Unfinished Business

CHAPTER 20: THE END?

"Now," Blanche said, addressing a very groggy, very sore Sandy while standing at the bottom of the ladder out of the bunker, "I think you have two real options for what to do about tonight if you want to not be involved anymore." Blanche looked at me over her shoulder. "Sandy told me she wants to forget. She's, like, not that bad."

Sandy grinned in the smallest way, then looked back at the path ahead. "I do. What is-- uh. What are the options?"

"You can go home and try to forget, and we'll leave you alone about it. Or, you can actually get your memory wiped, and it's the same deal on our end. That's it."

"The second one," Sandy decided, without a second's hesitation. "I don't want to remember."

"Neither do I, to be honest," I said, my voice dry. Nobody laughed. It was kind of a bad joke in general.

"Well, you're going to have to come and visit our mom, then," Blanche said, patting Sandy on the back and moving past what I said entirely. 

My stomach squirmed, partially from the humiliation and partially because I couldn't tell whether or not Blanche was genuinely being nice to Sandy. Was it the truth, that she liked being around her? Or was this one of those ploys that popular girls pull on the weirder kids, where they treat them like pets, like add-ons, like little jokes? I could never tell what someone's intentions were. 

"Who all wants to come with us?" Blanche asked, not looking at my body.

It was quickly decided that Sandy could retire from all of this and that Blanche would return to the group afterward. When it came to the rest of us... It was obvious that I would stick around. We were doing all of this for me, after all. This was my monster to kill. This was my unfinished business. I had to be there for it.

I paused on the path, just before we were out of the woods. "You don't have to keep doing this," I said, looking at Willa and Ethan.

They made quite the odd pair. Willa was still in her Halloween costume. That made sense. It was, after all, the morning of Halloween. The thirtieth of the month was over. The party was over. Willa was still dressed like a calico cat, with her hair in afro puffs and the cat ears pressed against them. Ethan was also dressed up, but I didn't recall seeing anyone in a creeper hoodie and Ghostface mask at the party. I didn't think to ask about that. It just wasn't important.

"You guys don't have to keep doing this," I said. "You don't have to keep putting yourself in danger. I get it if you want to go. I get it if you want to leave us behind."

"Are you joking? This is the most fun I've had in years." Ethan heard himself but didn't have the good sense to grimace or apologize for a comment that was in extremely bad taste.

Willa did, though. Side-eying him, she pointed out, "That was weird, Ethan. And, Even, I already told you. I'm seeing this through to the end. Maybe not for you, but for everyone else. For Claire, certainly, and Alicia. For all the other girls this thing has targeted and will target-- I'm sticking around. I'm going to help."

I nodded. "Okay. As long as you know that you can leave at any time, no questions asked, no grudges held.

"We know, Eve," Willa said, good-naturedly. "Now, come on, let's get going. I want Sandy to be safe."

I didn't get it. Why was she being like this? So selfless? So altruistic? I wouldn't have done this if I were in her shoes. I would have felt guilty, sure, but I wouldn't have gone as far as she did.

We walked closer to the house. Blanche and Sandy led the way to this teenage wasteland.

It was Utah. You would think that we wouldn't have had outrageous parties with crazy big messes left over and ludicrous amounts of alcohol, especially with the amount of Molly Mormons in town. Some of them weren't so perfect, it would seem. My old Laurels president was passed out in a hammock with an empty red cup threatening to fall from her fingertips. I was surprised to see her there. Maybe nobody I knew was perfect after all. Maybe I didn't need to measure myself against girls like her.

I thought about that as I took in the rest of the mess around this place. Trash covered the grass like lawn ornaments and picnic blankets. There was puke on one exterior wall of the house, having dripped from the windowsill. The window was closed on it. I could see, through the dirt-speckled glass that the house was just as dirty, that furniture, that furniture was overturned and garbage was everywhere. In short, the place was a mess.

As Sandy steered Blanche towards Willa's car, no longer being led, but leading, I heard something in the woods. It was rustling. It was something crawling toward me, something undeniably watching us from the trees, waiting to strike. The back of my neck was prickling.

I turned around, slowly, and, sure enough, there it was, watching me with loose eyes that were not its own. The Eye For An Eye, with its grayish-yellow vellum skin and amalgamation of stolen body parts stuck to it, like Claire's eyes and my abdominal muscles, and somebody else's skin like a choker-- it was there, watching me, laying in wait.

I turned back around, trying to pretend like I hadn't seen anything. Panic overtook me, though, and I almost immediately started freaking out, pushing on the shoulders of whoever was in front of me. "Go, go, go!"

As it turned out, it was Willa that I was pushing on. "Wait-- Eve, what are you doing?" She resisted e and tried to turn around.

"Just go!" I yelled, pushing her toward the car. I whispered in her ear a little too loudly, "It's back. It's back! Leave. I'll hold it off."

"Wait, I can help," Will objected.

"No-- don't. I've got this."

I pushed her toward the car once more, then looked up and locked eyes with Ethan, who nodded. He was picking up what I was putting down. Ethan grabbed Willa by the arm and pulled her into the back seat of the car with him. The fury in her eyes was evident, but she couldn't do anything about it because Ethan had already taken her keys out of her pocket and handed them up to Sandy, who immediately started the car and pulled out of the driveway. Sandy drove like she was haunted.

Once I was sure that they were leaving, that they would all be okay, I whirled around to face what ailed me.

The Eye For An Eye was closer now, galloping toward me like it did at Punkin's. I braced myself for the impact, knowing full well that it was going to go after the car and I was going to have to stop it.

I never really had a chance.

As soon as I turned around, it was there. No, rather-- she was there. This once was a person, and I was sure that she had a bit of her old self left within this shitty, monstrous body. That didn't really come through when I spun around and saw her there, ready to lunge.

It was kind of hard to think of her as a person, though, and I couldn't stop myself from thinking of it as a creature in my mind. Was that a moral failing I would beat myself up about later? Maybe. Trying to understand my humanity and the humanity of others when we were all truly, horribly monstrous was a task I wasn't cut out for. Who, among us, among all the monsters that lurk in the shadows, is capable or worthy of the love people offer to each other?

The Eye For An Eye lunged at me like it was already there, and I had no time to prepare myself for its attack. Its claws ripped into my skin, and one of its hands went into me, to touch my organs, or what was left of them. It was an odd feeling. I could feel its hands inside of me, inside the pre-torn cavity, but I felt no pain, just discomfort.

"What the fuck?' I couldn't keep the words from spilling off of my tongue.

With all of its hands and mass roaming inside my body, I couldn't fight back. I couldn't hit it properly. I had no way to defend myself. Panic rose in my throat-- or was that its hand? Was that its hand, climbing my throat like bile, scratching the stagnant tissue as I stood there, an inch of the ground, trying to regain control of myself? I got my answer when its fingers tapped the back of my teeth.

I knew, at that moment, that there was no getting out of this.

And it threw me to the ground. As I lay there, forced to watch it run after the car, with my body broken and unable to do anything about it, I could feel myself slipping in and out of existence. It was like dying, but worse. Just like before, I wasn't sure what was on the other side. I didn't want to find out. 

I didn't have a choice.