Title: Six crows, seven sneezes, and Saturdays flowers for Wednesday's child

Author: grayglube

Summary: Superstition and caution only go as far as stupidity allows.

Rating: M

Warning(s)/Kink(s): Language, violence, sexual situations, elements of non-con and dub-con, necrophilia


It had started as a joke. All fun and games until someone poked their eye out. It's not funny anymore. And they aren't laughing now.

Black candles around a Ouija board, a neighborhood stray, booze, a bad girl, a good girl, a bitch, and a virgin.

Halloween night and naked skin.

The fixings of the all American sleepover meeting extracurricular club of the occult.

Stephanie, Chloe, Leah, and Her.

It's the modern day movie remake of The Craft.

It was a coincidental beginning. Running into each other in some sitcom comedy scene of a situation afterschool.

She came in to buy patchouli candles for her mom's birthday and Stephanie was already there looking at her own reflection while she held an earring up to the side of her face.

Leah came in as per her own usual routine to have Billy Dean do a card reading for her. Violet nods back with an eye roll when Leah smirks at her. She's asked Violet to come with her before and she'd scoffed and said it wasn't her thing, palm readings and crystal ball bullshit. But still, it's funny to Leah to see her here.

Chloe's been a wreck for the entire week at school since her grandmother kicked it, been out for three days for the wake and the funeral. She's waiting for Billy Dean to finish up with Leah. Violet is standing at the glass counter by the register while the store girl pulls out another velveted jewelry tray at Stephanie's request.

"What do you think?" Stephanie turns and holds up two dangling earrings for judgment.

"I prefer gold."

"Argh, I hate it." Stephanie groans dramatically. "I don't know which I like better."

"Get them both."

"Yeah…" she sighs, "maybe."

Violet's already seen Chloe edging closer towards them, looking out of place and splotchy faced. She's a mess, she doesn't care. Violet knows that Greek women beat themselves and cry hysterically at funerals, maybe, she read it somewhere. Widows tear off their dresses and savagely beat their breasts, somewhere at some time, over the death of their man or their sons, throwing themselves at the coffin. Self-immolation is tried and true. Cannibalism. The silt of her mind is swirling with every strange footnote or television portrayal of burial customs.

"The opal looks really pretty," Chloe tells Stephanie, meek and shiny faced. "Hey, Chloe. How are you doing?"

"Pretty shitty."

"Condolences," Violet says as the shop girl rings her up.

"Yeah, thanks."

Violet turns to pay and swings the bag off the counter, it's heavy.

"What are you doing right now?" Stephanie asks, looking at Chloe, "I starving, do you wanna come with me, out to eat or something. I hate going to diner by myself," she turns to Violet, "you can come too, obviously."

Chloe sniffles wetly and blows her nose into a tissue, looking furtively around for a garbage can and finding none just holds the dirty tissue tightly in her fist, "I just wanted to…it's stupid, but I just wanna see if…you know. If this shit is real, I want to…you know." She waves a hand around as if it's supposed to help.

"Leah says she's for real. She's being told her future." Violet tells her.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. It shouldn't be that long. She's been in there like fifteen minutes already."

"Do you and Leah want to go eat?" Stephanie asks.

"Yeah, I'll go. You wanna wait for Leah?"

"Yeah, why not. Even if she is a huge fucking bitch."

"Uh-huh."

Chloe looks between the two of them and then coughs a little in her throat, she looks like shit. "What's going on in English?"

"Another quiz, test is tomorrow. You coming tomorrow?" Stephanie answers.

"I don't know yet."

"Text me and I'll let you know what's on it."

"Thanks."

Leah flounces out with the beaded curtain jingling and smacking against the empty doorframe in quick small snaps, "Hey, what's with the powwow?" She grins wide and white.

"How'd it go?"

"Vague. Cryptic." To Violet. "How was the funeral?" To Chloe.

"Awful."

"Yeah, sorry about your grandma."

"Thanks. Do I just go back there and ask for a reading?"

"Uh-huh. But sometimes it's not a good time and she'll ask you to come back. You going to try to talk to her? Your grandma?"

"Yeah."

"Billy said there was someone trying to get her attention. Maybe it was her."

"Maybe."

"Good luck."

"Thanks." Chloe is walking away and turning back to shuffle a step forward, "Are you going to be at the diner for awhile?"

"Yeah, should be. Why?"

"I'll meet you there, okay?"

Stephanie nods in affirmation. Leah scowls and laughs, "What? You assholes are going to the diner?"

"Yeah, you coming?" Violet pushes her.

"Uh, yes bitch." She pushes back.

Violet puts on her best Kill Bill impression, "Splendid."

"Come on let's go. I'm hungry!"

"Okay, okay."

"Did Billie really have a ghost at her pottery wheel?"

"No. Sometimes you have to lie to make people feel better about themselves."

"You are such a good person."

"Shut the fuck up, bitch."


It's the four of them. Leah's in her formal choir get-up, starched whites and pressed blacks, earrings out and no vampy lipstick-nail combo. She looks like a girl instead of a super bitch. Violet and Stephanie are still in uniform, little differences and in some sort of slovenly disarray. Chloe's pale inside her black dress and black stockings and black shoes and black sweater. A preschool shadow silhouette.

Leah does breakfast at five in the afternoon, Stephanie cheese and sauce, Chloe rabbit food, and Violet eats the picked over extras with too much condiment.

It didn't go well for Chloe. Billie Dean told her some spirits need time to transition to their new plane of existence and it may be awhile before dead grandma wants to talk. Chloe is disappointed and glum the entire time.

Leah wants to do something for Halloween.

Violet wants more fries.

Stephanie laments her painful menses.

Leah says they'll be synched up by the end of the meal most likely and they all laugh about the wide availability of hysto-wifi.


Leah's dad owns the Terror Tour franchise in L.A. and they've been branching out. They bought the house that's a 'realtor's worst fucking nightmare' according to Leah. They call it the Murder House. Murder-Suicide couples, dead babies, dismembered children, sorority house slayings, suicide by cop following the high school shooting spectacular of the last decade as the ones they knew about. There was a skeleton in the backyard that Leah said wasn't found until they were making the outside lounge. The discovery had halted the opening.

Because the Halloween party they had planned as an opening night can't happen and because Leah's dad has never enforced a reward system for his daughter based off of anything that requires real work they make plans to get shit-faced and play slumber party in the Murder House

It's fucking perfect.

Bad mojo and dark energy, Leah had said. Weekly sessions with Billy Dean have turned her mind to mush and superstitious bullshit.

They pass around a bottle of gin and get a buzz going, their version of electricity passing through linked hands. They light candles and get ready. No one's quite comfortable enough to be completely naked, but eventually everyone's seen everyone else's tits because of the need to compare size and loose robes and they can move the fuck on.

Leah reads Tarot Cards with a book that explains how to do it.

The two of cups comes up for Violet. Stephanie grows increasingly bored with a sound-loop of loud sighs and nails tapping on the wood floor in a rapid rhythm.

Everything's silly, the Ouija board spells out 'I-M-C-O-L-D-N-E-E-D-B-L-O-O-' courtesy the spirit of Leah's warped sense of humor and then trails off with Violet's help to continue with 'H-O-T-P-U-S-S-Y'

She isn't allowed to smoke in the house. They all accompany her out and a stray cat from the next yard over takes over everyone's interest.

"Hot pussy, bitch." She thinks it's hilarious, Leah hiccups around a wet laugh and Chloe burps a little. The cat follows along and they coo over it until Chloe tells Leah that the only chalk she could find was sidewalk chalk and Violet almost ditches, Stephanie takes another pull off the bottle and calls her a little bitch, Leah says it will be fun and Chloe just frowns and looks weepy drunk at her with big eyes.

They sit inside what Leah calls the circle of protection drawn in purple.

Violet's too drunk to put her pants on, let alone leave, so she stays, ready to summon Chloe's dead grandmother. It just happens to turn out that everyone else has something else in mind. Violet makes a quick apology to the dead grandmother while Stephanie draws a dick on the wood floor in absent minded drunkenness.

They write what they want on pieces of paper and burn them on four candles. Stephanie wants fame, Chloe wants recognition, Leah wants everything, and what she wants is clichéd for a reason.

Stephanie drinks herself sick and vomits all over herself and while Violet is trying to find a towel and something else for her to wear Chloe kills the stray with the heavy gin bottle. She hears the heavy thunk, thunk, thunk on the floor and the caterwauling of kitty cat death. When she comes back with a towel limp in her hand Leah's cutting her own hand, leg, and tit. There's a lot of blood and Violet has to pull off a patch job in the bathtub, they aren't deep but Leah looks manic, she admits that she did a line of coke.

Violet tells her that she's nuts.

Leah explains the need for sacrifice as Billie Dean so helpfully put it.

Violet stays awake, Leah is scary and Violet isn't sleeping anywhere near her while she's rolling through a high that makes her want to self-mutilate for the sake of sacrificial voodoo hoodo pseudo witchcraft spell circles.

She helps Chloe get rid of the dead cat, a garbage bag spun around and around and tied tight and off to the curbside dump truck pick-up. Leah fucks around in the kitchen making a sandwich and Stephanie is sleeping off her intoxication upstairs.

Chloe apologizes for the cat and climbs the stairs to tuck herself in and make sure Stephanie has a garbage can within spewing distance complaining of her heavy buzz the whole way up.

Leah smokes a cigarette and eats her peanut butter and kosher dill pickle slice sandwich outside in the portico.

Violet goes in to clean up the chalk lines and blow out the candles. She's drunk. Holding a hand on the wall as she walks to ease the sway in her steps. The sponge leaves a drip trail as she goes. As she crouches to erase the evidence of purple Crayola chalk, penis caricatures, and tabby blood the glass doors slam shut behind her and she almost shits her pants. She yells out at Leah.

She leans back on her haunches and turns to fast, her gorge rises and she tastes the sour quinine of tonic water.

Leah isn't on the other side of the glass panels, the candles blow out and something is touching her hair, then something snags on it she almost breaks the doors to the room when she slams them shut behind her, she turns and there's nothing in the room.

She sits with Leah on the portico and smokes and smokes and smokes.

She's doesn't go back inside the house until everyone is awake and it's time to get dressed and go home.

She doesn't mention it.

They don't talk about it.


Her mother is going on tour in a month with the symphony, he father is coming down from Washington for a visit and the obligatory hate-sex with his estranged wife that Violet always seems to hear when they forget about her existence in the other room.


The next week Violet goes with Leah for her card reading at Billie Dean's. The blonde refuses and tells Leah to get the fuck out.

When Violet asks about it Leah tells her she got caught.

"Doing what?"

"You know how that kid died in the house after he shot up homeroom at Westfield?"

"Yeah."

"Well, his mom comes and sees Billie Dean. And sometimes you need an object of a person's in order to get them to come and talk to you, so I kinda…took it."

"Took what?"

"You know."

"No I don't, Leah, what the fuc-…"

Leah pulls a tissue out of her Chanel and unwraps the ring in it.

"You can feel the energy in it."

"Bitchin." Violet says without feeling, without reaching out to touch it.

"Don't be that way."

"How much have you had today?" ADD meds are pharmaceutical speed and Leah's new flavor of the week.

"Oh, fuck you."

"Fuck you."

"You see him yet?"

"Who?"

She holds up the ring.

"You must be fucking high."

"I'm not," Leah hisses. "I saw him."

"Okay."

"The house is like a supernatural magnet, and magnets draw energy and if you know what you're doing you can use it to your advantage. You'll see. Don't worry. We did everything right."

"How? Is a wallet full of hundred dollar bills going to appear in my bag?"

"You asked for money?"

"No."

"You get what you ask for."

"I can't fucking believed you let her kill that fucking cat."

Leah shrugs.

"Don't blame me, I just told her we'd need to do a whole blood sisters finger prick but she decided the cat would be better and just fucking did it before I knew she was going to. It worked out better anyway. It usually takes longer to see a sign."

"Uh-huh."

Violet remembers cleaning up Leah's blood too that night, she's sure finger pricks were all Leah had in mind.

"You'll see, okay?"

"We'll see you fucking klepto, you stole a dead woman's last memento of her dead kid. That's fucked up."

Leah shrugs, again.

"Well her baby boy pump-actioned out fifteen brains, so whatever. I'm hungry. Are you mad at me?"

"Yeah."

"I'll buy you food."

"Good, bitch."

"But I promised to pick Chloe up from practice, her boy bailed on her."

"You are not driving."

"Yeah, I'm fucking blitzed."

"I know, I can tell."


It feels like someone's got fingers in her sternum. Dread. She sees him, across the field standing by the bleachers. He waves at her, just once and walks behind the bleachers. It could be anyone. She knows that. But, she doesn't believe that either.

They throw Chloe up and she's laughing, they are all chanting one of their stupid cheers. When the wind blows the cradle will rock when the bough breaks the cradle will fall and down will come cradle baby and all. That's just about how it goes. Somebody buckles and one side of girls trip over each other, Chloe rolls off outstretched arms and lands with her head under her neck.

There's a meaty snap.

Biting a heavy bone in a piece of chicken, kind of.

Violet opens her mouth and a stunted sound comes out, gut and throat sound, an 'ah' soft and hard and that's it, she's standing up and then she just sits down while everyone crowds around Chloe, who is definitely dead. Someone screams shrill and dramatic, a stupid girl scream. She expects that when the group clears all that will be left is bones, the thought sticks.

She goes and looks.

She's corralled away when the cheerleading coach runs up with school security and a gym teacher who's an EMT.

Everyone has to wait for their parents to come and get them, they all sit in the gym and voices buzz like flies. A middle aged hall pass checker yells her name, her mother is standing against the silver push handle of the heavy gym door in big dark sunglasses and an off the shoulder sweater, she has the dog with her.

They walk out to the car in silence. Her mother hands her the dog across the armrest.

"Violet, I'm sorry about your friend." They merge onto the highway.

"Yeah. She's dead." Violet tells her that's she's left the blinker on.

"I'm sorry."

"I know."

"Are you okay?"

"Pretty shitty, actually."

Hayley sits on her lap and she scratches the dog's head, rubs its belly.

She's expecting to see him staring out from the backseat window of another car, but he isn't. Its awhile before she sees him again.

Everyone is at the wake. Violet doesn't go to the funeral, just stays home and smokes out her bedroom window, counting the number of cars in the funeral procession as they go down the street and loop around, remembering belatedly that it's bad luck to count and that you're supposed to hold your breath as a hearse goes by. She says déjà vu under her breath, but realizes the similarity is from a thought of immolation and loud grief she had once.

Leah calls her and says her and Stephanie are coming to get her to go to the Stapleton household for hard drinks and soft sweet sample cakes that people send when people die.

Chloe's parents sit side by side, one of them just had to bury one of their parents and Violet stares at them from across the fray. Leah wants to go back to her house and try to Ouija Chloe. Violet blows her off and calls her dad after pressing her mother's name in her phone before realizing her mother left for tour yesterday. Her mother offered to take her with for the month and she's wondering why she didn't say yes as she stands outside and the wind blows cold through her nylons.

She smokes and waits for her father to come in his new shiny black Lincoln, he bought it after the divorce. He wears suits now, lectures around at colleges, fucks interns and secretaries and bright eyed psych students who give him the attention and praise he thinks he deserves.

They smoke in silence as they drive to some restaurant her father says was a new discovery last week when he first rolled in.

He says 'rolled in' so casually she can't help but think it's affected to seem younger.

He says he's sorry about her friend.

She tells him they weren't really that close.

They weren't, not really. She's not close to anyone.

Chloe's parents sue the school for lack of safety measures and the fact that the coach wasn't supervising the practice, they win, the cheerleading coach is fired and things go back to normal.

The gymnasium is redone and school administration puts a memorial plaque on a shelf in a glass cabinet next to pictures of Chloe in her uniform and her pom poms.

'Recognition.'


They have chemistry together, water is special. It doesn't scatter like other things, like mercury. Water is tensile. There's a special type of bond that is the weakest but if enough connections exists it becomes versatile, and that's how plastic cling-wrap works. She only takes the gist of the three hour lab experiment away, bullshits her way through the procedural write-up. Stephanie covers her eyes while she's at the computers desk that makes her feel like she's working at a bank.

"Boo."

"Get off."

"You're a pissy polly today."

"You sound weird."

"Yeah I know. Got it pierced." Stephanie sticks out her swollen tongue and shows off the barb accessory.

"Very cool," Violet says with no real impact.

"You wanna play doubles with me and Leah and that foreign bitch?"

"What foreign bitch."

"The adoptive Russian orphan."

"Oh, she is a fucking bitch. Won't do it. She sat down on the court the other day when I played her in practice."

"Why?"

"I kept hitting it out of court."

"How come?"

"It was windy."

"Or you suck."

"I do not suck."

Stephanie pretends to suck a dick and the girl at the computer at the end of the row snickers. Violet smiles.

"That why you got your tongue meat pierced?"

"Who says that? Weirdo."

"I'll play doubles, just not with her."

"Okay I'll find someone."

But she doesn't find anyone. Violet is the best of the three and plays one-sided, they volley awkwardly at first but her serves are violent pops and racket lashes with a fast spin. A ball hits her hard in the tit, she winces and clutches her chest, her nipple stings inside her sweaty sports bra.

Stephanie chortles and sputters, bowed over and hanging onto her ribs. Leah cackles. She lobes her last ball at them with no real force, still laughing.


That same weekend she does her first line with Leah, off the back of her theatre textbook. They make-out.

Leah's mouth tastes bitter, it's hot and messy, there's sticky lipgloss on her cheeks and chin and her panties are a wet mess as they rub against her crotch and Leah's wrist that's sandwiched between her legs.

They frot wildly, rubbing back and forth on the other's thigh, twin orgasms and open mouths, lips moving like worms.

Neither of them wants to cut their nails to finger the other but Leah goes down on her, slippery tongue deft but getting sloppy, Violet doesn't think she's ever been so wet before, the orgasm is weak but she tingles between her legs for an hour afterwards.

They fuck around all night and Leah does another line, Violet smokes and gets ashes all over the bed sheets.

Leah pushes her off when she's nipping at her breasts, tonging each nipple, biting too hard. It makes her angry, something feels cracked and sharp inside of her. Rage, she thinks. Leah's got a low tolerance for pain and for some reason it makes Violet hate her more.


It's supposed to be winter. Not here. It never snows in L.A. Violet goes along to the party the symphony is throwing. She drinks champagne and her mother dances with one of the guys who does security for them. She looks happy.

Whenever Violet finds herself in a place sitting somewhere on her own looking into a crowd she thinks that she's going to see him again. She's watched horror movies and read creepypastas and hung around the occult shop enough to think that something is going to happen, to know it will. She's going to see him again and the feeling that comes isn't pleasant. Part of her needs it, there has to be a climax and a denouement, one stab wound doesn't ever kill anyone.

She has more champagne.

Her mother and her have a silent Christmas at their apartment, they're both a little hungover. She has a bloody mary at the small dinette table and her mother smokes one of her cigarettes. She looks old without her make-up on. Harsh in the awful kitchen lighting. Violet wants something to happen.

Some days make her so sick of everyone she wants to kill herself. Open her throat with a razor she hasn't used since she was fifteen and her parents made her go talk to someone.

Her mother had miscarried again and Violet had to clean up all the blood while her father had rushed her mother to the hospital, her father signed the divorce papers her mother's attorney had handed him after the hospital discharge.

Something needs to happen, her life has always been broken up by horrible things. It's what she expects.


Her and Leah are invited to Stephanie's New Year's party.

The something she's been waiting for happens.

She's going around a corner after climbing the stairs to find the second bathroom because someone's getting a blowjob in the one downstairs and she really has to pee. Her sight is quickly overtaken by black cotton. Someone's chest is in her line of vision and she sidesteps to avoid collision.

But they move too and they're playing shuffle-shuffle, she looks up to scowl and it's him. He smiles, a hint of teeth and sinister despite the dimples, like he's saying 'see you soon,' she looks down and there's just her feet, she looks up and he's gone.

Someone laughs and someone else oh-my-gods something down the hall, and then there are other little snippets of conversation and outcry and she sees Stephanie. She watches dispassionate in the open doorway as Stephanie has a seizure in the midst of throwing up as she's pissing her pants, a nursing student rushes forward screaming about ambulances and turning off the music and help, HELP!

Too late. They get her heart pumping again with an AED that conducts off of her tongue piercing. Her mouth is burned with electricity marks, her tongue is a mess. Violet sees it lolling out of her mouth, bleeding and awful smelling.

She visits Stephanie in the hospital, she isn't dead but, really, it's a pillow over the face situation or would be if her parents weren't squeamish or Catholic.

A toaster oven is higher functioning than her now.

She becomes the poster girl for D.A.R.E. in the middle school population and a hot topic in homeroom and then the story of Stephanie Boggs passes into urban legend.

'Fame.'


They are walking past Billie Dean's shop when a well dressed woman with a blond up-do walks out staring across the street as if she's see a ghost.

She has. Her son is sitting on the bench outside the pizza place, one black boot balanced on the opposite knee, arm stretched out along the back length of the bench. He raises a hand in greeting, Violet sees him. Leah sees him, sees her see him too. For a moment they all stand silent, watching him. Billie Dean is behind them.

Go away.

He's gone.

"I told you not to come here." Billie is talking to Leah and the mother of a dead boy puts the pieces together, she screeches and goes for Leah, whirling out of the open door, pissed off, she pulls at Leah and rips the purse out of her hands, upturning it onto the sidewalk and down on her knees searching for what's landed at Violet's feet.

She screaming for Leah to give it back. Where is it!? You bitch, you fucking bitch! Where is it?

The wad of tissue is right there, what the woman wants is in it. Violet puts her foot down over it to hide it from view and the woman who is the mother of a dead psycho stands up with the sharp little manicure file from Leah's bag.

She's going for Leah's eyes and ends up digging the point in the meat of Leah's cheek, dragging it down. Violet's reaching out and grabbing the woman's hair, and then she's hitting her over and over again with the glass Snapple bottle in her hand.

Leah's face is bloody and so is the woman's and helpful onlookers separate them all, the police come.

Her own mother is angry, Leah's parents are calm. Leah wants to press charges and sue with a hissed: 'look at what she did to my fucking face."

Leah's uncle is a lawyer, Violet hears that the settlement is going to be H-U-G-E but all the times she talks to Leah on her phone and puts off plans with another text messaged apology and excuse she's twisting the ring that doesn't fit her fingers around and around on her thumb. When she cards her hands through her hair it snags, hard.

She puts it on a chain and wears it.

It makes her feel stronger, in control of the situation. One night she wakes up and sees something standing at the foot of her bed. Her heart stutters and stammers between her lungs. It's gone. Was never there, maybe.

It was.

It was.

It was.


She takes the murder house tour sans Leah. She roams away and hides under a cleaning cart until they close. She'd had to ditch school, right after swim. Her bathing suit is chafing the sides of each breast and the edges of her groin.

She doesn't know what she's looking for but she's tired of waiting.

Patience has never been her thing, she was a spoiled child. Only kid syndrome. Want, take, have. Need it now. Getting her way every time.


There's blood on the doorknob, dried already and she still opens the door. She's not scared, not scared not scared not scared. But she's shaking on the stairs and can't find the bannister and she misses a step and then her head is hurting and her hearing pinholes and her vision is lacking its peripherals and she's passing out which sounds better than fainting but is really the same fucking thing.

She comes around. Her head still hurts, she doesn't think she can climb stairs and all she wants to do is go home. There aren't any answers here, not ones she wants. She should be sitting next to Stephanie in the hospital while she drools on herself or leaving Leah another message on her phone because she's starting to get worried that she hasn't answered her phone or replied to any texts for the last two days.

There's another door, she leaves but she feels like she's forgotten something and then she back in the kitchen, it feels like the back of her neck is sweaty but when she looks at her fingers, they're red and when she touches the knot in her hair she winces. It hurts, she's bleeding and her mom is going to freak the fuck out. She should have grabbed a sweatshirt with a hood to hide the damage until she can decide if it's really that bad or not.

The basement door is closed.

She can remember seeing the light in the hallway while she was in the basement.

There's blood on the doorknob, dried already and she still opens the door. She's not scared, not scared not scared not scared. But she's shaking on the stairs and can't find the bannister and she misses a step…she catches herself and sees that there's blood on the floor where she fell.

And then something is shoving her back down the stairs. Did she even really fall the first time?

She starts violently and he's there.

"You're awake." He sounds so fucking happy.

Her head hurts, should have grabbed the one with the hood. Her mom is going to freak the fuck out. It must be late now, past her curfew. "I need to go home, my mom's going to kill me."

"No."

"I have to go."

"You can't just leave, Violet."

"Watch me, asshole." But she can't get up. Her legs are all sprawled out, unnatural, like a pile of sticks.

"Oh shit!"

"You'll be okay, promise." He nuzzles into her neck. "Violet."

He kisses her neck.

Her cheek.

Her mouth, too. Her lips squirm under his, her hands reaching up to smack him away. Her head hurts, she wonders if she's going to faint again, her spine is in shock. It happens a lot of the time with people who fall or are in car accidents. For a while the lower body doesn't work. Fake paralysis. She knows, she just has to calm down.

He smiles.

"You'll be okay, it'll be okay later. It takes a while."

"Spinal shock. I know. Get me out of here."

"You broke it, Vee."

"No." She's crying already, shaking her head. It hurts, the spot that's bleeding so badly.

"Shhh. I promise it will be fine. It took you an hour to come back the first time. But the second time was faster."

"What second time?"

"You're not so good with stairs." He says it like a whispered conspiracy secret.

"What? Just shut up, take me home. Please. Please."

"I can't do that."

"Are you going to kill me?"

"No."

"Tate, " she says his name. The first time she's ever said it. Tate, it's his name. Tate Langdon. "I need to go."

"You can't."

It's so stupid, she's crying. His mouth is back on her cheek and she's shaking harder. And he ruts against her, and her brain solders all the information together: this boy, this thing that ruined Stephanie, killed Chloe, and maimed Leah is going to fuck her.

She doesn't care, she just wants it to be fast and over with, she's just so angry now. Hysterical. She can't feel anything, just the scrape of cement on her skin where the nerves are still working, his weight, the pressure of his chest against hers, his mouth, the dampness of his grazing teeth and the wet sloppiness of his tongue on her carotid.

She feels the bulge of his erection through his jeans and through her sweatpants.

"I'm sorry."

She hears him take his shirt off and she can smell boy-sweat with its sweetness and salt. She wants to throw up from her head being moved as he pushes the bundle of fabric right under the torn part of her scalp.

"Please, just leave me alone."

"I will make it feel so good, so fucking good, next time. I just..., I can't yet. You're the only one left and then it'll be okay, I'll be able to then."

"Able to do what?"

She looks at him, he puts his hand over her eyes.

"Don't look at me, I can't make them go away yet. After this, I promise you'll never have to see them again. After this it'll all be finished."

"Finished?"

"Our deal."

"I never made a deal with you."

His chest is a mess, blood that she thinks is hers and then really looks at, finding that it's not flowing. Holes and tacky blood, the acrid scent of bullets and burned skin. He presses it against hers after he unzips her sweatshirt, smearing old blood against the dampness of her neoprene.

"You wanted me to love you. I didn't want it to be this way, I wanted it to be good and special but I can only do what you let me do. You didn't give me anything that night so I couldn't take anything from you, you died first, when I'm in you and you die you'll come back the same."

She doesn't understand.

He helpfully supplies the answer.

"A virgin."

He's thumbs each perked nipple that's answered to the cold in the basement with lazy ease.

"Wait."

His hands pull away and rest in the blood that halos her head, "I'm sorry, I scared you." He puts a bloody palm print on her skin, rubs his thumb across her bottom lip and she winces expected the sharp catch of his ring, "No, just…," she turns her head away as his mouth settles above her own, she startles and her wide eyes make him draw back an inch.

"I have something for you."

"Violet, I can't take something from you."

He says it slow as if she's a child, and the hand with a pinch on the chain around her neck falls just a little before she raises her arm again, as much as she can, "But it's not mine in the first place, you're taking something from me that was never mine, it's yours, your mom had it and Leah took and when Leah had it I took it. See?" She tugs on the chain and his ring swings into sight, rapidly between their faces.

His face goes pugnacious.

She knows.

She knew.

She remembers Leah saying 'Sometimes you have to lie to make people feel better about themselves.'

He has to take his ring back, but he doesn't want to. He wants to fuck her, rape her, love her.

Love is gentle, love is kind.

But he isn't.

He's a maniac.

Dead, too.

She laughs weakly, disbelieving and he looks like he's going to hit her. He sits back on his heels.

"Yeah, I see." He yanks on the chain and it rasps across her skin, burning. He looks at it in his hand before the chain slips to the cement and he puts it on.

Slowly he leans in and picks her head up by the hair, it hurts her scalp, and he smashes head into the cement until she's dead.


Something is touching her face, cold, something pinches and she makes a sound and it goes away, it feels like there's a scratch on her cheek from it.

There is.

She wakes up for a fourth time, but it's the first time she realizes she's been dead the last three.


A/N: There's a second part, promise. Miss you guys, miss writing fanfic, working on a book.