Page 58 of The Spiral
“Yes, you can. You can go wherever you want now, baby.” Figures appear in the gloom, three of them, all lurched over slightly as they creep through the opaque smear. “Good dogs,” Jack says from somewhere. “Good dogs.”
I gasp, unsure what they’re coming towards me for. Nerves pool again as I watch them getting closer, my own fear driving me into the tree I’m holding onto as I wonder if I can climb it. They’re killers, these three. I know I haven’t seen it with my own eyes, but I know they’ve done it. I saw it in my mind, watched it happen. They killed Selma and Lenon, and now they’ve killed Lewis. It’s madness. All of it.
Maddy
The fog starts moving as I watch them come at me, the ebb of it churning over the ground they come through, and then pain explodes in my head. It’s excruciating, enough that I grab at the side of my scalp trying to get it out of me. My knees crumple beneath me, shins knocking heavily against the ground as I tumble over and feel the mud sluice my lips. I try to gasp in breaths, but the pain intensifies with every pull. Visons erupt through the sensation—the three men, their faces blending together. Teeth and snarls, sinister laughter, the echo of screams in my mind. They’re raping her, hitting her. Oh god, they’re hurting her so much. The three of them holding her down, one of them smothering her mouth as she tries to screech Jack’s name.
It replays over and over, to the point where I scream with her at the feel of it happening. She’s so much like me. Her eyes, her face as it contorts in fear, the same way mine must have done every time Lewis held me down. And Lenon’s body comes next, the sight of him asleep in his bed, soft eyes fluttering against the comforter he’s wrapped in.
My head shakes again, knowing what’s coming. I don’t want to see it. I can’t. I scrabble at the ground beneath me, trying to crawl away from the image she’s making me see, but one of them comes into view in my mind, the tall one, followed by the other two dragging Selma with them. I prise my eyes open in hope, heaving my body to move away from them towards the clearing in the fog, but I’m knocked off my knees the moment a shot sounds.
My throat lurches, the blood splattering in my mind making bile race through me. I roll to my side, gasping in breaths as I watch Lenon’s body convulse under the bullet, his tiny chest broken open. A sadness sweeps through me that’s so profound the tears of fear that were coming halt me in my tracks, knees coming up to my chest for comfort against the pain. A child. Lenon, their son. My son. I can feel him inside me, feel his body moving as he grew. I can see him running, laughing. See Jack with him out here in the sunlight as they played.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, unable to stop the words as I cradle my knees in and rock back and forth, tears spilling from me.
Kill them for me, Maddy. Let me kill them.
I do nothing more than keep reliving the visions in my mind, locked in them as I stare at his bedding and watch the blood drip down the white sheets to the floor. That’s all I’ve got as I lie here, my body curling in on itself, lips smothered in mud. It’s sickening, vile. I feel brutalised and exposed, my skin harbouring her pain as she keeps feeding me with more and more nauseating images, one after another. And the noise—oh god the noise keeps coming. Screams and wails, begging, the sound of her head hitting the floor, the throb of it in my own head more vibrant than any pain I’ve ever felt.
Kill them.
I’m barely breathing as I feel her make me move. She slides inside me, her fingers pushing me up from my position and making me rip the coat away from my skin. I’m not in control of my own movement anymore. I’m still hugging my knees, crying into the mud, unable to do a thing. It’s all her. Her fingers tear at the fur on me, her thoughts propelling me to the pocket, my hands pulling the gun back out into the open.
“Selma, please,” I slur, watching as my hand grips the metal regardless of my hatred of the thought. I only used it try to scare them off, to stop them. “I don’t want...”
My head whips up, eyes targeting the three of them as they close in on the ground she’s pushing me towards. They look humble as they move, reverent even, all of them with their eyes lowered as they stalk the lying mist slowly. “Please don’t make me do this.”
A shrill laughter follows, wicked and full of malicious intent as it echoes the gloom we’re all in. I can’t stop it resonating somewhere inside me, filling me with her cruelty and pain. She’s so much stronger than me here, her power still flowing from her and flooding me with those images over and over again.
My guts coil, unable to stop the next wave of nausea as a flash of the tall one I’m watching comes crashing through my mind, his teeth biting into my neck as he pushes inside me and laughs.
“Get up, baby.” Jack.
I peer into the sound, looking for him, and see his face coming through the fog behind these three. He looks so handsome, his face a picture of refined splendour in the middle of this carnage. There’s nothing but his eyes for a moment, piercing me as he continues towards me. He seems to float through the space, his stride longer than theirs as his hands caress the swirling mist around him. They scamper at his feet, one of them banking right over to the stone the crow’s on, the others following suit.
“Jack, I...”
He smiles, his hand reaching for me as he finally arrives at my side. I stare up at him, flicking my thoughts between his hand and the inevitably of what will happen if I do stand. I’ll kill then; I know I will. I’ll lift this gun and hold it out in front of me, pulling the trigger three times, regardless of whether or not I want to. These men will die because of me.
“I’m not her.”
“Yes, you are. Let her come home,” he replies, the softness in his voice mimicking the same love he has when he’s inside of me.
He grasps onto my fingers, and a warm strength surges through me instantly lighting up all of this darkness. It’s filled with honour and loyalty, love ebbing between us and causing all of Selma’s venom to disintegrate. We hover here, me looking up at him as he continues smiling, him peering into recesses that don’t belong to me.
“You know what to do, Madeline.”
Tears come at the thought. Not because I’m scared of doing it, but because I’ll lose me when I do. I’ll be someone else, someone I never wanted to be. I don’t maim and kill. I don’t bruise or harm. I love. I love and I hope. That’s what I am to me. I’m full of care and dreams, weaknesses too. And if I do this for them, if I let them have their way, I’ll become a monster, no better than Lewis, or the animals I’ve just witnessed in my mind, the same ones standing here waiting for their end now.
Please, Maddy.
My knees push me without consent, his fingers pulling me into him the moment he’s able. His lips come so quickly I barely notice the distance that’s passed before I’m deep in his mind again, reliving images of them together. Their lives, their heat, and their smiles in this home she made for them, Lenon running around their ankles as he sings. And the sunshine pours down on them in here, darkness and fog obliterated as I watch them laughing and holding hands, his tongue reminding me of the way he loved her. So warm. So free of torment and pain. It’s too much to stop, too much for me to deny or resist.
I back away before I lose the courage, knowing I have to do this, and lift my hand to point it towards the crow that still caws and scratches the stone he’s on. I want them free. I do. And if that means I have to change, I will. I would rather that than see them in a moment’s more pain because of their loss of each other.
The men cower, their bodies alert to the threat I’m aiming at them, but they know it’s coming as they linger in the fog behind the crow. We all do. It’s unavoidable now, something she’s always wanted from me. Perhaps that’s what this has all been for—these men killing my threat, me removing Jack and Selma’s from them, too. I don’t really know, but this feels right now that I’ve bathed in that sun with them again. Perhaps then we can all carry on, finding our way together.
Two shots come quicker than I expect from myself. No hesitation. No thought of harming or maiming involved. Just death.
The first one drops instantly, the second holding his arms out ready for the impact before I’ve shot, and the third, the tall one, he bows into the mist as he kneels and looks straight at me waiting for his turn. It’s poetic in some ways, making me stare at the falling bodies as they disappear into the fog beneath them and hover over the trigger some more. She’s here in me. I can feel her finger holding mine, guiding me, as if this is the one thing she needs to be free.
“What happens now?” I whisper out, allowing her to take the last shot from me.
Because this is it, isn’t it? It’ll be over when I’ve done this. What will come after, I don’t know. Perhaps I’ll die too in some way, be lost in them and unable to find a way home of my own. I’m here, naked and at their whims, held hostage in a ghost story that has no end. I look across at Jack, hoping beyond all hope that maybe I can keep a part of him just for me, that maybe if she lets me I can be part of them so I won’t lose what they’ve given me. Such beauty and care, their world filled with a happiness I’ve only just begun to comprehend.
He smiles again and moves a step backwards, slowly receding into the fog as if he’s never been here at all. My left arm reaches for him, but my head’s whipped back to my target, Selma owning the last shred of me left as the trigger pulls.
Home.