Page 81 of Peak Cruelty

41

Vance

The door doesn’t close right.It’s still swinging open and shut, half on its hinges, like it’s as unsure as I am what the hell just happened.

There’s blood on the floor.Mine.Hers.I can’t tell where one ends and the other starts.Maybe that’s the point.

I don’t move for a while.Not because I can’t—though that’s part of it.But because the house feels rigged, like if I shift wrong, the whole thing will detonate.

Eventually, I push up.One elbow at a time.Not yet.I try once and black out halfway.Come to with the blood crusted dry and the light outside different.

My body protests.My ribs scream.Something shifts when I breathe, and it’s not just the air.It grates.There’s a whine behind my eyes that might be a concussion—or maybe just the part of my brain trying to make sense of what I saw.

She didn’t cry.Didn’t beg.Didn’t even look surprised.

She just looked…resigned.Like she always knew this day would come.Like she’d just hoped it wouldn’t be today.

I sit back against the cabinet.Feels like hours pass there.Might be less.Might be more.I watch the shadow in the corner stretch, then vanish.The room tilts again.Something low and metallic rises in my throat.

I breathe slowly, through the taste of copper.There’s a smear of blood where her head hit the floor.I look at it too long.

The puzzle box is still on the table.Water glass half full.Apple still on the plate.Domestic.Almost stupid.

She told me.Tried, anyway.In her own way.Little comments.Offhand jokes.The way she flinched at certain sounds, but never at me.And I missed it.Thought I was the monster in the room.

Turns out, I was the intermission.

She wasn’t lying.

She’s had worse.

She’sknownworse.

I thought I was doing something here—breaking her down, forcing a reckoning.But she’d already been broken.Already reckoned with things I don’t have the spine to name.

I touch my jaw.It’s swelling fast.Split open down one side.She took worse hits in less time.Stayed conscious longer than I did.And that smile she gave me before they dragged her out—barely a smile, really—wasn’t softness.It was strategy.

She knew they wouldn’t kill me.Not if she played it right.

So she did.

Left me breathing and her bleeding for it.

Like it wasn’t even worth thinking twice about.

I try standing.The first attempt ends with the floor again.The second attempt gets me halfway.Third, I crawl.Make it nearly there before the pain doubles me over.My side’s fucked.Ribs maybe cracked.There’s a tooth loose in the back of my mouth I want to rip out just for something to do.

Instead, I stumble toward the sink and wash the blood off my face and hands.It keeps coming.

It takes a full minute to realize I’ve been holding the faucet as if it’s the only thing keeping me upright.The storm has moved inland.I can hear it now—wind rising, distant thunder trailing behind.

I press my palms to the counter and breathe.

Then I look around the place.The house is exactly how we left it.Except she’s not in it.Which makes it nothing.

I stare at the door.Still open.Still swinging.

By the time I make it to the couch, it’s dark again.My shirt’s stiff with dried blood.Everything hurts less.Or maybe just deeper.

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