Page 5

four

Graduation it’s Halloween after all.

I’ve always been a fan of horror films and things that most people find scary, including everything having to do with Salem around Halloween. Most twenty-three-year old girls want to spend their time shopping or clubbing, but I’d rather be watching horror films or hanging out in cemeteries, pretty much doing what I’m doing right now, but with a whole lot fewer people.

Everyone is drunk; some are tripping on acid or ecstasy, enjoying their night as graduates, knowing that in the morning the rest of their lives will begin—some of them anyway.

Carli and Melanie disappear in the crowd, leaving me and River near a line of headstones, sprawled out on the grass just gazing at the bright, twinkling stars above us, while Shawn has his tongue down some broad’s throat and another on his lap with her mouth on his neck; he’s living his best life.

“What’s going on inside that brilliant mind of yours, Scar?” River asks, his voice rasping as it slips deeply from his throat .

“Nothing…absolutely nothing, and I like it,” I answer, turning my head to meet his gaze that he has locked on me and smiling as he licks his lips, showing off the shiny, silver barbell through his tongue.

River and I met when I first started college, and we started dating right away. Four years later, here we are, trying to figure out where to go from here now that we’ve all chosen different career paths.

With my arms under my head, my shirt rises and shows off my midriff, giving River a view of my stomach, which makes his eyes light up even more. He sits up and hovers over me, his hand grazing my exposed flesh, giving me goosebumps as his rough, calloused fingers toy with the band of my leggings.

“So, we’ve graduated now... Have you thought anymore about letting me get some?” He smirks, wiggling his brows as his eyes lower to my waist, his hand sliding down and caressing the heat between my thighs that I’ve never let him or anyone else have before.

It’s not that I’m saving myself for anyone special or waiting until marriage; I just saw all the shit my mother did and put me through all for a fucking dick, so I chose to stay as far away from them as I could. Focusing on my education and making something of myself was more important than letting a man put his cock inside of me. I guess we all have different preferences. I will say that River putting up with my virgin ass for four years makes him a fucking trooper, though. But it’s not like I left him hanging and gave him blue balls for our entire relationship.

As River rubs me over my leggings, my eyes flutter, and my back arches into his touch, making the soft, damp blades of grass glide against the skin on my back as I move with him. His green eyes glimmer under the beam of the full moon as I stare into them, a glossy look taking over from the alcohol coursing through his body.

“Feels good, huh, Scar?”

“Of course, it feels good, River,” I moan, practically panting in his ear as he lowers his head, brushing his lips across the front of my throat, his body now completely on top of mine .

Just when I think things are going to progress between us, I hear a shriek, and he jumps off of me, both of us bolting up to see where the noise came from.

“What the fuck was that?” I ask, fixing my clothes, trying to catch my breath.

“No idea, but it looks like a lot of people have already left,” he says, looking around at the almost empty cemetery, and I notice the same thing but wonder when that happened.

Shawn comes over, walking out of the shadows in front of us, a grin on his face and his neck covered in dark red hickeys as the girls happily skip behind him, drunk and fucked up off their asses.

“Hope we’re not interrupting anything. I come bearing gifts,” Shawn says, pulling a Ziploc baggie out of his black jeans pocket and dangling it from his hand.

I see a stack of orange pills in a corner of the bag and assume they’re E pills, and my mouth begins to water right away.

“You sure know how to kill a mood, Shawn,” River huffs, sitting back down next to me with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

“Cry me a river, River . You’ll be fucking in no time, and it’ll feel even better once you take a couple of these,” he laughs, dropping a couple of the ecstasy tablets into the palm of his open hand.

He drops two into mine as I hold out my hand eagerly, as well as Carli's and Melanie's, who both squat down next to me. When Shawn sits down and takes two pills from the baggie, we raise our glasses, pop the pills into our mouths, and wash them down in unison, ready for whatever wild trip they'll take us on. He isn’t finished, though. He pulls a sheet of acid out of his wallet and rips a strip off, placing it on his tongue and passing it to River next.

“Open up, angel.” A perfect square is torn off and put on my tongue as he speaks.

He puts one on his and presses his lips against mine. As the drug residue on the paper dissolves into our saliva, ushering us into a pitch-black chasm of the complete unknown, our tongues curl around one another in a frantic struggle.

Saint

My heart beats furiously inside my chest as a result of the blue lights behind me that are flashing right in my fucking eyes, driving me mildly insane. I take a few deep breaths, move to the right side of the road, and wait to see if it’s me they’re looking for while silently praying that they’ll keep driving and leave us alone.

“You were going too fucking fast, Sil; I warned you,” Blade spits while fidgeting with the Saint Christopher pendant he’s holding in his hand and nervously scanning his side mirror.

As we continue down the freeway toward the cemetery with a dead body stuffed in the trunk, they zoom past us with their sirens blaring, and all the tension in the car leaks out of all four open windows. Riley and Nixon are seated in the back, acting as if they don’t care about anything, with their eyes glued to the night outside their windows as it passes by in a blur.

"I was following the speed limit, Blade. Simply fucking put, they’re out tonight because it’s Halloween. Relax.”

“Relax, you say. Relax? We have a fucking dead body in the fucking trunk, and you’re telling me to relax?”

“Blade, you do need to relax. You’re working yourself up for nothing,” Nixon pipes in, sticking his head between the two front seats with a cheeky grin on his face .

Blade turns away from him and peers out his window, anxious and impatient. I can see Riley's knife in the rearview mirror, glinting in the moonlight, and just thinking about what the sharp blade can do to a human body makes me aroused.

As we draw near, my grip on the steering wheel becomes more firm, and excitement surges through me as I consider the unfortunate man in the trunk who crossed our paths tonight and met his demise.

In no way were we raised to be respectable members of society. With the parents we grew up with, Blade and I never stood a chance in life. Despite the fact that I don’t know much about Riley and Nixon's early lives, I assume they weren’t the most idyllic either.

We enlisted the moment we were able, hoping that the military would help us develop the structure and discipline we lacked. Even though it was a terrible mistake that I immediately regretted, it gave me the knowledge and abilities I needed to pursue my true passion, which is killing.

In the military, Blade and I connected with Nixon and Riley, and the four of us became close because we all shared a passion for homicidal acts of torture and murder. Killing enemy combatants and dismembering their bodies for amusement to see what it would be like was initially considered harmless.

From enemy soldiers, we gradually advanced to people that nobody would miss. We were honorably discharged after serving in the Marines for a decade, but we had undergone significant change as a result. In fact, we are as far from honorable as you possibly can fucking be. With the exception of children—the only innocent people left in this corrupt world we live in—the four of us continue to do our due diligence and practice our beliefs on whomever we choose, now that we’re all back in the United States and retired from the military. To avoid getting caught, we now bury the victims that we do not burn or dismember in the cemeteries near Salem .

A soothing chill spreads across my back and cascades down my spine as soon as we pull through the gates and begin to slowly drive the Mercedes down the lonely, winding road to the Mausoleum at the back. My nostrils tingle as the smell of death drifts through the air, and I eagerly take in as much of it as I can.

The thought of holding a blade in my hands and experiencing the velvety feeling of the blood as it drips down my hands and paints them red makes my hands itch. Blade still glides his pendant through his hands, an annoying tick he has picked up from his battles with severe PTSD, and yet, there is so much more he’s hiding beneath the mask. Then again, aren’t we all hiding something beneath our masks?

We pull up and get out, stretching our legs after the long drive. My eyes scan my surroundings, feeling like something is off tonight. Blade, Riley, and Nixon head for the trunk as I hit the button on the key fob, opening it to reveal our prize for the holiday.

“You killed him , Saint?” Riley’s tone is one of pure shock as he peers into the trunk, noticing whose throat is slashed to his spinal cord, bleeding out on my brand new fucking carpet.

“Yeah, I sure the fuck did," I reply smugly, and my brow raises as I begin to walk the perimeter, trying to listen for the laughter that I could’ve sworn I just heard.

“Everyone is going to be looking for this mother fucker, Saint. You don’t just go around slitting some frat kid’s throat.” Blade tries to play the big brother card, even though he’s only a year older.

“It’s already fucking done. Now get him inside the fucking tomb,” I spit, and hear the sound again, determined to find out where it’s coming from. “I’ll be right in. I’m gonna go look around to make sure we’re straight.”

I walk off as they work on getting the dead kid out of my trunk, his blood still stained on my hands, along with hundreds of others, but obviously I don’t mind. I know these graveyards like the back of my hand. We live in these places, and even though we have our own places, we spend most of our time here.

I follow the sound of panicked voices, keeping in the darkness with my blade out, hoping I’ll get the chance to use it again. Crouching behind a headstone, I see a group of kids in their early twenties, fucked up and out of their minds by the looks of it. I look between the four of them, but my gaze only catches one. She’s fucking beautiful.

It's her … Her jet black hair shines under the beam of the moon, making her eyes glow as if she were possessed or something. The tight fitting outfit she’s in leaves little to the imagination and shows off all the beautiful curves of her body, perfect in every fucking way. But what catches my attention more than her exquisite beauty is the gun in her hand and the crazed look on her face as she holds it, frozen in place.

Scarlett

It feels like there’s a demon inside of me that’s telling me to do these things, but there’s this other voice—a good voice—telling me not to do them. I look down at the gun in my hand and furrow my brows, trying hard to remember how I got it, and where it even came from.

“Scar, give me the gun.” I hear River’s voice, and I turn toward the sound of it, seeing his silhouette but not his face.

It’s the drugs, I tell myself; I'm probably having a bad trip. I stumble toward River and give him the gun, feeling myself collapsing right after.

“Where did it even come from?” I ask, still trying to figure out what happened that led us here.

“It’s mine. You saw it and wanted to play with it, and I guess you liked the feeling so much that you didn’t want to give it up,” Shawn laughs, taking his gun back from River and spinning it around his finger by the trigger.

“I wanna play with it!" Carli yells, jumping up and down, making me dizzy with her childish outburst, especially with the killer headache and short temper I have right now.

A brisk gust of wind whips through, rustling leaves and snapping twigs popping in my ears, snapping my attention in front of me, but all I see is darkness and a tiny spot illuminated by the full moon.

“It’s not a toy, Carli. It’s a fucking gun.” I hear Melanie say to her, but I can’t tear my eyes off of the line of headstones on the other side of the cemetery, feeling like there’s something back there, even though I can't see anything.

Shawn’s spinning gun still tortures me out of the corner of my eye, and Carli still jumps up and down, a bad feeling suddenly tightening all the muscles in my throat and making me feel like I can’t breathe. And then I hear it. The gunshot. It rings loud and echoes in my ears, feeling like they’re bleeding as I sit here, frozen, noting that Carli is no longer jumping up and down.

“What the fuck did you just do, Shawn?” River screams and runs over to Carli, trying to see if he has a chance at saving her from the bullet that came from Shawn’s gun.

When I see River’s face paling instantly as he stands up and backs away from her body, I know right away that my best friend is dead.

“Why aren’t you trying to save her?” Melanie yells, running up to Carli’s lifeless body, but River and Shawn hold her back.

“She’s dead, Mel. I’m sorry.”

“How do you know she’s dead?”

“She’s got a fucking bullet in her damn head!” Shawn screams, his hands running frantically through his hair as he begins pacing .

River watches him, not knowing how to console our friend who just killed our other friend.

“We have to call the police and tell them what happened,” Melanie begs, and all three of us look at her, fear crippling all of us to our core.

“We’re not calling the fucking police. All of our careers will be fucking over, and you know it. They’re not going to believe that it was an accident, Mel!”

“Then what are we supposed to do, Shawn?”

“We bury her out here and never tell anyone about this. If the cops ask us anything, we tell the same story—that we haven't seen her since she left to go home for the holiday. Everyone find something to dig with; we need to dig up one of these graves,” he says it like it’s nothing to him, while the feeling of being watched still seeps into my pores and chills my bones.

As we get to work on digging up a grave to bury our friend, nausea pools in the pit of my stomach, and it takes everything in me to hold it down. I can't look at any of them, or at Carli, lying on the wet grass in a pool of her own blood, a bullet hole perfectly between her eyes. Shawn's right, though; the cops around here won't believe the three of us or the fact that it truly was an accident, and that we were tripping and playing around with the gun. Not when the wound to her head is a perfect fucking shot.

Fuck, talk about a bad trip.