Glory and Gore

for insane-witch

LA was hell, as far as Grace was considered. In the cities surrounding the Bertrand family's farm, people tried to live like stars as much as they could in their own folky way, but Hollywood was utter madness. A pair of blondes on roller blades went by, glancing past the overrun fence at her and looking away in disdain. She chewed on the end of her cigarette in hopes the filter would crack off and choke her to death. Her sister and parents were walking around the seventy year old house while she waited on the brick outcropping in front. The sun beamed down, warm and relentless. It might as well have been speaking with the force it was trying to turn her into an outdoors-tolerating being.

She hopped down and circled to the equally barren and slightly overrun back yard. At least there were steps near the basement entrance. She perched on them to finish her cigarette. The air smelled artificial. Oh yes, this move was going to be great.

Snuffing out the ashes on the ground, she rose and dusted off the seat of her jeans before walking in through the kitchen. Her mother's hands lingered on her sister's shoulders while her father examined the appliances. The relator looked at her in a way that warred between judgment and dismissal. It made her skin crawl.

"Okay, I can't figure it out," her father said as he moved away from the stove. "Why is this place so cheap? What's wrong with it?"

The basement door sat slightly ajar, and Grace nudged it open with the toe of her boot to peer into the darkness. It smelled of moisture and disinfectant, but just as she was going to take a step down to investigate, Marcy cleared her throat. "I was under the impression you heard about the Westfield massacre?"

She paused. Her mother's hold tightened on her sister, "Of course. Why? Did one of those kids live here?"

"Tate Langdon, the shooter; he was…taken down in his bedroom upstairs."

Withdrawing her foot from the door, Grace turned back to the rest of them, "Which one?"

"The second door on the left."

Her half-boots thudded on the grand staircase as she made her way up to the room of the notorious Westfield shooter. Less than a year ago, he'd shot fifteen kids only for the police to gun him down in his bedroom. The media demonized him, but she'd read the interviews just after it happened. People thought he was a quiet kid, not a threat. She would've bet her meager savings that she knew exactly what made him snap.
She was on the cusp of it herself. The rage never fully subsided, merely settled into a simmer while waiting for the next flare.

"Well, Gracie, whataya think?" her father asked from the doorway. Marcy hung back near her Patsy and her mother. The hardwood was flawless. Everything was flawless. Better yet, it felt sane. The walls were an in-between color, perfect for the borderline.

She admired everything for a moment longer before turning back to him and flashing a mustered half-smile, "When can we move in?"

…

Patsy managed to get a room all the way across the house for optimal view of the back yard where she intended to plant a garden, so despite her mother's discouraging, Grace had the murder room completely to herself. And it had a working lock.
Her design was simple in nature; put clothes in the closet, organize furniture to best of ability, and unpack the following morning. Despite the lock and the bed beneath the window, she couldn't force herself to sleep. Numbers ticked by while rest remained elusive. Every moment those thoughts were bottled up drove her closer to insanity, but to record them would've meant leaving evidence of premeditation. There was a fireplace downstairs. She could plan it, memorize it, and burn it.

Someone tried the doorknob. Her muscles clenched and her fingers wound in the edge of her pillow. She turned on her side, just in case. There was a box in the drawer with rings in it, if she put on a few, maybe it would do a decent amount of damage. It jiggled again, then went silent. She listened for a moment. No footsteps. Torn between relief and fear, she turned over and came nearly face to face with a boy nearly her age. She jerked backward, nearly falling out of the bed, and scrambled for the drawer. He held his hands up in surrender, "Hey! Woah, hey, it's alright! I was just curious!"

"What the hell?! Is breaking into bedrooms a thing for you?!"

He blinked. His hands fell. His face was familiar. Her stomach twisted; oh no. Oh Jesus, this was just the thing she'd been trying to avoid.

"This is my bedroom," he replied.

She laughed. It was an involuntary reaction; with her heart rate subsiding, there was nothing else to do. She shrugged dramatically and gestured from the top of her head broadly, trying to convey how stupid it was of her not to know that. He waited patiently for her to be able to form a coherent sentence, resting his elbow on the post. Straight locks, piercing eyes, holy shit. He looked exactly like the news reports, minus the scrapes and makeup. Tate reciprocated her stare with a raised brow. She pushed her pixie cut back by the handful. "If I realized you were going to keep it after you're dead, I would've respected your space."

"They did take my stuff," he muttered. The acknowledgement seemed to bring him to life, and he crossed the room to toy with the few trinkets on her desk that she'd managed to unpack before settling down. Moving the jewelry box aside, he picked up the smaller box and started going through it, leaving things on the top of the dresser.

"Excuse me," she nudged.

He glanced over his shoulder and put it back, "You didn't say I couldn't."

"Yeah? Well forgive me, this is my first lesson in Dead Ettiquite."

A small smile crossed his face. "You weren't supposed to see me. I was going to go through it anyway."

A ring caught the light just enough to glimmer, so she walked over and removed it from his palm, dropping it back into the box. "I'd appreciate it if you kept your hands off my things."

"You tensed up when you heard me. He hits you, doesn't he? My mom used to too."

A jolt of ice plunged into her gut, rivaling the elation of a confirmed suspicion. She swallowed and shrugged slightly. Shifting her hands to the pockets of her pajama pants, he looked down at the way she hooked her thumbs just inside and back up. He nodded once and walked back over to the door.

"Why did you kill those kids?" she called after him.

He paused, turning back a bit, "You'll see."

…

"I've been watching you," he confessed.

She licked the pizza grease from her fingers and smirked. "Am I growing on you that quickly?"

"Yeah, I think so. I like you. You don't bullshit me." He paused to look down at her food, and she offered the spare slice. He shook his head; it didn't make sense when he didn't need it anymore, even if there were only a few things in life better than a good pizza. "You know, he tries to get in at night sometimes. He's picked the lock before."

Her chewing slowed. He draped an arm around her shoulders. "I hold it shut. Just because I had a crappy life doesn't mean you have to, too."

She swallowed and dusted the crumbs from her hands, shifting away from his arm as she leaned over to grab her soda off the floor. She took a short drink and screwed the cap back on. "You have to stop doing that, Tate."

He sat up. "Why?"

"Because if he doesn't come to me, he'll go to Patsy. If her mother finds out, she'll get a divorce, and they'll leave me alone."

"It sounds like you're screwed either way."

She put her bottle down on the nightstand and brought her foot up onto the frame of the bed. Turning entirely to face him, it crossed her mind that he was very adorable for a concerned dead boy. A small smile touched her lips, "I have a plan. This way, they don't have to worry about me."

His eyes fell to the plate between them, then rose. In the second it took, he'd steeled himself like he was preparing for war. "I'll help you," he offered, "just tell me what I need to do."

A touch of sincerity reached her smile and she nudged him to put his arm back. "Thanks, but I have to handle this one myself. Just help me clean up when it's over."

He nodded, and she picked up the plate before settling in comfortably again.

…

"I'm right here," he murmured from over her shoulder. She nodded, but didn't speak; they'd mastered the art of silent communication in a few weeks flat. One moment, she knew he was there, then the next, she was alone. It was intimidating at first, but it was a necessity. He didn't need to be directly involved, but he'd insisted, so she gave Tate the easiest job - just lure her father to the basement and they could worry about everything else later. The axe was heavy in her hands, heavier than she'd expected. She heard the footsteps, the pause, Tate running down the stairs and her father hot on his heels. He yelled up to Patsy and her mother about an intruder. Oh god, it was too perfect. It was too good to be true.

Tate came sprinting down the stairs, grinning with boyish wickedness, dragging every memory behind him like a trail of wedding cans. Her grip locked. Her eyes opened and elbows steeled. Her father came tearing down the stairs, and she swung. The first blow slammed into his stomach, but the way he grasped the hilt only made fury rise with the clench of her stomach. His hands sliced open as she wrenched the blade away and drove it into his throat. That time, she jerked it up sharply to smash his face in while the blood gushed down the front of his shirt. He fell to his knees. She drove it down into his skull.

"Oh my god!"

Oh no. Oh god, oh no.

"Patsy?"

"Oh my god. Mom! Mom! Get out of the house! Grace has an axe!"

"Patsy!"

High-heeled footsteps descended the upper stairs. She ran up the stairs against her better judgement, hands bloodied and armed. Her step sister shrieked and backed away, but her step mother didn't. She pushed Patsy back a bit and extended a manicured hand, "Grace, sweetie, put that down. It's okay. We can call the police, okay? It will be okay. I know what he did to you-"

"You know?" Her heart had been pounding from elation, exertion and fear – now it was just fury. "You knew and you didn't stop him!?"

Patsy shrieked suddenly at something barreling her way, and she sprinted for the back door, right past Grace with the axe. She could've swung and struck the younger girl down, but she didn't. Heat splattered her arm, and she turned back in time to notice Tate cutting her step mother's throat. The woman clutched her neck before doubling over, her breath gone before her blood could fully leave.

"I have to go after her," she murmured.

"That won't stop her now," he replied. He sheathed the knife in her step mother's back and extended a bloodied hand to her. "There might be somewhere better for someone like you. Maybe not me, but you? Your karma's great, Grace."

Was that better than prison? Who knew what they'd do when she told them the truth; the ghost of a homicidal maniac helped her carry out the murders. The axe slumped in her hands. Shit. There really weren't a lot of options.

"I'll take care of you," he muttered, "I promise."

Only a compelling, charismatic psychopath could make death sound as good as he did. She sighed and dumped the axe on the kitchen table, "I'm not doing myself in with that. Too messy."

He nodded. "Should I meet you upstairs?"

It was her turn to nod. Though he waited on the stairs, it was enough. They went upstairs to the shared bedroom and laid across her bed facing each other. He flashed her a small, comforting smile. She laughed.

When the police broke down the door, they found her lying across the bed as though someone had been there with her, her eyes closed, lips turned upwards slightly in her characteristically reserved smile, and gaping chasms down the veins on the insides of her forearms.

"They look stumped," she commented from the doorway of the other bedroom.

Tate shrugged, "They always do."