Page 82 of Caution Tape

“That’s bile. Bile and probably a little bit of your cum. I felt it when I was blowing you.” She sighs. “I thought if I made you come before she did, you’d pick me over her. Instead, you two did something very, very nasty to me.”

There’s a straight patch of road ahead and no cars around. I take a deep breath, hold it in and shut my eyes.

One.

Two.

Three.

I breathe out.

I check the road.

I breathe again.

Then I look in the backseat.

Natalie’s entire head is sticking through. Upside down and smeared with more bile as she hangs upside down, jostling with the motion of the car. Her hair hangs to the floor, clumped with black clots of blood. They remind me of black flies, snarled in a spider’s web.

“I’m not going anywhere, No-lan.”

I nod. Okay. I hallucinate now. Mental illness symptoms tend to manifest in the mid-to-late twenties. Okay. This is mine. I have…

Ex-girlfriend corpse hallucinations.

I focus on the road, tracing the yellow median line with my eyes, holding it steady, willing Natalie away. There’s a worrying knot working in my stomach. How soon until I start seeing Jerald, and Michael, and Ryan? Will I be seeing everyone I kill? Digging themselves out of the ground and out of the walls just to taunt me?

Eyes on the road.

Eyes on the backseat. She’s gone.

Eyes back to the road.

Eyes to the backseat.

She’s pulled herself midway out, but her hips are stuck and she’s using her bloody hands to widen the gap so she can squeeze through. Her bare breasts flop and dangle as she strains to free herself. She catches my eye and grins widely, liquid spewing between her teeth.

My eyes go back to the road. I refuse to turn my head despite all the choked gasping and groans I hear as she tries to get out of the trunk.

She can’t hurt me. She’s dead. She’s been dead for hours. If she was going to get up and move around, she would’ve when Cora and I were laying together in bed. This isn’t. You got a sick mind, baby, that’s it. A sick mind. Most of the time it just makes you want to bite people, but right now it’s biting you. And you know what? That’s fine. We can roll with that. Your mind wants to play games? Okay. Let’s play.

Out of the side of my vision I watch her pull herself into the front seat. For a brief moment, the gash in her throat flaps at me like a hungry mouth, the edges of the wound clapping together. Old blood oozes out like thick chocolate syrup.

It reeks.

It reeks of shit and rot and that fridge I cleaned out with my dad.

Then she’s sitting next to me, like I’m taking her to dinner. She crosses her bare legs and examines her nails, waiting for me to speak. There’s blood down her neck and chest, a large crimson streak that extends down her hip, and along her thigh, ending in a skinny drizzle that encircles her ankle.

I’ve seen Natalie alive, in lingerie, asking me to join her on the bed. I’ve had her on her knees, adoring me with those big eyes.

She’s never looked more attractive than right now.

“What do you want, Natalie?”

“Nothing much, babe. Just wondering how this all ends.”

“What are you talking about?”

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