Page 19 of Bad Seed
Resigned to my fate, I trudge across the parking lot.
Fingers dance over my arm.
“I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t we go back to my place?”
His place? I’d accuse him of orchestrating this whole thing, but the Green Elephant was my idea, and I’ve been trying to chain him to my bed since he saved my life.
“I can whip us up some dinner. It’s no tea leaf salad, but—”
“Yes!” I shout over him to a blinking shock of surprise then a slow grin.
My smile says ‘I can’t wait to try your food’ while my eyes scream ‘I’m going to swallow your cock whole.’ “Let’s go.”
?
AFTER TURNING ON every location sharing app with my friends, I pull onto King’s road behind him. So I’m doing this. I’m really following a guy to his house just to go to bone town.
Oh my god, do not call it bone town.
“Sade!” Lucy’s voice cuts over the speakers, killing the song I didn’t hear. “Are you serious?”
“As a thing that’s serious,” I say, trying to focus on the road. All I can see is a big ass truck, which is probably how it feels following behind Aubry himself. I’ve been around men taller than me before, but never one who’s so much taller and wider that I feel…small.
“Where are you heading?” she asks.
“West on King’s road, probably out of town.” We used to send each other pictures of our date’s license plates and last identifiable information since college. Just in case they ever need to find our bodies. It’s a macabre calming ritual for first date jitters. Now it’s all on the app. I’m still itching to take a pic of his truck just to show off how much junk it could hold if it wanted to.
“Just you, that tall drink of whiskey, and a farm in the middle of nowhere. Think he’ll introduce you to his mother?” Lucy laughs.
“Shut up,” I shriek. He’s normal. As normal as a man who wants to fuck me could be, anyway.
“That’s her in the corner.” Lucy puts on a withered voice. “Been sitting there for fifteen years, not aged a day.”
“I’m sorry, is the mother talking?” I ask. The truck comes to a slow, blinker on. I mimic and follow. “We’re turning left onto Ashley Creek drive.” Narrating like I’m in some slow police chase is a good distraction from every nerve Lucy’s plucking.
“Out into the boondocks,” Lucy cries out before beginning to sing some abominable amalgamation of songs that end with me being butchered into tiny pieces. I try to follow along, but my butterflies are getting Mothra sized. Fancy houses, the kinds with infinity pools and in-law suites, zip on past.
The drive’s beautiful, the trees shifting to oranges and yellows while we zip on past. As we circle up a climbing hill, I can almost make out the Sierra Nevadas in the distance.Where are we going?
Aubry takes one more turn and my jaw drops.
No. He can’t be serious.
“Sade? What’s happening? Don’t tell me he already got you.”
We travel though rows of bushes in autumnal colors that tower above my car. I try to peer around them, spying only a hint of a blue roof. Maybe he lives in a hedge maze, and he’s bringing me to help fight the minotaur. I start to laugh.
Then the hedges end.
I stop laughing.
And begin to hyperventilate.
“It’s…it’s…”
“A shack? A murder cellar? A tent in the foothills?” Lucy switches from joking to panic fast. “Sade? Talk to me.”
“It’s a mansion!” I cry out. “Columns, there’s fucking columns.”
