The Last One (32 page)

“She’s crazy,” says Harry. “I’m not getting anywhere near her.”

I don’t see any red on the blade, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. I have to get to Brennan, I have to make sure he’s okay. He’s somewhere around the corner. Cliff and Harry are between us.

“What did you do to him?” I ask, stalling.

“The kid’s fine,” says Harry. The machete continues to swing.

Cliff stands fully and raises a hand to his bleeding nose. I see his hand is bleeding too. The expanded meaning of the metallic taste in my mouth makes my stomach twist. I’m disqualified. I must be. Not only did I strike this man, I
bit
him. Hard enough to draw blood.

Cliff steps toward me. “Look,” he says. “I get it. You’ve been through a lot. We all have.”

Why aren’t they stopping him? Stopping me?

I maintain a watchful crouch as Cliff takes another step. I can tell now that much of the blood in my mouth is coming from a cut on the inside of my lip, which I feel swelling and throbbing.

I broke a rule and nothing’s changed.

Maybe they’re making an exception. A special circumstance, like when Heather hit Randy and the consequences never came? She was provoked and forgiven. I’m being forgiven too. Because conflict makes for good TV and that’s all they care about.

Conflict—and the unexpected.

“Okay,” I say. “I’ll go with you.”

Cliff pauses and looks at Harry. It’s clear they don’t buy my sudden acquiescence. They shouldn’t, but I need them to.

“I think my hand’s broken,” I say, and I allow myself to feel my pain. I allow all my frustration to surface. As I start shaking, I think of my husband. How badly I need to be home, how far I’ve come and all that I’ve seen and done. I think of the blue cabin, the message left for me there. I summon one of the simplest tools available to me—tears. I feel them sliding down my face; I taste their salt.

Cliff immediately relaxes. He puts out his hands in a gesture of appeasement.

“I want to see my friend,” I say.

“This way,” says Harry. He heads toward the corner of the building, toward the broken window. The machete swings casually at his side. Cliff takes my arm. I can see the cut on his face, the already swelling skin at the corner of his mouth, the blood running down his palm and wrist. He’s holding me close, but lightly, like I’m not a threat. I’m used to being dismissed as harmless, but that’s because I usually don’t cause any harm. Does he think my fighting him was some last gasp of feminist fury, now dissipated? Is this what he needs to believe?

I can work with that.

I wipe my face with my sleeve as he leads me around the building’s edge.

Brennan is supine upon the pavement, faceup. His zebra-print pack peeks from over his shoulder. I don’t see any blood, but between his red sweatshirt and dark skin, my eyesight could easily smooth away a wound. I pull away from Cliff. Kneeling, I place a hand on Brennan’s chest, feel that he’s still solid, still breathing. Which—of course he is. He’s just pretending. I know how this scene works; he’s going to open his eyes at the most dramatic moment. All I need to do is create that moment.

I see a glimmer of orange and silver under the window.

Harry prods Brennan in the leg with his foot. “He wouldn’t stop,” he says. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

“I’m not going anywhere without him,” I say.

Cliff nods at Harry, who tucks his machete into a loop on his belt and hefts Brennan over his shoulder.

“He’s heavy for such a skinny son of a bitch,” says Harry.

I leap away from Cliff and snatch the rusty pipe under the window. Before either man can react, I smash Harry’s left knee. I half expect the pipe to fold like foam, but the contact is solid, rumbling through my arms and shoulders. Harry screams and drops, letting go of Brennan, who against my expectation does nothing to soften his own fall. He’s deadweight.

“Shit,” I say.

Harry yanks the machete out of its loop and I swat it with the pipe. The blade clatters across the pavement. I think I hear Brennan groan, but I’m not sure, and then Cliff is barreling toward me. I jump away—too late. His arms catch my waist and pull me down. I lose the pipe as my chin smacks the pavement; my teeth clatter, my vision sparks. Dizzily, I feel myself pulled around so my back’s to the ground, my pack lumpy beneath me. My vision’s swimming, but I see Cliff above me, scowling. My arms and legs are pinned. His forearm is pressed to my chest, my throat, holding me down.

I could have run, before. Without Brennan. I should have. Why didn’t I?

Cliff is snarling meaningless threats. He’s going to do this to me, and that. Pain stacked upon indignity. His lips move with fascinating slowness among the bloodied blond hairs of his beard. Everything else happened quickly, but this moment takes its time. I realize that he will kill me. Everyone has a breaking point, and I found this man’s. I see this in his too-close eyes. Hazel. A color, a name I circled in a book a lifetime ago, joking about dressing up a daughter for Halloween; baby’s first pun. I want to fight, but my muscles are unresponsive. Like half-waking from a dream, I’m aware of my surroundings, I can see, I can understand, but I can’t move. Maybe the fall paralyzed me. Maybe the best thing is for me to end, here, now.

I shift my line of sight. I don’t want this angry stranger to be the last thing I see. I look toward the scraggy trees behind the dumpster where I first found the pipe. My vision makes it easy to pretend the sight is beautiful. I blink, my lids sliding so slowly, so thickly, that they’re all I can feel. And then I make a wish. I wish for the producer to come running from those scraggy trees, sprinting toward us. Or Cooper, or Emery, or Wallaby, or even one of the busy-bee interns. Anyone, as long as he’s real and yelling for Cliff to stop. This is my wish, and like all wishes worth making I know it’s impossible.

This isn’t part of the show.

None of this is part of the show.

Nothing has been part of the show for a long time.

Something within me releases, an almost pleasant untightening; I don’t have to explain anymore. I’ve fought. I’ve fought and struggled and strived—and I failed. There’s peace in this, in doing all I could have possibly done; in failing without being at fault.

At least I didn’t quit.

A wet sound, a grunt. My eyes flick unwillingly to Cliff. Twin hazel abysses staring through me. I feel him atop me, but the weight is different now—gravity is the only force at play. Cliff’s mouth is moving, gasping. And then he collapses, his chin smacking my forehead. His bloodied beard covers my eyes. I should probably be screaming, but all I feel is confused. I don’t understand how he is dead instead of me.

A ruse, I think. The show, it’s all part of—

The distance and pain in Cliff’s hazel eyes could never be faked.

But my glasses are broken and I—

You
saw.

I close my eyes. I feel coarse hair against my lids, I feel him crushing me. I see Brennan falling to the ground, limp. I feel the pipe hitting Harry’s knee, the crunch. A vise settles around my heart, my throat, as implication rushes me, and I squeeze my eyes tighter because it’s all I can do, but it’s not enough, nothing is enough, I know.

I’m alive, and the world is exactly as it seems.

I can’t breathe. I don’t want to breathe. I have to breathe.

Since
when
? When did it all change?

Above me, Brennan grunts as he tries to drag Cliff off me. He calls what he thinks is my name. The dead man’s chin slides off my face and
thunk
s against pavement.

A prop, I think, desperate, but I’m trapped beneath something far heavier than the man on my chest.

“Mae!” I hear. “Mae, are you okay?”

The boulder was Styrofoam.

The blood was artificial.

The cabin was blue.

Was it?

The cabin was blue, it
was.
So much blue, balloons and blankets and gift wrap. The
light
was blue, everything was blue.

The inside of my eyelids are sparking. I see red light around the edges.

The curtains were red.

An orange vase on the table; I put kindling in it.

My eyes can’t close tightly enough. I see brown paint, red trim.

I killed him.

A coughing, crying baby trapped in its dead mother’s arms. A house that wasn’t as blue as I want to remember. I saw him and I panicked. I ran. I left him to die.

“Mae,” a distant voice right in my ear.

I didn’t know. How could I have known?

“Mae, are you okay?”

An endless forever. Mottled pink cheeks, crusty eyes, a divot on the skull pulsing lightly. It wasn’t static in the cries, it was
need.
I let the blanket fall and told myself that it was all a lie, but the only lie was mine. I knew.

“Mae!”

I open my eyes. Brennan’s face is inches from mine, and I feel his hand touching my shoulder. I look past him and see the machete jutting from Cliff’s lower back. My back is cold. I’m lying in a pool of the dead man’s rapidly cooling blood.

“I killed him,” I say. My voice is a sob, but I don’t feel tears. I feel the cold blood against my back, the dryness of my mouth, the throbbing in my forehead. The warmth and pressure of Brennan’s hand. I look back to Brennan’s face. It’s gaunt, but not long. His cheeks want to be round. Not even the promise of stubble on them yet. This isn’t a teenager’s face, it’s a child’s; he’s a child. A child who saved my life by plunging a foot-long blade into a grown man’s back.

“Can you move?” he asks.

How did I not see how young he was?

“Mae! Can you move?”

I’m nauseated and mired in sorrow and my muscles are stiff and resisting, but I find that I can control them. I nod. Brennan helps me up. My clothes are sticky, drenched in blood. I smell it, fresh death.

I hear a soft cry, a groan so pitiful, and that’s when I notice Cliff’s fingers are twitching. The man with the machete jutting from his spine isn’t dead. A whiff of shit reaches my nose. It’s not
death
I’m smelling but
dying.

Brennan’s hand is on my arm. He’s shaking; we both are, I think.

A scraping sound from behind us. I pivot unsteadily, taking Brennan with me.

Harry is crawling toward us, dragging the leg I smashed. I feel a coyote’s skull caving and I nearly fall, but the boy is there and I keep my feet.

Brennan, softly: “We’ve gotta get out of here, Mae.”

Harry’s voice is a rumble of threat and grief, and at our feet Cliff’s groan is getting louder and his head is moving, rolling back and forth. He’s a feral dog, maimed in a misfired trap. He’s a coyote and I’m still swinging.

Harry is shouting. I hear his tears for his brother. He inches toward us, a throbbing, uneven blur.

“Mae.” Brennan’s arm slips around my waist, and I allow it because I feel enormously unstable.

“Stop!” Harry yells. We pause for this word that used to mean something, mean everything. I wish for Harry to stand with a flourish, to grab Cliff’s hand and lift him to his feet, for the two of them to bow and say “Gotcha.”

How badly I wish.

But neither brother can stand and Harry doesn’t seem to know what to say; maybe he didn’t think we’d wait. He’s just staring at us and thoughts of the show keep pounding my awareness even though I know they’re false and a baby’s cries echo through my skull.

Harry continues to stare at us—or maybe at his brother, I can’t see his eyes—and I hear Cliff’s breath, ragged, as his body fights for every last second of existence, despite the pain, despite the inevitable end. Clinging to a useless life, as the human body is wont to do.

Listening to his rasp, understanding strikes like a blade through my heart.

My husband.

If. Then.

The outcome of this logic puzzle is inescapable.

Harry has pushed himself up onto his good knee. He grabs a shopping cart and yanks himself upright. His ascent looks staged, the way the light is rising behind him, and I need it to be. The sky is so bright; I’m searching for a drone. Then understanding reasserts itself, fast and crushing, and Brennan’s tugging on my arm with urgency, taking a step. All I can think is maybe I’m wrong again, because I want to be, and I’m confusing myself and I don’t know which memories to trust. I’m searching for something concrete and my thoughts settle on a pot of lentil stew. I made it, I
know
I made it, it’s sitting inside, and for a moment the existence of that half-full pot is the only thing in my recent memory that I know to be true.

Absurdly, I find myself wanting to offer the lentil stew to Harry and Cliff, as though by sharing this one true thing with them I could undo the world and transport myself home; I’d be there with my husband and he’d be alive and I’d be the me I used to be, and the last month would become less than a dream, less than a thought—it never would have happened. But then Cliff begins to scream and there’s liquid in the scream; blood or bile, gurgling beneath. Harry takes a step toward us, then falls back to the ground at his brother’s side. My throat is paralyzed, I have nothing to offer, and Brennan’s leading. We turn our backs on the maimed brothers and hobble together toward the road, in the only direction I know to go.

In the Dark
—Week One Down. Reactions?

Why did they make her get the wallet? That was twisted. Admittedly a bit of a slow start, but it’s official: I…can’t…stop…watching!

submitted 29 days ago by LongLiveCaptainTightPants

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[-] HeftyTurtle
29 days ago

There’s some interesting stuff going on, I’ll give them that much. I’d like to see a little more attention paid to the science teacher next week. I think she’s the dark horse.

[-] HandsomeDannyBoy
29 days ago

Agreed. I bet she makes top three. Preacher’s going to run off the rest.

[-] MachOneMama
29 days ago