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Chapter 6: Child's Slay
Drew
"That's not what I heard."
He was really getting sick of this slapping.
"I heard rumblings that he loved someone else, and that you couldn't stand it, you were a jealous hag over it even."
Lance pushed Deanna away, and pulled the knife out. The body armor had saved his heart.
"So this is what I get, for everything I've done for you?"
He started breathly deeply.
" I grabbed you earlier! I tied you to that stump to keep you safe!" He spat at Deanna, "I KILLED FOR YOU, AND YOU DO THIS TO ME?!"
Tracy stood there, staring idly at him.
"I know about it all...stupid."
***
Deanna bent down, pulling out another knife from her sock.
"YOU WERE THE ONE WHO BEAT ME BLOODY AND TIED ME TO A STUMP?! THAT WAS YOU?!"
She spat out, vicious anger lining her eyes as she lunged forward and slashed at his abdomen, reaching the knife upwards and into a soft spot.
"I DO WHATEVER THE HELL I WANT! I'M A WILCOX...HAVEN'T YOU HEARD, WE'RE CRAZY?!"
-Tracy, Deanna
Drew
"Exactly, that's what made it all the sadder, a girl pining after a boy who would have never given her what she truly wanted. And now..."
He scoffed,
"A girl pining after a corpse."
Tracy laughed at that, stepping back and looking at him.
"Your dead...you know that?"
She turned her back on him, pulling out her phone and sending a text.
Drew Watson, I want his blood on someone's hands.
Her gaze drifted over to him, and she smirked.
"See you in hell."
"THAT WAS THE FUCKING WEED!! YOU GOT A CONTACT HIGH OR SOMETHING!" The knife hit the body armor again. It'd have to be a headshot to kill him.
Principle Teague had had the right idea...
"Don't you get it, you crazy bitch? I loved you! I wanted to keep you safe! And when we broke up, something snapped! I killed the Preacher because of you!"
Deanna shook her head, bringing the knife up and lunging for his neck.
"I'M GOING TO RIP YOUR THROAT OUT!"
She plunged the knife towards his throat, and swung it to the side as she looked at the flesh.
"DIE ALREADY!"
Drew
Drew moved fast and close to her, grabbing her wrist, as he whispered in her ear.
"Oh darling, didn't you know? I crawled from the depths already."
He smirked,
"Or maybe I have to dress up like Terrance again to get you to be honest with yourself."
"And maybe I just gave the killer a new target..."
Tracy cackled, shaking her head.
"Watch your back, Drew..."
Zach was about to say more. That it hadn't been brave to help her, that he'd been frightened and unsure, and he didn't really understand any of this, and he knew he could've been better, he knew it, there was more he could do, if he just tried, if he'd just done more, if he...
She kissed him. Aleks kissing him, her lips pressed against his.
A girl. A girl is kissing you.
And it was warm and soft and firm and it smelled like blood and goo and funky body parts and it was so awesome and so scary and so, so amazing, and how had he lived so long without ever experiencing...
There was a tremendous creaking from beneath them, a shifting of weight, like some big ballast beam being budged.
At the wheel, Ryan tensed. Zach parted from Aleks only by half an inch, breathing ragged, not entirely sure what to...
"SHIT!"
The creaking was more than creaking.
***
Theodora reached the edge of the bridge just in time to watch the wooden planks come apart, the bus plummeting into the churning river below.
"Oh!" she let out a long, low gasp, teetering on the edge, stumbling backward.
"Oh...I..." she lifted two hands to her mouth to suppress a moan.
"No."
***
"I still don't know why," Rachel said softly, "Sometimes I wonder if you do."
She shrugged, "Sometimes I decide not to care."
***
Brooke watched Noah standing there, a weeping, angry, unrecognizable version of the person she'd come to know so well, the person she had trusted, the one she had even come to respect.
"I'm not phased, huh? Is that it? You watched me fall apart, you saw me collapse when Jake died, you were there when my father fell down dead in front of me, you let me cry on your shoulder, you let me tell you everything I was feeling, how useless, and how stupid, and how alone I felt time after time, and the one thing you took from that was 'Brooke Maddox is an unfeeling sociopath'. Well, guess what, Kid Detective?"
She looked dead at him, "It takes one to know one."
She left him there, standing in the rain.
***
Fitz leaned back, quiet and admittedly stunned.
He imagined what the broken girl must've looked like, lying outside the wreck. The terror and pain of the father finding the body...the sorrow, sorrow such that he had never been able to muster for his son.
Then again...
"Murderer?" he said quietly, "For a cruel accident of fate?"
He looked down, breathing ponderously, "I may as well be a murderer, for 17 years of telling my son he was less than worthy, that he'd be better off gone, that he would never amount to anything. When Terrance died, my wife wept and my eyes were dry, and she wondered what manner of monster that made me. When your girl died, you wept and hurt and suffered, and you have carried the guilt longer than I've shouldered anything since the day I was born."
He sighed, "If you, Evans, with your regrets, and your pain, and your guilt are a murderer... Then I am ten times the murderer you are."
-Zach, Ryan, Theodora, Brooke and Fitz
Drew
"Baby I'm untouchable."
He rolled his eyes as he turned, to walk away.
Aleks gasped out, clutching onto Zach and the gun as she felt the bus tremble beneath them.
"What the hell Ryan?!"
She was scared, would they not make it?
At least you got to kiss him, before you die.
No, don't think like that, she scolded herself. She looked up into Zach's eyes, clutching him tightly as she felt the fear rising in her chest.
"So you think."
Tracy challenged, walking away and smirking.
Noah
And so he stood there, emotions, and anger fueling him as he let out one last anger filled scream into the nothingness surrounding him.
"Fuck you!" yelled Lance.
***
Teague stopped dead in his tracks.
"No...no..."
***
"I love you, Rachel Murray. More than you'll ever know."
She almost cried. But felt a hand on her shoulder.
"Come on. Let's go."
She started following Ted again. They were quiet for a little while, before she said, "Thank you."
"No problem."
Deanna didn't respond, instead she plunged the knife right into his throat as hard as she could.
She than swung it across his throat, ripping the flesh.
"Fate! Feh!" Dave scoffed. "Fate is what old men use to justify where they ended up in life. 'It's fate that my wife left me! It's fate my daughter died! It's fate Sawyer was killed! There's a reason for it all!' It's wrong! All of it!"
He staggered to his feet, leaning against the stair railing. "What good is guilt when the deed is already done, Fitz? Remorse keeps us grounded in the past. It drowns out ambition. You're a businessman, aren't you? Hasn't your life taught you guilt is for the weak?"
"Well..." Fitz said at length, "I've always been a poor businessman."
There was a long, awkward silence before he remembered, "I...er...I must give you this."
He retrieved the paper from his pocket, pressing it into Evans's hand.
Lance gave one last defiant stare before he died.
How could she? How could she do this to him?...
Deanna ripped her knife out, blood splattering over her face and clothes.
"Goodbye...Lance."
She muttered before she looked upwards, for her brother.
"Kieran? Are you out there?"
Dave looked at the paper suspiciously. "What is this?"
A figure did emerge from the trees to meet Deanna Wilcox.
It was a face she knew, and not one she was looking for.
The mask is streaked and slick with rain, the black coat seeming for once to serve its intended purpose. Ghostface grabs the conquering killer by one arm, wrenching her around. With the other hand, a knife was brought up, almost gently, against her face. A slow, tender gesture.
Time seems to move in slow motion. A thousand vindications sung in the whisper of the rain, the promise of an end to a girl's nightmare, deliverance to a restored dream...
The killer drew the knife across her neck, letting the torrent of hot blood spray out.
Deanna Wilcox had fought this long for freedom, to be saved from her family curse.
At last, she found it.
Deanna stood stock still, the color draining from her face.
A single shout echoed from her lips as she felt her throat being slit.
"K-Kieran..."
She gasped before she fell onto her knees, her hands moving to press against her throat.
This was the end of it, she was dying, and she felt the blood pouring from her throat.
Big brother...save me...please...don't let me die...
"A token for you," Fitz told him, "Don't ask me to explain. I'm afraid I can't."
Dave narrowed his eyes, placed the bourbon down and unfolded the paper. It read the following:
"In the sea of desks there's talk of
bags and games
and long pipes that leak dreams
with the strike of a match
and there's a loudness to the
whispers I hear
whispers shouldn't be that loud,
should they?
There's a girl over there who
everyone knows
And men without ears who will
stand by the door for a price
in long hallways, there are angry
mobs of dwarves and rats
And
One
Single
Angel."
At first, he wasn't sure what to say, except the obvious. "Sawyer wrote this poem. I, er, helped advise her on some romantic trials before she died. I'm sure you know what young love is like." Dave then cleared his throat and read it over again, a smile coming to his face as the tears had stopped, if only briefly. "Excellent meter. Iambic pentameter. And shaped, as well. Like George Herbert's work. The imagery is wonderful, both domestic and fantastical. It's...lovely." His expression darkened. "Pity I'll never be able to teach her in class. This is superb."
They were quiet for some time.
"She confessed to me that she was going to die," Dave said, after some hard contemplation. "She was diagnosed with a terminal disease. The thought of it, well...it was heart-wrenching. Yet another young soul destined for death. I tried to find some good reason as to why something as horrible as that would happen to her but...I couldn't. I was at a loss. But Sawyer, she...she was less down about it than I was and I-I was so distraught that she comforted me. Me, Fitz! This big, old man you see before you was comforted by that little girl. She told me, 'At least I'll be forever young.'" Dave smiled, one tear streaming down his cheek. "So she is."
Looking up through the pouring rain at the stars above, he continued his reflection. "The world is a strange and confusing place, isn't it? Us, its lonely players in a vast cosmos, constantly baffled by senseless tragedy. Yet we persist. We struggle to live to see another day. And that's what Sawyer was going to do, until the day she died. Remarkable, really. The strength of the human soul." He pocketed the poem and turned to Fitz. "I think...I think I still have some left in me, Fitz."
"Ah," Fitz said at length, not entirely sure what one could say.
"That...that's a bad go, Evans. A dratted ugly go."
He considered, mulling over the story in his head, the girl's hope in the face of death. He wondered if she had carried it through to the end, or if it had been crushed out of her as surely as the life had.
Did it matter? Was the true lesson to be learned in the coping of others? In the man sitting beside him?
"You do?" he cocked an eyebrow, "Well...very good, Evans. Very good. Yes, it's...it's a damned good thing to have," he nodded, adding for conviction, "Hope."
"Yes," Dave replied, smiling. "Hope." He moved to leave with Fitz until a sudden chill came over him from behind. "Good Lord!" Dave turned to his friend, shocked. "Did you feel that?"
"Well, yes, there has been a little dampness down there, in point of fact..." Fitz began.
***
"And the world will keep wondering why," Rachel sighed, a heavy, sad sound sweet as a spring breeze, "Still...thanks for the memories."
And she was gone, almost as surely as she'd never been there at all.
Which, of course, she hadn't.
"No! No!" Dave corrected with a smile. "The wind! From the west!" He pointed to the horizon, feeling the need to clarify, "The West Wind!"
Fitz narrowed his eyes, "...what are you blathering about, Evans?"