The Emperors of Washington by gallantcorkscrews

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5337013/1/

"amazing how death wins hands down

amazing how much credence is given to idiot forms of life"

- Charles Bukowski

He was my psycho. It's all... so horrifying, but it makes sense.

Because love should be scary.

Love means you'll throw yourself in front of a bullet for someone. Love means a
willingness to die.

People like to whitewash the sentiment, but really, love's a pretty morbid thing.

It starts like this.

I should start the story further back, to when we first started picking on Edward
at school. To when we made him cry. From what Edward tells me, my friends had
tortured him since first grade. He says Tyler even killed his pet frog after he
brought it in for Show and Tell. Threw it against the outside wall of the gym and
laughed as Edward screeched in shock.

But the thing is, I don't remember any of that. Edward had been suffering for
years because of my friends, and it wasn't notable enough for me to remember.

For me, it started on Dress Down Day.

I went to a very nice Catholic school. The girls usually wore skirts and button-up,
and the guys had khakis and button-ups. On Dress Down Day, the students each
paid a dollar that goes to some charity- some deaf, dumb, and blind institute on
the other side of town, and we got to wear our street clothes.

That day I was wearing my yellow dress. The color yellow washed me out
horribly, making me look slightly jaundiced. But I loved the color. Maybe it's
because when I was little, I drew yellow flames a whole lot. The drawings
featured houses on fire, trees on fire; little flames dancing above stick people's
head, like apostles receiving the fire of Holy Spirit. In Forks, water was
ubiquitous. I loved fire, because it could dry this soaking mess of a town out.

We all -Jessica, Lauren, Tyler, Mike and myself- cut fourth period and went to the
Forks' diner. For several minutes, we loitered in the parking lot in front,
wondering if we should risk going inside where people might recognize us for
truants.

"We're dressed in our normal clothes," Mike said. "So they won't know we're
cutting school."

Lauren scowled. "As if. Our school is, like, the only entertainment this town has. I
bet every establishment has a calendar of the school's events posted in their
office. They probably all called each other this morning, all like, 'Shit! They
Catholic school girls aren't wearing their skirts today!'"

"Quit being a Negative Nancy." Mike pinched her waist.

"I can't be caught skipping school again," Tyler said. "They'll suspend me, and I'll
lose my scholarship."

"Broke ass," Mike sneered.

Jessica slapped Mike's shoulder. I was silent.

You see, St. Mark's Prep School was voted top parochial high school in the
Northwest. It was also the largest supplier of jobs to Forks community, employing
more people than even the hospital. Kids from all over the country were sent and
boarded at the institution.

Except for Mike and I. We were 'townies' who happened to get admitted. It
helped our popularity; we had houses where friends could spend the night at over
the weekend, getting away from their dorms.

The school set you for college. Cambridge, Harvard. It was a golden star on your
application. It's only blemish was that it was ninety-nine percent white. They
started giving scholarships to minority kids. Jessica was Asian... we don't know
exactly what her lineage is, specifically, because she changes the answer from
Chinese to Thai to Vietnamese, based on her mood.

Tyler swore she was Japanese. "It's obvious. Look at her eyes. You all can't tell
the difference between a Japanese person and a Vietnamese person? It's like
night and day!" he had once said, all incredulous. But Tyler's mom is from
Senegal. So maybe he knows more about minorities.

Forks is completely, utterly white. The only black people in town are St. Mark's
students.

Lauren started to get restless, and she pulled out her iPhone to scroll through
pictures of spring break.

"Big bad Tyler, too scared to go into a diner," she muttered.

"Look, how about we stay out here. You three will go order our shakes," Mike
declared, addressing Lauren, Jessica, and I. He plunked himself on the front of a
Jeep Wrangler, dusting his knees off and ostensibly settling in on the sagging
fender.

"Coward," Jessica said, rolling her eyes. "You send the girls in to be caught while
you stay outside."

"That's pretty much the gist of it." Mike spat onto the pavement. "Go. I want a
vanilla shake. With extra awesome."

Jessica and Lauren both made annoyed faces, cringing at our mulish boys, just
sitting there and spitting on the concrete.

Quietly, I turned on my heel and headed inside before one of them opened their
mouth and a fight ensued. I swear, they could make a mountain of a mole hill.

The diner reminded me of the fifties, all chrome countertops and black and white
checkered tiles. A jukebox played Sam Cooke.

I ordered the shakes for us. For a bunch of run-of-the-mill, C+/B- teenagers, we
sure were eclectic with our tastes in ice-cream drinks. Lauren loved the
cappuccino, Jessica dug the pina colada. Tyler was all about the peach almond.

(Seriously, the Forks Diner shakes were a feature at a town. They're even
mentioned on the town's website.)

Mike loved vanilla. It was the only flavor he ever drunk, and he was loyal to it. I
liked this about him. My favorite was strawberry, and it was all I'll order, too.

Sometimes, when I was in a contemplative mood, I analyzed my friends. I
thought of what their shake choices say about their personality. Lauren was a
charged personality, and she dreamed about being a sport agent, a la Jerry
Maguire. Jessica... well, she aspired to be a trophy wife. She was very open and
self-aware about her choice, always saying, "Hey, at least I know I'm only good
for arm candy." You have to admire her honesty. And Tyler, he was creative. He
painted intricate scenes in art class, and he could play the tuba. In sophomore
year, it was whispered that he was hooking-up with Eric. You see what I mean?
Creative, a free spirit.

Mike and I were the most boring. We would probably live out the rest of our
years in Forks while our friends moved away, and have vanilla and strawberry
loving children together.

Lauren and Jessica walked in behind me, chattering about the new dye job our
Biology got.

"Totally wrong complexion for blonde hair," Lauren decreed. "And you did you see
how she bleached her eyebrows to match?"

"It totally looks home-done, and that's really dangerous. She could have blinded
herself!"

"Yeah, and then we could do whatever we want in class, and she couldn't see!"
Lauren snickered.

The shakes arrived on the countertop, four cups wobbling in the cardboard cup
holder. Mine was the odd man out, standing outside on its own. I smiled at it,
rubbing the top affectionately.

"You're going to pay for these, right?" Lauren asked me.

"I always do."

I picked up the cup holder. The girls retrieved their drinks, sucking noisily at the
straws, and I walked outside to bring the boys their shakes.

The parking lot of the Diner was shared by the pharmacist, grocery store, post
office, etc. etc. It was the only thing we had resembling a strip mall. The lot was
large, and the sun was out today. When I walked outside, all the sun and the
white concrete flashed brightly after the dim diner interior. It was like snow
blindness, and I covered my eyes with spread fingers to filter out the light. The
door closed behind me, the handle's bell jingling as my friends exited.

"Bella, you're blocking the way-" Lauren, poking me in the back.

"Yo, Bella's got the shakes!" Mike, waving from his post on the jeep.

Suddenly, so suddenly, a loud noise echoed across the parking lot. I still confused
by all the people calling my name and didn't react.

And really, a gun shot's not something you think you'll ever hear in real life. You
hear it so much in movies, T.V. shows. It becomes a little unreal. You never
expect it to really happen. Gunshots are a thematic device, on-par with gigantic,
rolling boulders and sharks equipped with laser beams. When talk show pundits
squabble over children being desensitized by television violence, this is what they
mean. Not that you'll go out on a killing rampage after watching too much HBO-
but that you won't duck when a bullet comes by you.

Not that it hit me.

I stood there, still confused by all the people calling my name, and now
disoriented by the loud, foreign sound. Jessica and Lauren were suddenly
crouching at my feet, their arms crossed protectively over their heads.

As if that would stop a bullet.

Tyler was shouting. "Oh God- someone shot him! Someone got him!"

The sun was still in my eyes, and I blinked, trying to focus.

And I saw him crouching and crying over Mike's crumpled body. Tyler cradled
Mike's head in his hands, and he was leaning very close over Mike's body. Like,
familiarly close, like he's held him that way many times before.

Still, I was disoriented. At first, I didn't think about what was happening, why
Lauren and Jessica were now on their feet and screaming next to me. All I
thought was, huh, maybe Tyler got into Mike's pants the same way he got into
Eric's. I guess Mike wasn't that vanilla, after all.

But oh, Mike's head was half-blasted off, red gore dripping and wiggling out of his
shattered face.

We'd never have strawberry-shake-loving babies, now.

"and I run child-like

with God's anger a step behind,

back to simple sunlight,

wondering

as the world goes by

with curled smile

if anyone else

saw or sensed my crime"

-Charles Bukowski

No one ever paid as much attention to me as they did when I was a victim. When
Edward was gunning for my friends, people looked at me like I was a delicate
marvel, a miracle.

I was suddenly precious.

I wonder why people bother to succeed in life. Why they strive so hard.

It's so much easier to be a victim, to have horrible things happen to you, and to
be loved for it.

Well, it was all very interesting, to say the least.

The cops and my dad, they said the shot that killed Mike came from the woods
out behind Wagner's Meat Mart. They also said the shooter was a good criminal.
His shoe prints left no tread marks, and they lead to a rocky creak where they
disappeared. The police scoured all up and down the brook, but they never picked
up his trail.

My friends and I talked to policemen, reporters (all the way from Olympia! how
did they get there so fast?), and a representative from the Forks Council for
Recreation and Tourism.

"Try not to say too much to the reporters," the representative said. "Forks hasn't
experienced a murder in thirteen years. And the fact that it was a St. Mark's
student; that can look bad to the school's investors."

A random sniper killing teenagers in small town Forks was going to cause a panic.
People wanted to be told that the killer didn't live here, and that he wouldn't
attack again. Charlie said he was receiving pressure to say the suspect was "likely
a drifter, just passing through". It all reminded of Jaws, when everyone was
worried that the shark attacks would adversely effect Labor Day weekend
tourism.

The principal for St. Mark's visited all of us the night after Mike's murder. He was
seriously freaking. He asked my dad if they should close the school until they
were certain there was no threat to the students.

"That's ... quite the overreaction," Charlie told him. He later grumbled that this
"murder business" was seriously going to cut in to his fishing time.

"It's totally silly," I said. "Hogwarts got attacked annually, and you didn't see
Dumbledore closing it down."

Charlie frowned so deeply at me the grimace curled the wrinkles in his forehead.
"This isn't a fantasy, Bella. Stop comparing everything to the damn movies."

Sometimes, I suspected that Charlie sort of disliked me. Maybe he thought I was
a freak. According to him, I changed when I became a teenager. Grew morbid.
He would get so offended by my blasé attitude about life and death. Like six
years ago, he shot and killed a rapist. He was torn up by what he did.

I harassed him with questions about it: how did it feel, what sort of noises the
man made as he died, what visual changes his body went through. I pretended I
was a detective on Law and Order, like Jerry Orbach.

My father yelled at me. He wouldn't speak to me about work for many months
after that.

But I think he's used to me, now, finally, at seventeen years of age. He used to
be disturbed by me. Now he knows I'm just full of crap.

Lauren and Jessica camped out at my house that weekend. With the Sherriff and
a witness living there, my house had become Murder Central, with calls and
visitors at all time of the day and night. It was the place to be.

My friends, they have never been... so emotional. They cried all the time, all snot
and smeared mascara and hiccoughs. They lounged on my couch like insolent
cats, stretched out and languorous in their grief, drizzling used tissues and tears
over the cushions. It was awful.

Maybe I just have conservative attitudes about these things, but girls were
supposed to cry prettily. That was how it was shown on the soap operas. A few
tears slipped down the actress's blushed cheeks. The light caught each drop,
glittering like starlight. The woman sniffled like an allergic kitten, and then she
stared out a lace-lined window, contemplating the backyard willow. And she
always wore water-proof mascara.

Mike would have thought that Jessica and Lauren looked terrible.

Don't get me wrong. I loved Mike. He was like an incestuous brother- someone I
grew up with, loving in that obligatory, patient way siblings had; and every now
and then, I wondered what it would be like to suck his penis. And I did feel
depressed and lowly about his death. However, it was a very…. detached
depression. I simply felt bad. I didn't dwell on it. Didn't wallow in the sweet
memories of one Michael Rinaldo Newtown.

There weren't that many sweet memories of him, anyway. He was just a boy who
did average boy things.

(Like he never taught us girls to play poker well, because every time we played
with him, it would be strip poker, and he wanted us to lose. He was that kind of
boy.)

Nothing stellar about him.

And now he's dead, gone, erased. No longer of consequence.

He would hate the circus they were making out of his demise.

"I want grapes. Do you have grapes?" Lauren asked, snot bubbling from her
nose.

"Yes. I have grapes."

Gazing off, she wiped her nose on the back of her hand and smeared her hand
against the couch arm. Then she looked around sheepishly, wondering if anyone
caught her defiling my furniture.

I turned away to get the grapes.

"Dad, can you ever love people, but sort of hate them at the same time?" I asked
him as I walked into the kitchen.

He peeked at me over the top of his American Angler magazine.

"I suppose so," he sighed, looking entirely unwilling to be engaged in an abstract
conversation.

I rinsed the grapes in the sink and gazed at the window. I stared at Charlie's
porcelain owls littering the sill.

I have no idea why a grown sheriff collected porcelain owls. Porcelain animals
were the props of portly fifty year old women who taped the Ellen DeGeneres
Show on VHS. Not a leathery, prematurely-aged copper. Still, the owls were my
favorite thing about my father. Sometimes, when I sort of want to punch him in
the face, it was these porcelains owls that remind me why I love him.

When I got tired of looking at the owls, which was no easy feat, as the owls were
plentiful and adorable (but I was in a strange mood), I stared out the window into
the backyard. Old croquet hoops were set up and rusting in the soft loam. My
mom set those up when I was an infant, before she went crazy and moved away
to become a "feminist" (buzzword that meant self-righteous floozy, if you went by
Renee's example).

Beyond the croquet pitch was a dilapidated dog house furred over with green
moss.

On top of the dog house sat a beautiful boy.

He sat with crossed legs, his hands folded and resting on a bended knee. His face
was serene, with ripples of contemplation passing like cloud shadows over his
features.

I furrowed a brow.

He smiled and waved, his teeth so white they had a neon, incandescent quality,
like they had been bleached to the root.

Holy smokes, it was Edward Cullen.

I hadn't seen the boy in two years. He had left St. Mark's under shady
circumstances. Rumors abounded. One day Sr. Margarita's dog showed up dead,
its throat slit, on the fifty yard line on the football field. The next day, he was
withdrawn, taken away to military school or alternative school or God-forbid
public school.

Back then, he was ugly as sin. His face was ridged with acne. Like, the acne was
atrocious. His pimples had pimples. He didn't have cheekbones- just strata of red,
rising inflammation carving up his face. And he kept his head shiny-bald.

His hair was still razor-styled, but there was a good inch on the top, just enough
catch the bronze sheen in direct sunlight. And the rest of him... well, he was just
the most seductive thing I had ever seen.

"BELLA! Did you get the grapes?"

"...Coming."

Jessica and Lauren were gathered around my laptop when I entered the room.

"What's going on-"

"We took over Mike's Facebook page," Lauren sniffed. "We're posting an alert
about his wake."

She turned the computer around so I could see the screen. On it was Mike's
profile, with a RIP avatar in lieu of his picture.

I dropped the bowl of grapes on the glass tabletop, appreciating the disruptive
rattle it made against the pane. "So you're the post-mortem voice of Mike?" I
asked.

"Who better?"

"Just saying, we should conduct a séance or something to determine Mike's
wishes. What if he doesn't want you on his Facebook?"

Anger flooded Lauren's face, and she seemed on the urge of snapping when
Jessica touched her shoulder.

"She's just being weird because she has blunted affect," Jessica said. "It's from
post-traumatic stress."

Lauren nodded her head sagely.

For some reason, the term blunted affect reminded me of my gorgeous man
friend sitting on top of the doghouse.

Seeing that boy stirred me more than any of this death talk. I felt like crying over
how beautiful he was, but not over my friend's murder.

That couldn't be a healthy.

I realized I should mention Edward to someone. He was posted outside of my
house, lurking with no reason, and that certainly can't be a good sign. Yet I
wanted to keep the knowledge of him to himself. He was too hot to talk about. If
Lauren or Jessica knew he was out there, they would swarm him, tease and
giggle at him. They've destroyed every crush I've had. Whenever I got a little
intrigued by a guy, I would see him interact with Lauren and Jessica, and that
would ruin in it. My friends would giggle and flirt and sneak fleeting touches with
him, and he would eat it up. It was disgusting, and not the least bit disillusioning.

"Should we post pictures of the crime scene?" Lauren asked. "People want to
know as much as possible about his death..."

Jessica met my eyes then, looking a little nauseated by Lauren's lurid suggestion.

"Jesus," Jessica mouthed, glancing quickly at Lauren and biting her lip.

Sometimes, I really loved Jessica. She could be a real faker sometimes, but then
there were quiet instances like this, when we could share a quiet understanding.

And I don't love people a lot. I only realized I loved people in flashes. Like with
Charlie, when I remembered his porcelain owls, and I'd suddenly love him.

A shot rang out then.

And this time, I ducked. And screamed.

Glass flew over my body, spraying from the exploding window above the couch.

It took about a minute after hearing the bullet to realize I hadn't been hit.
Tentatively, I peeked up at the couch, wondering who bit the dust.

It was Lauren who got it this time. She was slumped over my laptop, bleeding
black all over the keys.

That would make one helluva Facebook alert:

Lauren Mallory is dead. Killed while trying to post under a dead boy's account.
The bullet carved a neat, red tunnel through her nose.

It was at that moment, covered in glass, trying to pull a screaming Jessica away
from a body, watching my sofa soak up Lauren's plasma, and completely losing
my mind, that I realized Edward Cullen was the shooter, killer.

Which just didn't compute. Edward Cullen was too pretty to kill.

I know that sounds shallow of me, but it's a Catholic thing. There's a Jesuit
doctrine from the 18th century about it. Supposedly, (and I believe it
wholeheartedly) the beauty of the body reflected the beauty of the soul. If people
were ugly, it was because their soul was corrupt.

Edward Cullen looked like an angel.

The school's secretary, Mrs. Cope, let dorm students stay her house. At a
boarding school, there were instances when students needed to stay a night
away; when they had their wisdom teeth pulled and they needed to be closely
watched during the night by an adult who could readily dispense their Vicodin;
when they got suspended and were separated from the student populace. The
school needed to send them to the house. And they went to Mrs. Cope's.

Everyone loved her place. For one, the dorm kids weren't allowed television on
school grounds. Mrs. Cope let you watch her widescreen HD TV and play X-Box.
Two, her kitchen was stocked with munchies, from Fruit Loops to kiwi to home
made dumplings. Dorm students could only eat during cafeteria hours, so to have
access to a kitchen like this was heaven. When kids got stressed from the course
load, they would intentionally get themselves suspended. They called it a Cope
Vacation.

So maybe it made sense that Jessica and I were dropped off at Mrs. Cope's house
after Edward attacked my house. I don't know exactly why he chose to stash us
there, except maybe Cope's place was the dumping ground for hapless St. Mark's
students.

He posted Officer Tom at the front door.

"Keep the curtains closed," he instructed -just that simply- lifting my head and
placing a kiss on my forehead.

Charlie was a beast in crisis. Like, literally, a beast. When he was in life-or-death
mode, the reptilian brain took over his head and drained him of all human affect.
His motions became swift and efficient, and he showed no emotion, having no
time for dramatics. In 1999 a mudslide over-ran a plant nursery, killing three
people. Charlie worked forty two hours straight during the crisis, only speaking in
grunts and growls.

Tyler was there, sitting on the counter with a plate full of turkey sandwich on his
lap.

"You'd think they give us some Valium or something," he mumbled. "Instead I
have to settle for tryptophan." He peeled a slice of bread away and poked at the
poultry slices, a frown spreading over his face. Tear streaks were drying on his
cheeks.

Jessica embraced him. He shoved his face into her collarbone and cried out
loudly.

She peeked at me over his shoulder and flicked her head, in a come and join us
gesture.

I took a quick step away, stuttering something awkward and apologetic.

Cause I didn't feel right hugging. Let's-hug-over-our-dead-friends didn't work for
me. Somehow, it made me feel vaguely disgusted. People were dying, and all we
could do was cry and hug over it. I knew this was a backwards attitude; people
should hug over their murdered friends. The touching was comforting. If Edward
killed again, maybe we would even have a comfort orgy. I'd like an orgy. At least
that was novel.

"God, I miss them," Tyler muttered.

"Me, too," Jessica answered, petting his gelled hair.

"Me... three?" I said. God, I suck at this.

"What if he's coming after all of us?" he asked, unhooking from Jessica and
backing away. "Jessica and Mike... they both died while they were hanging out
with us."

"Maybe we're just bad luck," Jessica said, smiling weakly. "Bella and I."

"I don't want to die." Tyler chewed his lip.

"At least it would be quick," I added, making a gun out of my hand and aiming it
my head.

Tyler gave me a hurt glare. Jessica, bless her heart, smirked in response. I knew
it was a pity-smirk, but I would take it.

For a moment I thought about explaining myself. Death didn't disturb me too
much. Sure, I had plans for the future -I'd like to dig up dinosaur bones in New
Mexico, that would be cool- and getting that nixed by an early bullet would
certainly be awful. Nevertheless, I didn't fear death so much as pain. As far as
psycho killers went, Edward was a merciful one. He could break all our bones and
fold us into a luggage case, letting us bleed to death in his closet.

But I didn't think Tyler wanted to hear that.

Mrs. Cope ambled into the kitchen, taking tiny, quick steps in her restrictive
pencil skirt. "Who wants to help me make pizza?" she asked. "I have all sorts of
cheeses: mozzarella, provolone, Parmesan, Romano..."

Her cheese list was endless. I excused myself, secretly gesturing to Jessica with a
mimed-inhale of a cigarette.

I don't smoke cigarettes. But I didn't want anyone to follow me outside, and I
knew they wouldn't be caught dead around cigarette smoke.

I slipped out the back, holding the screen door so it didn't bang shut, and
stepped out into Mrs. Cope backyard.

It was dark, filled with the complaining of locusts that rose in waves as they
called and answered to each-other. A resin bird bath in the shape of a lily pad
stood in the center, a 150 watt bird bath heater/de-icer floating in the bottom.

The whole yard was a bird habitat exported straight out of a zoo; shadbush and
coral berry and bottlebush grass, which hated this climate and grew in graceless
clumps. Mrs. Cope said the garden provided her with hours of 'cheep'
entertainment.

Christmas lights were wrapped around a hickory stand, blinking merrily from blue
to white. During the holiday season, Mrs. Cope kitted out her house in lights and
had a five foot inflatable snow-man in the front yard. She's been the MOST
FESTIVE HOUSE in the Forks' Gazette for the past five years.

Something rustled in the black-eyed Susan bush to my left. I froze, my chest
constricting. Images of Edward staring at me through a rifle scope danced
through my head. Slowly turning, I faced the bush with the finality of someone
watching a semi-trailer truck sliding across black ice into your car.

A tabby cat walked out, meowing plaintively.

"You little shit," I murmured, crouching down to scratch him behind the ears.

"You haven't told on me," came a male voice behind me.

The cat skittered away at the same moment he spoke. (Animals knew evil) The
two simultaneous actions startled me and I toppled over, landing on my elbows
and knees in the grass, my rear up in the air facing-

"Edward," I said, scrambling to my feet.

He stood with his feet a shoulder's width apart, bracing himself like he expected
to tackled to the ground at any moment. He rested a fist on his chin, taping his
knuckles against his bottom lip as he watched me under lowered, tense
eyebrows.

"Bella," he answered. His head dipped slightly in a minute bow.

"You haven't shot me yet."

He snorted. "Why haven't you told them about me?" he asked, his eyes
narrowing further. He could pin moths under glass with that gaze.

Maybe it was all the shock and emotional upheaval after loosing my two best
friends and the fact that I was now staring down their killer. I suppose I have a
lot of reasons for being distraught, but I was still ashamed of myself as I burst
into tears.

"I- I- I was too upset. If I-" I raised the collar to my nose, wiping the snot off on
my shirt. He still watched me with unwavering curiosity. "If I told them I saw
you, they would ask me a million more questions, and I just wanted to be alone."

"After I killed Lauren, you mean."

"Y-Ye-" Sobs seized my throat. I couldn't speak, so I cried.

He lowered his fist and enclosed it in his other hand, resting them in front of his
pelvis, looking for all the world like a patient cop waiting for a witness to spit out
her story. His eyes caught the glow from the shifting tree lights, flaring
eucalyptus green in the white light and dark teal in the blue.

"WHERE THE FUCK IS OFFICER TOM?" I shouted. "He should be-"

He grabbed me by the forearm and pulled me into his chest, slapping a hand over
my mouth. My lips were squeezed between his index and middle finger.

"You yell, and your friends come running outside to check you. And then I have
to kill them," he said.

And God, he smelled so bad. Like stale body odor and rancid baby powder and...
gun cleaning grease.

Charlie smelled like gun cleaning grease. Blearily, I wondered if they used the
same product.

"You need to chill for me, Bella."

His body was fully pressed against mine. He was taller, and his weight bore down
over me, making me slouch to accommodate him. His arms wrapped around me
and his moist arm pits resting over my shoulders. His was a hot, blistering hot
body, a lone radiating source in the cold autumn night.

Maybe I should scratch him, I thought. Get some DNA under my fingernails for
the coroner.

He loosened his hold over my mouth. His hand remained over my lips, getting
damp with my breath.

"I need to show you something," he said. "Reach into my pocket -slowly- and pull
the book out."

I slipped my hand inside and discovered a small notepad. It was a six inch tall
black marble notebook, kind Renee used to write her grocery lists in.

"Read it," he said, tapping the cover.

On the front was scrawled Reckonings in neat black felt-tip marker. Not like a
psycho killer's handwriting at all.

He took a step away from me, and as he did so he tugged my shoulder, forcing
me to turn around and face him while I read. While my eyes scanned the page, I
felt like each facial movement was being devoured and avidly committed to
memory to be remembered later.

Bella Swan: No Harm May Come to Her

-She's such a coward, such a cunt. Why she chooses those people for friends, I
don't know, except maybe she possesses a higher social intelligence than I could
ever hope to have. But they aren't right for her.

She removed an iron filling from her back tooth with a screwdriver because she
said it was picking up a radio station. She believes in aliens but scoffs at ghosts.
She cuts her own hair, and it's ugly and asymmetrical, and when people ask her
why, she makes up some magazine article, saying that it's the new craze.

She's insane, bold. She's waiting to arrive. There's no one else for me.

"Are you... killing my friends for me?" I asked slowly.

I couldn't control the you're a dumb shit tone of voice as I said this, and I winced,
expecting to be hit or shot.

He laughed at that. "You're such a narcissistic bitch." As he laughed, his hands
held his waist and he leaned forward from the hips, his whole chest rocking with
lungfuls of hysteria. When he was finished being tickled, he shook a finger at me.
"God, I love you."

"So why are you killing them?"

He wiped a hand across his mouth. When it came away, his smile was replaced
by a remote expression.

He shrugged. "I have my reasons."

I flipped a page in the notebook.

The header was: Mike Newton: mandatory kill. On the page next it was Coach
Robertson: possible kill. Can be collateral damage, but don't actively seek.

"Are you going to keep killing us?"

He grunted.

Another page: Jessica Stanley: mandatory kill.

"Are there any other people that no harm may come to?"

"No."

At that, a strange feeling settled into me. I've only experienced it once before-
when I was five and watching Jurassic Park, and I decided I wanted to dig up
dinosaur bones for a living. It was a feeling of purpose, of self-possession, of
knowing what I was doing.

I swear, only little kids ever feel that way.

"What if I go with you? Will you leave my friends alone?" I asked.

Please don't judge me on this. This guy had the power to kill everyone I knew.

If he said no, I could nothing but sit by and watch while the town became... a
hell-hole. Full of remembrance ceremonies and jaded, stupid people. Nothing was
worse than a jaded, stupid person. They were dull as dishwater and believed
themselves to be complex. It was one of my pet peeves.

But if he took me away, I would be a hero... at least in my mind.

And besides, this man had the power of life and death over us.

I was a tiny bit complimented that he cared about me. Cared... really hard about
me. He was a psycho that shouldn't love anything, and yet it looked like he might
for me.

Beyond the fear for my friends, beyond anything noble; it simply appealed to my
vanity.

"Okay," he said.

He took my hand and led me away. We cut across the road and into the woods on
the other side. As I passed Mrs. Cope's house, I saw Tyler and Jessica at the
stove, dabbing marinara sauce on each other's noses. On the front step was
Officer Tom, laying in a pool of blood that leaked from a slit throat down the
steps in long, think rivulets.

"Was Tom collateral damage or a mandatory kill?" I asked.

"Mandatory. He arrested me after I killed Sr. Margarita's dog," Edward said,
holding back a branch for me.

"Do you have any more mandatory's in town? Besides my friends?"

"Your father." He shrugged. "It's how I knew I loved you; I knew you were fated
to be the center of my world, because I was going to kill everyone around you."

"I've got the world on a string

sittin' on a rainbow

got the string around my finger

What a world, what a life, I'm in love!"

-Frank Sinatra

We drove out of town in a slick silver 1963 Volvo P1800.

"Beautiful car," I told him as I slid into the three-door sports coupe.

That seemed like a neutral enough topic. All guys dug cars.

"It's not mine," he said. "Found it outside of Madison, Wisconsin."

I didn't ask.

We passed the sign saying 'Welcome to Forks: Home of Chester Peeves, Record
Holder for the Longest Half-Marathon Run on Ice!'

Chester Peeves was an agoraphobic shut-in now, years after earning his local
celebrity status and the nickname "Ice Man". The National Geographic Channel
made a documentary on him, wherein he discussed how he has been chaste his
whole life. He felt practicing chastity helped him control his internal body
temperature. All of the town's spinster daughters fawned over him, trying to be
the one who stole his lucrative virginity. He now shot cats with a bee bee gun out
of his back door and hired a professional grocery shopper so he wouldn't have to
make runs to the store.

The St. Marks' trustees hated that sign. They felt it painted Forks as an oddball
town, a place to go in between visiting the Corn Palace in Iowa and the world's
largest twine ball- not a bastion of education and young mind-formation.

At the thought of possibly never seeing ol' Chester's house again, I started to cry
uncontrollably.

After many minutes of snivelling, I tried to get a hold of myself. I searched the
pockets of the car door and underneath the seat, looking for Subway napkins,
tissues, something to wipe my nose on. In the center console I found a pack of
what I thought were baby wipes and scoured my face.

Suddenly my eyes stung and I smelled ethyl alcohol. As it turned out, they were
Lysol wipes.

I started screaming. The car swerved, the driver no doubt startled by my yelling.

"Here," Edward said, shoving a water bottle at my hands. "Rinse them out with
this."

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" I scratched at my eyes.

"For God's sake, tilt your head back," he barked.

I leaned back, and he upended the water bottle over my face. I was drenched
from the top of my hair to the base of my bra. For several minutes I blinked
rapidly, trying to clear the sting away, and rubbed at my eyes.

Edward grabbed my hands. "Don't rub. You'll irritate it."

I jerked away from him. "Fine," I said, more than a little scared that he touched
me.

The situation overwhelmed me.

Give me murderers or give me Lysol in my eyes, but don't give me both. I broke
down again and spent the next hour intermittently crying and hiccoughing.

Even though I was hysterical, I still tried to keep an eye on Edward. It was bad
policy turning your attention away from the psycho.

Every now and again, I would catch him looking at my drenched boobs. The
damp shirt clung to my chest, outlining the top of my A-cups and the sagging
slope of my boobs.

Edward let me cry. He didn't say anything, which I appreciated. He did turn up
the radio, and I oscillated between being grateful and offended by the gesture.
Then I became just plainly confused, because I was obviously caring what this...
this man thought of me, even though he had no right to influence my feelings.

And then he started singing. "I've got the world on a string, I'm sitting on a
rainbow..."

He sang quietly but shrilly over the radio. The disc jockeys on-air were discussing
the murders in Forks.

Three hours in the car:

We hadn't spoken again.

I counted road kill: two raccoons, a deer, and a squirrel splayed gruesomely
across two lanes. Edward watched it too, his eyes trailing after the carnage as we
passed by and then flickering to the rear view mirror as we left it behind.

For forty nine minutes, we drove behind an eighteen-wheeler piled high with
lumber. I almost had a panic attack. Ever since I saw the Final Destinations
movies, I've been terrified of freak accidents; like, for example, the bindings on
an eighteen-wheeler's load of lumber coming loose and sending a large piling of
Douglas fir careening through the windshield and impaling me through the chest.

The air conditioner was on and too strong, blaring Arctic cold through the car.

I curled into the far corner of my seat and watched Edward some more out of the
corner of my eye. He wiggled his nose a lot, his face screwing into a disgusted
expression, like he was thinking something particularly disturbing.

What sort of things disturbed this guy?

"I'm thirsty," I blurted.

I braced myself for his reaction.

By all accounts, I shouldn't feel comfortable with voicing my needs to a madman.
Who knew how Edward would respond?

And I was scared.

But I hadn't had anything to drink since before Lauren died. And I ... was already
fairly certain I would die, anyway.

After internally debating it for the past eighty miles, I decided I might as well try.
The boy wrote nice(ish) things about me in his journal. Maybe he'd water me.

"There's a cooler in the back seat," he said. "You should be able to find something
you like."

He had a nice cooler packed. Like this was your standard road trip.

The cooler was in awful shape. It smelled like rotting fruit and was filled with
lukewarm water from long-melted ice. The fruit smell came from a busted bottle
of Sunny Delight which had spilled orange juice. Along with the Sunny Delight,
there were bottles of water, several packets of Capri Sun, and a can of O'Douls
non-alcoholic beer.

As soon as I had agreed to go with Edward, I decided that I should stay quiet. A
neighborhood boy had once gone to state prison after burning down a house,
almost killing its elderly inhabitant. Charlie forbade me, but I still talked to him
after he returned on parole, looking twenty years older with new frown lines and
double bags under his eyes. I asked him what it was like, how he got along with
the inmates. "Well," he said. "I stayed quiet for the first two weeks. You don't
want to open your mouth and say something that's accidentally disrespectful.
There's a whole different set of norms there, and you gotta learn their etiquette
or else you'll get knifed."

I tried to employ a similar tactic with Edward.

And I mean, seriously, how do you make small talk with a psycho killer?

But I was too fascinated by the contents of his ice chest to not say anything. I felt
like an archaeologist that had just unearthed the fossilized compost heap from a
Mayan village and was now sifting through the contents, wondering what their
foodstuff said about them as a culture.

"O'Douls?" I gasped. "You- you drink non-alcoholic beer?"

"I found an open case in the trunk. I bought the Capri Sun and water, though

"Oh." I frowned, still crouched over the center console and leaning into the back
seat

"You sound disappointed."

"Well. No, not really." I picked a water bottle and eased back into my seat. "Most
people who buy O'Douls are recovering alcoholics."

"And you thought I was an alcoholic?" He grinned. Dimples showed in his cheeks.
"Because maybe that would explain why."

"No- no, nothing could explain why."

"What if I was raped habitually as a child?" he asked, easing the car into a left
turn.

I was stupefied for several moments, imagining little Edward -the first grader I
knew from school, who picked his ear wax with the sharpened tip of his pencil-
hiding in a closet, alone, naked, rocking himself as he said something especially
victim-y. Like "No more monsters. No more monsters."

Or something like that.

"Were you?"

"No."

"Huh." I rubbed my eyes, trying to fight fatigue. "Well, that might have explained
it. Some of it. Maybe one murder."

He turned his head fractionally toward me, his eyebrows raised.

"... If the victim had been your abuser," I amended.

Five hours in the car:

By then, I had adjusted to the silence.

Sometimes, I thought maybe I should chit-chat with him- occupy his mind with
talk so he wouldn't be left there to idly stew as he drove, thinking up more
mayhem. Most of the time, I was content to watch the road signs flash by the
window.

Old Thorp Mill, next two exits.

Where we were going, I had no idea.

Motel Six and Taco Bell, exit now.

"I'm hungry," I said.

It was 3:14 a.m. I have never been on the highway this late at night. We were on
I-90 just before Ellensburg, heading east.

Edward kept right at the speed limit, and he always used his blinker, even while
switching lanes on a desolate road.

"Is there food in the cooler?" I asked stupidly. I knew there wasn't any food, but I
didn't want to keep asking the same question.

The stress made me hungry, though.

"No. There's no food."

I crossed my arms. "We should empty the cooler. It's going to start stinking up
the car. That smell sinks in to the upholstery- you'll never get it out."

"You're worried about my car? That's... sweet of you."

He might have been smiling, but it was too dark to tell.

"But don't worry," he said. "We're dumping this car in Idaho."

"So we're going to Idaho?"

Now I could see his smile break out into a full-blown grin. Dimples and all.

"Not ultimately," he muttered.

Suddenly, we exited the highway. We pulled into a trucker haven- one of those
little roads off the highway in the middle of nowhere that were outfitted with two
fast food chains and a humongous gas station/casino with a twenty acre parking
lot filled with eighteen-wheelers. There was usually at least one novelty store-
either selling Indian jewelry, adult toys, fireworks, or all three. America's
overflowing with these trucker resort destinations.

Edward steered the car in front of an all-night 7-Eleven.

"What do you want?" he asked. "That I can get from here."

"Um. I dunno. Hot dog. Can of SpaghettiO's. Lunchable. Something resembling a
meal. Oh- and a Cherry Pepsi. I need the Cherry Pepsi."

He nodded severely, his eyebrows furrowed in concentration like I had just
explained quantum physics to him.

The door slammed shut. I rested my eyes, leaning back on the headrest, thinking
about my cola and Mike in heaven.

I'm with your murderer, Mike. He's buying me Pepsi.

I imagined Mike wearing a toga and floating on a cloud with the most perplexed
expression on his face.

Then I heard a gunshot.

It came from inside- it was nowhere near me, but I started screaming and dove
underneath the dashboard. For several minutes, I remained on the car floor,
whimpering into a floor mat covered with pebbles and leaf crumbs.

The driver car door opened.

"Oh- Bella?"

The seat sagged and the leather crinkled as his weight settled into it.

"Bella, it's okay. It's ... over."

I squeaked.

"Pepsi?" he offered quietly. He laid a one liter bottle on my seat. "Look under the
cap. You may win a car."

"Why'd you have to kill him?" I peeked up at him.

He was turned in his seat facing my side, his elbow propped up on the wheel. The
pose fixed his body in a stiff shrug.

"Is the 7-Eleven guy on your 'mandatory' list?" I whimpered.

He frowned. "No. I just did it. I needed the money out of his cash drawer. We
need money."

"But... you didn't even know him."

I don't know why it bothered me so much that he killed someone random, but it
did.

"I know," he sighed. His mouth creased into a frown so tight that his lips went
white. He stared out the windshield, taking in the crime scene. The neon light
from a beer sign illuminated his face a bright, sickly green. "At first, I was only
going to shoot people who deserved it. But, well... might as well be hung for a
sheep as a lamb, right?"

I coiled tighter against my knees.

He patted the seat. "You've got to come out of there. I need to drive -now, before
someone discovers the body. You need to put your seat belt on."

"No. Just drive. I'm staying down here."

He sighed again. "You're going to have to get over this. If you freak out every
time I shoot someone, you're going to have grey hair by the time this is over."

Then he hit the gas, and I knocked my head against the door as the car lurched
into forty miles per hour. We sped away from the gas station.

We won't stay in random victim land for long. More canon characters will be
killed. Just another warning. Can never have too many with this kind of story.

"I might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb": In the past, people who stole
lambs were killed, so it was worth stealing something more because there was no
worse punishment.

I've had sex with a few guys before Edward.

Conner- that was a six month relationship and my first time. Eric. He called me
pretty one particularly low, desperate night, and that was the extent of that. And
then Jacob, who wheedled his way into my pants one day and camped out there
for weeks until his father caught us at it.

But despite my history, I hate sex. I'm too self conscious to let myself get lost in
the physicality. The entire time we're humping, I'll be laying there wondering if I
look bloated and trying to arrange us in positions that will block the view of the
pimple on my boob.

I know that sounds weird. After all, I had sex with Eric because I felt bad about
myself. I did something that would make me feel bad in order to feel better. It's
paradoxical.

I only like sex, in fact, when the guy is really forceful. It happened once- Jacob
got really macho on me and just demanded that I strip and get on all fours. When
I wouldn't do it, he laughed and pushed me to the floor.

The sex that followed was amazing. It's much better when I don't feel complicit in
my own debauchery.

"Please come out from there," Edward said. "Aren't you hungry? I have candy...
little girl."

He snickered at himself. Edward was amused by clichéd moments like this- when
he sounded like the madman he was.

I had passed thirty minutes crouched on the floor of that Volvo. At first, I stayed
under here due to terror. Now, I liked the idea of having a partial hidey-hole
underneath the dashboard. I felt like I wasn't as exposed. Edward couldn't watch
me out the corner of his eye, and I couldn't watch him. For a moment, I could
pretend that I was simply tucked away in a tight place. Not on some murderous
march across country.

"Hmm, all these Laffy Taffy's... hmmm," he said, smacking his mouth over the
candies. "I always loved these as a kid."

He tossed the orange and yellow candy wrappers on my car seat.

"Mmmm. So good... but there's just so many. I can't possibly eat all this candy
by myself..."

"You got candy?"

"Oh, did I get candy! I got Sweet Tarts, Jolly Ranchers, Gobstoppers, Swedish
Fish..."

"Did you get actual food?"

"Mmmm... they had pizza, hot pretzels, boiled eggs, apples... There's a bag in
the back seat. But you can't eat down there. Eating while lying down is bad for
your digestion."

I crawled onto my seat, wiping away the mountain of wrappers that had
accumulated.

"You need to warn me before you shoot someone," I grumbled as I snapped my
seat belt. "It's traumatic to the average citizen."

"Why? So you can try to talk me out of it?" He spoke through a thick wad of
candy stuck to the roof of his palate, a multi-colored clump that I glimpsed
between his teeth every other word.

"Um. Well- I guess I couldn't talk you out of it. But you don't plan on killing kids,
do you? I mean, other than high school kids."

"What- like seven year-olds?" He swallowed the taffy.

"Yeah, like seven year-olds. Like, if they haven't hit puberty, then you probably
shouldn't shoot them."

He sighed. "You're going to have to stop talking about this. It's pissing me off."

"Oh. Sorry. Okay."

We passed an RV. The flag of Puerto Rico hung in every window. A small child
was at the back window, staring forlornly at the road, the blinds propped
crookedly over his head. It's way past your bedtime, little man, I thought.

It scared me that he was on the same road as us.

"You know, it's dangerous to try to define who I can and cannot shoot," Edward
murmured in that low tone I would soon learn indicated danger. "You'll be playing
God right along with me."

I popped a knuckle and looked away, discomforted by his growling voice and talk
of God.

It's never good when killers talk about God.

Then I tried something heinously stupid. Feeling awkward and anxious, I did what
I usually do in socially straining situations; I tried to make light. This works
wonderfully at lame parties. Not so good here.

"Well," I chirped, all false-bravado. "I'm just saying- child killers don't do so well
in prison. Child killers and child molesters- those are the ones that get raped to
death-"

Growling, he jerked the steering wheel, swerving the car off the road. Beside the
highway was a shallow trench, and the undercarriage scraped the ground as we
careened down the bank. I heard the front grill make impact, and I jerked
forward, instinctively bracing my hands against the dashboard.

I winced for the car. It really was a beautiful machine, even if we were going to
ditch it at the state line.

All thoughts for the car's integrity then quickly vanished.

Edward's belt clicked open, and in an instant he had leapt on top of me. As he
jumped to my side he hit the light, and the car was suddenly illuminated for the
first time all night. A swath of blood streaked the roof- no, not a swath, but four
distinct lines of blood that trailed across, like four bloody fingers had clawed it
during a struggle. But Edward was a shooter; he never got close to his victims, so
whose blood was it?

Now he was crouched over me. One hand pressed against my headrest, pinning
my hair down, and the other was propped against the car's ceiling, inches away
from rusty smears. His knees were pressed into my thighs, the balls of his shoes
pushed against the windshield; his body was too large for this position and he
looked like he was about to crack the car open so he could better situate himself.

"You think you know about this, do you? You think you know about murder?" His
face was down, floating above my neck. His saccharine hot breath gusted sticky
over my throat. I stared down his long forehead, at the beauty mark on his right,
twitching eyelid. "Have some pearls of wisdom for me? How's the prison food
going to be, Bella? Hey Bella, since I shouldn't kill children, what's a preferred
victim demographic? Asian elderly? Fire fighters? Redheads? Who, Bella, who can
I kill?"

He spat out my name like it tasted nasty. With every 'Bella', the hand on the
headrest fisted in my hair, tugging it and jerking my head. My thighs were going
to be bruised from his knobby knees. It was uncomfortable and bordered on

agonizing. And I was the sick fuck in this equation, because I was bowing my
back up, trying to press my breast against his chest, my nipples just aching for
contact.

"Do you have any tips for evading the police?" he snarled. "How do I get blood
out of my clothes? How far will this madness go- will I always be a sniper, or will
I start to get bored and want to get closer to my targets- put a knife in the
kidney, maybe snap out their tongues?"

His head suddenly snapped up, and we were nose to nose. I met his eyes- blood-
shot from the long drive, eyelashes crusted with sleep he hadn't had. "Torture,
Bella, could I do torture?"

I licked my lips; they needed to be touched. "You could do anything you wanted."

Then he kissed me. He led the kiss with his teeth, pulling my lips apart with his
front incisors. I opened underneath him, and he kneaded his lips over mine,
pumping Laffy Taffy saliva into my mouth. And I sucked it down so hard I
imagined my stomach would hurt after.

At that moment, I wanted to spread my legs so wide I'd sprain my thighs. I
wanted him buried balls-deep, carving out a home for himself in my body,
wrecking the tenderest part of me so no one else could ever fill his fit.

Then I smelled him. The baby powder, the body odor, Christ, the gun grease. I
remembered- this is Edward, for God's sake. I pushed at his shoulders, and for
several moments he didn't register the movement, continuing to twist his lips
against mine. When he finally pulled back, he looked so confused- the most
vulnerable I'd seen him yet.

"I have to go pee," I blurted, and I opened the car door, scrambling from
underneath him.

He stumbled out after me, maybe thinking I was going to run.

I crouched in the chickweed and thistledown, pulling my pants and underwear
down, and let loose my bladder on the side of the highway. Edward coughed
uncomfortably, and I heard him shuffle away, kicking gravel across the tar road.
The moon was bright, and a bird screeched in the trees.

I became used to being startled. The disturbing, the murdering, turned
commonplace. Shock became a way of life.

The constant hysteria was like living in a fog. I adapted to it. And by adjusting to
the constant hysteria, I found myself accepting the source of the constant
hysteria:

Edward.

It's survival. Simple as that. People need to adapt to stressful situations.

There's one thing that's... off, though. I think I adapted too quickly. Surely
normal people don't acclimate to psychos that rapidly. Right?

At sunrise I drifted off to sleep, fully gorged on Swedish fish and hot pretzels. In
my dreams Edward wore Joker face paint and had green hair. He went down on
me and smeared his face paint over my thighs and coated my pubic hair white.
When I woke up Edward was pink-faced and wearing a very puzzled smile, and I
was embarrassed, wondering if I had said anything while asleep.

We were pulling into a parking lot as I was rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.

"What are we doing?" I asked, seeing the plastic siding of Waffle Diner.

Three men loitered in front of the diner's tinted glass windows, chaining lights off
each other's cigarettes, their denim collars pulled up against the hard wind. I
looked at the driver's seat. Edward was studying a map of Idaho, his trigger
finger tracing the red interstate line. A chill of fear for the three men spread down
my neck.

"We're going out to eat..." Edward drifted off, clucking his tongue in tune with the
radio jingle. Then he turned the engine off and jerked the keys out of the ignition.
"We haven't taken you on a date, and we've already passed first base. It's not
decent."

He shrugged.

Well. I couldn't argue with that. And a good meal of strawberry waffles and
cherry Pepsi would be delightful.

The interior's walls were nicotine-stained off white and featured framed ads from
the early nineteenth century. There was toilet water and talcum powder. Minute
Tapioca, with two Norman Rockwell children spooning the discrete lumps of
pudding into their mouths. Pall Mall posters that promised to guard against
Throat Scratch. All the tables were covered with oil cloth and set with tiny wicker
baskets filled with pinecones that were spray painted silver. The hostess had red
hair with grey roots and an emphysemic cough. She wrinkled her nose as Edward
passed, whispering under her breath that he was "ranker than Pig-Pen."

Wanting to distract him, I grabbed Edward's hand and pressed it against my
stomach, and he gripped my fingers, pressing his knuckles into my belly button. I
prayws that he hadn't heard her comment. I still didn't know what sort of
offenses triggered his rage, and I didn't want her to be shot for speaking the
truth.

We were seated at a table by the bathroom and where we were treated to the
smell of antiseptic spray and fart every time the restroom door opened. For
several seconds, we stared off into the spaces behind each other's heads.

Every few moments, he slapped his cheek -hard, abruptly, drawing the stares of
the diners- to keep himself awake.

"You look tired," I said. "You should sleep."

"I don't like sleep," he muttered.

"Do you have nightmares or something?"

"No. I never dream. It's all... one big blackness, like death." He smiled ruefully.
"It's like a small death. And when I'm lying down in bed and I'm about to shut my
eyes, I think I might not wake up again... Actually, never mind -forget I said that.
I'm sure that sounds ridiculous."

So you hate how you have no control over death, I thought, my mind whirring
with the possibilities of how this simple fear could mutate into the urge to kill. I
came up with a thousand explanations, and I knew none of them would be
resemble the always-stranger actuality.

"I hate balloons," I blurted. "They could pop at any time. It's such a loud noise,
and so unexpected. It's the spontaneity that scares me."

He giggled. His fork was in his hand, and he idly traced circles on the table top
with the tongs. "I suppose you're right; it is the unexpected that gets me. I want
to die wide awake, seeing the gun that's aimed at me."

He stabbed the fork at the napkin dispenser.

"I remember Mike used to grab you in a head lock. Choked you until you passed
out."

"What Mike and Tyler did could fill notebooks." He looked out the window, his
eyes glued to two black and white Great Danes that were being walked in the
blackgrass. "You see things when you are choked out. You see multicolored lights
weaving around in the darkness. It was like watching a video of a blacked-out
city, with the only lights the headlights of cars visible, put on fast-forward. But I-
I saw someone when I passed out. Superimposed over the whirling lights was a
featureless face surrounded by dark hair. It was a girl- telling me I'd be okay. I
thought it was God." He turned to me, eyes starkly bright against the blackness
of his lower lids. "Turned out, it was you."

I tried to remember the instance he was talking about, but I couldn't recall this
particular event. Sometimes, I felt bad for him after Tyler and Mike heckled him,
and I would think about comforting him (once my friends' backs were turned). I
never thought I had. I wanted to ask him more about this instance, but I figured
that he would be insulted if he realized I didn't remember.

A strawberry blond waitress approached our table. "Can I take your order?" she
drawled through her smacking gum.

She addressed this to Edward. Her back was turned toward me, leaving me to
glare up her pear-shaped figure, my eyes level with her overwhelming rear. By
the tilt of her head I could tell she was eyeing him appreciatively.

I crossed my arms and slumped back into the booth.

"Um, ma'am? Ma'am..." I grumbled. "I would like to make an order, too."

Her back gone stiff, she slowly pivoted toward me, her pumps scraping against
the linoleum floor.

"Yes?" She smirked at me.

I summoned up my snottiest tone. "Well, Ms..." I eyed her name tag. "Tanya, I
would like a strawberry waffles, with extra whipped cream, hash browns, bacon...
How much money did you get, Edward?"

"Enough." He was smiling widely, showing his sharp eyeteeth, obviously
thoroughly amused.

"And a bowl of fruit. And oh- a Pepsi. Do you have Cherry Pepsi? You might as
well bring out two. I gulp them down."

"We have Coca Cola."

"Tch. Lemmings." I pushed my menu into her hands and waved her away.

She curled a coral-painted lip at me before stalking off.

"That was contentious," Edward said.

I grunted. "I'm not usually that pugnacious. But there's something-" Quickly I
shut my mouth, swallowing my words. I was going to say, There's something
about being with a man who can handle his guns that make you cocky.

A toddler walked by our table, dribbling gummy bears behind him like Hansel and
Gretel. His blonde hair was sticky with syrup and butter. Three booths over a
frantic mother was calling for her child. I awkwardly picked him up under his
arms, hoping I didn't drop him on my way to his mother. Children scared me with
their small-boned fragility. Intellectually I knew they were stronger than adults in
some ways. Oprah once had a seven-year old girl on her show that fell out the
window of a burning building, plummeting seven stories. The child only sustained
bruises. She left an imprint of her body in the wet ground. An adult would have
had every bone broken in their body, but children's bodies were soft that way.
Malleable, resilient, able to sustain certain impacts.

"You're cute," he said when I was back at my table.

"Do you like kids?" I asked, fidgeting from the compliment.

He tilted his head, thoughtful. "Children are wonderful," he said, quite
unexpectedly. "They're innocent and perfect. Heaven is made of children."

Heaven is made of children. I imagined Peter's Golden Gates made of cross-
hatched children.

"Have you seen my three year-old cousin? Hellraiser. They're not so innocent, if
you ask me." I winced, remembering how the small girl parroted every swarthy
word she heard me say. Never the big, sophisticated, cool words in my
vocabulary- but words like 'cuntcake' and 'pussybreath'. I had been talking on the
phone with Lauren while I babysat her; a mistake I'll never repeat.

"Would you ever have kids?" I asked.

"Why do you ask?" An amused smile turned the corners of his mouth, and I
blushed, thinking how he would interpret that.

I shrugged helplessly.

"I want a plump woman in my kitchen, constantly pregnant, with children
clambering all over her. I want to make a town from my offspring. But I know no
woman could ever do that-"

"Some could-"

"One woman couldn't give me all the children I want." He lifted one finger and
glanced at, eyes disdainful. "I want hundreds." He brought both his hands up and
spread his fingers, wiggling them. "I can see where the urge for polygamy comes
from."

"You could always adopt," I snapped, feeling outraged and not sure why. Then I
added grudgingly, "Though I think you might have a hard time during the
screening process."

He laughed. "I don't see why. I think I've proven that I'm fully capable of
protecting my brood."

For a moment I smiled, picturing him on a front porch rocker and surrounded by
bronze-haired children, a rifle over his knees, eyes trained toward an obscure
horizon fraught with invisible enemies. It was a strange image; one that spoke of
another era, perhaps the earlier half last century, a Grapes of Wrath time.

I was romanticizing him. I didn't realize it then, but I was.

"...Turn it up!" someone shouted at the counter.

The red-haired hostess stood on tippy toes to turn the volume dial on the
television hanging above the coffee can.

"...more information has come up on the identity of the Washington Serial Killer,"
the television said, rising in decibels at every syllable. "Edward Cullen, disturbed
adopted son of respected Chicago heart surgeon Carlisle Cullen. He is responsible
for the deaths of at least five people. It is believed that he has abducted Bella
Swan, daughter of Forks, Washington Sheriff Charlie Swan.

On the television was a photo of me from my junior year. It was a fucked-up
picture; I still had my braces, and my hair was glossy with grease. Not realizing it
was picture day, I hadn't washed my hair for two days previous. I smiled like I
was opening up my mouth for a root canal.

"Here is her mother, Renee Higginbotham..."

Then my mother appeared at a podium in front of the grey monolithic facade of
the Forks' Police Department. She must have flown up from Arizona for the
occasion. My stomach churned at the sight of her, twinkling with tears on the TV
screen. Last time I talked to her, I was explaining that I wouldn't accept any
more presents from her and to stop air mailing them.

"'Please, Edward, if you are listening to this, bring my daughter home. She is a
sweet, innocent girl...'"

Edward grabbed my hand resting on the table and yanked it sharply, knocking
over a salt shaker. When I looked at him I saw two fierce eyes trained on me-
looking at like I was the only one in the world.

"Do you want to go home?" he whispered.

My mind was still spinning with disgust for my mother. She was still on the TV,
bleating about her maternal woes. Out of a desire to spite her, I answered
automatically, "No."

"Good. Let's go."

When we stood, we faced a diner full of startled patrons, their eyes flashing from
the television screen to Edward's face. On the television was a picture of Edward
looking sheepish in a homecoming tuxedo. I fought the urge to laugh. The news
should have searched for a picture more evocative of a killer.

"Now we go to FBI Agent James Poursuivant, who will be heading up the
manhunt..."

"Fuck it," he muttered, and he reached into the pocket of his suede jacket. I
knew to cover my ears before I even saw the gesture.

He sprayed the diner with fire and then pulled me toward the door. I only saw
one person get hit: Ms. Tanya, walking out of the kitchen's double doors carrying
plates full of food. She dropped to the ground, the tray filled with my waffles and
hash browns toppled over her body. The strawberries cluttered her hair, her
blood and my Coca Cola mingled on the tiles.

Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than with a drunken Christian.

-Herman Melville

5:02 pm.

Couer d'Alene, Idaho

The Aston Martin Vanquish gleamed in its double-parked spot, confident that no
one would dare ticket it.

The owner loved that car. In the glove box we had found leather wipes, a bottle
of scratch remover, glass cleaner, a nifty microfiber towel that boasted "mirror-
like results"- and condoms. Rolls and rolls of condoms.

Edward had chucked the condoms out. "It gets hot in car- the heat can't be good
for them," he explained.

Currently he was sitting behind the wheel, running a cordless drill along his jaw,
humming Here Comes the Bride under his breath as he studied the keyhole. I
stood outside, leaning against the front bumper of a Toyota Corolla, watching the
parking garage's elevator so I could warn any interlopers.

Next to him on the passenger seat were the plastic bags filled with our 7-Eleven
loot, a slim jim car pick, and his black Adidas tennis bag, which had formerly
been locked up in the Volvo's trunk.

That Adidas bag was the scariest thing I've seen yet. It was an assassin's Easter
basket. In it was a handheld police scanner, a first aid kit... a Glock pistol. At the
bottom was a Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifle -about twenty five inches long with
the stock folded- lying on a bed of three inch tall bronze rounds- or, as I liked to
call it, exhibit A in Lauren and Mike's murder trial. I teared up when I saw it.

I don't know what Lauren and Mike would think of me now. Sometimes, I thought
maybe Lauren would understand. She'd get off to this, too; being the center of
some whirlwind dash across state lines, facing life and death, getting stared at by
a suicidally beautiful boy. Really, it was only Mike I worried about. Mike wouldn't
agree with what I was doing. Mike didn't have a sensationalist bone in his body.
As stuffy as Sergeant Joe Friday, that one. He wouldn't understand the epic
nature of my current situation. He probably thought I was being ridiculous- and
not to mention, disloyal.

"I'm doing this for Jessica and Tyler," I prayed to Mike. "So they won't be killed.
Please don't hate me"

"What did you say?" Edward asked.

I recovered quickly, "I said that the Vanquish is too gaudy. It draws attention.
People see the car and they wonder who's lucky enough to drive it. They glance
at the driver- Bam, you're ID'ed."

"You have no sense of style," he laughed.

"What if someone walks in on us while we're stealing this?"

He snorted. The parking lot's red Exit sign glowed over his face, a mirage and a
warning glimmering across his eyes.

"You're so weird," he said. He flipped the drill on, and the parking lot was filled
with the sound of grating metal as he penetrated the keyhole's lock pins.

"You're the one who wants forty kids. You can't tote them to school in a
Vanquish, you know. You'll need to steal a minivan for that."

Suddenly I heard a car rolling down the exit ramp. I stiffened, praying it didn't
turn into our area of the garage- imagined the passengers' surprised, limp
expressions as they passed by, the reflection of Edward raising a gun
superimposed over their faces.

The car skidded on its brakes, the sound of shredding tires echoing across the
cavernous garage. It didn't turn off the ramp. I let out a breath.

The cordless drill clicked off, and all was resoundingly quiet. He placed a
screwdriver into the hollowed-out keyhole and turned; the car came alive, easy
as pie.

"Let's go!" he said, clapping his hands together.

I leaned through the open passenger window. "We need to get all this crap out of
here so I have somewhere to sit." I gestured to the bags.

"You're getting mouthy," he said, grinning as he got out of the car and rounded
to my side.

I thought he liked it when I ordered him around. It gave him a good chuckle.
Maybe it amused him that some little girl hostage had the gonads to boss around
the guy with the gun. Made him feel more normal, less scary, more
approachable.

This was a ridiculous thought, of course.

He whipped the bags out of the passenger's seat, mumbling at me to pop the
trunk. The Adidas tennis bag was open; a knife sharpener fell out as he swung it
through the door.

I picked it up, frowning down at it.

"You have knives?" I asked. "I didn't know that."

"Yes." He dropped the bags on top the car and glared, impatient with me.

"Can I see one?"

His head shaking in that tolerant, weary way of parents, he flipped open his
suede jacket and revealed the twin shoulder holsters crisscrossing his chest.
Stainless steel hunting knives glistened against his torso like fish scales.

He inched one out of its holster. "You want to see the knife?"

I nodded.

"Why? Are you going to stab me?" He flipped the knife in his hand and caught it
by the blade, the handle held out toward me. "Take it."

"Uh."

He thrust the handle at my hands, stepping closer so he was inches away now.
His breathing grew heavy as he stared down at me, his mouth slightly ajar,
bottom jaw crooked to one side.

And, well, I had a knife in my hands. The ghosts of Lauren and Mike and Tanya
were collectively screaming at me.

I lunged, my war scream getting choked off in my throat and coming out as yip.

The blade struck right below his nipple.

He grunted, blinking rapidly, eyes stunned and incredulous like he just got
champagne thrown in his face.

I leaned into his chest, knees locked, trying to gain leverage so I could shove the
knife in deeper. My face was pressed against his torso, and I could hear the
thunder of his heart.

I could take down a killer. And never have to do anything for the rest of my life,
content on my laurels.

I looked down and realized that my hair had gotten pinned by the blade. Some
was trapped inside the wound. A lock of severed hair had floated to the ground,
getting caught on the laces of his Oxfords.

Really, knives don't slip in as easy as one would think. Maybe I thought it would
be as simple as chopping steak, but it felt like the blade was stuck in drywall.

"You have to turn the blade if you want it to slide between the ribs," he mumbled.
His hands came to rest on top of mine, still wrapped around the knife. "It's stuck
on the bone. You aren't strong enough to break through."

I pushed against him again, trying to press the knife deeper. My thigh shoved
against his groin; he was half-erect.

"Enough," he said. Not angrily, not desperately, merely firmly.

He shoved me off. The knife came with me as I stumbled back.

A little delicate squirt of blood arced out of his chest, like a red root trying to lay
anchor in the air.

"Fun's over. Get in the car."

Edward made me hold gauze to his chest as he drove.

"I don't think you should be driving with a chest wound. What if you bleed so bad
you pass out?"

"Then I guess we get in a car wreck. You shouldn't have stabbed me."

We passed the lakefront where we had dumped the Volvo an hour ago. It had
been a thirty minute walk from the lakefront to the parking garage where Edward
spotted his Vanquish. I had been paranoid the entire walk, wondering if someone
would spot us, killer and calm hostage, tranquilly strolling along the road.

Police cars now surrounded the Volvo. Their alarm sirens were off but all their
lights were blazing, striping the trees and a nearby jungle gym with red and blue.
Several late evening picnic'ers were forming a circle around the perimeter, arms
folded and heads tilted toward each other as they murmured about the
proceedings. A Channel 4 News van was pulling up to the scene. The sun was
setting in a paroxysm of orange sky and lavender cumulus, the fading light
draining everyone of their color so they appeared in tones of cobalt and charcoal.

My window was down, and I stretched an arm out, feeling the wind press it back
and stream over my skin, my hand in a stiff wave to the passing media. We were
driving so fast that the wind filled the car with the billowing sounds of a dozen
whipping sails.

"What is the nicest thing you've ever done for someone?" he asked.

"Um." I racked my brain for nice things people do. I thought of Renee going to
therapy, Charlie being the only enthusiastic applauder in the audience at my
violin recital, or Jessica punching Mike for me in sixth grade. None of those
seemed like something that would interest Edward. "When I was seven, I broke
my leg and went to the hospital. I screamed really loud. Three old Vietnamese
ladies rubbed my shoulders and my hands, trying to soothe me. They didn't have
any teeth..."

"I think that's the nicest thing someone has done for you... I was asking-"

"Yeah, I know what you were asking," I snapped. "I got confused."

I pulled the gauze back and wadded it up, tossing it to floor of my car seat with
the others.

"I don't think I've ever done anything really nice," I said, retrieving a fresh piece
of gauze. I pressed it to his chest.

"Ah."

"I brought a street cat home once. But that's not a person."

"No."

The gauze grew warm and moist under my fingertips. I wondered if blood could
stain fingers like nicotine.

Edward grew light headed, and we turned off into a truck stop so he could rest
and take a piss in a urinal.

"I hate pissing outside," he complained. "It's scary. What if the cops see me with
my pants down, my cock in my hands?"

Pulling me along by the wrist, he trotted me inside the men's room with him. He
had been ornery since I stabbed him, and I supposed at that moment wasn't
feeling trusting enough to leave me inside the car.

As he peed he leaned both elbows against the wall above the urinal, legs spread,
his head resting against one of his forearms, eyes squeezed tight in relief and
pain.

It finally occurred to me that maybe he was hurting- really hurting, not just
wounded in an abstract way. After all, he had shrugged it off like it was nothing,
so I assumed that my piddling attempt at assault hadn't penetrated too deep.

When he turned and approached the sink, he was clutching his chest, and his
face was flushed with sweat. I wrinkled my nose; he was going to smell like
abject shit after this.

"Let me wash you," I said.

"What? Here?"

"Yes. A ho bath. It'll soothe you." I grabbed the soap, an anti-bacterial cube the
color of amber, and waved it in front of his face.

He cringed a smile. "You just want to finally do something nice, right?"

"Yes. Sure. Whatever. Take your shirt off."

Edward seemed to take to the idea quite quickly. He removed his bloodied shirt
and jacket, throwing them on top of the paper towel dispenser. Next he shrugged
out of his pants and underwear, pulling them down in one quick squat. Then he
was left naked except for his tubes socks and the gun in his ankle holster; all
white flesh save for the bronze bush of pubes out of which dangled a fiercely pink
prick.

"Oh, wow." The soap dropped out of my hands and skated around the sink bowl.

Mostly his body was thin and long. His shoulders were pathetically narrow,
sloping to wispy arms that dangled down to too-large hands. Light hair that
glinted orange in the fluorescent light furred his forearms. Infant muscles ridged
his stomach, the lines so light they could have been shadows. His hips jutted out
like tankard handles. He had runner's legs, thick and wide, almost diminishing the
rest of his slight body with their stoutness. His knees were scarred from ancient
playground roughhousing.

He raised his arms, palms up, in a well come on gesture.

One nipple -the nipple above the knife wound- was deformed and larger than the
other. His normal nipple was a light coral, the areola barely a flush against his
light chest, and the deformed one was dark and purple like eggplant.

I pressed a lathered paper towel over it and glanced up at his face.

"What happened to your nipple?"

"I tried to pierce it with a safety pin. I kept jamming it in- but it wouldn't go
through."

"Oh." I rubbed it until it stiffened up. "Okay."

As I washed him, moving in slow, winding circles around his body, I grew
fascinated with certain parts of his anatomy. I washed his nipple for a solid
minute, the paper towel circling and circling until Edward hissed from the
heightened sensitivity. His elbows were particularly pointy, and I enjoyed swirling
the wash towel around it, rubbing down the ashy calluses that had grown there

after years of being propped up on desks. I discovered I liked the bulbous parts
of his body- elbows, nipples, runty shoulders. I trailed the towel down his back,
ticking off each knob of his spine. Sliding down, I arrived at his waist, etched with
stretch marks from a past growth spurt. My face was very close to his body, and I
sighed heavily, blowing down his stomach and stirring the hairs of his crotch.

He moaned, and he grabbed my collar. He yanked it urgently.

I wasn't sure what he wanted, so I stood up, holding the soapy paper towels
between our bodies. If I looked down, the wet wad of paper blocked my view of
his penis. Suds trickled down my arms and dappled the floor.

Then he slipped his hand inside my underwear. His palm was coarse against my
pubic bone. I gasped and at the noise his lips curled back baring teeth.

He hooked one finger inside of me. I felt like an ungainly finger puppet fixed on
his fingertip.

"I want this," he said, wiggling the finger in me. "But for now..."

He snuck his hand out of my panties, trailing moist gum up my stomach, and
dropped the hand on top of my head. He grinned down at me -the dimples came
out- his pupils jiggling with dilation. And then he pressed hard down on my head,
and my neck suffered trying to hold under the strain.

I wondered... did he want me to clean his feet now?

Then I realized that he wanted me to kneel, and not to clean.

The cold of the bathroom closed in, air humid with the dankness of toilet bowls
and phosphoric cleaners. The boy before me was patient, waiting for me to make
up my mind, smelling keenly clean except for a suggestion of blood's iron from
the open cut.

I realized that this was what I signed up for. Why else would he take me along if
it wasn't for sexual gratification? With that a wave of calmness came over me,
and I felt more in control knowing my purpose. I fancied myself enlightened like a
little randy Buddha, kneeling at Edward's feet like he was my Bodhi Tree.

Just take the cock and suck hard and harder. It was a clear assignment of roles;
it seemed honest.

It took a long time to bring him off. He was hurt, after all. His blood was shy after
so much had been spilled, and it took a bit of effort to coax enough into his cock.

Wrapping my lips around his cockhead, I wondered if I could hurt him through
the suction of my mouth. If, without teeth, but just pressure, hard, ear-popping
pressure, I could injure his penis, make it blister, suck the top layer of skin off,
make it red raw and tender as fresh steak. I put this brutality into his prick,
squeezing it between my tongue and the bone in my palate, screwing my mouth
back and forth over him, on and on, again and again until he screamed out his
release.

Edward became extremely handsy after the blowjob.

As we drove on, he roped one arm around my shoulder, his hand dangling down
over my chest and cradling my breast in his palm. Whenever we slowed down or
sped up, he would unconsciously squeeze it or twist it, like it was a second gear
shift.

It was not the sexiest thing in the world, feeling like I imagined a mammogram
would, and it made me wonder…

"Have you ever, uh, been with other people?" I asked, trying not to sound as
irritated as I was.

"Beg your pardon?"

"I just wanted to know if..." I thought quickly for an acceptable lie. "If I would be
your first..."

Of course, it would be hypocritical of me to care if he had been with other people.

I really asked because a boy who had an iota of sexual experience would never
handle a breast like a gear shift. However, one had to wonder, because he had
just plunked his hand on my head and pushed. Such dominating entitlement
wasn't usually part of a virgin's MO.

He shrugged. "I'm a virgin." He wrinkled his brow. "Never did have much luck
with ladies."

Suddenly a memory rose up in my mind: we were in third grade, and Edward was
sitting Indian-style on a playground bench studying a hole in the crotch of his
pants. All one could see through the hole was his boxers, but when Lauren had
seen what he was doing -"He's looking at his penis!"- she ran to a teacher,
screaming that Edward was wagging his weenie all over the playground. He was
suspended for a day, and all the kids brought lurid, second-hand tales home to
their parents, who wrote the school complaining about the playground deviant.
Edward developed a stutter soon after.

The memory made me feel very exhausted. I wondered why Edward could
possibly want a hundred brats of his own. He clearly didn't get along well with
children.

"Are you a virgin?" he asked me.

"Yes," I lied.

Of course I lied. Anything to make myself more precious.

He sighed. "You deserve a more romantic first time. Not some quick copulating
while running from the law."

He withdrew his hand from around my boob and grabbed my wrist. Pressing my
hand to his lips, he kissed each knuckle in turn. He was so focused that he
missed a curve in the road, and the car drifted into the opposite lane.

A truck pulling a horse trailer was speeding towards his.

It blasted its horn, its brakes screeching, the driver's mouth gaping in an
inaudible scream.

Edward sucked hard at my knuckle, his teeth pinching the skin there, as he
jerked the steering wheel and swerved to avoid it.

As the truck passed, I saw the horse trailer rocking on its axle. Through the
trailer's window slats I saw a lurching black head and white rolling frantic eyes.
The creature kept kicking and bucking, made hysterical by the blare of horns and
the sudden braking.

Then the trailer suddenly became unhitched.

The truck had been pulling the horse uphill, so suddenly the trailer started rolling
back, the panicked horse still rocking it side-to-side.

Edward slowed down to watch it as it coasted past us. The horse was now wailing
in panic.

"Huh, you don't see that every day," he said.

A quarter mile down the road we spotted the trailer crashed against a hickory
tree.

The horse wasn't making a sound. I wasn't sure if that was a good or bad sign.

"A trail of carnage wherever we go," I sighed.

He kissed my wrist.

1:13 am

"What is this place?"

I dropped the Adidas bag at my feet.

After passing the town of Kalispell, Montana, we had pulled off the highway,
heading up a red dust road that plunged deep into a pine forest. Twenty minutes
later we pulled in front of a lonely log cabin with an abandoned rabbit hutch and
filled-in well in the front yard.

And inside…. Lord.

Inside was a menagerie of dead, stuffed animals. Mallards floated up and down
the bright blue walls like a recreation of duck migration across a clear sky. A
raccoon standing on its hind legs provided the trunk for a lamp, a light bulb set
on top of its head like it was having a bright idea. A polar bear rug –head and
paws intact - was laid in front of the television set. Another bear, black with a
white bowtie marking on its chest, stood in a far corner, looming over a dead
ficus. Through the cracked door of an adjoining room, I spied a warthog and an
impala. That must have been the Serengeti room.

Down the darkened hall I spotted the gloomy silhouettes of jungle cats and stag
heads.

"It's a cabin my birthmother's boyfriend owns," he said.

On the coffee table was an albino cobra rearing next to a candle stick.

"You know your birth mom?" I asked.

He was at the security panel, punching in a code. The alarm system chirped twice
and shut off.

"When I turned fourteen she contacted me," he said. "My biological father had
been dead for over ten years, but she was doing well. Waitressing somewhere in
Minnesota. Dating this guy whose family owns this place. They hardly use it, as
you see."

He was rifling through the 7-Eleven bags, his nose pinched up in disapproval of
contents. We had eaten all the good stuff and were left now with Cheetos and
Warheads.

"What is your birth mom like?"

Edward frowned at the label on the bag of Cheetos. "She's insipid. The first
conversation I had with her was about Drew Barrymore. She's her idol. She didn't
know who we fought in WWII. I was embarrassed that I was related to her." He
popped a Cheeto in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully, his eyes tilted up to a
corner in the ceiling, looking for all the world like he was mulling over the
Cheeto's subtle undertones. "But she has a good heart. It makes me wonder
where I... get it from. You know. The crazy."

"Maybe your dad…."

He nodded, sucking at a cheese-encrusted finger. "He did die in jail."

"What was he there for?"

"Rape." He grimaced, his finger still stuck in his mouth. "Of my mother. That
resulted in me."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. He was an astrophysics professor. It's from him that I got my
intelligence. Imagine if my mother had shacked up with someone on her volition.
My dad would have been an idiot."

"I... okay."

I was left pondering who was worse: Edward's father or Edward. What was
worse? Murdering or raping?

Of course, murder was the ultimate, final punishment, but being a murder victim
was more dignified than being a rape victim. The news readily reported murder,
but was silent on the subject of rape. Not to mention, recovering from rape was
messy and emotional, whereas recovering from being murdered was- well, easy.
Death was nothing. Dying was the easiest thing in the world.

1:45 am

"Oh my god- Edward! Lion King is about to come on T.V," I squealed, clutching
the remote to my breast and shaking it between my boobs in excitement.

Edward stared at the remote ping-ponging between my breasts.

"Uh."

We sat together on the bear skin rug. All the furniture was unacceptable as far as
sitting material went. The couch smelled vaguely like alcohol and cat piss, and I
wondered if his birth mom's boyfriend ever kept pets at the house- or incontinent
alcoholics, for that matter. The leather chair squeaked at every movement. I had

sat there for two minutes before I noticed Edward glaring at me, moodily
munching his Cheetos as his eyes stared wide and offended. Besides the leather
chair and couch, there was a beanbag. Edward had sat on that, and a worn seam
had exploded with bean stuffing.

All told, the bear skin rug was not so bad.

"Can we watch it?" I asked.

He snapped his eyes to my face, looking extremely guilty for his gawking. A blush
spread up his cheeks.

"We can watch it." His eyes skittered away from mine, searching the room for a
boob-free zone. They alighted on the half-opened door that led to the Serengeti
room.

"But wait- wait-" he said, jumping up. "We need something first."

I watched him disappear into the adjoining room.

Two minutes later, he returned with the stuffed wart hog. He patted its head.

"It's Pumba," he said. "He wants to watch, too."

He sat it on the floor next to me, leaning it against the cat piss couch. Its red
marble eyes faced me, its mouth contorted in an eternal squeal (death squeal?
did it die squealing?) flashing me the tartar of its teeth.

I ran my finger along its tongue and wondered how the taxidermist crafted it. The
tongue felt like papier-mâché but looked incredibly real. I wondered if it was real;
if they had skinned the poor hog's tongue along with rest of his hide. I glanced at
the gums. Did they skin the gums, too?

I recovered. "Wait! There's a lion in here somewhere!"

"That's a mountain lion," he sneered. "Not the same thing."

"A lion is a lion-"

"-certainly not. An African lion could kill a mountain lion in three minutes, no
contest-"

"-for God's sake, I'm getting the damn mountain lion."

A minute later I come back carrying the stuffed feline.

Edward was grinning at me. As I passed him, he poked the lion's belly.

"Too bad they don't have any Meerkats..." he muttered.

I set it down, angling the lion's outstretched paw so it looked like it was picking
the hog's nose.

Then the four of us settled in to watch Lion King.

Mufasa was just trampled by the wildebeest stampede. Simba discovered his
father's body and, still in denial, was tearfully begging Mufasa to wake up.

"I cried when I first saw this in theaters," I sniffed, feeling tears tingle in my
eyes.

"Really? Why?"

I turned to roll my eyes at him.

But Edward was the picture of earnestness. His expression was confused and
mystified, and something in my face must have made him self-conscious,
because he cleared his throat and glanced away.

"I mean, it's just a cartoon..." he mumbled bitterly. He picked at his eyebrow and
pulled his hand away, two hairs pinched between his fingers.

"Well... I guess it made me think of how I would react if my dad died."

He scowled. "Whatever. To me, it was always just a dead cat."

And he looked so pissed as he said that.

I wanted to laugh at the stupid boy. He was angry over not being able to cry to
Lion King. But it was touching in its own odd way, and it gave me hope- because
Edward recognized that he was flawed, that he should be able to empathize with
little Simba, but he just couldn't. He probably was never able to understand a
single Disney movie because of his emotional handicap. What a horrible childhood
that must have been.

Smiling, I tugged on his shoulder, pulling him into my lap.

He looked so tense as his head settled in his lap, and he lay rigid as a plank for
several minutes. Finally, he relaxed, letting out a shaky exhalation. His eyelids
fluttered closed, and he turned his head into my thigh, inhaling deeply. He
seemed at peace.

It was the first time I invited him to touch me. I didn't realize it at the time, but I
had made a choice that moment. At that moment, I accepted him completely.

Lion King was over, and Edward had flipped the channel to -of all things- World's
Wildest Police Chases. On the screen a helicopter was stalking two bank robbers
as they cut across a parking lot.

His head was still in my lap. On top of his shoulder I had propped his Reckonings
notebook.

"You have this Emmett guy written in here twice," I commented.

"Emmett McCarthy Cullen. My brother."

"You go from saying he's mandatory kill to let live-"

"He pissed me off. Then, I forgave him. He killed a woman... some singer playing
at the bar he was drinking at. He gave her a ride home, he was drunk. They hit a
light pole." He bumped his fists together, grunting Boom. "He never went to
trial." A shadow darkened his face. "Our father paid off the victim's family."

"And... he deserved to die because he killed someone?" I snapped, irritated at his
hypocrisy.

Sighing, Edward sat up, the notebook fluttering to the floor. He ran his hands
over his head and slumped against the coffee table, hitting the table's edge so
hard I winced, figuring it would leave a bruise.

"I didn't like his attitude about it," he said, carefully enunciating his words like he
was speaking to a foreigner. His eyes followed the felons on the television screen,
reminding me of how a transfixed cat watches fish in an aquarium. "Three days
after the charges were cleared, he was in Amsterdam, smoking hashish in
Vondelpark. It annoyed me. But... I got over it."

He sounded so bored it was so almost comical; we could have been just as easily
arguing over what brand of detergent to buy.

"So... he's okay to live, but Lauren and Mike, who never killed anybody-" My
voice was escalating, hitting hysterical, unattractive notes.

"Let it go."

His elbow was propped up on the table, his hand buried inside a crystal dish of
stale potpourri. His fingers combed through the cedar shavings, idly stroking like
he was petting a dog, and he still wasn't fucking looking at me.

"No! I can't just let-"

I was yelling now. I wanted him to look at me. This was important. He killed my
friends- the least he could do was look at me.

"Ultimately, it was simple: I'd miss my brother. I don't miss your friends. At. All."
He turned, finally, to glare at me, and a little thrill of triumph sparked through me
at the eye contact. "Let it go."

"If I killed your brother, what would you think?" I growled.

Then I froze, not knowing how he would respond to that. All bravado drained out
of me, leaving behind a cold draft and feeling of shaky weakness.

He reached for my hands and clasped them, gently massaging the bases of my
thumbs. "I would understand," he said- his face contorting as he said it, clearly
expressing that he found this conversation distasteful.

"Would you... retaliate? If I killed him?"

"Against you?" He snickered as he kissed my fingers. "Fuck, never."

When we finally went to bed, he cuffed one of my hands to the headboard.

"Sorry, this is very undignified. But I know you'll feel like you have to run away
while I'm asleep. I might as well settle the matter now. It's the only way you'll
get a good night's sleep."

It took barely two seconds to realize that he was right. If he didn't handcuff me, I
would have to attempt to escape. Perhaps I could steal the car- but it was
manual transmission, and he would wake up to the sound of grinding gears.
Other than that, my only option was to escape on feet. Through miles of back
road Blair Witch woods at night before I even found the highway. It all sounded
very uncomfortable, very dirty, but I would have to do it.

But he took the option out of my hands. I could now sleep without guilt, like a
baby.

He slept on top of me, chin pressed into the dip of my clavicle. Several times he
would have a dream and smack his lips, brushing them against my neck. He
would arouse slightly at that, nose brushing my ear, his groin becoming firm
against my thigh.

"Edward," I whispered.

He kissed my throat, where an Adam's apple would be, had I been boy. His lips
stuck to my clammy skin.

"Edward, wake up."

His pelvis was grinding hard against me. I felt a weak, moaning rumble in his
chest.

"Edward, I want you."

My skin felt flushed, too hot, too tight. Being horny was a demented thing- I
wanted to wiggle out of my skin (constricting, crawling skin) and I imagined
werewolves bristling and bursting from their human forms, or butterflies squirting
out of their cocoons.

"Ok, sweetheart," he mumbled.

Then I heard snoring. He had drifted into a deeper sleep. His penis softened,
getting smaller, and I imagined a snail retracting into its shell. I sighed,
frustrated, but resolved to hold him through the night. The thought occurred to
me that he was probably going to jail, and this might be his only chance to be
held by a lover for- well, for forever.

And god, that made me feel so valuable, so shiny.

It's very short...

9 am

"I'm worried, Edward."

"Hmm."

We were driving toward the sun, and the light caught on the windshield grime
and flared across the glass in a sheet of filmy bright white. Edward drove with his
hand raised in front of his face, eyes squinted, the long shadows of fingers
slanting over his cheeks and nose. The radio was on a Spanish salsa station; all
the other ones kept mentioning his murdering.

"Every time you kill someone, I take it less and less hard."

I fiddled with the hem of my dress. It was a black cocktail dress, borrowed from
Edward's birth momma. It had a tassel fringe that you see on flapper dresses or
the bottom of lampshades. I had showered this morning, but I couldn't put on my
old clothes because they smelled horrible, like sweat and adrenaline. They made

me kind of sick; when I looked at them I thought of the people who had seen me
in those clothes and were no longer around.

Edward hadn't showered. While I was in the shower he stood in front of the
mirror applying baby powder to his underarms and between his legs. "It's so I
don't sweat," he said. "I don't like sweating." But he did like his smell. He was as
happy in his stink as a pig was in shit.

"I take it less and less hard, you see," I pressed on, though Edward was plainly
trying to ignore me. He didn't like it when I talked about his murdering, of
course. I think he'd rather I pretended it didn't exist. "Like this morning, when
you shot that cop? It hardly fazed me."

We had woken up an hour ago to a police officer banging on the front door.
"Excuse me, but is this your car? It was reported stolen in Idaho..." he had said.
He was a young guy, still pimply, with a robust Jewfro squashed under his police
hat. The keys to his cruiser dangled on a lanyard stitched with tiny Stars of
David.

Edward shook his head sadly at the officer. "You should have stayed home
today," he said as he raised the gun.

I had said a prayer over the dead cop. An 'Our Father'. I felt a little guilty for
saying a Christian prayer, but hell if I knew any Hebrew.

Then I took his lanyard. I don't know why... killers were supposed to take the
trophies, not hostages- but I couldn't stand that he was just lying unmourned on
the front steps of a desolate cabin. If I had his lanyard, it would keep a part of
him close to me. His family, friends- they didn't even know he was dead yet, but
he was still treasured by at least one person. I just hope he was okay with it
being me.

"The cop's death... it hardly fazed me," I repeated, and I stroked Edward's hand,
resting on the gear shift. Edward pulled back his upper lip, flashing a set of wine-
red gums. His left hand compulsively flicked the blinker. On.Off. On. Off. The sun
was too bright, but he must have adjusted to the glare now, because he stared
steadily into it, his pupils constricted to pin points.

"All this killing's gonna change me, Edward," I said. "It's gonna make me...
colder, or something. It's gonna make me-"

"I need to take a piss."

He jerked the car off the highway and swerved onto the exit ramp. The wheels
screeched as we skidded across the lanes, and cars behind us blared their horns
at the abrupt maneuver. I turned around and gawked at the clear black scuff
marks we blazed across the interstate. Edward was leaving a trail as plain as
Hansel and Gretel's, and somewhere down that road was the police, just gobbling
up all the evidence.

We turned off into another truck stop oasis, but this one was more luxurious than
the vagabond hamlets we had previously toured. It had strip mall with Wal-Mart
and a TJ Maxx and a grocery store with mechanical horse rides out front for
children to bobble on.

Inside we passed two moomoo-wearing biddies, who were leaning against the
deli counter discussing the finer points of pan-seared turkey. A teenager with a
scoliosis bent to his back listlessly pushed a mop down the feminine needs aisle.
A lady in magenta scrubs rushed with two kindergarten-age children toward a

Crayola display, yelling, "Why didn't you tell me yesterday you needed
watercolors for an art project?"

The store was a study in sepia- beige walls, khaki floors, orange lights. It was
sleepy, and the muzak crackled tiredly over the speakers.

We walked through the produce section, and Edward grabbed a Granny Smith
apple, buffing it against his shirt (turned inside out and around to conceal the
stabbing stains).

Then he passed it to me. "Apple a day and all that," he muttered.

"Thanks." As I bit into it I scanned the store, waiting for a grocery clerk to run
toward us screeching about theft.

Edward walked ahead of me, grabbing fruit as he went. His arms filled up with
kiwis, peaches, mangoes. One avocado.

He turned to me, produce piled up to his chin. "I think I need a basket," he said,
looking sheepish.

I raised a hand over my mouth to cover a smile.

One plum was teetering on the edge of his elbow, and he shifted his arms, trying
to balance them all. The mound shook and an orange rolled- he caught it
between his shoulder and ear.

"Crap, crap, crap..." he said.

A kumquat dropped. He kicked up his heel, attempting to catch it on his foot like
a hacky sack. He was biting his tongue, the red tip poking out of his pursed lips.

Then a man yelled, "Edward Cullen- hold it right there!"

The speaker was on the other end of the produce section. Edward's back was to
him.

Showing no inclination toward turning, Edward slowly opened his arms, and each
fruit dropped one-by-one to his feet. He was staring down as they fell, looking
sad at their demise.

Seconds stretched into eternity.

The speaker stood next to a pyramid of pineapples, his gun raised. His cheeks
were flushed bright red down to his neck. Sausage-like blond curls framed a
forehead that was as pronounced as a dolphin's.

I recognized the man instantly. It was James Poursuivant, the FBI agent I had
seen on TV.

And I thought, damn, I'm going to be rescued with the dead copper's lanyard
around my neck. That might look weird.

"Bella- get down!" James yelled. "Edward Cullen, put your hands on your head
and slowly turn."

I looked to Edward. Meeting my eyes, he inclined his head and glanced down. It
was permission as well as a command: Get down. This is going to be ugly.

I crouched below a stand of watermelons, peeking around the edge of display so I
could still see Edward's shins. He scratched his calf with the toe of his shoe.

"Edward Cullen- please put your hands behind your head and turn around slowly!
I won't repeat myself again!"

I looked up into his face. He was staring blankly ahead. Only the twitching of an
eyelid indicated his tension.

There were two despairing outbursts from the moomoo ladies, followed by the
scraping of chairs as they ducked for cover. Then a young voice -probably one of
the Crayola tots- observing, "That man has a gun, mommy."

The muzak still placidly played on with a jazzy version of Baker's Street. Edward
surveyed the store, his eyes lingering in the direction of the automatic doors.

A veil of purpose and concentration dropped over his face. His jaw set at his back
teeth, his nostrils flared, he dove to the floor.

As he dove a shot rang around from James' gun, followed by the meatbone-
crunch as it made contact. Edward hit the ground, blood surging from below his
neck.

Screams sprung up from our audience.

His face crumpled in a rictus of pain, Edward pulled a gun -the Glock- from the
waistband of his pants. He rolled into the prone position, smearing blood and
scattering produce across the linoleum floor, and aimed.

He shot- but he wasn't aiming for James. Behind James' shoulder the scoliosis
teenager had appeared, looking doltish and surprised, his mop hanging limply
from his hands.

The teenager's body jerked as each bullet hit a different part of him. He looked
like he was doing a strange lurching dance. The meat section was at his back; his
blood sprayed a shelf of beef. He stumbled back and fell against a selection of
pork chops.

James turned away, momentarily distracted by the fallen grocery store employee.

Edward crawled to his feet and ran for the door, barely faltering his stride as he
reached down and grabbed me by the collar.

"Fucking run," he whispered, spittle spraying my cheek.

As we scrambled toward the exits, I became dimly aware of how silent the store
was. All I could hear was Edward's ragged breaths and the rushing of blood in my
ears. No one was shooting anymore. Blessedly James had holstered his weapon,
no doubt worried he would hit me if he continued to shoot at Edward.

For a second, I wondered if that was why Edward was holding my collar in a
death grip. If I was this close to him, no one could target him, because I might
become collateral damage.

Then I decided that it didn't matter. I huddled close next to him, wanting to
protect him, and listening as the soles of our shoes scuffed against the floors.

We approached the automatic sliding doors.

They wouldn't budge. One of the employees had turned them off, trying to trap
us inside.

Edward was clutching his injured arm to his chest, but he still managed to raise a
trembling Glock to the door, firing three times until the glass shattered. He
flinched at each gun burst, and his face was deathly pale. He looked on the verge
of passing out.

Then he pushed me through, and I stumbled through the broken door, staggering
into the sunlight and almost colliding with a table of potted cacti (on sale for
5.99!).

A family was piling out of a navy blue minivan in the parking lot. Two teenagers
were standing at the tailgate, arms crossed and looking coolly unimpressed at the
spectacle. One had their cell raised; they were recording it all on their iPhone.

It was purely by coincidence that James caught up with us.

He had been pursuing us -sure- but he didn't realize how close we were.

He had been travelling along the interstate when he had a random hankering for
pears, so he pulled off the main road, and la dee fucking dah, walked into our
grocery store.

Months later, when all was said and done, I found the minivan kid's recording of
the scene posted on YouTube. Judging by all the comments on the page, it was
quite the hit.

A/Note: I have no idea how the FBI would actually take down a suspect. Hope I
didn't botch it up too bad.

Edward won't be getting a shower for the next... five or four chapters. I know this
will upset a lot of you, but he's just not a showering type of guy.

Review this Chapter

Report Possible Abuse

"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody
there to shoot her every minute of her life."

-Flannery O'Connor, A Good Man is Hard to Find

9:32 am

We sped away from the grocery store in the Aston Martin. Edward was in no
condition to drive, though I couldn't decide if it was due to the bullet wound
(maybe in the shoulder, maybe in the arm, there was too much blood to know) or
from frantic frenzy that had overtaken him. He screamed curses the entire drive,
tears streaming down his face. The only the only thing that kept me rooted to the
car seat when my whole brain was yelling for me to open the door and leap into
the street was that I believed he was cursing from the pain and not because he
was having a psychotic break.

We ditched the car at an abandoned limestone quarry and lit it on fire.

"They'll have tracking dogs," Edward gasped, swaying under the weight of the
Adidas duffle bag as he stood next to the flaming vehicle.

He held his wadded-up suede jacket to the wound. He was underdressed for the
cold autumn morning, trembling in his white (and damp red) Hanes T. The
shoulder holsters for his knives crisscrossed his chest. They didn't look right on
him anymore. He slumped under them, strained by pain. They seemed silly and
impotent in light of his injuries and looked more like children's props.

"We couldn't leave the car intact- they'll find something in it and use it for our
scent," he added.

The fumes swarmed in front of his face, causing his visage to flicker and whirl in
the gas vapors. His yellow-green eyes glinted in its glow.

The sky was white behind a thin skin of clouds. Gasoline and the smells of baking
upholstery overpowered the atmosphere.

For the first time all day, I felt the urge to cry. This car- this beautiful, guiltless
car was destroyed. It had faithfully carried us for miles and miles. It was a
fucking Bond car; so many people wanted this vehicle, but it was ours -all ours-
for a tiny moment. And now it was gone.

I knew what I was feeling was hysteria, and that there was no rationale behind it.
But it was a lot easier to cry over a dead car than a dead person.

The fire soon travelled to the engine, and there was a hollow boom as the front
exploded in a flash of light. Thick black smoke was now billowing around us.

That snapped me out of it. I wasn't going to cry in all this acrid smoke.

"Come on." He jerked his head toward a macadam road.

The road snaked around the perimeter open mine pit, a gaping mouth of blue and
gray strata that stretched as wide as professional football stadium.

"Shouldn't we... attend to...?" I pointed to his injury.

He shook his head. "We'll take care of it when we get to where we're going."

For thirty minutes we clumped through snowberry and pea shrub. A kestrel dived
into a patch of thistle to our right, rattling the weeds. Edward jumped at the
noise, searching the bush wildly for signs of FBI, his gun shaking in his hand and
aimlessly threatening the plant life. The falcon plucked a vole from the ground
and carried it jangling in its claws into the northern horizon. Then we cut through
cattle pasture, to which Edward joyfully shrieked, "Fucking right- cow manure
might mask our scent from the dogs!"

He looked crazed, blood-soaked and fever-gleaming, doubled over in the bush
and slapping his knee with mirth. All his teeth shone through his smile. The
dimples even appeared.

Finally we got to where we were going: a stopped train with Amtrak Express
emblazoned on the side.

"Get in," he said, indicating an open boxcar with the Glock pistol.

"What- you- this isn't the fucking Depression," I snapped. "We can't just fucking
ride the rails to California."

He was panting from the walk. Sweat coated his arms and stuck to his shirt.
Steam rose from his heaving back into the frigid air.

"We can and we will." A humorous cringe twisted his face. "But we aren't going to
California."

It was pathetic to watch him leap into the car. He hoisted himself over the ledge,
and his shoulder was jarred from the scramble. He yelped, gritting his teeth as a
dribble of drool trailed out of his mouth. He was still halfway out the trains, and
his legs flailed in the air. I saw him start to slip.

I ran and caught his knee, pushing underneath him until he was could roll into
the car, grunting as his injury turned into the floor. I clambered in behind him,
my arms feeling weak and reluctant under me, my elbows wobbling.

And I thought why am I following him?

My brain responded with the contradictory answers, for Jessica and Tyler, so he
doesn't kill them and for Edward, he needs you.

When the train pulled off, we heard sirens echoing in the distance.

10 o'clock...ish. Maybe 11. No clocks on a train.

As we chugged through the countryside wind streamed in the open door and filled
the narrow boxcar. The interior was lined in rotted plywood. Graffiti tags cluttered
the walls -Welcome to the Dope Den- from derelicts who caught and quit this line
years ago.

"Do you need something from your bag?" I asked him.

I raised the freezer bag and wagged it at him. It was filled with turquoise pills:
Roxycodone.

"Yeah... I could go for one."

I handed him his pill and took half of one for myself. Then I curled up in the
corner with my knees pressed under my chin. I watched him.

Edward was fairly zoned out already. I had peeled his shirt off and tended -or
tried to tend- to the gunshot. We had his Adidas bag and therefore his first aid
kit, which contained, among other things, the large plastic bag bursting with
narcotics.

"I cleaned my house out before I left," he had explained. "I was staying with an
uncle in Wisconsin before I headed up your way; the poor man's wife just died
from lung cancer. His stores were stocked."

"Did you... you knew you would be shot?"

"I thought it was a possibility. I tried to think of everything." He blinked rapidly,
the only indicator of pain that shone through his intoxicated state. "And if need
be -if the cops caught up with me, or something else stupid- I could just take
them all. It would be a peaceful death. Like going to sleep."

"You hate sleep," I had said.

Though I had to hand it him- the boy had a contingency plan for everything in
that bag. There was snake bite antivenom in the first aid kit, for God's sake.

I wrapped his arm in gauze and tape. The bullet carved a clear entrance and exit
wound through his upper arm. The exit was miniscule, slit-like, more like a deep
scratch. I couldn't imagine a bullet squeezing out of it. Edward said that the bullet
deformed as it slipped through his arm, flattened by all the meat and muscle.

The first aid kit included a travel-size pack of antibacterial wipes. Though they
were hardly sufficient, I cleaned up as much blood as I could, minimizing the
outright carnage to a sanguine tinge of the skin.

Then he curled up underneath his gory jacket, shivering in the cold. He tucked his
head in between his elbows, trying to drown out the whistling air hoses.

My poor boy. My poor, little boy.

I scuttled on hands and knees and crouched next to him. He lolled his head to the
side to see me, blinking myopically up at my face. Then he snorted, like
something I did amused him, and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. Perspiration
dappled his moustache stubble. The wet beads rolled down and he licked at them.
His lips were caked with Roxycodone powder. We chewed them dry; there was no
water.

Sighing, I gently raised his head and settled it into my lap. Licking the pad of my
thumb, I cleaned up the white crust along his mouth with my fingertips, then I
dabbed a chalky E on the floor.

"In Wisconsin, there was this hobo named Bobby Finn that kept robbing houses
and evading police," he said, his words coming out slurred and rough. "For years
he eluded them. When they caught him, he gloated that he burglarized over two
hundred houses in three states. You know how evaded the police?"

"Riding the railroad?"

"Riding the railroads. Think about it... you avoid checkpoints, cross county lines...
it makes you hard to track..."

I didn't want to think about all the ways his romantic roguish scheme could go
wrong.

The FBI would catch up with us soon, maybe- but not now.

Edward was too sick to defend himself right now.

"Why didn't you shoot the FBI agent?" I asked, attempting to shift the topic. "You
shot the kid instead."

He shrugged his good shoulder. "To be honest, I decided I liked James. I need
someone to chase me." He smiled. His dry lips cracked, and red seams appeared
in the soft flesh. "Bobby Flynn was sort of a folk hero because he kept escaping
from the police. Do you... do you think I'll ever become a folk hero? Like Billy the
Kidd?"

Tears welled in my eyes. "Sure thing, honey," I lied, smoothing my hands over
his hair. "Sure thing."

I leaned down and rested my forehead against his. His sick breath rustled my
hair. And the train rumbled on into the high-noon.

The way of the transgressor is hard. God made this world,

but he didn't make it to suit everybody. Did he?

-Cormac McCarthty, Blood Meridian-

"-but I have to."

"No. It's not safe. A million things could go wrong. Someone on the street could
recognize you. What if someone comes home while you're robbing them? And the
train could leave before you get back-"

"We need blankets. And... water. Maybe a jacket. For fuck's sake, a jacket."

A sigh. "Fine. If the train leaves... I suppose I can jump out and wait for you by
the tracks. Alright?"

"Okay." I kissed his brow. "I'll be back in ten minutes."

With that I jumped out of the railway car.

The train was stalled in the middle of a no-account tumbleweed town. And I was
going to rob somebody's house.

It had been my idea. It was freaking uncomfortable on the train. The air was
frigid, and I was underclothed. Edward was already not feeling well, and if we
didn't make him as comfortable as possible, he could die.

I didn't want to think of that.

I could almost smell the lead paint and shattered dreams saturating the town. In
backyards weed gardens bloomed with rubber tires and fast food soda cups.
Cinder blocks held up the sagging corners of houses. Street lights were layered
with the molding posters for lost pets who were now long dead. In lieu of curtains
garbage bag plastic covered the windows; an all-time low of destitution, because
everyone knew self-respecting poor people used bed sheets for their drapery.

I scanned the area for signs of life. On the front porch of a corner house, two
young people lounged in each other's arms, emulating copulating in a lawn chair.
A nimbus of Black & Mild smoke surrounded their heads. It reminded me of
Eeyore and his dark cloud.

I decided I was going to rob the prettiest house on the block. It looked taken care
of, and it featured a hand painted address sign with stenciled lady bugs along the
rim. It had a good aura; made me feel welcome.

Edward had advised me to knock on the front door first to see if anyone was
home. If someone answered, I was to ramble on about a local congressman
running for office. I spared a thought for my appearance: dirty and in a cocktail
dress, shivering and blue-faced in the cold autumn afternoon. Not exactly
representative of a political campaign. If someone answered, I would be shown
the door and probably given an uncomfortable look. But at least I would know if
someone was inside and wouldn't break in during the middle of a family reunion.

I knocked and waited. I thought up a congressional-sounding name and a few
sentences' worth of information incase someone was home. George Allen.
Democrat, moderate, especially interested in school reform.

No one answered.

Then Edward said I was to go into the backyard and try all the windows. One was
bound to be unlocked. "Make sure the house has a solid fence around it so the
neighbors can't see you breaking in," he advised.

I tried three before I finally found one that would open.

When I crawled through the window, I discovered a miniature Dachshund. It was
growling at me, reared-up with its front paws against the ledge, trying to block
me bodily from entering.

I patted its head. "Good boy for trying."

The dog gave one last yip and then trotted off, resigned to being useless.

I swung my legs over and landed in the master bedroom.

The bedroom could have opened a tourist shop for The Daughters of the
Confederacy.

An oil painting of General Stonewall Jackson, wounded astride his mount at the
Battle of Chancellerosville, hung over the bed. Flintlock pistols and muskets were
mounted on the walls. In the corner stood a grandfather clock with Scarlett
O'Hara and Rhett Butler embossed on the clock-face. A biography of General
Beauregard was open face-down on the nightstand, a little bobble-head of a
drummer boy in Confederate uniform standing over it.

Hastily I stripped a comforter off the bed, and then I raided their bathroom for
antibiotics. There was a bottle of Amoxicillin next to a tube of Monistat. The lady
of the household must have a yeast infection.

Hopefully the antibiotics were strong enough to combat infection from a bullet
wound.

Surprisingly, the rest of the house was devoid of Confederate paraphernalia. I
could just imagine a couple arguing over how best to exhibit Southern pride.
Finally, one spouse would throw their hands up, saying something like, "Fine. But
keep it in the bedroom- I don't want my friends seeing it!"

In the hallway closet I found two parkas. I rubbed my face against one of the
sleeves, savoring the feel of padding, anticipating the warmth it would provide. I
imagined the look of delight in Edward's face when he saw them.

Then I went to the kitchen for a garbage bag to stuff everything in.

I also took a gallon of water and several cans of soup with (score!) easy-pop lids.
And two spoons.

All the while, I was composing a list of rationalizations in my head.

(I mean, there were millions of burglaries a year in the United States. Why the
hell shouldn't I be one of them? I am in freaking need!

Too bad the house isn't a rich one, though. Then I would be like Robin Hood. But
if the house was rich, I probably wouldn't be able to rob it so easily...)

Suddenly, I heard footsteps in the hallway. The footsteps were slow. They
dragged across the floor, sounding like the scrapes of thinly soled slippers.

In the kitchen doorway an old lady appeared. One of her hands clutched the door
frame. The other pressed the edges of her bath robe to her chest. Edema swelled
her ankles, the skin catching a broad stripe of light along its bloated curve. She
stared at me with pearlescent, blank eyes. She was blind.

"Jasper?" she asked. Her voice warbled in that rusty old people way that spoke of
overused lungs and broken-down bodies. "Jasper, son, is that you?"

With jerky hands I tied up the garbage bags, about to beat a quick retreat out the
front door.

"Jasper? I was asleep... I heard the dog barking. Can you get me a glass of
water?"

She held one hand out toward me, a thin claw scratching at the air. Her robes fell
open, revealing skinny legs under a long nightshirt patterned with bluebirds. Her
white hair feathered outwards with static-electricity.

As I looked at her, I thought, why not kill her? It was a hypothetical question, of
course, but I studied her in all seriousness, taking in her dilapidated features. She
was useless to society and probably a burden on her family. Was she really
enjoying life anymore, or was she just breathing out of habit? If she simply
dropped dead at my feet, would I care?

After all, who was she to me?

Nothing. She was nothing to me. If I killed her, I might not have felt a thing
about it- except worried over the repercussions.

On that same note, however, I wouldn't feel anything over killing her. Her death
would mean nothing to me. So why even bother, if I got nothing out of it?

I bet Edward probably felt something when he killed.

He probably... well, who knew what he felt. But he definitely felt something.

I got her that cup of water.

"Jasper?" she croaked. Her fingers closed around the glass. "Why won't you say
nothing?"

Her bottom lip trembled, eyes rolling unseeingly around the room. The realization
dawned on her face: a trespasser was in her home.

Quietly I left through the front door, cool and calm like I held the deed to the
place, a garbage bag slung over my shoulder filled with their goods.

I wondered if the old lady would have a heart attack out of fear. Maybe she didn't
know the trespasser had left. Maybe she would wait in that kitchen afraid until
her son came home.

I felt a prickling of guilt at that.

A pit bull ambled down the street, his right leg canting at an odd angle, a paw
trailing along the asphalt.

This town needed to invest in more fearsome canines.

I wouldn't have stayed by Edward's side if I hadn't gotten the jackets and
blanket. Cocooned in the comforter, we huddled together for warmth. At ever
hour we alternated who faced the windblast from the doorway. When nature
called, Edward pissed off the side of the train, leaning out the doorway and
angling his penis so no blowback reached into the car. We won't go into what I
used for a bed-pail.

I wanted to abandon him. I fantasized about what I would do as soon as I was rid
of him.

See a chick flick with Lauren-

Oops, not with Lauren.

Eat an ice sundae next to a warm fire.

Something.

I had never done anything this hard before. And it was challenge of it, the fact it
was an epic hardship, that kept me there. A perpetual quitter, an absentee
member of every high school club, I hadn't completed a single task that wasn't
assigned by a teacher or resulted in allowance money. Everything leading up to
that point had been easy, so nothing was worthwhile.

We spent a day and a half in that godforsaken boxcar, clomping through peatland
and conifers. When night fell a sky spread over us so full of stars I couldn't lift my
pinky to the atmosphere without concealing a galaxy. Edward tried to name the
constellations and got every one wrong. He tucked his head between my shoulder
blades, said, "One day I'll know them all. One day I'll steer ships by them."

I asked him where we were going. He wouldn't tell me. He said to think of this as
an adventure, some careless quest into the horizon.

I thought of the movement of glaciers, how they once rolled mindlessly over this
very same land thousands of years ago, mashing every hill under its glassy heel.

"When did you decide you wanted to kill people?" I asked him.

He was tugging up the hem of my dress, his fingers leaving contrails of
goosebumps as they slid up my thigh. "In church," he muttered.

"Wha- uh..."

He shifted, adjusting a bundle of blanket that had bunched up between us.
Suddenly, he was flush against my back. His shirt was off -no longer wearable,
stiff with grime- and he wasn't wearing the parka, still feeling the ebb and flow of
fevers. I felt the ridge of his collarbone push against my shoulder. His nose
rooted in my hair, twisting tangles around his face.

"I suffered an injury in military school." His fingers brushed the space between
my cunt and my anus. He stopped at every spare pube, tenderly plucking the
tendrils. "Tore my ACL. I stayed with my aunt in Madison while I was recovering.
She brought me to church. Christian Science."

His hand crept toward my clit. I never realized how soft his hands were. One
would expect a boy like him to have coarse, workingman's hands. His felt like
they had been kept it mittens for years. "There was this preacher there, healing
people," he breathed.

Two fingers eased into me- slowly, so slowly, he thought I was a virgin. He curled
them slightly, feeling the walls of my sex, lightly pressing nails into the dough of
flesh.

"My aunt suddenly yelled, Help him! Help my nephew. Everyone looked at me.
And... I stood up, leaning on my crutches. I went to him."

He rubbed me in time with the train's rumblings. At each wheel rotation, his
fingers slid deeper, reaching out for some unknown destination in my body.

"It was such a long walk down the aisle. All these people were staring at me, all
of them clapping and smiling. I've never seen so many people smile at me
before."

"Oh..." I moaned. I felt flushed. My skin itched. The blood felt hot in my pelvis,
swelling up between my thighs. I leaned against him, thrusting into his hand, that
babysoft, tender hand.

"The preacher laid his hands on me." He laved a tongue along my ear, up to my
hairline and around to the back of my neck. "He asked for the miracle. And then
he stepped away, taking my crutches with him. He asked me to walk without
them."

My rear rutted against him, bobbing into his palm. I was sucking in so much cold
air. Vaguely, I heard my breaths, and I thought, Huh, it sounds like I'm having a
panic attack.

"All these people were clapping and yelling Hallelujah'ing," he said. He bit my
neck. My hair caught in his teeth. "All for me. I've never... been so celebrated. So
I took that step."

"What...what-" I choked on my words. My thighs twitched, gliding over each
other, glossed with my come. I came, quietly, my body trembling around his
claw.

"What happened?" I finally croaked.

"I fell on my face." He gave a final pinch to my clit before withdrawing
completely. His hand rested against my ass. "The church was dead quiet. And I
decided then. As soon as my leg healed up, I would find that preacher. All
through rehab I dreamt about it. I was going to kill him. "

"Did you?"

My thighs felt really cold now. Cold and wet. The wind was to my front, and it felt
like it was slicing through the blanket and pooling over my groin. I wanted to ask
him to keep his hand down there, cupping my sex like a cunt glove.

"Yes. As soon as I was healthy enough, I went after him. And I stole his Volvo.
Then I headed to Washington to fetch you."

He gave a parting lick to my ear.

I realized that he wasn't hard. Hadn't been the entire time. Of course, he was on
a large dose of narcotics and suffering from a gunshot. Not exactly the most
arousing predicament.

Still, it was surprising.

Gently, I rolled on top of him, careful to avoid his injury. He reached up, holding
my face in his good hand.

"It's my turn to be behind you," I said. I shivered.

On the second morning we woke up and discovered a big broad expanse of water
running alongside of us. It glistened in the AM sun.

Edward sat up. He pulled me onto his lap and settled the blankets around us. "I'll
bet you that's Lake Michigan." He nipped my ear. "We're almost there. So close."

"Fucking and fighting, it's all the same"

-Bradley Nowell

We were stalled in a city whose name I didn't know. Edward knew where we
were, judging by the glitter in his eyes, but he wasn't sharing.

Before us was the switching yard, a half mile long stretch where a half dozen
tracks converged. Industrial wasteland surrounded us. Warehouses and sulfate
smells and squealing sirens. Fire trucks, probably. Something was on fire. I
scanned the milk white skies and found it. From the east flowed a wide plume of
smoke.

I smiled. The last fire in Forks was in 1973. We were a small town that wasn't
susceptible to trouble. Fires, burglaries, murder (once upon a time) stayed away.

Forks was a cancer town. A diabetic place, with cirrhosis and hypertension and all
the slow fatty deaths of better living. Fire didn't catch there.

"It's time," he said.

He slapped a hand against the Adidas bag, now wrapped around his should and
ready to go.

Finally, we were leaving the train.

It felt odd to be on sure ground; I continued to walk with sea legs, feet spread
wide apart, bracing myself for the jars and jostles of the train. When the Earth
didn't move, I felt too solid. Too steady.

Edward jumped over a track and overestimated his strength. He fell short, got his
foot caught in the rail, and landed on hands and knees.

Seeing Edward rump up in the air was nothing new. I had seen him jiggle around
a train for a day and a half now. Seen him struggle to find a comfortable position
and finally settle on the most awkward contortions. Ass in the air, arms wrapped
over his head, like he was shielding himself from a roof about to cave-in.
Sometimes he couldn't stand to touch me -said I was too hot- and had curled
around his Adidas bag instead, arms and legs entwined like a koala bear settling
around its mother. I'd seen him like all this. I imagined telling the cops about it-
Well, you see, Dad, I know he killed something like ten people in cold blood, but
he was a pitiful sleeper and I suspected even pissed himself a little while we were
chugging across the plains of Montana. You'd love him too.

I walked behind him and twisted my forefingers through his belt loops, intending
to pull him up by his pants.

My crotch brushed his ass.

I thought, If I was a man and he was a woman, I'd be getting turned on by this.

I did an experimental groin bump against his butt. I wondered what it would be
like to fuck him if the gender roles were reversed.

How would he take losing his virginity if he was a female? Would he be stoic
about it- not even telling his partner that he was a virgin? Lauren had done that.
The guy never knew he'd had the pleasure of deflowering her.

I bounced up against his butt again.

I could see him being stoic about it.

"Are you enjoying yourself?" he asked. I heard the scrape of palms against the
gravel as he clambered up to his feet. His hands lift skid marks of blood on the
ground.

As I stared at the blood and groaned to myself.

It had been a day and a half of Pax Romana. On the train, there had been no
dead bodies. No carnage. I knew he was gearing up to kill anew- if he didn't drop
dead first. Green and pallid with sickness, Edward was more composed than I'd
ever seen him, as though purpose had solidified in his center, and neither
infection or injury could touch the core from which he drew his strength. This was
his mission.

And I understood that. And he loved me because I was the only person who could
understand.

Still, death was fucking exhausting. I didn't know if I was up to it, anymore.

Another minute or two we finally found a street.

Edward stood with one foot on the curb and one foot in the street drain. He
patted himself down: tatty parka, half zipped open and revealing the bare sweat-
shiny chest underneath. His knife holsters chafed his skin, leaving red stripes
across his clavicles. The blood on his pants had long discolored to a muddy hue.

"Chicago." He swept a hand at the street. "Welcomes you."

I could hear three different fire trucks converging on the fire.

We walked three blocks of bad desolate neighborhood before Edward found a car.

It was stopped at a stop sign. Atrocious reggae rock blared from the sub standard
woofers. I hated the car owner immediately.

Edward tapped on the window getting the attention of the driver. The guy was
dressed in a green apron and acid washed jeans, looking like he was between his
shift at Starbucks and a class at the local community college. The driver glanced
at me, the ragamuffin in a parka and cocktail dress, and seemed too curious to
not roll down the window.

I almost mouthed something at him. I don't know what I would have said. Hey.
You're going to die.

Striking like whiplash, Edward reached through the window and grabbed the
college schmuck by the collar of his polo. He pulled him out the front seat,
dragged him out the door, and pulled him out the street.

Then he pulled out the Beretta and blasted the black tar with the driver's brains.

"Edward!" I screamed. "You can't just go firing a gun in the middle of the street!
Someone will hear you!"

He scowled at me. "They'll just think it's a car back firing. No one ever wants to
believe when they hear a gun shot." He rapped on the car hood with the gun.
"Now let's get."

I kicked the rubber tire.

We pulled off in another stolen vehicle. The tires sliced through a puddle, and we
splashed mud and oil over the body. Edward smashed a fist against the radio
panel, finally silencing the stoner rock once and for all.

Edward turned off the car engine and sighed. "We're here."

"We... where are we?" I asked.

The street was filled with upscale brownstones. Gas lights hung over well swept
stoops. Glass arches crowned the doors. Small French dogs huddled at the
windows. Neat hedges trimmed the side walk, and fliers for local plays were
tucked in their mail boxes.

We were somewhere nice. Days of rolling through America, and we had finally
found somewhere nice.

"We're a couple of blocks down," Edward muttered.

He pressed the point of the car key into the steering, making notches into the
leather. He didn't seem inclined to move.

"So. We're going to kill someone..?"

He nodded. Then he shook his head. He cringed, and finally he shrugged.

That was interesting.

I thought of his Reckonings Notebook. The notebook included everyone from old
psychologists who had misdiagnosed him to a childhood neighbor boy who had
played "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" with him and laughed at his

revelation. Pages upon pages of decisive Mandatory Kill's pressed with pen-
busting pressure to the margins.

The notebook contained very few wafflings. His brother Emmett had been a
Mandatory Kill before evolving into a Let Live. There had also been a sister, Alice.
She was at one time a Let Live, but those two words had since been scratched
out and nothing replaced them. Her name floated in a limbo of non-judgment.

Only family could provoke an indecisive response from Edward.

Christ, I was meeting the parents. Suddenly I felt the urge to comb fingers
through my hair and wash my face.

"What are you doing?" he snapped as I rifled through the glove compartment.

"Getting my finger prints everywhere. Don't want to leave CSI with a light course
load."

I found a couple of napkins and wiped my cheeks.

A travel-sized canister of Axe rolled out of the compartment. After sniffing my
armpits (rancid, rancid), I concluded a little pheromone-riling deodorant couldn't
hurt. I cast a glance at my lap and wondered if I should spritz my crotch. Would
antiperspirant harm the mucous membranes in a vagina?

I pictured my labia encrusted with deodorant frost.

He watched me spruce up with startled eyes. "Jesus," he breathed. He shook his
head.

I scratched at my face with the napkin. A scab of dirt circled my cheekbone and it
wouldn't fucking come off.

In my head, the Starbucks barista continued to collapse dead in the street. Over
and over the scene played, like some sports play a fascinated coach kept
rewinding for his team.

"What do you get from killing?" I suddenly asked.

"...Beg pardon?" He was staring out the window, and he looked quite
unimpressed with my question.

A tow truck passed baring a T-boned convertible. It flashed yellow lights through
the windshield, filling the car with a canary glow. His eyes trailed after the
smashed automobile, as they always trailed after destruction and wreckage.

I growled -or something like a growl, though it sounded more like dry gurgle to
my ears- and considered spitting on him.

"Tell me what you get out of killing. Or else I won't go willingly with you
anymore," I said.

It was an empty threat. I was tied to him, and nothing could sever that. Where
ever this led, I would follow him through it.

That didn't mean I didn't need to know.

He watched me coolly.

He knew I was bluffing, but he wouldn't call me on it. "When I shoot someone...
it feels like I'm taking the best piss ever. I get a... I get that little shiver, like all
the pressure had suddenly flowed out of me, and I can walk easy again."

So killing was like pissing.

I imagined Lauren and Mike flushed like gold fish down a great big toilet.

"That's... probably the worst explanation I've ever heard," I said.

He laughed and opened the door.

"Come on, we're losing light," he said.

When I got outside I took a final glance at myself in the mirror.

"You look perfect." He kicked a wadded newspaper that had been skittering down
the road like tumbleweed. "Picture perfect."

As the newspaper rolled away, I saw a flash of my face across the page. My
picture was still in the papers. It was then that I realized Edward didn't say
anything unless it carried ten shades of irony.

"It sort of a shame that we have to be on the run while we're famous. I'd like to
be able to sit and watch my press coverage," I said.

God, what if Jessica was talking about to me reporters? I could imagine her
interview, simpering and full of backhanded compliments.

"The date on that paper is a few days old. We might be old hat now." He smiled
over his shoulder at me as he added, "So we better hurry if we want to make the
ten o'clock news." Then he started down the sidewalk, slaphappily oblivious in the
open street.

As we walked down the road I looked through the windows into the front rooms
of residences. Most of the houses had the TV on. Three of them were watching
the same thing, a forensic cop drama. An attractive blond was bent over a
microscopic pressing one heavily penciled eye to the lens. It was eerie to be
moving from house to house and see the same cat eyes blinking back at me.

"That's it. The house at the stop sign." He pointed. Two blocks down I saw the
sign. Spray painted under the white Stop was a black War, the single sign of
vagrancy in the whole neighborhood. Next to it was a nondescript, completely
forgettable brownstone townhouse.

"Oh." I started walking again, crossing my arms over my chest, ready to get this
over with.

Edward grabbed my sleeve and stopped me. "We can't just walk up to the front
door and knock. There's probably police around here. Who knows... maybe
reporters..."

He bounced on his heels as he said this, his eyes wet with joy.

"Alright, we need a diversion if we want to get in. Right?" I asked.

Nodding, he unzipped the Adidas bag and started foraging.

"What kind of diversion?" I grabbed a lighter and flicked it. "Would fire do?"

"I dunno. Loud noise, explosion... I'm not picky- What are you doing?"

"So fire's okay?" I pulled his bloody shirt out of the bag and waved it at him.

I don't know why I had saved it. The same urge to keep the slain cop's lanyard
had made me take the shirt. At the end of this, I could make a keepsake box of
the experience.

"That'll do."

"Give me the car keys."

He looked down at his hand, appearing surprised when he discovered that he still
clutched the stolen keys in his fingers.

With the key I pried open the gas cap lid of a near-by car.

I stuffed the shirt into the gas tank and lit the end. The fire trickled up the cloth
like white water flowing in reverse.

Edward sucked in a breath."Maybe we should back up." He slipped clammy hands
under the collar of my parka and clasped my shoulders.

The fire was spreading across the door. The silver paint job started to bubble,
crackling like bacon grease in the frying pan.

I stepped against him and brushed an erection.

His fingers tightened. Nails pressed into the soft dip along my collarbone.

"That was the sexiest thing I've ever seen," he said. "You... did that for me?" He
pressed a kiss to my neck, sliding his tongue over a hickey that had just started
to darken.

The engine exploded, and the air seemed to quake with the seismic flash of light.
Pigeons fled the power line above us. Someone yelled; all the dogs in all the
windows started howling.

"Come," he said. He gave one last squeeze of my shoulders. Then he cut into the
front yard of a house.

I followed him into a narrow gulf between two buildings. Broken shards of pottery
covered the ground. Above my head I noticed an open window looking into a
kitchen. Voices screamed within, oblivious to the fire and clamor outside their
houses. I wondered if someone had thrown plates out the window during their
fight.

We ducked into an alley. It was the cleanest alley I'd ever seen (though I've only
seen them in movies). Garbage cans stood straight and pristine at the back
doors. Little else cluttered the way. A clothes line was strung over the alley, a
finger-painted art project hanging on it to dry.

"You are the craziest bitch I've ever met," Edward said. He was panting from the
exertion and cradling his bad arm against his chest, but he looked happy. The
green in his eyes seemed preternaturally bright, like glints of Elmo's fire. "I think
I love you," he said.

And that was a big moment.

I stopped and gawked at him.

Which was fortunate, because someone took just that moment to yell "Stop right
there!"

A red head lady appeared in the back doorway of a house. A law enforcement
badge dangled from her neck. She held a trembling gun level to Edward's head.
Her cheeks were pulled back in a snarl; her lips were bitten white between her
teeth.

And her eyes were too wide. I could see the whites all the way around her irises.
She looked like she was facing a train.

Faintly -maybe I imagined it- I heard a snicker from Edward.

He slid behind me and thrust the Beretta against my temple. Again, I felt the
erection (harder, stronger now) against my thigh.

"I love you," he whispered. "Don't worry."

And then he screamed. "Put your gun down! Or I will hurt her."

I felt him quiver at my back. He matched the cop's gun shudder for shudder.

Suddenly, the most curious sensation overcame me. I felt as though my head
lifted balloon-like out of the top of my skull, and that it was hovering above us, a
satellite surveying the scene. Every branch of my body tingled like laughing gas
had pushed all the blood out and was now circling through my skin, bouncing
buoyantly from artery to artery. I almost laid my head back against Edward's
chest. I wanted to recline into his arms and just giggle at the wide stupid world.

For a moment the three of us faced each other, listening to the couple fight in the
kitchen. "And here I thought you were at a convention when really you were
getting your rocks off..."

Faintly, I heard another piece of dishware smash against the concrete.

The cop stood frozen on the stoop, her mouth forming over silent words. The gun
rattled violently in her hand.

"I'm taking her now," he addressed the cop.

Edward frog marched me backwards down the alley, turned toward the cop,
always keeping her to our front and me between them.

We stopped at a back door. An Italian flag awning hung over us, and from it
dangling twenty wind chimes, all rattling hysterically in the wind.

The cop lady was still watching us three houses down. The air whipped her hair
over her face and filled her gaping mouth with red squirming tendrils.

Edward knocked on the door.

"Do you actually think they're going to open their house to the gunman?" I
whispered out the side of my mouth.

"Shut the fuck up," he said. Then he added, "Sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

At his second knock the door opened. The dry chill of air conditioner hit my back,
and I tried to twist against Edward's hold to see who was letting us in.

"I've been expecting you," came a quiet voice from inside. Edward pushed me
through the entrance and into the thin arms of our greeter.

The girl holding me was small and kept her dark hair short in a dyke cut. She
reeked of patchouli. Half a dozen scarves trimmed her neck and head. She
pushed bottle cap glasses up her nose and blinked owlishly at me.

I wanted her to die right there.

"You look like fucking Professor Trelawney," I blurted.

The cunt only smiled wider. "Actually, my name is Alice Cullen. Come on in,
they're just started talking to Edward's piano tutor right now."

Take from the dresser of deal,

Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet

On which she embroidered fantails once

And spread it so as to cover her face.

If her horny feet protrude, they come

To show how cold she is, and dumb.

-Emperor of Ice Cream, Wallace Stevens-

Fire trucks squalled outside. The house phone rang, and I could just imagine
some Commissioner Gordon type on the other end of the line- Sir, did you realize
that the wanted Edward Cullen just entered your home?

There was a helicopter above the house. I could hear the pulsing of helicopter
blades over the roof, like someone had shut a great big beating heart in the attic.
In the street a woman yelled into a bull horn, "Va! Está peligroso! Please, you
must leave the perimeter…"

"There's been cops milling around for days," Alice said simply. "I'm sure there's
dozens surrounding the house now."

Edward flung the windows a frantic glance and inched closer to the wall.
"…Where's dad?"

"He's at your piano. In the basement."

"Let's join him."

The soles of Alice's slippers hung by threads, and they slapped against the floor,
making flatulent fwap, fwap, fwap sounds against the parquet. A dirty skirt of sea
foam tulle and champagne satin hung off her hips. White stockings clung to her
shapeless, matchstick legs. She was older than me -twenty or twenty one,
perhaps- but she looked like a little girl that had raided her mother's closet and
pulled out the worst of her Halloween costumes. I amended my first impression
of her: from the neck up she was Trelawney but beneath she looked like a
ravaged ballerina. A performer of some apocalyptic swan song, who appeared
after the nuclear cloud to dance one final concert.

Christ, I'm losing my mind.

"No words of salutation for your sister?" Alice asked over her shoulder. "No 'Hey,
how you doing- are you okay now that I'm society's number one menace?'"

"No. I take heart that all the anti-psychotics you're taking are reliable and doing
their job."

She made a face. "Ugh. They have me on Seroquel* now. That stuff's trippier
than the visions."

The three of us passed the den. In the center loomed a wall-tall television. The
interview of Edward's former piano teacher had concluded. Now pundits were
arguing whether music and video games influenced Edward's psychosis. "His
brother purportedly played Grand Theft Auto, and though there's no evidence to
suggest that Edward also played the game, certainly having such violent
programming in the house affected him deeply..."

Edward scoffed, but the noise sounded half-hearted and puttered out to self-
conscious throat clearing.

We descended the basement steps. The wall was lined with family photos. As I
progressed down, the pictures featuring Edward became younger. Edward,
scowling out at me, maybe a year younger than he was now, his face scrambled
in rosacea and contempt. Edward, gawky and disproportioned at thirteen, his
head too big on a long swan neck- he resembled a bobble head, and he still
scowled.

Edward, almost androgynously pretty at age seven, with large doe eyes and thick
lashes, staring at the camera quizzically.

Edward, with fat fingers and big cheeks, giggling happily at three years old.

"Where's Emmett?" Edward asked. He paused in front of a picture of a burly boy
crouched next to a football trophy.

I hadn't even noticed the pictures of the other family members.

"He's away at college." Alice pressed two fingertips over Emmett's eyes, her lips
pursed in an air kiss. "He's trying to figure out how he can work his brother's
psychotic break into a pity scholarship. His frat brothers have thrown him
condolence parties for the past three nights."

Edward nodded. "Emmett has the Midas touch. Can turn anybody's grief into
gold."

We arrived at the bottom.

Edward knocked on the basement door. "Dad. I'm here."

For a moment, we heard nothing.

Then the faint hum of an unnoticed radio was turned off, and the silence
pronounced itself.

"Okay," said a man. "Come in."

We walked inside.

The room was concrete reinforced like a bunker. Tubes of fluorescent lighting
were spaced evenly across the ceiling. It was as cold as the grave, and the air
was thick and smelt like bad bread.

"The former owners turned their basement into a fallout shelter," Alice explained.
"It was 1972 when they renovated- a bit late for nuclear hysteria, but who am I
to judge?"

The basement was spacious and largely empty. A grand piano stood in the middle
of the floor. A couple of ratty sofas were shoved against the walls, and there was
a Spartan twin bed in the corner.

One poster was taped up on the wall. It depicted the Twelve Stations of the Cross
drawn in the style of comic books. Twelve illustrations of holy agony framed the
edge, and in the center posted a tall Jesus with arms upraised. The caption read
in Comic Sans font 'Jesus has risen from the dead!'

"This was my room," Edward said. I glanced between him and the poster, and he
noticed where my attention was drawn. "I like suffering," he explained. "And I
love resurrection."

"He was always fascinated by Jesus."

I turned my attention to the speaker beside the piano. A white-haired man sat on
the bench, his shoulders slumped, staring at us blankly. His eyes were bright red,
like he had been in smoke filled room for the past several hours and his eyes
were scoured raw.

"Bella, this is our father, Carlisle," Alice said.

I felt an overwhelming urge to wave to him.

The man canted his head. "You're my son's hostage, then? Well. I've spoken to
your mother. She left me many… messages. She's very worried." He brushed a
vacant gaze over my body, lingering over my dirty knees and the muddy edges of
my ankle socks. His look could have been mistaken for lascivious had this been
any other situation, but I knew he was just checking me for signs of torture. At
the hands of his son. "You seem... well."

He broke off into a coughing fit, sputtering into a white-knuckled fist.

The man looked so broken. It made me sad for him, and suddenly I wanted to
provide any comfort I could. The urge to comfort was ridiculous, of course. I was
part of his problems -me and Edward had terrorized the countryside, probably
bringing untold amounts of attention and grief onto his family.

I was a part of his grief.

That made me uncomfortable. I didn't want to make this white-haired man
miserable. Killing people was one thing. They were dead- they were no longer
around to experience the horror of their murder. So in a sense, it was almost a
victimless crime.

But making people's lives miserable was completely different. It was sadistic, and
I didn't consider myself a sadist.

I felt very awkward, squirming under his gaze and needing to comfort him. My
mind raced to say something - and suddenly I remembered his words, "I spoke to
your mother."

And that bitch fucked everything up.

So what finally popped out of my mouth was, "My mother's a shit. Don't worry
about her."

Carlisle cast me a murderous glance, as though he felt insulted behalf of her and
all parents.

Then, inexplicably, he laughed.

"Is she now?" he asked.

Edward was nodding furiously, as though I had just confirmed everything he
knew about life. He said, "We'd kill her too if we had the time." The words came
out giddy.

Carlisle laughed harder. He laughed so hard he rested his forehead briefly on the
keys. The piano squealed in discord, and Carlisle wrenched his head back,
blinking back at the piano in surprise as though he hadn't realized the thing could
make noise.

"And what did she do to deserve death?" Carlisle asked.

Edward looked at me, expectant. He almost seemed happy. And he was never
happy unless he was certifiably out of his mind.

My gut clenched with fear.

"All teenage girls hate their mother," Alice piped behind us. "I hated Esme."

"-Why do you hate your mother, Bella?" Edward interjected. He leaned forward
from his hips, his hands balled on his hips, and leered into his father's personal
space. "Tell Carlisle why. Why your mom must die."

I didn't know what was going on in his head. Edward had entered... one of his
crazed moods. I hadn't seen him this unhinged since I had met him, when he
called me a narcissistic bitch in the back of Ms. Cope's yard.

A cell phone rang in Carlisle's pants, and Frank Sinatra crooned in the ring tone,
I've got the world on a string… sitting on a rainbow…

Carlisle sighed. "That would be the police, wondering if we're going to surrender
you."

"Bella, come on. Tell him. Why does your mother deserve to die?"

"Because... because she never taught me how to be somebody," I stuttered.
"She... spends all her time with awful boyfriends and I've seen them hit her and
she wails all night when they leave like it's the fucking end of the world. She's
never taught me how to carry my head in this world. She's ... useless to me...
and I feel stupid for wishing she was more than that," I gushed out.

"Oh, for fuck's sake, so what?" Alice idly snapped, though she was turned toward
the poster on the wall and seemed to be addressing Jesus.

"Well, it's just my reasons," I said apologetically. No one ever said the urge to
murder was rational.

Edward leaned forward and pressed a kiss to my forehead. Warmth radiating out
from the kiss, sliding down and flushing my cheeks, making the hairs on the back
of my neck prickle. "Stupid fucking lamb," he whispered.

Then he was looking down at his father.

Carlisle's head was bowed like a tired carriage horse.

"Father. you know that on the news they're all asking, where was Edward's
parents?"

"Yes," the white-haired man said.

"You know they are saying, What could the parents have done to help him?
They're blaming you. Do you like that?"

"It makes me wish I were dead."

"What if you were a victim, too?" Edward asked.

I hadn't caught it when Edward took off his jacket, but there he stood with chest
bared. Even the knife holsters were now gone, and his scrawny chest heaved with
sickly squeaky pneumonia sounds, his nipples pebbled in the dank chill of the
cellar. His body was checkered red and white, and I couldn't tell whether they
were blotches of fever or smears of untended blood.

His jaw was crooked forward, the bottom row of Chicklet teeth flashing.

He raised his gun. "If you were a victim, they wouldn't antagonize you. They
would say, poor old man, targeted by his own son-"

Carlisle finally perked up, finally caught on to the danger he was in. He raised his
hands, fingers spread wide in surrender.

"Edward- no- son, you don't have to do this-"

"Patricide," Alice keened from her place against the walls. "For God's sake,
Edward. Patricide."

I remembered this hack mythology class I took in my sophomore year. The
Greeks- they believed that Zeus killed his father, Cronus. Then he took over
heaven.

The Enuma Elish told of the god Ea who destroyed his father Apsu in order to rule
the Earth. Patricide was the crime of the gods. And it made you supreme.

"Edward, son..." Carlisle's fingers trembled and curled, as though longing to
clutch to something.

The pipes groaned in the walls.

Then, Edward smiled. A slow curling of lips, the motion like the sinewy stretch of
a jungle cat upon waking.

"This little piggy went to market," Edward muttered.

He squeezed the gun. And one of Carlisle's fingers exploded.

The bullet cleaved through bone and continued on, rebounding off the concrete
wall behind him. Then it ran back at us, glancing along the corner where Alice

stood- slicing through the tulle fabric of her skirt. Finally the shot ended; the
bullet lodging in the piano lid with a splintering crack.

Alice screamed, bringing a scarf-filled hand to her mouth as though she meant to
stuff it. Her cry reached such crescendos that I thought her glasses would crack
from sonic shock.

Head turned, face pale, Carlisle gawked at his hand, his eyes lolling wildly in its
sockets like a startled steed's. A disembodied wail filled the room, and it took me
a moment to recognize Carlisle as the source; he seemed too still and stunned to
vocalize.

"The little piggy went home." Edward squeezed the trigger.

The sound ripped through the small concrete room, and my hands shot over my
ears, it felt like a muscle was pulled in my ear canal.

Carlisle screamed and leaned down to clutch his hand -now short twofingers-
between his chest and his knees.

The bullet hit the wall behind him again, and it bounced back toward Alice -but
fell too short, winding inside the leg of Edward's bed.

Edward turned the gun toward the floor. "This little piggy had roast beef."

He shot Carlisle's foot. A small geyser of blood fanned up from the tip of his
stylish Oxford.

"This little piggy had none." He shot the shoe again.

Now a crater of singed leather and dark blood stood where the toe had once
been.

Carlisle sunk to the floor, doubled over. His body curled over his feet and hands,
and his head tucked below his shoulders. He resembled a turtle trying to draw
into itself.

"And this piggy went wee wee wee all the way home."

Edward crouched next to Carlisle. He brought a cupped hand to his ear, his head
tilted over his father's shaking form. "Let's hear it, dad." He put the gun to the
white hair. "I want to hear you wee."

All I could think of was Charlie.

Charlie was a mandatory kill on the Reckonings list. He would have died had I not
left Forks with Edward.

I wondered, would Charlie cry if Edward had a gun to his head?

I thought of my dad, idly rearranging his porcelain owls on the window sill.

My dad was the loneliest soul I knew (other than Edward). I was eight the last
time he had a girlfriend. Twice a month he would drive for hours to see her in
Tacoma. When she broke up with him, he bought himself one of those fucking
owls at a garage sale during the long ride home- and that's when he started his
collection. He had porcelain owls in lieu of live women.

My daddy wouldn't cry for Edward. Surely.

But Edward's daddy did.

The cry started at a low hum, like the dim frequency you heard through the ear
phones when the doctors checked your hearing. It descended slowly, moving
from the high whine of dog whistles to the low lewd moan that the dying or the
fucking made.

"Wee, wee, weee..." Edward combed the muzzle through a lock of Carlisle's hair.
His eyes -dilated with fuckknows what emotion- tracked each silver strand as it
shifted under the barrel. "…All the way home."

I knew he was going to kill Carlisle.

And I just couldn't take it.

"Why, Edward?" I cried. "Why?"

Across the room, Alice squeaked.

Edward looked over his shoulder at me. "What?"

"Why do you have to kill him? What did he do?" As I asked this, I told myself that
Edward didn't need a reason to kill his father. He shot countless people along the
road from Forks, and they hadn't done a thing to him besides get in the way.

Still, I liked to think that he would need a reason to shoot someone as important
as his father. His dad wasn't some nameless face. Carlisle meant something, and
I needed to know what that thing was.

"Why, Edward?"

Edward squeezed his eyes shut, like I was the stupidest cunt on Earth. "He never
let me be me," he said.

And that didn't seem worthy of assassination.

I thought of Alice snapping "Oh, for fuck's sake, so what?"

"... I remember when I was ten," he continued. "I climbed a water tower and
threw Alice's cat off the top with lit firecrackers taped to its collar. Carlisle
slapped me. He grounded me for the rest of summer."

"But... Edward... most people would react that way. Anyone would be upset if you
killed a pet."

He opened his eyes then. Maybe it was the lighting, but his green eyes looked
almost yellow. It was a sick, bile-like color, and his pupils seemed to wobble
under the pallid flickering of the fluorescent bulbs.

"And? So? What of it?" He sighed then, sounding almost wary. "This is who I am,
and I will hate anyone who makes me something other than what I'm supposed
to be."

Tired of crouching (looming could be such a strain on the muscles), he lowered
himself to the floor and sat Indian style, one knee pressed against Carlisle's
shoulder. Like he was settling in for a chat.

He shook his head at his father, his lip curled in a sneer. "You adopted three
fucked-up children. Emmett, Alice, and I- we were fucked up at birth, and you

thought you could mold us into something different. We were always monsters-
and you were cocky for thinking you could help that."

He snorted, and a grin spread across his face. The dimples shone in his cheeks.

Then he brought the butt of the gun down on Carlisle's head.

Carlisle collapsed. No longer curled up like a turtle, he laid belly down to the
floor, all four limbs spread wide. Utterly beaten down.

I thought he was knocked out. But then he turned his head, and he blinked one
dim blue eye up at me.

Humans were a lot harder to knock unconscious than I had realized.

"I can't do it Edward," I said. "I ... can't watch a father die."

I was terrified. When times were easier, I knew I would recount this moment and
have a long cry over it. But I couldn't show those emotions now; this was
Edward, and I had to play it detached if I wanted to get anywhere with him. If I
started crying right now, he would become remote and disdainful. Edward didn't
appreciate those sorts of emotions.

"I just... maybe I'm a little traumatized, or something," I said, and I tried doing
an eye roll -because aloof motherfuckers can do eye rolls at times like this- but I
think I only accomplished an eye twitch. "I've just seen a crapload of shooting,
you know? I can't stomach any more, right now. Maybe I need a slower
initiation..." And here, I shrugged. "Into all this."

I flipped a breezy hand. And shrugged again.

He stared for a moment, plainly assessing me.

I wondered if he was remembering the last time I had counseled him on his
killings- when we were in the Volvo and I beseeched in a roundabout way that he
not hurt children. He had angrily mocked me and then he had kissed me for the
first time. "Torture, Bella, could I do torture?"

I wondered how I looked to him back then, those long days ago. And if I looked
any different to him now.

Finally, he said, "If I let him go, you will stay with me."

I nodded. "Anything."

"You'll stay with me no matter what I do."

"Yes." I never thought I had a choice in the matter. But I appreciated what he
was doing- he was telling me, this is end game, and this is your last chance to
back out.

I never did have a choice in the matter.

He glared down at his old man. "Fucking... get up. Go away. Tell the cops
upstairs that I have a hostage, and I'll kill her if they try to come down here. You,
too, Alice. Just fucking... go."

It was amazing- how he could come off so disgusted and condescending while he
was being the most disgusting and lowly thing on Earth.

Alice hurried to gather up her father, and together they limped out the bedroom
basement door.

She took the cell phone out of Carlisle's pocket and flung it at Edward's feet. "You
can talk to the fucking hostage negotiator yourself. I'm sure they'll be calling any
minute."

Edward picked up the phone and put the volume on silent.

Once the door closed behind them, Carlisle gave a long, keening wail.

But it sounded like a happy wail. It sounded triumphant. A wail of escape.

Now we were alone and deep underground, with the police and all the world
above us.

I was amazed. After all that, Edward didn't have a spot of Carlisle's blood on him.
It was splattered across the piano, seeping between the keys and dying the ivory
a deep crimson. I felt bad for whoever had to fix and clean it. I wondered if it
would play right after what it witnessed.

As I stared at the piano, a panic attack hit me. It felt like a cross between a heart
attack and strangulation, and for a wild moment I looked to Edward to make sure
he wasn't strangling me.

He was watching me quietly. He held the top sheet of his bed in his hands and
was awkwardly tearing it into strips. One arm was still badly injured and he
couldn't grasp the fabric, so he had to pin one corner between his elbow and
ribcage while he tore with his good hand.

I tried to quiet myself -mumble sensei over and over and Zen out or some shit.
Meanwhile, Edward replaced the dirty gauze around his shoulder and arm with
the strips of sheet, and then he fashioned himself a makeshift sling.

I placed a hand over my heart and rubbed, trying to massage it back to normal
palpitation.

"Are you better?" he asked.

"Yes. I think so."

Edward picked up Carlisle's cell phone. A call was already buzzing on the screen-
he pressed Ignore and then started a text:

To: Alice Cullen

Tell the police that I will speak to them in forty-five minutes, he sent.

Edward was bad with texting. His broad fingers couldn't manage the tiny keys,
and though it took him nearly two minutes, he capitalized and typed out every
punctuation mark. What an Anal Andy.

I remembered how I only texted people when I was trying to duck out of an
engagement and was too cowardly to talk to them. Frequently the recipient was
Lauren. She was strident when people cancelled on her- she always took it as a
grave insult. So I always texted her, cant make it, and then ignored her calls until
enough time had lapsed for her to cool down.

It amused me to see Edward employing the same tactics with the police. I guess
he was scared and didn't feel like having a contentious conversation.

How insane.

It was rare I remembered that Edward was a teenager and that for all his evil
genius he still thought and reasoned like the stupid fuck of a kid he was.

He dropped the phone to the ground and raised his face to me. His eyes were so
wide that I could barely see his lids. He looked scared and white as a ghoul, and
he shook his head, as though to clear the fear away. I could see it in his face, I
just texted the police. And asked them to give me a few minutes before they
barged through the door in a halo of gunfire.

"Are you... what are you feeling?" I asked stupidly. I wanted to ask, are you
alright?, but that question was ridiculous.

"I'm not ready."

To face all the cops waiting in the street to arrest him? No, I imagined not.

"O...kay." I stared at the poster of Christ.

"I want sex," he mumbled.

That got my attention. "Wh-What?"

He raked his good hand over his cranium. His hair had gotten longer. It was now
a solid coat of burnished brown, with no hint of skin underneath. Its length was
almost-normal.

"I ...well, something's probably about to happen. And I'd liked to not be a virgin
when it does." He barked a laugh. "You know- all those movies where it's the end
of world and the high school dweeb is running around propositioning women
because he doesn't want to die without getting laid first? Well, that's sorta this."

Well.

Framed that way, I would be sort of a bitch if I denied him.

I glanced down at his crotch. "Are you sure you're up for that? You're... sick."

He shrugged and reached for his belt. "Fear is a powerful aphrodisiac." Suddenly
he looked sheepish, and he glared above my head at a corner of the ceiling while
he said, "Like, when I said you would stay with me no matter what... what I
mean was... I really want to fuck you before... anything happens to me."

So basically, Edward thought he could die and my vagina was sort of like his last
meal.

"Oh. Well. Yes, then." I tried to fight back a smirk and failed. "Of course."

He nodded.

He looked impatient as I undressed, like a little kid frustrated with the wrapping
paper keeping them from their present. When we were both naked he put his
hands on my shoulder and pushed me until I was seated on the bed; then he
bent and wrapped a big hand around my ankles, and he lifted my legs up,
arranging me just so. When I seemed comfortable, he slid in next to me. He ran
a hand over the space of sheet between us, smoothing the wrinkles in the linen.

We lay naked on our sides facing each other, and I felt tight as a guitar wire,
each muscle stiff to the point of cramping.

I knew he was nervous too, and I tried to kiss him so he would stop thinking so
hard. He didn't like the kissing- his lips moved mechanically and grudgingly, and
eventually he huffed and tilted his head away, his face contorted in distress.

"I'm sorry. I just want... it..." And he pointed, all four fingers tucked except for
the forefinger, which was rigidly arrowed toward my pelvis. "Can't I just have..."

"Sure."

"Are you...sure?"

"Yes. Please." I figured begging might help. Edward seemed like the kind of guy
who would like begging.

So he brought a hand to his face and inspected the cleanliness of his nails
(astonishingly clean, all things considered). Then he stuffed his hand between my
legs.

"I don't understand all this," he said. He poked a hard finger around my genitals.
"I don't understand the nooks. Why do vaginas have nooks?'

"Labia," I muttered, and I mashed myself closer next to him. I liked the way his
chest felt against my breasts- I liked feeling the stuttering beat of his heart
against my nipple.

"All those nooks just seem useless. It reminds me of this badger that has a nose
shaped like a star fish. What a retarded animal, you know? Just- it seems like
there could have been a better way for your body to form. Evolution does stupid
things." He skirted a nail along a fold of skin. He was getting hard now, and the
firmer his penis got, the softer he handled me- his movements phasing from
clinical exploration to languid sensuality. "Why can't it be a plain ol' hole?"

"What, like another butt hole?"

"No. Not like a butt hole." He let go of my clit and grasped the head of his penis,
making quick hard tugs. "I think I'm starting to warm up to it, though."

He bit his lip hard, and one eyebrow twitched crookedly. He angled his prick
against me and did an experiment bob inside, sliding in a fraction of an inch and
then slipping right out. "Can... I..."

I nodded, and he sort of rolled his eyes at that, like yeah right. He didn't believe
me- probably on some level he didn't buy that this was happening.

I tugged at his shoulder and scooted under him, arranging us with me
underneath and him tentatively leaning over me. All eye rolling scorn was erased
from his face. Now he was looking down at me with vulnerable worry, like he was
a beached marine mammal inspecting this new surface he'd landed himself on. It
was there on his face: oh god, naked girl.

I opened and wrapped my legs around him, bringing the heat of his cock directly
against me. He gasped and grabbed hold of himself again, bringing the head back
against my entrance.

"It's okay," I said. "Really."

And at that he surged his hips forward, quickly pushing himself inside with the
flinching fury of someone ripping the band aid off, his hips bruising as they
muscled through my thighs.

"Oh.. oh my... wow." He shuddered and tucked a slightly damp nose against my
shoulder. His cheeks grew wet, but I refused to believe that he was crying.

I curled my arm around his back. "It's ok. If you need to-"

"Are you okay?" he whispered. "Are you... does it hurt..."

"No. I..." I thought quickly. "I already lost my virginity... in a bike accident."

He nodded against my neck, and as he nodded he started thrusting. A low groan
slid out wetly along my collarbone.

As he got down to task, he forgot wholly about my clitoris, and instead clutched
at my breasts and hips, his hands leaving long flowing finger marks across my
stomach. I pressed myself into him harder, wanting to feel as much of his skin as
he could.

"I want to fuck you forever," he said. He raised his face and I saw clearly the
salty streaks of tears down his cheeks. "I could do this forever."

I shook my head. "We... I would get pregnant eventually... I can't fuck you if I'm
having baby."

He hissed through his teeth and bit my neck. "Then I'll fuck your mouth."

He gave one long, kidney-punching thrust, and came, his moan coming out as a
gurgle. Then he jerked backwards and kneeled between my legs, and his penis
gave one final arc of fluid onto my thigh.

He remained there for several moments, his cheeks puffing in heavy breaths, his
eyes tightly shut. Every few moments he would wipe his forearm across his
cheeks, trying to dry himself, but the tears never stopped coming. I jacked
myself off to the sight of his crying until my legs shook.

"I love you..." he gasped. "God, I love you..."

"Let be be finale of seem.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream."

-Wallace Stevens Emperors of Ice Cream-

"How many minutes do you have until you gotta call the police?" I asked, pointing
at Edward's phone.

We were sitting naked on the bed. Edward was playing with a knife, spinning it
between his forefingers. He stared below the twirling blade at the cell phone in
his lap.

"A few. Maybe," he said.

He picked up the phone and dialed. Then he hesitated and glanced at the screen.
Deciding against the call, he dropped the phone on the bed.

He glanced up at me. "Can you do me a favor?"

"Um." I hated it when he asked me for favors. It was like handing a blank a check
to gambling addict.

Still, I was in love with him. Or as close as I would ever be to in love. And part of
love was handing out ill-advised blank checks.

"Yes," I said. "Anything."

He reached to the foot of bed and produced his Adidas bag. I had forgotten all
about it, and I was surprised to see it.

He took the Beretta out and placed it in my lap. "Have you ever shot anything?"

Immediately, my head was inundated with images of gunning down the cops in
the style of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Did Edward want me to shoot at
the cops with him?

The panic probably showed on my face. I wasn't ready to be his accomplice quite
that flagrantly. Sure, I could set a car on fire while was no one was looking or rob
a house if no one was seeing, but I couldn't march out into a line of cops and
witnesses.

For God's sake, my dad was a cop. I was the little sister of every policeman in
Forks. Various police rookies, new to town and far from their family, had attended
Thanksgiving at my house every year for as long as I could remember.

I couldn't be outted as a criminal yet. Not like that.

Still, the proud country girl in me had to scoff, despite my misgivings. "Of course,
I can shoot a gun. My dad's taken me hunting since I was eight. I was the son he
never had."

He nodded. There was a ring of love bites around his chest, framing his neck like
an eyelet collar. They winked in and out of shadow as he moved.

"I need to make something clear: I can't go to jail. There's no way out of this
other than jail or death. So I'm going to need you to shoot me," he said, very
slowly. He caught my eye and raised his eyebrows. Like he was asking me to get
him a cup of coffee and would I please get on with it.

"Wh-Why?"

"You need to kill me... as hard as you can*." Then he snickered at himself and
rolled his eyes. I think he might have misquoted some movie, but I couldn't
remember what.

Then his face sobered, all levity blinking out of his features like a light going
dead. He laid his hand over mine, pressing my fingers into the metal grooves and
pushing the gun into the skin of my thigh.

I mean, my thighs still hurt from fucking.

He had asked me to fuck him, and now he was asking to kill him. I couldn't just
kill a guy whose sperm was still swimming around in my belly.

Sperm could live for days inside of a woman's womb. Oh god, his sperm was
going to outlive him.

I could only laugh at it all. "You're fucking kidding me."

"Have I ever really kidded you?"

He had the gall to look affronted.

Clutching the gun in two hands, I jumped to my feet.

"Have you ever kidded me? Yes, you've fuckin' kidded me!" I screamed. "You
asked me if I wanted food- then you walked into a fucking 711 and shot some
guy for Lemonheads. Well, ha ha, Edward! Ha ha! Joke on Bella! Billions of people
dead- sike, Bella! Killed your two best friends- April's Fools, Bella!"

I think I was waving the gun at this point. I didn't mean to be threatening- but I
was incensed and I gestured with my hands a lot when I got incensed. It just so
happened that I was holding a gun in them.

But Edward was staring at the gun in my hand, and every time one of my flails
brought the barrel in his direction he would flinch.

I could make Edward flinch.

I waved the gun toward him again, and he twitched away from me, turning so his
good shoulder was between him and me. I saw him only in profile. He looked at
me out of the corner of his eye.

"Oh, you don't like that, do you?" I shouted. "Big man, enjoys a little suicide with
his homicide, can't take a gun aimed your way?"

I shot the gun at the bed next to his knee. I almost shot the wall- but I
remember the bullets would bounce around and I had ducked enough gunfire for
one lifetime.

And, well, it felt good to finally shoot the gun. I had been flinching away from its
fire for days. There had been nothing I could do to control it. I never even got a
forewarning before Edward shot it; he never told me when to cover my ears
because this noise is gonna be so loud it'll hurt.

It felt amazing to shoot it. It felt like when I purged myself after a huge Twinkie
binge. I felt crazy, but I also felt in control. Every purge made me feel a little
more composed. I felt like I could take everything but it's okay because I can
give it right back.

And boy, that Beretta shot as smooth as a whisper, barely bucking in my hands.

Edward had his palms over his ears and his head was pulled into his shoulders.
His elbows were raised in the air and bowed toward each other, as though to
shield himself.

That position must have really hurt with that bad shoulder.

He must have really been scared of me.

"That felt good," I breathed.

My breaths were calming down, now. My heart rate was steadying. Amazing how
firing a gun could steady the nerves.

Edward squinted one eye open at me. "You... look hot with it," he whispered.
"With the nakedness... and the boobs." Then he squeezed his eyes shut again,
like he expected me to shoot for his comment.

I should shoot him for that. "I should shoot you for that."

He nodded and bit his lip.

Sighing, I lowered the gun. "You want that to be your last words? Boobs?"

He shrugged his good shoulder and nodded again.

"Open your eyes, idiot," I laughed.

I wondered if I could twirl the gun around my finger like Annie Oakley. Really, I
was starting to love this gun.

Then, the door burst from its hinges.

"...Bella Swan... honey... please, put down the gun."

I glanced over my shoulder.

The FBI fucker James stood in the doorway with a gun raised at Edward.

For a moment, all I could think was that poor FBI dude has to see my stretch-
marked ass.

Probably the only reason why he called me "honey" was because he was seeing
me naked, and he thought he owed me some token of tenderness.

"Bella, sweetheart- you're okay now. It's over. Lower the gun," he said. He was
trying to peer around me. I realized that I was blocking his view of Edward.

"Why- how are you here?" I asked. My back was still turned to him, and I had to
turn my head slightly to see him in my peripheral. I wanted to keep facing toward
Edward. He was the important one. He was my focus. No matter what.

"We heard your conversation over the phone," James said, his words clipped and
abrupt, spilling out automatically like his mouth was set on Say anything you
have to the crazies. "Whoever called the police left the phone on. We knew that
you had the gun on Edward. Bella, it's over. Just come by me. It's okay, now. We
got him."

I looked to Edward. He was holding the phone up, the screen clearly blinking with
the time code for the phone conversation. Two minutes and counting.

He pressed End, and the screen went dark.

He looked so composed. He was naked as a jaybird and cool as a cucumber. The
only indicator of his stress was that his lips had gone a little pale.

I wondered if he had dreamed about this kind of stuff. Not the shooting and the
stand-offing, but about being naked with an awkward audience. Bullied kids
probably dreamed about that stuff all the time. Everyone pointing and laughing
as he stood naked in home room. Showing up to prom and realizing that you're
only wearing your birthday suit.

I bet Edward had been dreaming and preparing for this moment forever. He was
now in the most awkward moment of his life -hi, police officer. I killed a bunch of
people. Oh, and I'm naked- and he met it with the composure of a monk

"You," I breathed. "You knew they were listening."

Edward sneered. "I knew you probably wouldn't shoot me. Thanks, by the way."

He stood up, then. Still shielded by my body from James, he took out the knife he
had been playing with earlier and pushed the edge along my belly. He didn't
press hard; it skimmed the surface like a paper cut. But the belly was a soft,
tender area, and I imagined the knife easing incrementally inward, quietly
slipping through my stomach before Edward even realized it.

I should have been more frightened (and wasn't that the mantra for the week?
Over the past several days, I had constantly told myself, I should be more
frightened, I should be more frightened, as though trying to steel myself through
reverse psychology. By telling myself I should be more frightened, I convinced
myself to be more numb.)

"Shoot me, James," Edward said, leering over my shoulder at the FBI agent and
providing a clear shot of his face. "You need to shoot me. Take me down. Come
on, hero."

"Why are you doing this?" I murmured.

I should have been more frightened, but a deep and heavy lethargy suddenly
settled over me. Maybe my body recognized that some sort of ending was at
hand, and it was finally giving up after sustaining itself on Roxycodone and
adrenaline for the past 48 hours. Or maybe it was simple post-sex languidness.

I leaned against his chest and rest my head along his collarbone. The knife
pressed in a little harder as I shifted position.

Can you still conceive while being stabbed? I thought insanely.I pictured Edward's
sperm and my egg running away from the knife and cowering in the walls of my
womb.

"James, I will kill her," he said. "I will tear her stomach open and spill her guts
out on your shoes."

His body shook as he said it.

He released his grip on the knife and mashed his hand flat against my stomach,
pressing the blade flush between my flesh and his palm. His fingers curled,
digging into my abdomen.

"You really thought I would kill you just like that?" I muttered, sounding sleepy
even to my own ears.

"Well, yes. You did stab me once, you know," he whispered, his voice sounding
oddly tender.

I took one last sniff of him. After being in close proximity to him for so long, I had
gotten used to the smell and no longer recognized it. All the foulness faded to the
background. He smelled strongly of skin. Most Americans didn't smell like their
skin- their stretchy, plucky, sweaty skin. They smelled of lilacs and oleander.
They carried with them the scent of prairies. Sanitized, dirtless prairies.

"Why can't you just shoot yourself, then?" I asked. I closed my eyes and
wondered if they would let me doze while they battled this out. "That would be
simpler than all this."

"Good killers don't take their own lives," he murmured. "They deal death to
others- suicide means they are as pathetic as their victims. They need to go down
in a blaze. Jesse James, Billy the Kidd, Clyde and-" I felt his head tilt, and I knew

he was looking down at me. I could hear the sneer in his voice as he said, "-
Bonnie."

"I'm sorry that I wasn't a good Bon-."

"Shut up."

"-Edward," James interjected. "Lower the knife. Let her go. We can work with
you. We have people that are willing to negotiate-"

"Nope. Negotiation sucks. Don't feel like it. I thought about it, but really-
hostage-taking only works in third-world embassies."

"Edward," the agent intoned, his voice going cold and firm. "You must think about
this-"

"Right. Fuck this," Edward said. Then his hand closed around the knife and he
raised it above my head. "On the count of three, I will stab her in the skull."

"One..."

I wondered if he would really do it. He had pointed a gun at my head before, but
there had been no countdown involved with that. A countdown meant a deadline.
A countdown meant he had to deliver.

"Two..."

Wails were a weird thing. When you're making them, they can be so high and
keen that they barely shake the throat as they're made. Even if I couldn't feel it -
and I barely heard it, I felt so detached from the situation, just floating away, you
needed a passport to reach me- I knew I was wailing.

There weren't many instances in life when one could freely wail. The only time
I've heard it (before today, before Carlisle) was when my mother was getting the
shit beaten out of her.

Funny. I was about to be stabbed- and she's been threatened by her boyfriends
countless times. We were both battered women, now. Maybe we could bond over
that. If I ever survived this.

"Three."

Then he shoved me toward James. As I stumbled backward, I saw Edward slash
the knife down and strike his flesh, just below the belly button. Right beside the
cut I had made on him days ago.

He jerked his hand back forth, slicing his stomach from left to right.

Seppuku, I thought. This was the suicide of the samurai. And naturally, Edward
knew the technique. Edward seemed like the sort of dweeb who would have
worshipped all-things-Japanese. The terd.

I wanted to ask him, do you want me to die, too?

Oibara. When you committed seppuku upon the death of your master.

(Mike had been a Wapanese, once upon a time. A samurai sword had hung above
his bed. For over a year, he would rattle off anime-learned Japanese words to
me, determined to master the language without the aid of formal education. Then

he discovered pot, dropped the obsession, moved on, and grew up. And then he
died.)

Even if I had asked, Edward wouldn't have heard me. His eyes were dimming, the
green irises turning glassy like grey opals.

"To hell, then," Edward gurgled. "You can't always get what you want."

Then he left this world, naked as the day he came into it.

*The misquote is actually, "I need you to hit me as hard as you can" from Fight
Club.

"Fools make a mock at sin."

-Prov. xiv. 9-

The police started eavesdropping over the phone right after Edward said, "I'm
going to need you to shoot me"- specifically, when I asked "Why?"

Thank god, they never heard him say, "Can you do me a favor?" They never
heard him cajole me. They heard me spit vitriol. They heard me rampage about
my dead friends. They heard me ask him if boob was going to be his last word.

James also reported that I was acted like a thoroughly traumatized hostage
during the incident in the basement. While Edward had threatened, I had
mumbled incoherently- the only thing James could discern was, "Why are you
doing this?" and "How are you here?"

(I remember when I told him, "I'm sorry I wasn't a good Bonnie." It was the only
damning thing that I said, and Edward had cut me off. I wonder why he did that.)

Everything that I said, over the phone and in front of James, had made me look
crazy and confused. It all helped my case.

However, the police still grilled me on what happened while I was with him. For
eight hours I sat in an interrogation room, shifting around in the probably-
intentionally squeaky chair. They wanted to pin some sort of charge on me- they
knew I did something.

Then, in the middle of the interrogation, some big wig had entered and informed
me that I was free to go.

I knew I was getting off because I was America's sweetheart victim. The press
loved me, so the police couldn't touch me.

The police, my dad, the media- they all decided I had Stockholm Syndrome.
Which was ridiculous. I was only with him for three days. Stockholm Syndrome
couldn't hit me that fast. That thoroughly.

I know I was only with him for a short time, but you can't let small matters like
that get in the way of love. I hold those memories close to my chest, recounting
them over and over until they feel threadbare from overuse and no longer real.
Then I go to sleep, and I dream about him, and when I wake up the next
morning my memories feel revitalized by the dreams.

Those memories are more real to me than the present.

I took a whole bunch of pregnancy tests in the days following Edward's death. I
don't know why I got so obsessed with the idea of being pregnant. Maybe I
wanted something good to happen out of all that bad. Maybe I was hoping I had
some part of him still alive inside of me.

I wasn't. I took a pregnancy test every day for a month and a half. Not a single
false-positive. Nothing.

I try to picture him. Up in heaven, or hell, or maybe some non-judgmental ether
space where the confused go to endure their afterlife. I like to think that he's
sitting in some mystical saloon, playing poker with Billy the Kid and Capone and
Jesse James. They drink mezcal and kick their muddy boots up on the table top,
scattering dirt clods over the chips. Edward shows them his Beretta, and they
exclaim over the wonders of invention as they inspect its hard chromed barrel.

I hope they don't shun him because he killed himself. I hope they don't think he's
a pussy who took the easy way out.

Every hour of every day, I wonder if I should have shot Edward.

If given the chance to do it over, I would have shot him.