Page 46 of Together We Rot

I clear my throat. “I’m pretty sure everyone’s fantasized about killing Brian Schmidt.” He doesn’t laugh.

“Wil. I’ve had visions, too. Remember the bug incident back in your bathroom?”

The rippling change in his voice is enough to shake me. In the light, he’s the Elwood I know, but here in the darkness, I’m not quite sure who I’m looking at. There’s something undeniably feral flickering off him like a sputtering flame.

“I think they put something evil in me.”

“No.” I jolt to my feet, hyperconscious of every change in him. I meet his eyes and notice the explosive burst of his pupils. His irises have been overtaken by black. Beneath his skin, the veins are tinged green like the coils of vines. Night casts him in a darker light.

He looks monstrous.

“Have you ever thought about killing me?” I ask, my voice unbearably small.

His eyes widen and he breaks from his own stupor. “Never! I’d never—” He catches the look in my eyes and something breaks in him. I’ve seen that same grief on my own face. He shivers with the change, a severe undercurrent running through him and breaking in a cry from his clenched teeth.

It happens then.

The floorboards scream. Elwood digs his nails into the wood, his lips sputtering for words that won’t come. That same dangerous energy as before ripples off him. Right beneath his skin—so potent I can sense it without even seeing it. A lot like a carcass in the woods. Like maggots and beetles beneath the bloated skin of a dead deer; you don’t need to see to know it’s true. You just know.

Beneath his fingertips, the room explodes in color. Weeds rip through the cracks in the floor and erupt all around us in one violent burst. Drywall caves in with an infestation of ivy. Foliage carpets the ceiling in an impossible upside-down lawn. Parts of it cave in and collapse in chunks. The corner of the room where Mom’s old desk used to be has bowed in and begun to break. The ceiling hails patches of itself down on us, and a jagged clump of it slices a path down my cheek.

The sight of my blood breaks him free.

“Wil!” Elwood cries, finding his voice again. He races toward me, and his fingers are cold against the flush of my neck. “Are you okay?”

I don’t mean to flinch from him, but I can’t help it. Here he is, the boy I know, but seconds ago he wasn’t. I had no idea what he was.

His fingers fall back to his sides, and the tears welling in his eyes break through me.

He tries to back away, but I grip his wrist.

I haven’t yet figured out what I’m about to tell him, but it doesn’t matter. My voice is drowned out by another fierce rattle of toppling walls and wavering foundations. The ceiling is going to give out soon. This whole wing of the motel is being demolished in one freak act of nature. Elwood’s midnight-black pupils have begun to recede, but they still eclipse the true color of his eyes. Somehow, someway, he did this. The fear and anger burning inside him is enough to wreak havoc. “We need to get the hell out of here.”

I barrel out of the room and down the stairs with him in tow.

I’ve got tunnel vision on the door. I grip the knob and it swings open with a rusty cry. The blizzard embraces me with open, hungry arms.

We’ve only made it a couple steps into the snow and Mom’s section of the motel is destroyed. I hear the deafening crash of the roof collapsing completely; the floors topple like dominoes, reduced to a smudge in the night. The greenery is carnivorous. It swallows the room whole. Not even the bones remain when it’s done.

In a matter of minutes, everything has been reduced to rubble and swaying grass. And then, just as easily, the grass itself wilts and dies beneath the snap of cold. In its place is nothing.

Elwood did that.

He destroyed half the motel.

My mother’s office is returned to the earth along with the rest of her.

I drag him far away from the rest of the building, which is still intact. All that noise and I doubt my father has even stirred. He might not care about anything anymore, but I’ll keep him safe. I have to.

Elwood’s trembling fingers find my shoulder. He twists me around and for one grateful, fleeting moment, he’s all I see. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, hollow. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t mean to. I—”

The heat begins somewhere deep and then flashes and burns to the rest of me. My grief is consuming. There’s no snuffing it out, but I’d do anything to try. Anything to block my vicious thoughts and the wrenching twist of my heart.

So I do the only thing I can think of. “Shut up,” I beg, and I don’t have time to explain my thoughts to Elwood, let alone to myself. He’s frozen, too, staring so intently at his hands that I’m not even sure he hears me. “I don’t want to think about anything right now. Distract me or I’m going to lose my mind.”

Dad’s got his vices. I’ve got mine. I think about all the ways I’ve dodged my grief left and right. The bottles I’ve emptied, the smoke I’ve held in my lungs, the sloppy drunk kisses with guys I didn’t give a shit about. Anything and everything I’d do to feel something else.

Make it go away. Make it all go away.

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