Page 5 of Follow Her Down
And then it happens.I scream, not in pleasure, but in fucking ecstatic ruin.My body locks, back bowed like a drawn bowstring.Every muscle clenches.The bottle feels fused to me, and I gush around it, hot liquid soaking the blanket beneath me.
The gun falls between my legs.The bottle slides out with a wet, obscenepop.
As the last tremors fade, I lie still, my heart pounding in my chest.
For the first time in a long time, I feel alive, connected to myself.To the raw, unbroken part of me that’s been buried beneath layers of trauma and pain.
“Who knew revenge could get me so hot?”I whisper to the room.
The house, a witness and a participant to my strange release, growls in response, and I smile.
2
Red Hands
Shebecomestruewhenthe skin peels back.When terror erases pretense.When the screaming stops and something small and honest crawls out from behind her eyes.
I watch her become.
Four hours, twenty-three minutes of preparation.Of listening to her lies, her bargaining.Four hours, twenty-three minutes of waiting for her to understand that her fear is the only honest thing she has ever made.
The storm rages around us.Wind rattles broken windows.She no longer makes sounds.
Rebecca Morrison.This is what her driver’s license says.But two years ago, she was Becky Williams.Before that, Rebecca Lynn Harris.Three names.Three failed attempts at becoming someone else.
Three layers I had to cut through.
Her hair is still soft when I touch it.Cooling, but not cold.The body holds warmth like a secret, reluctant to surrender it even after the soul departs.
She was thirty-two years old.She came to Wichita to escape a man who hurt her in Michigan.She changed her name, her hair color, built a life selling homemade soap at the farmer’s market and slinging coffee at one of the diners.Smiled too wide.Laughed too loud.Never let anyone see inside her apartment.
I found the pills she hid inside her laundry hamper.I found remnants of the wedding photos she burned in the fireplace.I found the false name.The false life.
“Rebecca,” I whisper, arranging her hands.“I know your name was a lie.But now you are true.”
The floor is wet with rain that blows through the missing window glass, forming small pools that reflect nothing.I do not mind the rain.
I place her carefully, knees drawn up like a child’s beneath her, kneeling in submission.Hands at her throat, as if she is gasping for truth, with a fresh coat of nail polish.It takes time.Positioning matters.The story must be clear for those who come after.
When I am finished, I take a single strand of her hair.Long, dyed blonde over brown roots.The duality of her—visible even in a single strand.I place it in a small glass vial and seal it.
“You were more than the lies you told,” I tell her.“You were more than the mask you wore.Now everyone will see.”
After death, faces settle into something closer to honesty.The social muscles relax.The performance ends.In her stillness, she has found a truth she spent months running from.
Nothing is wasted.Not pain.Not fear.Not the journey to revelation.
I remove more red paint from my bag.The color matters, and red is honest.Red is the color beneath all our skins.
On the peeling wallpaper, next to my false handprint already there, I write:
THE TRUTH IS LOUDER THAN HER VOICE.
The words drip slightly, perfectly.When they find her, they will understand that her silence speaks more clearly than her life ever did.
From my coat pocket, I withdraw a mirror.Small, antique, silver-backed.I break it against the edge of a rotting windowsill.The crack divides the reflection into fragments—truer than the whole ever was.I place it in front of her so she can truly see herself, catching the last of her image in its broken surface.
Last, the rose.Black stem from burning, the petals still red.A symbol of something that grows from ruined soil.I place it between her fingers.
