Faithless

Chapter 14

Nancy Allen was suicidal. In the months following the deaths of her two best friends, she lost her will to live. In class, she frequently stared blankly at the wall, her pencil remaining unmoving as she wondered whether or not she would be missed. She faked being sick some days to avoid school, and on other days she was forced to go anyway. In between classes she stopped in the hallway next to Hannah's old locker and leaned her head against it. Silent tears poured down her face whenever she thought of her best friend. And with prom right around the corner, and graduation soon to follow, she realized she had nothing left. Initially, she and Hannah and Darren all planned to move to the city together and go to a community college while they worked on music. But her plans had been flushed down the drain. She distanced herself from her other friends and even Lucas. She stopped going to drum lessons and only barely managed to finish her school assignments. Watching the world move on without her only worsened her misery. All the smiling faces of her classmates; it was like they didn't even care. And all the nights she dreamed about the last time she got to see Hannah, the last time she and all of her friends were together, she woke up crying, wishing to go back to sleep and to see her face again.

One night near the end of January, Nancy finally decided that she had enough of the misery. Her parents had gone out of town to visit her grandparents in Tacoma, so she was left alone. She laid awake in bed, staring at the ceiling. It was then she made the decision to kill herself.

Slowly, she rose from her bed and walked to the kitchen. She lifted a long, thin boning knife out of a drawer near the sink and made her way to the living room. She set a kneeler down in front of the altar, decorated with crosses and a framed photo of Jesus, the renaissance interpretation. With a stick lighter, she lit the candles sitting on the altar and set the knife down in front of the kneeler. On the bookshelf were a number of records collected by her father over the years. Her hand found the record, Saturnine Metal & Lunatic by Tears for Fears. Slowly, she set the vinyl down on the record player on the shelf beneath it, and rested the needle on the edge. As it began playing, she returned to the altar and rested her knees on the kneeler. The pendant of her necklace, a crucifix, was pinched between her fingers as she lowered her head in prayer.

"Dear Lord," she said quietly, "Please forgive me. I mean not to offend you, but I cannot go on living in this world anymore. It is my intention that I will take my own life by the means of the blade in front of me, a slow, and quiet end. Again, I ask for forgiveness. I hope only to be with you and my friends once again. Amen."

She lowered her hands, tears pouring down her face. One by one, she wrapped her fingers around the handle of the knife and lifted it up to her exposed arm. She hesitated, bated breaths quivering with each sob.

"Are you really going to kill yourself?"

Nancy froze and looked up, her eyes darting around the room. "Hello? Who's there?"

I'd been sitting in the darkness, watching Nancy as she prepped the room for her suicide. Admittedly, I felt bad for her, but that feeling did not go beyond pity. I stepped out of the shadows, standing in the pale moonlight so that she could see me.

She squinted, wiping the tears from her eyes. "Jay? How did you...?"

"You forgot to write a suicide note," I said. "If you're going to end your own life, you at least owe your parents an explanation."

Nancy looked back down at the knife in her hands. "I don't owe anyone an explanation but God."

I couldn't stop myself from laughing at her words. "God? Even after all of this, you still believe in him?"

She glared at me. "Of course I do. Why wouldn't I?"

I walked over to the window, staring out at the crows waiting on the high wires. "What did God ever do for you? He let your friends die. He let you remain miserable. And the killer was never even caught. Is that God's will? Or just bad luck?" I sighed. "Either way, you're right. There's no reason to live anymore."

Nancy's gaze softened as she considered my words. "What are you doing here, Jay? You're clearly not trying to talk me out of it."

I leaned against the wall. "Just tell me one thing. Do you really want to die?"

While I expected her to be instantly insistent on her decision, she hesitated. She looked from me to the knife to the altar, considering her answer. And after a moment, she nodded. "Yes, I do."

"Think carefully. Are you absolutely sure?"

"I'm sure."

"Good. Glad to know you've made up your mind." I peeled back my lips in a smile, exposing my razor sharp teeth. The skin around my hands split open and hung loosely from my arms. The truth was never pretty, and judging by Nancy's reaction, I'm sure she thought so too.

She stumbled back, knocking over the kneeler. "D-demon..." She scrambled to her feet, holding out the crucifix on her necklace in front of her. "You're... you're a monster in human flesh. I knew it. There was always something off about you. Stay away from me, you lying, conniving thing. You're just trying to drag me down to hell, aren't you?"

I pushed the window open. "That sounds more interesting. But no." I walked over to Nancy, who kept hiding behind the pendant on her necklace. I wrapped my hand around her chin and pulled her face close to mine, digging the points of my claws into her cheeks. "It's just a fair trade. You want to die, I need a meal."

She winced. "You'll burn in hell for this."

"And where will you go?" I let go of her and stepped back without waiting for an answer. "God bless the privileged, Nancy."

A flood of crows entered the room and began feasting upon the suicidal girl. She screamed and waved her arms, trying pathetically to defend herself from the ruthless birds. Before long, she fell to her knees and then collapsed on her stomach, her head cracking against the tile floor. The birds ate and ate as she died, blood seeping through the cracks between the tiles. I tugged off my shirt and laid it on a chair before joining the crows in the meal. It shocked me how hungry I was. I'd postponed eating for a couple weeks despite the ever growing hunger inside of me, simply because I wanted to put more space in between the murders. It wasn't worth bearing the agony for that reason, though.

I ate more of Nancy than I intended. It was difficult to stop myself, but I needed to if I wanted the body to remain identifiable. Her face was mostly intact, so I waved away the crows pecking at it, and they continued eating a different part of her body. I stood up away from her corpse and walked to the kitchen to wash myself off. The cold water soaked my feathers as it ran down my arms, running the blood into the drain. I stuck my face under the faucet, washing off the blood running down my face and neck.

Once I was done, I shook myself dry and restored my skin so that I looked human again. I pulled my shirt and jacket back on, and climbed out the window from which I entered. The night ached with a kind of tension you couldn't really ignore. It was almost as if the sky itself knew that someone had been murdered. I wouldn't be surprised if it did. The sky could see almost everything.