Page 37 of The Lies We Steal

Rook walks towards Chris, the bag in one hand. For a moment there is relief in Chris’s eyes, thankful I’m done beating him. My toes curl thinking of how in just a few seconds, he’ll be begging for me to kick the shit out of him if we’ll stop what is happening. Rook made his way behind Chris and says, “Death from snake bites isn’t the way to go, Chris.” He says, before carefully turning the bag upside down and dumping the contents all over the kneeling man in front of him.

The black, red, and yellow snakes fell across his body. Covering his shoulders and lap. It took less than a millisecond before he realized what has happening. Registering that his worst fear had come true.

“How does that song go, Thatcher? Red and yellow can kill a fellow?” Rook says as he squats behind him, saying it loud enough that he’d hear it over the hysteria.

The screams were so loud after that, he wouldn’t have been able to hear us torment him. So acutely blaring I was positive he’d shattered the sound barrier. I wasn’t even sure there was enough capacity in the human lungs to project screams like that.

He flung his arms wildly, throwing the silly creatures in multiple directions, their slinky bodies whirling in the wind. I doubt he knew that if he would have just sat calm, they would have minded their business and left him alone.

But coral snakes will bite when threatened and being slung around seemed pretty menacing when you’re a snake. The first strike landed on his neck, the small mouth of the serpent opening to deliver the second most poisonous neurotoxin in the world. Another struck his hand. With two bites, he’d have less than three hours before his entire respiratory system shut down.

“Tell us what we want to know Chris. You can walk out of this.” I offer him, “The process of before death from a neurotoxin is painful. Sweats, vomiting, excruciating pain. I can make it go away.” I continue, walking towards his whitening body, so curious as to why he’s so hellbent on staying quiet. What was it that he was hiding?

The screams had hushed, sobs had taken their place. His body shaking from the sheer force of his tears. He was looking up at me, pale face and milky eyes. Hopeless, broken, the will inside of him had snapped beneath my weight.

“I got a text! I got a te…text, from my guy!” He wails, shaking “Please just get them off! Get them off and I’ll tell you!” He choked on his tears, the wetness allowed a stream down his face, cutting a path through the blood that has become a consistency like paint.

Rook comes to his rescue, well as much as he can after snake bites. Using his foot, he moves them away from his shaking body. Picking a few of them up with his bare hands and laying them several feet away. Keeping one in his hand, playing with it,

“Will you put that shit down before you get bit.” I scold.

He rolls his eyes, putting it down, “Yes, captain jackass.”

My eyes return to Chris, watching him heave on his hand and knees. His entire stomach contents emptied out onto the ground. I wasn’t sure if it was from the nerves, or the bites. Either way, I found it hard to feel sorry for him.

I wondered if this is how Rose felt. If he’d been the one to end her life, if she felt scared like this. If she begged, if she cried for Silas. My nostrils flare, my boot pressing into Chris’s side, kicking him over onto his back.

“Talk.”

“I don’t make the drugs.” He coughs, “I don’t…I just, I pick it up and drop it where it needs to go. When I started working there I got a text from a random number. I thought it was bullshit, but there was always money in my account after the drops. This TA job doesn’t pay shit and it’s extra money.” He breathes, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“I got a text from my guy, I don’t know who he is, I just know he tells me where to pick up the drugs and where they are headed. He told me he had something he needed me to take care of, I just thought—I thought it was another drug run or something. Told me he’d pay my twenty-five hundred for it.”

Everything in this town comes down to money. Everything. This entire place had sold their soul to the devil for fucking nickels and dimes.

“Go on.” I push.

He brings his hand to his neck, where the bite is swollen and red, wincing, “I showed up to the address, and there was a parked car. He had told me to check the trunk and that’s when I found her. She was already dead!” He says panicking.

“I told him I was out. I couldn’t do it, but all he needed was for me to plant her body, make it look like an accidental OD. It was easy money, man! So I…I just, I…I left her at that trap house cause I knew that’s where kids still partied.”

His explanation just makes me angrier, it doesn’t soothe or even help. It only makes it worse.

“So we are just supposed to believe you didn’t kill her? We are just supposed to take your word for it, Chris?” Thatcher accuses.

Chris raises his hand in defense, “I swear! I swear! That’s all I know! I don’t know who killed her,” He weeps, like a newborn baby, “The guy who texts me is a teacher, he’s making the drugs, creating it in the school labs. I guess it’s him, he did it! I don’t know, please man just don’t let me die!” And he slowly turns into another blubbering mess, the pain beginning to set in. He rolled into a ball, cradling himself.

I run my hands down my face. I’m so fucking tired of running in circles. More dead ends. More people who don’t fucking know anything. I ram my fist into the nearest tree bark, splintering the first layer and from the feel of it, slicing my knuckles wide the fuck open.

“God fucking dammit!” I yell into the sky.

And if I thought I was angry. If I thought my rage was unquenchable in this moment, I couldn’t imagine what Silas was feeling as he appeared from the shadows.

He gives Chris no chance at pleading his case, he’d buried himself the moment he admitted to laying hands on his girlfriend’s dead body. There was no stopping him from walking behind Chris, grabbing his hair and yanking him up to his knees.

I couldn’t argue when I watch the sharp blind slice straight across the flesh of Chris’s neck. The thick liquid pouring from the wound, spilling onto the ground.

There was a moment of silence, our heavy breathing and the sound of Chris’s body spurting for help he was not going to receive from any of us before he was dead.

---