Page 8 of Murder/Love

8

Jeremy

“So much blood,”Carrie says, her voice nearly drowned out by ocean and thewind.

Darkness cloaks us both, the fire flickering down to almost nothing. The teenagers hadn’t been tending to that fire as well as their booze. I barely needed the mask I wore tonight. I’ve cut them all down but Laurel, and of course, Carrie.

Laurel screams. I barely hear her cry out, her voice seeming distant even though she’s in my grasp. Hers is the final body strewn along the beach tonight. I sink my blade into Laurel’s side several more times, cutting and twisting her insides, but my eyes are on Carrie.

I watch her pick up her phone.

She’s called 911, like a good littlegirl.

The logical thing to do would be to finish off Laurel and leave. Instead, I toss the shivering shell of Laurel, quickly losing blood, into the water and walk towards Carrie. Her white gown is covered in blood, water, sand. Her bare feet I see, just barely against the moonlight, sinking into the sand, mixing with the blood on the shore that the waves keep lappingup.

“Yes, I’m at Zala Point Beach, my name is Carrie Winters,” Carrie says to the emergency responder on the other line. I step closer, mesmerized at the blood and water washing over her toes. She’s looking at it, too, through slivers of moonlight. I don’t bother being stealthy as I move closer.

Carrie’s eyes look right up intomine.

Her hand goes over the phone’s receiver. “Hello?” she asks quietly, and I move from the tiki torches and awnings that were hiding me and into her line of vision.

Shouldn’t she be afraid?

How am I supposed to think logically and leave when Carrie seems to be totally unafraid? I know her life is fairly depressing, but I don’t think that she has a deathwish.

Her hand moves from the receiver and she looks right into my eyes. Mask or not, darkness or not, I know that she recognizes me. “No,” she says, and I almost shake at the sound in this moment, so close to each other. “I didn’t see anyone.”

It’s unmistakable. Carrie is looking right at me, and lying. Does she think I’m not real, that she’s imaginingme?

The sight of her in a wet white dress, the wind whipping against her, the blood on her dress, her skin, it makes my chest tight and I ache forher.

I am real, Carrie.

“We’re sending a unit now,” I hear from the phone.

Carrie just hangsup.

I still have the blade in my hand, but I point it toward me. I touch the side of Carrie’s face with myhand.

Her mouth forms a little ‘o’ and she reaches out and puts her palm flat against my chest. The touch is like a defibrillator, the electric current so strong. The crashing waves around us sound louder. The salt taste in the air stings more. I hate to leave now, and I want to swoop her up and hide her away, mine forever. I watch her close her eyes and drop her hand. I want to kiss her, but instead I tear my hand away from her cheek and leave, disappearing as quickly as I appeared, into the night.

I feel the weight of her hand on my chest still, like I’m some demon and she’s an angel burning her touch into my skin. My hand itches to feel her silky skin again, but I head backhome.

I didn’t fuck anyone after I killed Lorenzo Sirvio. I’m not fucking anyone after I killed Carrie’s classmates. My cock is so painfully hard I almost worry that I won’t be able to drive, but I find my composure.

I can’t explain it, but when I saw Carrie, I knew she was mine. No more than I can explain how Carrie seems to recognize me in some primal way when she’s seenme.

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