Page 40 of Grave Love
The control panel beeps, signaling the next stage of the burn. I scan at the dials and confirm everything is correct, then stare at the back of Blaze’s head. Taking the same chair he used last night, he spins it around until it faces the window, then he sits. His thumb traces his chin, deep in thought. The retort hums with fire, and I glance at the metal door, imagining my corpse inside of the oven, the flames devouring my flesh until there’s nothing left. I don’t imagine his mother could’ve been incinerated like that.
“What happened to the body?” I ask.
He smirks. He hears it too—my choice of words: ‘the body,’not‘her body.’
“Buried her in the backyard. When my brother came back from college, all he had to do was look at me, and he knew what happened.”
“Did he ever try to turn her into the police like he said he would?”
Blaze shakes his head. “The guilt was too much for him. In his mind, she was good to him. Sometimes, he tried to tell me it wasn’tthatbad. She was nice to him, right? I must’ve done something to deserve the way she treated me.”
Heat flushes through my body. How could his own brother say those things to him? I clench my jaw, my lips flattening. The man was supposed to protect his brother, and instead, he told his brother that he was freaking out over nothing?
You would know if your leg was broken,my grandmother told me once.You can walk, can’t you? Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
People who are supposed to love you. Protect you.
Blaze stands, still facing the window, his back to me. His fingers tap the windowsill in a steady rhythm, like a heartbeat. I tuck a piece of hair behind my ear.
He jerks around, his bloodshot eyes bulging as he seethes at me.
“You think I’m weak, don’t you?” he snaps. “That I’m some fucked up, insecure little boy who needs to kill women to feel good about himself.”
I blink rapidly. My lips quiver, fear clawing at my skull, trying to climb out, but I keep it tucked inside of me. I think of the reasons I should be afraid of Blaze. He claims he’s a killer. He’s choked me unconscious before. And he just told me he killed his own mother.
I’m not scared. Apprehensive, maybe, but this is what I wanted, right? To know the man who is going to kill me. To prove that he isn’t clinical.
Blaze is anythingbutclinical.
“I know,” he pauses. “You must think I’m a misogynist.”
He says it plainly; a statement. His judgment bestowed upon me. My face twitches. Misogynist? Why does that matter? Does he care about what I think?
No, this is a test to see if I’m like everyone else. If I’ll blame it on him like his brother did.
“I think you don’t trustanyone,” I say. “Why would you? Your own mother and brother betrayed you.” I lift my shoulders. My mother didn’t kill herself to hurt me; I was too young for that. In spite of that, it always felt like she must’ve done it because she didn’t care about me. Like I wasn’t enough to keep her alive. Like I need to do the exact same too, because if I can’t keep my mother happy, then why am I making my grandmother’s life miserable? It’s not like she wants me around. I’m a burden to her.
“I don’t trust anyone either,” I say.
Blaze’s upper lip twitches, almost curving into a smile. “Not even yourself?”
I look down at my flats. “Especially not me.”
“And you’re not baffled by my sadism.”
I shake my head. I don’t know if it has to do with my mother’s death or my grandmother’s lack of physical affection, but I can’t have normal sex. I can’t cuddle. I can’t let anyone hold me. Even when I was having sex with my ex-fiancé, wenevertouched outside of the bedroom. It’s like I couldn’t take his touch without imagining my mother’s body hanging there. How loose her arms must have been as she swung from the noose.
By the time I was in college, I knew it was an addiction, and that fantasy grew until I started dreaming of a man who would fuck me while he killed me. As if that would make my mother’s death make more sense. As if I could finally understand my own impending doom.
Blaze’s sadism makes sense to me.
“I don’t judge people for what they like,” I say. “I know what I like is fucked up. I know I’m a freak.”
His eyes sear into me. Studying me. Reading something below the surface that I’m not aware of yet.
“You truly think that,” he says slowly.
“Who pretends to be dead? Who wants to get killed while being fucked?” I laugh nervously, my throat thick with shame. “It’s not normal.”
