How to Kill Yourself in a Small Town (6 page)

Colt

Mikal’s
forked tongue slid into my mouth and her legs tightened around my hips. Her
body was scorching—all those years before the fall that she spent singing glory
to God around His throne were still burning deep in her bones. Her tar-covered
wings stretched out to full span and rocked with her.

I
tried to remember what it was like to feel guilt or disgust, but they were
gone. Just not there anymore. I wished I was numb. Without the constant,
boiling anger just under my skin, I would’ve been. But if I was numb, I
wouldn’t be able to fight her. I had to keep fighting because… Shit. There was
a reason. I knew there was.

Difficulty
recalling information,
Mikal said.
That’s new.

Fuck
you.
Ignore her. Start at the beginning. The reasons that came easy from repetition.
I had to keep fighting because Mikal started the war the day she killed Mom.
That was right. And because God chose us to be His soldiers. That was right,
too.

I
always said your father was a smart man to indoctrinate you kids so young,
Mikal
said.

Fuck
you.
She was trying to mess me up, twist everything so I would doubt the stuff I
used to believe and have to trust her.

There’s
no reason you shouldn’t trust me,
she said, tracing my jaw with
her fingers.
I’ve never lied to you.

Dad
never lied to me,
I said.

He
never had to because you kept secrets. If he had known about the black noise—

He
helped Mom,
I said.
He would’ve helped me.

You
can’t believe that or you would have told him,
Mikal
said.

No.
Remember the times Mom had locked herself in the bathroom. Sang to herself,
stadium-volume and smashed stuff to drown out the black noise. Sissy or Ryder
would call Dad and no matter where he was—on duty as the hospital chaplain over
in North Fork, in his office at the church, visiting the shut-ins around
Halo—he would come home. He would’ve helped me. He had always helped Mom.

How?
Mikal
asked.
What did he do to make the black noise go away?

I
didn’t know. It had been my job to keep Tough outside, take him down to the
creek or out to the barn to shoot hoops until it was safe to come back in.

So,
you don’t know if your father was shoving anti-psychotics down your mother’s
throat or beating the black noise out of her,
Mikal
said.

Something
exploded inside my brain and shrapnel went everywhere.

You
Goddamned fucking bitch! Dad would never hurt her! He loved her more than
anything!

Outside,
I felt Mikal detonate, too, getting off on the force of my reaction. I’d walked
into a trap, engaging instead of just saying “fuck you.” Now I was pinned down
in her warzone on her terms and I couldn’t get out without her blowing
everything to shit.

Focus.
Think. Dad had always protected Mom. He wouldn’t have hurt her. He would’ve
protected me, too, if—

—if
he could have,
Mikal said, picking off the thought. Even
coming down from the orgasm she was a crack shot.
That’s what it was, wasn’t
it? A congregation to lead, four children to care for, and a wife he had to constantly
pull back from the edge. Danny might’ve been a man of God, but he was only
human. He did everything he could, but when it got to be too much he suggested
getting help, didn’t he, Colt?

This
was the part where I was supposed to bleed and hurt, to remember hearing Mom
tell Dad that getting professional help was one step away from the nuthouse,
and to admit that I didn’t tell Dad because I was scared he couldn’t handle two
crazy people at the same time.

You
were right not to tell him,
Mikal said.
He would’ve let them lock
you up and throw away the key. He would’ve had to choose between you and your
mother and—

—and
Dad loved Mom more than anything.
I didn’t realize I was
repeating the words until I felt the shrapnel from the explosion shift. Dad had
always saved Mom, but he wouldn’t have saved me.

Mikal
understood. She’d been rejected, too. We were just alike—two soldiers whose
families had abandoned us because we were screwed-up.

But
Mikal wasn’t screwed-up, not to me. She was strong, powerful, and so fucking
beautiful. I buried my face in her neck. She smelled incredible, like cinnamon
and coffee and hot, sweet peppers. I could make her pain go away for a little
while. I could make her feel what I felt when I looked at her—my Mikal, my
burning angel.

As
if I was standing somewhere outside, I watched myself make love to her. I heard
my voice tell her how much I needed her, how bad I wanted her.

My
chest hurt, then prickled and burned as if someone was drawing pictures on my
skin with dry ice. “Resist or Serve”—the tattoo cut through the haze like razor
wire. Bile stung the back of my throat, pushing up farther and farther until I
was choking on it.

Don’t
fight it,
Mikal said.
I know that you want this as much as I do.
You can’t lie to me, Colt.

I
couldn’t hold back. I came, too. When it was over, that empty pit in my stomach
ached. My fault. All of this had been my fault. Just say “fuck you.”
Disconnect. Don’t engage. It wasn’t rocket science.

Mikal
folded her wings and laid down with her head on my shoulder.

I
know you can feel the end closing in,
she said.
That’s why it’s
getting so hard to remember what it felt like to hate me.

Fuck
you,
I said.

She
laughed.
You just did. And well, I might add.

I
think I told her,
I do hate you, you sadistic fucking bitch. I hate you. I
can’t fucking wait ‘til you’re burning in Hell—
but I don’t know for sure. I
couldn’t hear myself anymore. The more I tried to yell at her, the louder the
echoes in my head got—louder and louder until all I could hear was
My Mikal,
my burning angel, my Mikal, my burning angel, my Mikal, my burning angel…
The words were everywhere, part of everything, and I had to start screaming to
drown them out.

Tough

It
was a dream, so I didn’t freak out that Ryder was alive again. He had a dip of
Copenhagen in his lip and he was trying to beat the chicken shit pussy out of
me, like always. But unlike always, Colt wasn’t cleaning the same gun for the
hundredth time or recounting ammo while I got my ass handed to me. So I spit
out some blood and asked Ryder, “Where’s Colt?”

“Don’t
act as dumb as you look, Baby Boy. You know where he is.” And I got a boot in
the face for letting my guard down.

When
I got back up, Sissy was there. She hugged me and I started crying because she
was getting blurry and I couldn’t remember what it sounded like when she
talked.

“I
hate this town,” I told her.

Sissy
wiped some snot and blood off of my face and smeared it across the knee of her
jeans. Then she picked up my John Deere hat, dusted it off, and put it back on
my head.

“I
can’t get Colt back,” I told her.

“Then
you better man the fuck up,” Ryder said. I ducked the first punch, but the
second one caught me in the stomach. He didn’t let up when I doubled over.
“You’re on your own for real now, Baby Boy. Sing your way out of this one.
Maybe if you play your guitar real pretty, they’ll just let you be.”

I
tried to fight back, even though in real life all that ever did was make it
worse. Ryder got his arm around my neck and choked off my air. I tried to tell
him I gave up, but Jason Gudehaus had my voice again. Sissy would stop Ryder if
I asked, but she left because I couldn’t holler for her to come back. She left
and Colt was gone and Ryder’s bicep crushed my throat.

*****

I
fell off the couch.

Jax
laughed and looked away from his video game for a second. “Flashbacks?”

I
shook my head, then stopped when the motion made me sick. I closed my eyes and
rested my forehead on the floor and listened to Jax pause his game while he got
off the coffee table and sat on the couch. My brain did a slow spin inside my
skull.

I
must’ve won PKR. At least I hadn’t pissed the couch—which was kind of a wonder
looking at all the empty beer cans by the coffee table. Then there was that
bottle of tequila at Rowdy’s.

Oh,
shit, Scout. If I thought really hard, I could remember standing in the kitchen
of her and Harper’s parents’ old trailer house. She couldn’t find a piece of
paper, but she had a pen, so I wrote it on her hand—
Get some self-esteem.

Man,
I missed being able to groan.

“All
right, guys, I’m heading out,” Harper said, bouncing into the living room. She
had on her hot pink bikini and her beach bag over her shoulder, ready to go
lifeguard the lake. “You look like shit, Tough.”

I
rolled onto my back and made the sign of the cross at her with my forearms.

“Excuse
me?” she snapped, getting her body all cocked the way her and Scout both do
when they’re offended.

Right
then, I didn’t have the energy to figure out how to apologize. Thank God for
Jax.

“Take
it easy on him,” Jax said. “Can’t you see the alckie’s hurting?”

“I
got some hangovers in high school—I know they suck,” Harper said. She shoved my
shoulder with the toe of her flip-flop and I tried not to barf. “That’s no
reason to make the sign at me like I’m some kind of Godforsaken freaking
vampire. Me and Jesus are best friends, preacher boy, so don’t you even—”

I
reached my hand out to her before she got really wound up.

“Fine,”
she said, squeezing my fingers. “But don’t do it again. It’s offensive.” She
leaned down and kissed Jax. Her bellybutton ring dangled straight down and it
looked like her breasts were going to drip out of her bikini top. She stood
back up. “I’m gone, guys.”

“Later,”
Jax said.

I
waved.

The
door shut behind her. Jax went back to his game. I got up to take a leak, puke,
and shower. Somehow, I made it to the stairs.

“Hey,
Tough,” Jax said.

I
stopped.

He
didn’t look away from his game.

“Keep
your eyes to yourself, all right?”

Desty

Blood.
Rivers of blood and I was drowning in it. I tried to force my eyelids open, but
they were glued closed by the thick wetness. My lungs bucked and
screamed.  I thrashed and scratched and clawed until—

I
opened my eyes. The rivers of blood were just the sun shining through the backs
of my eyelids and the drowning just another dream-panic-attack in a long line.
I stayed still, flat on my back looking up at the blue of a cloudless sky,
waiting to breathe again. Heat shimmers and soybeans drifted along the edges of
my sight, hairy pods of Midwestern gold drying in the summer sun. That lying
vampire jerk had dumped me in a field.

Turning
onto my hands and knees took more effort than it should have, given that I
remembered being bitten before eleven p.m. and it was obviously late morning
now. Bite-sedative. I must’ve fought him when I realized he was just stringing
me along about knowing where Tempie was staying.

I
pushed up to standing, swayed, and dropped back down to one knee. My skin felt
hot and like it was stretched too tight over my face, arms, and legs. Sunburn,
blood-loss, and dehydration—the trifecta.

My
second attempt at standing was slower, but ultimately successful. I was about
twenty feet from the two-lane blacktop that ran through Halo. Down the road,
through the heat waves, I could see the little green population sign, the much
larger Halo Chamber of Commerce sign, and the trailer park at the edge of town.

Maybe
the fallen angels had sent that vamp, Finn, because they knew I’d come for
Tempie.

My
head spun itself into a fuzzy mess again and I had to lean over for a second
with my hands on my knees.

Hopeful,
optimistic crap. The fallen angels wouldn’t have sent anyone to get rid of me.
I posed zero threat to them. Even if that enforcer, Mikal, really had looked
into my mind yesterday, the only thing she would’ve seen was an overwhelmed
nineteen-year-old grasping at straws. And if I couldn’t convince my own mother
not to kill herself, what in the world made me think I could talk my sister out
of becoming a familiar, steal her away from a legion of fallen angels, and drag
her back home? Nope, that jerk Finn had lied to me about knowing where to find
Tempie because he was hungry and he could tell I was desperate.

A
shooting pain in my left boob cut my pity party short.

I
pulled the neck of my shirt away from my chest so I could look inside. Two fang
marks had crystalized just above my nipple and a splash of blood stained the
bra cup.

“That
dickbag.”

I
checked the road for cars, then unbuttoned my shorts to make sure Finn hadn’t
done anything else while I was out.

Nothing.
I hadn’t entrusted my life to a rapist, at least. And there was my backpack by
the highway. Not a rapist and not a thief. Stellar.

Bending
over to grab my backpack almost made me pass out.

When
the dizzy spell ended, I started for town. Crying and whining about being an
idiot with horrible judgment wasn’t going to bring Tempie home.