Page 107 of Smut Lovers

? T H R E E ?

Tearing Flesh

Georgie

The weight of the ghost of her parents lingers here.

Their parents before them.

She knows they’re still here, tethered to this earth, because every time Evan tries something, there are repercussions for days. It’s why he left for the summer and took a job on his daddy’s caravan. Left without a backward glance.

No phone calls.

No letters.

Bliss.

Now, she’s running. Evan’s hand reaches out to the back of her dress, popping more of the buttons, but she reaches out a hand to grab hold of the fridge’s handle. He slips, his foot smearing hominy kernels onto the discolored floorboards with a curse.

Her own feet find purchase. The kitchen light flickers rapidly, disorientingly, on-off-on-off-on-off until she thinks she’s going to be sick from the whiplash of it, but she clutches at the open pantry.

She’s knocking Chef Boyardee cans and snack boxes out with a sweep of her hand.

Bright yellow aluminum Gushers packets go flying, scattering on the floor.

She grabs at the pots that don’t fit under the cabinet off their perches, chucking them in his direction.

He’s yelling again, but she doesn’t listen. She closes her mind to it until it’s nothing but a slurred sound swirling in the background because if she doesn’t, she knows she might slow down, might cry and shake in fear of his threats. She doesn’t have that kind of time.

Not this time.

Never again.

Georgie kicks out at anything she can as Evan’s hands go to his head, covering in the same way she’s done one too many times.

There is the light of something satisfactory in seeing it, something she wishes she had more time to explore, to see him on the floor like this, cowering from her.

Instead, she turns, nearly slipping in the little hallway beside the kitchen pantry that holds the washer and dryer and beside it, the back door.

It’s only feet from the counters; the small, homey trailer feels cramped now, now that his anger is vibrating inside of it.

Her hands are slick, bright red lines of hot soup in the whorls and crevices like neon blood.

Georgie’s curse is loud, desperate. Evan laughs somewhere behind her, hearing her struggle with the small little latch he knows stays locked at the top of the door. It’s too far for her to reach without the footstool and that’s in his hand as he hauls himself up off the floor.

His skin is red. The edges of his hair—red. His eyes? Red.

He’s blistered, pustules of skin beginning to bubble up from his cheek. She fears he’ll drag her back to the oven and lay her face onto the electric coil.

He’s moving too fast for Georgie to think straight so she pulls the phone off its hook in the corner and throws it. He blocks the teal receiver but gets caught on the coiled cord with a curse. The Cheer box on the shelf goes flying next, the white powder spraying in an arc that litters his face.

He’s panting now, screaming. Shouting so hard the vein in his neck is throbbing in time with the one in his forehead. There’s a crash somewhere in the house that she registers but can’t be bothered to explore because she fears it’s someone he might know, someone who would help him but hurt her.

She throws herself into their room.

Into her room.

Her parents' room.

The room she grew up in, watching cartoons on Saturday mornings with her beanie baby collection in the right-hand corner hammock.

Georgie is quick enough to lock the door before Evan starts banging, but she knows it won't hold. The wood isn’t even real wood; it’s two pieces of thin plywood stuck together by glue and cardboard. She’s proven right just by the way it bends inward with a crash somewhere near her shoulders.

Evan throws his body against it, punching and kicking. The whole thing lifts from the edges. If he weren’t in such a blind rage, he would see it too. He would see exactly where he needed to push it, to shove it to get to her.

Enough tension, and the meager little button lock would collapse in a second.

She tries not to give him that time.

Georgie’s stronger than she was three months ago, but the old wood dresser-mirror set her grandpa made her grandmother as a wedding present decades before is heavy enough that it takes two men to move it.

Even though she asked her instructor to help her put cloth under the legs weeks ago, it takes everything she has to shove it, even a sliver, of the way in front of the door.

It covers the knob and not much more, but she hopes it’s enough.

The door splinters where he’s kicking it in, but the dresser is closed over just enough for him to not be able to open the door all the way without hitting the mirror.

Georgie doesn’t think it will deter him long.

Every second feels borrowed, as if she’s stolen it away.

It’s slipping away like sand in an hourglass.

There’s only one way out now. Just a few steps, and she can be crawling out the open bathroom window, her own little emergency hatch. She has no keys; those were in the bowl by the front door, but this was her swamp. It might be a little rough of a drop, but she could handle it.

She knows this land like she knows the back of her hand.

Every rough stone inch of it.

Evan had never bothered to care for it, had never so much as thought about it in any capacity but a drain.

That’s her advantage.

Her turn is sharp; her right foot slips on the floor, on something thick, red. Georgie tries to hold herself up, tries to keep from falling back onto the bed, but she is moving too fast. The floor is too slick. It’s between her toes, wet and sticky.

Georgie knows blood when she sees it.

That isn’t what makes her grip the sheet so tight her fingers lose feeling.

The dog—no, not a dog. It’s too big to be a dog. The wolf shakes its fur out. Its jaw unhinges like it’s being put back together by gravity or some opposing invisible force. Sharp, dripping fangs track blood and spit on the floor below it.

Its claws are long, the pads of its paws the size of her head, with a thick chocolate snout that looks like it could be wide enough to fit her arm in.

She’s frozen. Her stomach drops. She’s paralyzed, caught between firing synapses, between waterfalls of chemical dumps and confusion that bursts with a resounding pop. Sound returns; her feet are moving her backward on the bed until she tumbles off of the far edge.

Her back hits the dresser.

Evan is punching at the door, his fingers breaking through the flimsy particleboard. Georgie doesn’ think her heart can take much more, caught between one evil and another. Her jaw is locked tight, but on the inside she screams so loud she can feel it vibrating in her ears.

Evan grabs at anything, his hand opening and closing, grabs at the back of the mirror—shaking it—trying to knock it forward while Georgie stands. She’s trying to push against the glass to keep the whole thing from shaking.

All while the thing stalks her.

It inches toward her with the look of something human, something alive and vibrant.

It’s damn near shaking, trembling limbs pulling tight. Exhilarated.

There is something about this wolf that makes Georgie believe fairy tales are real. It reminds her of stories her grandmother used to tell her about wolves and men. Georgie believes in a lot of things. She’s never needed much convincing, but this…

Glee flares in its hazel green eyes. Flecks of gold and delight dance off one another as she hikes her dress up one-handed and climbs onto the dresser.

It’s tough in a dress. Tough when her eyes can’t seem to move away from the lit up green ones in front of her.

Its paws claw into the bed as it jumps up, back hunkered low.

Georgie’s going to die.

The bottom drawer beneath her foot breaks, the one that’s always sticking out, but she uses it for leverage as her heart climbs in her throat.

She tucks her feet up and crouches on the top of the dresser. Nowhere is high enough cause the thing fucking straightens.

My God, is it smiling? Can wolves smile?

Her mother’s bottle of Red jeans perfume, all she has left of her, falls to the floor, shatters in a puff of sweet-smelling smoke. Her grandmother’s jewelry box digs into her thigh.

She thought she would have more time.

She thought she would have a better plan, but this is all she has.

Evan is pushing the dresser now.

If he doesn’ kill her, then this beast surely will.

The mirror rocks dangerously beside her. She’s caught between hanging on to the side or holding the mirror as Evan shouts obscenities. He uses the force of his body to plow further into the room.

Everything happens all at once.

The door pushes wide open. The dresser shifts under her. The mirror falls forward and shatters. Georgie has enough time to duck her head; her own screams are loud enough to bust the glass the rest of the way.

She shouts, but she doesn’t even know what she’s saying or who she’s saying it to.

Wait. Stop. Evan—

He’s in the room now.

He’s here. He doesn’t see the wolf because his eyes are too bright, too bulbous. He’s only got ‘em for her.

He wraps his hands around her neck and drags her off the top of the dresser. Her body weight sinks into his hands, her legs scrambling. Skin is slick with blood from before as he drags her and spins them around.

She can tell when he sees it.

His hands tighten, then slack.

Georgie falls to the ground, a sickening crack as the two beasts stare one another down, growling and huffing, frothing at the mouth.

Her head is swimming.

Georgie turns onto her side. It’s nauseating; a sharp pain throbs in the back of her head, but she tries to crawl away from the two predators as they eye one another.

Her vision is spotty; she touches her forehead to the wood of the floorboards and tries to remember how to move.

She sees the spot under the bed where her papa’s shotgun used to be before Evan took it and told her he was all the protection she needed. She wishes she had replaced it while he was gone, gotten a baseball bat, something.

Anything.

But time ran away from her.

She lifts her head, tries to track between the two monsters, and hopes they fuckin’ kill each other swarm her mind. It’s in this thought, mid-thinkin’ that she sees Evan get knocked back against the TV.

The VCR falls, ejectin’ whatever unnamed tape had been recording her last show.

Disney clamshell cases scatter onto the floor.

Georgie’s poor beanie babies crash to the ground as his hands try to grab purchase for anything, but there ain’t nothin’ else for him to grab hold of ‘cept for the standin’ boombox on the side and tearin’ that down might have done more harm than good.

She’d never understood the words “tearing flesh” before, but she does now.

It rings in the air, over and over and over.

There's blood. So much fucking blood. Too much for any one person, she thinks, but what does she know?

At first she thinks her vision is failing her, that she must be too far gone. The beast blurs at the edges, the air around him a mirage in the same way the road shimmers in the summer heat. It’s massive, distorting.

Wet, snapping sounds fill the air. The creature grunts through it, but Georgie’s stomach twists.

Her mind is screaming wolf because she knows that’s what he is, but when she can finally make her head stop spinning. the fur is gone, the claws retracted. That space is filled with something more human, but no less terrifying.

There’s a man in the wolf’s place.

Something inside her clenches tight.

The man—the monster—sits before her, bloodied and smirking.

By all that’s good and fuckin’ holy, he looks down on her with something wild and suffocating in his eyes.

She thinks he leans down, squats beside her, touches the side of her face and brushes her bangs from where they’re dried against her tears.

By then, though, she thinks she’s dying. Her eyes roll back so hard she’s glad she’s drifting. It’s easier this way, she thinks. If pain is coming, she’d rather not experience it.

She’s had enough pain in her life.

And nothing that violent and beautiful could be anything good.