Page 41 of Bloody Desecration

Gareth played my body like a fiddle. Whatever that expression meant, I wasn’t too sure, but I think it fit here, because it didn’t take long at all for my body to become burdened with the need to release.

The orgasm arrived swiftly and viciously, and it took hold of everything I was, refusing to let go as it swelled within me until it exploded. Hot, searing pleasure swallowed me up, and I cried out, not bothering to be quiet. Why should I, when my mom wasn’t here?

Let’s just say I was glad Gareth decided to pay me a midnight visit, gladder that he decided to stay after we were done—never thought he’d be the cuddling type, after everything he’d done to me—because when the next day rolled around, everything changed.

Chapter Fourteen – Brianna

Everyone in school was off. You could tell. The halls were quiet, even between classes, and the teachers were unfocused. Some of them couldn’t even teach, telling us to look over whatever chapter in the textbook and take notes ourselves. Some classes became a quiet study hall. Everyone was feeling the murders.

The unfortunate death of Neo aside, they could try to ignore one body, but two… the second of which had been left on a playground, her face mutilated, you couldn’t ignore that. Nor could you overlook the fact that the two bodies belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Watts—and that said nothing about Erin’s car at Neo’s grandfather’s house.

What few conversations I heard amongst the other students involved Neo. How maybe he got caught up in some shifty, shady things, with bad people who were now terrorizing Eastcreek. Some had theories that Neo had been buying steroids off some drug dealers from an adjacent town, and he didn’t have enough to pay them this last time, so they went off.

But that particular theory was reaching, because why would they go after Erin and her family and not Neo’s family?

And then there were those wondering if Alistair could do something about it. He owned damn near the whole town, so why didn’t he hire a private team of investigators to find the culprit and bring them to justice? Because, obviously, the sheriff’s department wasn’t doing shit.

You couldn’t blame Rick or his fellow sheriffs for what was happening, though, nor could you blame them for not being able to catch Brett Banks. Eastcreek was such a small town, everything was trapped in the past. There was, I believe, a single stop light. All other intersections were stop signs. Hardly any cameras anywhere, and those places that had cameras probably had old ones.

Eastcreek wasn’t a hopping place. Roads weren’t busy. It was easy for someone to dump bodies without anyone else seeing, but no one wanted to face that reality. Up until now, everyone had thought this town was a safe place to be, even with its wealthy overlord.

That couldn’t have been farther from the truth.

By the time lunch rolled around, I was resigned to having a weird day. I was waiting for another call from Brett while trying to act normal—but it was impossible to act normal when no one else was. Eastcreek High felt like a liminal place, somewhere in between, neither here nor there, and today, everyone knew it.

When I reached the lunch table, I found Kaity, Angelina, and Cherith were already there. No one had food, either bought from the cafeteria or brought in a brown bag from home. My guess was they weren’t hungry. Cherith wasn’t even looking at her phone. Each of them wore a morose, sullen expression, telling me exactly what was on their minds.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Erin had officially been labeled as missing, and now that the identities of her parents had been announced… and with how they’d been found, it wasn’t far-fetched to believe Erin would be next, and that meant she was dead.

It was something I’d assumed for a while now, honestly, but it was a new development for Kaity and the others, along with the whole school.

“Hey,” I said to no one in particular after I’d sat down, breaking the silence of the lunch table. The whole cafeteria, for that matter, was a lot quieter than it should be. Today was definitely a weird day.

No one said hello back. Angelina, however, did mutter as she absentmindedly twisted a tendril of teal hair around a finger, “I can’t believe this is happening.”

“Me, either,” Cherith spoke with a frown. Her eyes stared at a nondescript spot on the table, a far-off gaze that told me her mind was elsewhere. Her hands rested on her lap beneath the table, and she appeared even smaller than she usually looked.

“They need to catch the son of a bitch who’s doing it,” Kaity huffed, blinking rapidly—and then I saw why she blinked so much. Her eyes were extra watery; I’d bet anything she’d been fighting tears all day. “They need to find him, or them, or whoever it is before…” She trailed off, unable to say it.

Angelina whispered, “Do you think… she’s still—” She stopped when Kaity tossed her a glare.

Kaity said, “I just don’t get why. Why Erin? Why her parents? They’re good people. They’d never get involved with anything bad. I’ve known them my whole life. We’ve been best friends since preschool.” I didn’t know who she was saying that to, maybe me, since the others already knew this information already. “She’s a good person. Her parents were nice.”

I didn’t say it out loud, but I thought it: just because you were a good person didn’t mean the world’s horrors couldn’t come after you. Being good and righteous was no defense against the criminals and the killers. Sometimes bad shit happened, and there was nothing you could do to stop it.

What Kaity didn’t know, of course, was that this was entirely my fault.

The lunch table got quiet after that, no one saying a word in response to what Kaity had said. I turned my head and glanced at the tables around us, at the other Eastcreek High students. Some tables were knee-deep in conversation, but others… let’s just say you could feel it in the air. Something was off. It’d been off all day, and I had the feeling it’d continue to be off until this was over.

It was crazy, how you had to keep going, day after day, even while the world was falling apart around you. Life didn’t stop, even if it got batshit crazy. You still had responsibilities, things to do. No one ever talked about that, just like no one ever talked about how you got so tired from those daily responsibilities that when the shit hit the fan, you had nothing left in you. No shits left to give. How could you do anything when you were too exhausted to care?

Everyone cared now, but in a week, everything would get back to normal, because it had to. Because we couldn’t keep living like this.

Suddenly, Kaity glanced up, and her eyebrows furrowed. “Mr. Huckleberry,” she said the principal’s name out of the blue, and I turned my head to see him rushing out of the office, a walkie-talkie in his hand, his phone in his other. The secretary was right behind him, although she soon trailed behind, her legs too stout to keep up.

My stomach sank when I saw the look on Mr. Huckleberry’s face, and Kaity must’ve noticed it too, because she asked, “Do you think—” She got up without saying another word, and before I could stop her, she was tailing them both.

Angelina, Cherith, and I watched her go, and then Angelina looked at me. “Should we go too?” Her voice was hesitant, tentative. It was obvious she didn’t know what to do, and she looked to me for guidance.

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