Page 3 of Roses Are Dead
“Look at the very top mark.”
I did.
“Touch it.”
It was a fight not to disobey him. But I did as he asked.
“That is ours, Rose. You and I made that mark.”
He was certifiably crazy. And I was even more insane for ever thinking I could bargain and reason with someone clearly trying to outwit the very Devil himself.
My silence kept him talking. “Remember that day? You wore a dress. I could see up your skirt. Your thin little legs, virginal white panties, those ridiculous light up tennis shoes you wore. There was pink lace on your socks.”
I hated pink. Most any color now. Except black.
“Your point?”
He grabbed my hair and forced my face against the rough wood. I hadn’t had any warning. “These are deaths, Rose. All of them. Count.”
There was no way I could. “Okay,” I said to placate him. That was the game. Placate Carl. Pretend to be obedient so he’d do what I wanted. Give up my life to keep him happily amused for long enough to get his compliance. It had been such a rough September. But I’d never complain. Too much hung in the balance. “I’m going to bruise. And we have the doctor’s appointments next week.”
He let go of my hair, and I straightened the pins for my braids so nothing hung loose. As I did, he traced down my cheek with a fingertip. “I don’t think you’ll bruise. It’s just a little red. Put a cold washcloth on it.”
If I didn’t know better, I’d think he cared about me. The soft tone of his voice was deceptively sweet. But it was all an act. One he’d insisted upon. Carl the kind. Carl the merciful. Carl the forgiven.
What a crock of bullshit that was.
And an even bigger crock held my own deception. I wasn’t this meek version of myself. The button-down beige and pastel clothes were echoes of a different life.
Now that he’d let me go, I counted the marks. He made it easy, lining up the neat hash marks in rows of five. Only the top line and the bottom row with its lightly scratched ghosts broke the pattern.
Sixteen and four to come.
If Carl was to be believed, he’d had a hand in those deaths. Details on those would come in handy if I needed to blackmail him. Yet, a part of me didn’t want to know. If Carl had escalated his bloodlust, I was in deep trouble. And those ambiguous final four had to remain quiet. Because, while Carl gave the Destroyers exactly the information they needed to hunt the gang down, he hadn’t precisely done anything wrong. And he had a point. No one narced on the Destroyers and lived. He’d found people more diabolical than he was, and that was not only dangerous, but deadly.
What if he’s playing a game with me?
Then I’d have to play a better game is all. He fought proxy wars by making others do his dirty work. Carl rarely took an active role, knowing full well how a single crime could bury him. Or ostracize him. I smiled. I’d been his downfall once. I could do it again if he didn’t do what I needed him to do. Hopefully, before he killed me.
I needed to break free. I needed an escape.
I needed hope. But that wasn’t what grew in my heart. The spark born there was vengeance. A thirst for violence when despair becomes desperation.
The only light I could see was that after the blood donation procedure, this farce should be done. I’d be free if everything went well. Carl had complied with all the medical orders, taken the shots to boost his stem cells, and all his tests came back perfect. I’d made plans to move in with Beth’s family to help her focus on her recovery and to eliminate “temptation” from Carl’s life. Hopefully, by the time she got better, I could figure out a way to return to my old self and remain out of Carl’s crosshairs.
Despite that, an invisible noose tightened around my neck. Carl had manipulated my life to fit his plans. I couldn’t trust he’d let me go. That meant I needed to give fate a little “nudge.”
A few nights later, I slipped out, prepared, but not knowing if I’d find a suitable location. My requirements were moving water, a place to stand in the in-between, and the new moon. I couldn’t look anything up on my laptop because Carl would find out. I couldn’t use my phone because I wasn’t certain that Carl’s hacker hadn’t touched that, too.
The weather got worse as I crossed the bridge. A late hurricane drove moisture up the eastern seaboard and despite breaking up over twenty hours ago, the clouds churned ominously.
But that worked in my favor. The threat of more rain kept sane folk inside. A flash of lightning lit up the sky as I drove west along a tributary to the Susquehanna. The flash bounced behind the clouds, giving a soft glow to the surroundings. In that brief reprieve to the gloom, I spotted a chained driveway. I stopped the car. It was a boat launch. Perfect for what I needed.
I unhooked the chain and drove in. I hid the car from view behind a monstrous bank of drooping gooseberry bushes.
The dense canvas of my coat barely snagged as I slipped through a gauntlet of thorny brush to reach a broken dock that jutted into the river. The right side had solid planks that creaked as I walked onto them. I took the jacket and my dress off to face nature wearing nothing but the sky. Then came the hard part. Unbraiding my hair.
And meditating.
