Page 1 of Worse Than Wicked
one
Duke Dolce
When people say, ‘the world is your oyster,’ does that mean that any day, we can find a pearl? I never quite got that expression. Maybe it means everyone is their own pearl. But for me, pearls aren’t rare. The world is full of pearls.
They slide down the chute in a great, rattling, bouncing rush, a blue wave coming in like a tide, adding to the ocean below. The bin is almost full. I hold my hand under the waterfall of them, sink my fingers into the new, warm batch and down below, into the cold, smooth beads.
Even when I go home, they stay with me—the smell of them in my clothes, the buzz of them in my bloodstream. When I close my eyes, their iridescent shimmer coats my eyelids. When I lay down for another sleepless night, I can hear their rush like hungry flames, can feel the exact pressure it takes to turn the crank when they’re done. I see the swirling liquid, bubbling and fuming, before it forms into the drug that has become my whole life.
“Hey, Duke,” says a voice behind me. Her small hand snakes onto my shoulder, and I turn and smile down at my girlfriend.
“Hey, yourself, Duchess,” I say, gripping her waist and pulling her in for a kiss.
She stands on tiptoes, pressing her soft lips to mine.
For one moment, everything is perfect.
Then she pulls back with a grimace. “I thought I told you to wear your mask when you’re doing this,” she says, pulling the covering up over the bottom of my face. “I can taste it on you.”
“It’s not bad once you get used to it,” I say. “I don’t even smell it anymore.”
“That’s probably not a good thing,” she says. “Neither is breathing it in all day. Hence, the mask.”
I don’t tell her that I breathed in the smoke when they burned once. That I watched the flames shoot up while my father lay facedown in a tray of pearls, and instead of rushing to save him, I turned and walked out.
Sometimes, I wonder if he woke up before he died. If he tried to get out, to crawl across the floor and out of the room before the flames consumed him, writhing in agony. Sometimes, I see him standing there, silently watching, ready to pounce on me for the slightest infraction, but when I blink, he’s gone. Sometimes, I wake up to the sound of him screaming as we burned him alive.
Baron says it’s not real because we never heard him scream, but he doesn’t know. I hear it all the time, whether or not my ears ever did. He doesn’t understand. He would have saved Dad. He believes what Dad always told us.
Dolce blood is thicker than chocolate, more toxic than the Lady Alice.
He didn’t say the second part, but it’s the truth. After all, he’s just one of the dead we’ve left in our wake.
Dawson.
Dad.
The man who fucked Mabel.
Jane.
Less than five, still only a handful. I tell myself that to console myself, just like I only call her Jane, never her real name.
Blue.
Blue, like the blue pearls, the pearl lady, Lady Alice, Alice in Wonderland.
Mabel smiles, sensing my mood, and gestures to the machines. “Everything off?”
I hit the button to turn off the lights. “It is now, Duchess.”
Her smile turns secretive, the one she keeps just for me. “Okay, Duke.”
On the way out, I snag her hand, and she lets me.
She lets me hold it all the way to the car, where Baron is waiting.
Does she wish they were his fingers between hers, though? Does she pretend they are?
