Bleeding Smile

TEN

__________

I was extremely conscious of the fact that a vengeful Teller now possessed a knife, that he was closing in on me, diminishing the scant but temporarily safe buffer between us, and my first instinct wasn't to run or scream or throw the nearest object but to somehow talk, to negotiate, to say something, anything, that could be convincing enough.

If I was incapable of talking, particularly for the sake of reprieve, to the person I'd known since I was seven, then what hope did I really have in ever convincing him that one of the things that had "kept him going", his resolve with rectifying or, more correctly, exacting his years of undisclosed grievances and pain wasn't a brutally simple — or even wholly merited — process of elimination? If I couldn't redirect his hatred even in the slightest, how would I navigate this encounter, and every inadvertent one that I knew would follow, unscathed?

Was I now condemned to continue taking small steps backwards, gradually shifting away from Teller like I was doing now?

"I don't know who attacked, Ms. Young," I said, striving to sound firm even though I could vividly picture his towering figure following closely behind her as she ran the kilometers of one of the Elk Point Trails, unsuspecting of the sudden assault that would land her in the hospital days later. "With everything going on, I haven't had enough time to think about it," I continued, though the truth of the matter would readily reveal the opposite.

Ever since the tail end of sophomore year, when Teller and I descended from the clocktower that first night and became amongst the last to receive news of HK's first victim; St. Joseph's beloved cantor, Kacey Fields, the disappearances and murders of this town quietly became all I could think about, and for years — well-after Teller's imprisonment — I persisted, always having in my possession nothing but time to mull everything over as it became second nature to render every grim misfortune intimately familiar to me, even as I continually placed more and more distance between me and Elk Point.

This awareness, in tandem with Teller's ambush during Dad's reception, was why I suspected his involvement in Ms. Young's attack, but I knew that admitting this aloud wouldn't diminish the chances of a violent reaction, so I said, this time more earnestly, more confidently, "All I care about is my mom, I want to keep her safe, Teller. I don't care about who could've targeted Ms. Young; my focus is on finding the Hatchet Killer so I can leave this town for good."

I felt the cold pressure before registering that my back had made contact with the smooth surface of the sliding doors, and in the tense quiet of the kitchen, I could hear that the downpour of rain outside had grown louder than I recalled it being when I woke up this morning.

I dropped my forgotten, half-eaten piece of bacon from my hand, instinctively splaying my fingers against the glass — which was frigid and slightly wet with condensation — behind me and holding my breath as Teller stopped close, right in front of me, lowering the knife and poking my midriff with its pointy and potentially deadly tip, pushing slightly, as if testing just how much pressure it would take for it to truly sink into me, before lowering the knife further, reaching the hem of my shirt and lifting the fabric to press against skin, against the oh so breakable barrier of my flesh.

"If I were to slice you open from here," Teller motioned upward, dragging the knife steadily as a sensation similar to a paper cut followed from my right abdomen up to the third rib underneath my breast, "to here...it still wouldn't account for the first couple months at Sierra Ridge," he told me, and my heart dropped at the mention of the state prison where he was held, at his candid tone and silent intrigue, as if pondering what horrible ordeal would truly be equivalent to the months he had in mind while he watched what I knew were the increasing motions of my exposed stomach, my efforts to not breathe at all turning into precarious intakes as a result of an elevated heartbeat that I couldn't seem to bring under control. "I should gut you open, shouldn't I?"