want to go home.”

“Okay. Let me talk to someone and see if they need you for anything else.” Aunt Maggie offered me a supportive smile, and then she went to speak to the nearest police officer, the woman who’d driven me here.

I was free to go. They weren’t charging me with anything, though I wasn’t allowed to leave Blackrain until their investigation wrapped up. Typical police procedure, I was informed.

---