Page 70 of Worse Than Wicked
I grab the box of beer from the fridge and slog upstairs to our room, ignoring the voice whispering behind me. I could lie in the bed and chain smoke to piss them off. I consider it, but it doesn’t bring any real joy. So I step out the sliding glass door onto the small balcony. Each of the bedrooms has its own little private deck, three in a row. From here, there’s not much of a view, just the big backyard and the woods beyond.
I’m glad I can’t see Maverick leaving. I don’t even like him. He’s a dick with an ego the size of Manhattan, so I shouldn’t care that he didn’t want to hang out. I’m not even sure I wanted to hang out with him. I just didn’t want to be alone.
Popping the top off a beer, I wash down a handful of pearls.
I hear the crunch of his tires on gravel, and then the growl and roar of his engine as he accelerates. When the noise dies away, the sawing sound of summer insects fills the silence.
I open another beer.
The cap bounces across the balcony and tumbles through the railing, over the edge. It seems to float down, but finally, it clinks musically into the gravel below.
I wonder how it would feel to float like that.
But of course I’d fall faster, probably land with a disgusting crunch. I wonder if the drop would kill me. Probably not. It’s only twenty or twenty-five feet. It would break a lot of bones, though. I wonder how long I’d lie there before they came home. Maybe they wouldn’t even notice I was gone. They wouldn’t think anything about it until tonight, when I don’t come home from Royal’s house. By then, I would have died from internal bleeding or some other slow death.
They’d get home and shower and fuck and make dinner. They wouldn’t even miss me. They’d be happy to have the house to themselves.
And all the while, I’d be lying right outside the door, slowly succumbing to my injuries.
Maybe they’d finally feel bad then.
Or maybe they’d be happy I was out of the way for good, without them even having to get their hands dirty and make it happen. No one else would care. I saw that with Dad.
Oh, they’ll make a big spectacle, have a funeral and play sad for a few days. But then they’ll go on with their lives, just happy it’s over. One less Dolce in Faulkner. And in a few years, someone will remember to ask about me, and they’ll say what Colt said about Dad.
The world is a better place without him in it.
The Alice finally takes hold, and I put on some music and vibe, and then jerk off for a while. Finally, the door closes downstairs. I hear Mabel greeting her cat. I lie on the bed, staring at the ceiling.
“Duke?”
I look up and there’s a girl in the shadows of the hallway. “Blue?”
She steps into the doorway, and it’s not Blue. It’s Mabel, with her hair in two pigtails, each dyed a different color. She has a long, butcher knife in one hand. She lifts it and grins, her tongue flicking over the end. Her mouth is full of blood, and it pours out, down the knife blade, but she just laughs. “Duke’s fucking a dead girl,” she sings, her words a twisted mockery of what I said when I pushed the dead guy into her. The blood gushes faster from her mouth, and she chokes on it, spraying it from her grinning mouth.
“Duke?” It’s Baron’s voice, more demanding now.
I try to blink the vision away.
Heavy footsteps ascend the creaky old steps, and then Baron is standing in the doorway. I blink a few times to make sure it’s really him, that the Harley Quinn Mabel is gone.
“Why didn’t you answer?” he demands, stepping into the room and flipping on the light.
“I don’t know,” I mumble. Even high, I know it would sound dumb to say I was waiting to see if he’d come find me, and even worse to tell him what I saw.
He studies me from behind his glasses, like I’m a specimen, just like Jane.
“You’re drunk?”
“I had a few beers.”
Mabel appears in the doorway next to Baron, holding Seeley Boots. She’s smiling, happy. Her teeth are white, withouta trace of blood. Despite what she says, she’s clearly fine after being alone with Baron all day.
“What took you so long?” I ask.
“We had to talk to the police,” she says, checking Baron from the corner of her eye.
She looks positively giddy.
