nullius creaturae expers

so give me a sign that i'm not making love to myself

frances studies you, in the candlelight; charlotte ties you into your bedsheet; it feels faintly like prom, like she'll zip you up the back and compliment your hair next. it's surreal. there's a joke about the thread count of these things perched under your tongue, but you swallow it down because you are the esteemed heiress to an oil well and it feels horrible and imperative that you don't give these girls any reason to turn on you. not tonight.

you won't remember much in the morning -

the feeling of running that matches your blistered feet and thorn-cut arms -

your thighs tacky and drying, the taste of heather's fingers like smoke -

but you feel lucid, more so than ever before. like waking from a long dream, the wind on your face cold and beautiful for its coldness. the air smells like woodsmoke and you can feel your hands like you never have- they're like doves, or crows, something elegant and alive.

it isn't until the man dies that you feel anything close to unpleasantness.

(it will make you panic, in the morning, after you've showered and changed and come down, been helped into a bed between cameron and heather with their bodies warm and sweaty, slept and slept and woken with only a trace of the high, enough to make you anxious-quick in your movements, enough to make you bury your face in her chest and cry. only for a few minutes, quiet and fast and wet on her bare sternum. you're going to go to jail. you're going to die. you smoke a cigarette in bed.)

you'll have a split lip, in the morning, and you won't know what it's from, but tonight you watch heather's fist in slow motion cracking against this man's face like art, like a movie, and it's primal and it's sick. it's beautiful, her with her bloody knuckles and glasses knocked half-off.

(what comes next is static, which scares you.)

the grave-digging breaks charlotte's nails, dirty and dry-blood-red, and you watch her ruined manicure wash off in the dim bathroom. you all shower together and it should be weird, shouldn't it, to be brushing shoulders and hands and thighs, but heather washes your hair for you and so it's alright.

(you dug the grave. you remember it. it was shallow and unfinished and heather and cameron bore the body, on their shoulders, and you looked at heather and thought of how caravaggio got away with murder. god, this is murder. it is morning and you are swallowing vodka like romeo and poison, your twelve year old self and nail polish remover. it is the middle of the night and you are digging a shallow grave that this man will never lie in and you aren't looking at him. you won't.)

frances is singing, her voice high and clear in the night, and you are finally okay. you are at peace. the air is cold and thick and your lungs are strong, your body is powerful. you're a current rushing through a river, bearing virgil and dante forever onward. dante faints, into virgil's arms, and down i fell, as one that swoons on sleep - cameron catches you, in his sweet arms, his face boyish, doe-like. he rights you, you remember it clearly, and the two of you stand beneath the trees until only you are left. frances's voice echoes, and it sends a shiver down your spine. like something is wrong.

the crickets chirp and you are running, walking, singing old hymns and feeling pain that is there and not, walking over sharp stones and knowing it should hurt, shouldn't it. heather is smoking a cigarette but there is something wild in her eyes, and you can't place this, more like a dream than a memory - a shaking sip of your drink - more a dream than a memory, more a fantasy, heather dripping blood from somewhere, somewhere on her face that was painting her in red, her shoulders and her back lighting a fire in you. flames licking at your spine and a terrible look in her eyes, the two of you too close to the old dirt road, too far from the shelter of the woods.

(you don't know how or why you remember this, because it doesn't line up with anything else, it seems fake, and yet-

a car rushed past, too-fast, would've killed you if you'd been closer, and it lit heather in that unnatural white, her mouth red, dripping, the glare of her glasses making it impossible to see her eyes.

'i met god ,' she says, and she smiles, and it's red-pink and sharp and she is cast in darkness once more, in moonlight. she's still holding her cigarette. you decide that you aren't going to scream.)

you can't speak, at breakfast. frances and charlotte curl up into the loveseat and murmur to each other, both in tennis sweaters you think belong to cameron.

(the blank space scares you. you've blacked out before, but never like this.)

heather kisses your cheek and says something low and soothing, greek or latin, thorny and sweet. you can't stop thinking about her mouth in red.

(you're going to call bunny, when you get back to school. god knows what you'll tell her -

so you'll go see judy, then, someone who you can tell the vague details -

it'll just sound like a bad trip -

you're trembling, inside-out. your skin is too cold.)

when your voice comes back and cameron's doesn't-

(he's standing in the bathroom, wringing out his hair -

charlotte looks just like him like this, her hair falling to her back instead of her shoulders, the suggestion of curves where cameron is lithe and chiseled -

blood-red trickling down his moon-white skin, your eyes tracing out the line of his jaw.)

heather hums, a quiet that's-too-bad, her arm around your waist while the other tilts cameron's chin up to look at her, her rough fingers probing gently at his throat. you were going to be a doctor, once upon a time. it feels like someone else's life. orange groves and swimming pools and blue twilight tennis courts. hollywood and pasadena and heels clicking on fake marble. heather's hand around your waist while she diagnoses and you don't. heather's tongue in your mouth. the taste of blood.

(you blacked out. you blacked out but you remember her covered in blood and you remember fear, and you remember a nicotine buzz and a wetness on your hands. your mouth. between your legs. you can't tell if you had sex or -)