MATTHEW

"Can you see your truths are not mine anymore?"

I lean over the bathroom sink, trying to focus my attention on the blond hair falling past my face and not on the feverish feeling threatening to capture my body. A single curled piece is longer than all the other strands and it brushes the white porcelain of the sink gently, wetting itself on lingering droplets of water as it lightly trembles. I am shaking. I realize this in the moment as I watch the hair quake. I am waiting. Waiting for the silence to end, as I know it must.

It seems so cold in this tiny bathroom, yet I am sweating and my hands are hot as they grip the rim of the sink. There is a desperation to vomit into the basin, but I know I won't, and this somehow makes it worse. I am getting vertigo from looking into the sink, past the depths of the drain. I want to cry, I want to run, I want to sleep, I want to please just let me retch! I squeeze my eyes shut so tight that I see white.

From the other room, beyond the closed door, there is a girlish giggle. I start at it, knowing that the screams are about to begin again. I clench the edge of the porcelain in anticipation; it pushes back painfully against my fingernails. A moment more and there is a piercing shriek, almost a howl, of pain so loud it hurts my ears. Abruptly I let go of the counter and drop to the floor, my hands clutching through my hair to get at my ears, perhaps I can stop the noise from getting in. Why does she have to do this?

But the sound of this utter agony has already infiltrated my mind, it did a long time ago on the first night I saw her lose to the demons of her own desires. Scribbled through the screaming is her joyous laughter. That night was worse though, worse than all the others were. It hadn't been planned; she just cut through them like a farmer does with a sickle through the wheat. Their blood painting the room, drenching us both like water from fountains… The wail of the tortured soul dies down to almost inaudible sobs.

He will die soon, this poor man that I didn't even have the heart to look at when we found him by the side of the road. It will be better for all of us if he would just go… but Lyric is good at this and he will not die until she wants him to. The cold of the floor seems to radiate up through my legs and bottom into the rest of me, leaving me shivering in fits again. I want to cry. Why do I still help her?

"Please…" The man's voice is a hoarse whisper, his few ounces of remaining strength invested in that one word. I can almost feel Lyric smiling.

"It's alright, sir, we can be done now if you like," Her voice is sweet, but not sickeningly so. She talks as if she were talking to an elderly relative whom she planned to help care for. Reassuring, kind, gentle, loving. "Thank you," She says sincerely. A quiet slicing tells me that he is finally free.

I stand up quickly, knowing that is my queue to enter this tragedy. The sudden movement drains blood from my head and for a moment, I am dizzy, and swoon. I try to regain composure but find myself trembling again. This time I will tell her. I will tell her she needs to stop, that I won't help her anymore; if she doesn't stop, I will have to turn her in. I open the door to a scene of gore.

The room has a fresh spray of crimson over the old brown stains of nights before. Across the floor and occasionally sticking to the wall are small flecks of flesh, completely unrecognizable. The bits become larger as they reach the center of the room where sits their origin: a broken figure of what is left of a man, no more than pieces and fabric holding him together. Cradling this mess is a woman, barely more than a girl, who is colored red. She is crying.

Lyric hears the door creak quietly as it opens and looks up toward me. Her tears make clean streaks of white skin through the slick blood that is painted across her cheeks. Her eyes are large and wet with grief, her pupils nearly eclipsing her gray-green irises. Her lips tremble as her tears flow.

"Mattie?" Her voice cracks as she says my name. "Mattie, I-I think I loved him…" She manages out before racking sobs begin to shake her small frame again. She buries her face into the ruined man she holds.

It is this sudden innocence that tells me why I help her. I see once again my best friend since childhood in need of comfort instead of the sadistic fiend I had begun to envision in the bathroom.

I go to her, my shoes slapping quietly through the puddles of gore, and hug her gently. She lets go of her mess and clutches at me for comfort like a child does. She will forget about him by tomorrow, she always forgets and moves on. She always thinks she loves them by the end of it, it always ruins her to see them go, but in the end, it's alright. Always.

"Shhh…" I whisper to her.

"Mattie, I'm so tired," her voice is shattered, akin to the sound of the dying man.

"You have to get clean first."

"What about him?" She doesn't even know his name.

"He's alright now; I'll make sure to send his ashes up."

She holds on to me a little longer, her nails digging at my shoulder, her chin resting in the crook of my neck.

"Okay," She whispers.

I help her up and over to the bathroom. She stumbles in and closes the door behind her. She is exhausted by now, but will strip, leaving her sullied clothes in a garbage bag, take a shower, and pull on something clean. I must change as well, our embrace having left her bloody imprint on my shirt, but I must gather the remnants of our visitor together and get him into the incinerator first. This is my half of the murders, making sure she can get away with it.

Across from the bathroom, next to the stair-well that leads up and away, is a closet. I stride across the cement floor, feet splashing, and open it. I take a shovel from it. I go over and open the door to the incinerator behind the ragged mess in the middle of the room, it has been warming up since we arrived and is now ready to accept its gift of flesh. Behind my temples is a deep, pounding headache; the feverish sweat beginning to subside and transform into a simpler pain. I lean the shovel against the wall and grab the chair which the man had been tied to, most of him still managing to stay on. Heaving it up, trying not to spill any more of the mess onto the floor, I lug the chair and its occupant to the incinerator. The door is not quite large enough to allow the whole chair to pass within, so I begin to shove the chair forcefully through. The wood snaps under the pressure; the warmth of the fire blasts past me, making me sweat. The body on the chair is squeezed in as well, beginning to cook from the heat it pops and sizzles, the blood boiling.

One final push gets the whole thing through and it drops to the bottom with a thud and a shower of crackling sparks. With the shovel I scoop what remains are left on the floor in with the majority. By the time I am done my forehead and back are slick with sweat. I use my sleeve still stained from hugging Lyric to wipe my face. I am about to do so again when I realize that I must have just smeared more blood across myself. Sighing heavily, I close the door of the incinerator and set it on its body-burning cycle. I return the shovel to its closet without cleaning it and head up the stairs, away from this accursed basement.

Each step I take is heavy, my feet leaving bloody prints on every tread. At the top there is a trap door in the style of a cellar. I pause a moment, knowing that it will be very heavy to lift the door upward and out. My breath is labored, each mouthful of air dragging through my esophagus and across my lungs. I close my eyes. Downstairs I can hear the water of the shower running and I decide suddenly that I don't want to have to see Lyric for as long as possible. This jolts me to act, and I heave the door outward, letting in a rush of fresh night air. I breathe deeply, and take the last few steps upward.

The forest is black in contrast to the red and yellow light spilling from the basement below, but the sky above is glittering. Billions of stars are scattered above, making the heavens gray compared to the towering dark of the surrounding pines. The familiar sight brings me for a moment back to my childhood and the winters spent in the Canadian wilderness. I know that behind me, beyond the demonic cellar, is the cabin in which I spent those frozen months. I find that I am crying.

Pursing my lips, I squeeze my eyes and try to stop the tears before they become serious. I go to the little red car parked in the driveway of the cabin which I can see now that my eyes have adjusted. The light layer of snow crunches beneath my feet as I walk, the sound echoing in the silence. The car is not locked, and inside on the driver's seat is my favorite red hoodie. I take off the bloodied shirt I am wearing and pull on the hoodie over my bare skin. Its familiar scent is calming.

Closing the car door disrupts the quiet more than the crunching snow did. I lean against the hard, cold frame of the car and pull out a joint and a lighter from the large pocket in the middle of my hoodie. The sudden flare of the tip when it is lighted matches the colour of the light spilling from the open cellar door. Taking a drag from it, the inhaled smoke swirls through my lungs. It is more calming than any memory of childhood. I close my eyes, wishing to sleep, trying to forget that soon Lyric will return and I will have to drive for many hours before reaching the hotel. Just for a moment I weep.