Page 111 of Little Deaths

“Only for you.” He gripped her harder. “Did you ever want to kill me?”

She looked rattled. “I wanted to hurt you. I hated you for what you made me feel. For what you did to me. How you betrayed me. You were the only thing in this town that felt safe, and to have you turn on me like that—” Her voice broke. “I had to get rid of you.”

“I came down here thinking I could fuck you out of my system,” said Rafe. “But being here only reminded me why I fell for you in the first place. I don’t care if you see yourself as broken. I’ve been chasing your reflection in a ruin of jagged shards for the last ten years. It’s you I want—flaws and all. No facsimiles. No illusions. Just real flesh-and-blood you.”

He tilted her chin up. Her eyes were clouded, and she seemed to have trouble meeting his gaze. “I won’t hurt you again,” he told her. “And the next time someone else tries, you won’t have to be quite as strong. Because I’ll be there. And I’ll kill them for you.”

“You . . . would?”

“Yes.”

There was a knock at the door, followed by an ominous creaking noise. Rafe took a step back and Donni nearly lost her balance, clinging to his neck.

Throwing another glance towards the hall, he guided her to the stool and watched her struggle to stay upright with a worried expression. “How are you this drunk already? Is that a Sauternes?”

“No.” She ran her hand down his arm. “It doesn’t have any rings.”

A bad feeling rose up in his gut. He didn’t remember her popping the cork and it wasn’t a screw-top. He glanced at the label and his heart sank. It was a fucking chardonnay.

Leaving her perched precariously on the stool, he jogged to the front door and peered out through the eye-hole. There was a highball glass on the front porch. Sliding his hand into his pocket for his knife, he slid the door open a crack—and gasped.

There were two severed eyes inside, suspended in fluid, their trailing optic nerves dangled artfully over the rim. Propped against it was a card, written in that same gory-looking red.

AS MAE WEST ONCE SAID, HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU—DEAD

“Oh fuck,” he said, quickly shutting the door and locking it. He immediately went to the bathroom and washed his hands, even though he hadn’t touched the glass or what was in it. The medicine cabinet was hanging open. Rafe opened it wider, his eyes scanning the contents.

The ancient bottle of Quaaludes was gone.

“Donni,” he barked, alarmed now.

“I’m in the kitchen,” she sang out. “Hold on tight, Raffi. It’s spinning.”

He took a sip of her wine and spat it out with a grimace. It was bitter. Very, very bitter. He picked up the bottle again, tilting it towards the light. There were some little half-dissolved lumps in it, floating at the top like icebergs.Or like crushed fragments of pills.

“Donni,” he said, speaking very slowly in spite of his panic. “Where’s your—”

He stopped, frozen.There’s the pop, he remembered thinking, randomly. But the sound of it was all wrong for a wine bottle, and why the fuck it be happening now?

The pain came hot on the heels of that thought, like someone had taken a shot to his back with a hammer. He dropped, feeling something slam up against him. The floor—he was on the floor.

“Rafe?” Donni’s voice was echoing strangely over the ringing in his ears. “Raffi?”

He clutched at the front of his suddenly wet shirtfront and his palm came back red.

The last thing he heard was her trademark hoarse scream.

???????

Blood. There was blood. On the floor. On Rafe. On her, too, as she spilled from the stool to the floor like her body had gone liquid and crawled to him.

He was still breathing, but his eyes were closed and his skin had gone rather pale. “Oh God,” she moaned, groping for her—her phone. Where was her phone? She looked around, wild-eyed, and her eyes caught on a black-robed figure, wearing one of the devil masks fromSatan’s Key.

Her eyes widened, and then went wider still, until it felt like they might fall from their sockets.

She wasn’t even aware of screaming at first. But then the sound of it was filling the kitchen, hurting her ears.No, she thought.No, no, no, no.

“That wasn’t very good,” the creature—the man, she corrected herself—said, in a stilted, robotic voice. “I think that needs another take.”

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