Page 73 of Hideaway Whirlwind
I lick my lip, then his. “I love you, too.”
“Zaxsha!” Mom shrieks, hurling what I suspect is another rock at the house. “I want Zaxsha!”
“Who the fuck—Sydney,” Elliott says with a sneer and disgusted twist of his mouth, answering his own question. “That’s her name?”
“Was,” I say. “Her name is Sydney, and she is our daughter. She belongs with us.”
“Yes,” Elliott growls, his chest rising and falling faster as his form seems to grow taller, wider, his knuckles turning white on his gun with a murderous rage to match my own. My twin flame. Mine.
We both look down when Elliott’s phone lights up with a text message.
Russell:She’s alone. Go.
It’s shortly followed by an explosion of noise outside, and Elliott bursts out of his crouch, the back door cracking open. The slanted rain floods the interior while Storm sprints ahead of Elliott, who does a running leap over the deck railing with his gun raised, shouting at Mom to drop her knife.
I rush out, careful not to slip on the slick stairs, finding a lifted teal truck fishtailed in the backyard, having driven up the right side of the cabin beside the creek. Mom’s hands are thrown up over her face in the truck’s ultra-bright LED headlights, flashing the metallic tip of her knife, a fair bit of blood snaking down her spindly arm. Guns drawn, Paul rounds the back of the shed while Russell approaches from the woods. With the creek at Mom’s back, she’s surrounded, and Storm darts in and out, circling her like a ravenous wolf.
“Birdie?” Elliott says over his shoulder without taking his eyes off Mom, his index finger curling over his trigger. “This is your call. What do you want to do?”
It’s the final part of the plan that I have yet to decide. How can I with so many fantastic options to choose from?
Mom squints when I saddle up next to Elliott. Storm comes running to my side at the sound of my voice when I giggle abruptly. Just a little bit to see Mom standing amid a pile of river rocks, wearing her familiar, long, tattered apron tied at her waist to protect her hideous dress. In fact, I can’t stop giggling as I walk toward her with a confident swagger and Storm following me step for step, my gun pointed up and resting on my shoulder since she’s no threat. It’s absolutelyhilariouswhen Mom nervously but bravely rolls her shoulders and brandishes her pitiful little kitchen knife.
“Hello, Mezzarx,” I say, using the Zeraxist title for all the mothers at the compound. “Don’t you look like shit.”
Eight years into living with the cult, she hardly looked like the same woman who’d given birth to me, underweight and rapidly aged beyond her years without proper sunscreen and medical care in the Nevada desert, which she proudly touted was the“natural order of things for Zeraxy’s warriors”, building the mental strength needed for the coming trials of battling the Gonarfans. What a load of crap.
Now, she makes it look like our time in the cult was a motherfucking all-inclusive resort, her lighter brown eyes now shrunken deep into her skull, her cheekbones even more pronounced. The skin along the left side of her body is shiny and puckered, painfully and sloppily knitted together. Burns, I realize, from the explosion, which I doubt she sought medical attention for, else she might have been arrested.Oh, how she must have suffered, I think gleefully.
She still has that same maniacal, fiery devotion to the Zeraxists, despite everything, and if I thought for even the briefest of moments that she had finally opened her eyes and come to throw herself at my feet, begging my forgiveness forwhat she did to me, this whole shtick has snuffed it out. She never would have found forgiveness here, anyway.
Even as Mom sways listlessly, she points her knife at me, her hair dark at her roots, stringy, faded yellow hair matted to her ghoulish face. “You took Za—”
I whip my gun down and fire near her filthy, white sneakers, making her dance like a puppet for me. “Damn fucking right I did! And her name is Sydney. She’s doing wonderful, by the way. Happy. Healthy. No longer engaged to someone before she even took her first step.”
Mom wheezes for breath, a wet, hacking cough making her bony chest cave in after that tiny bit of exertion. This just gets better and better.
“Engaged?” The tooth-pick skinny kid, Trace—who looks the very picture of health compared to Mom—takes his bucket hat off and hurls it at the ground, pacing beside his truck with a handgun held in his left fist.
“Oh yes,” I say, spitting out the water that streams from my hair into my mouth after a lightning bolt strikes close by, making everyone jumpy. “The Zeraxists plan that sick shit from the moment the women give birth.”
Steam rises from my skin in the cold, hard driving rain, my blood scorching hot with vengeance rushing in my veins as I step closer to Mom, grass and mud squelching beneath my bare feet. I’m grounded to this land, and it strengthens me, this solid foundation I’m building my new life upon.
I take a wide stance and raise my voice when I demand, “Tell them, Mezzarx, who you planned to marry her off to when she turns twelve!”
Someone cocks their gun with a deep growl from their chest that resonates within my very soul, my heart beating and mythoughts in sync with his—Sydney’s Papa.
Mom lifts her chin, the tendons in her neck taut and freakishly sliding beneath her nearly translucent skin like maggots. “Her marriage to Guxxer would have made Zeraxy proud. Their children—”
I scream the sound of a thousand ravens taking flight, my throat raw as I rush forward with my gun aimed at her head.
“Birdie!” Elliott yells, unbearably distraught, and I stop just out of reach of Mom’s knife that’s poised to strike. I’m fully prepared for it when Elliott loops a burly arm around me from behind between my breasts and belly to yank me back while the other men creep closer, yelling at Mom to drop her knife to no avail.
“It’s time to finish this,” Elliott says, his palm gliding lower to rest over our baby.
“Yes.” I tip my head back, and he drops a kiss on my lips. “I’ve decided,” I say. Those river rocks at Mom’s feet have given me an idea.
“Will it hurt, Mama?”
