A/N: Hey, I just wanted to say thank you so much for everyone's kind words in regard to my last note. It keeps me going and reminds that even if I feel alone, I'm not really alone. Thank you 3
In the living room of the McCormick house, Karen is swaddled up in a blanket on the torn-up couch. The VHS tape she put in has seen better years, and every time Snow White bites into the poisoned apple, the picture becomes snowy and cuts out. She knows that Snow White is later resurrected by a handsome kiss with true love's kiss but she's never seen it. As far as she can tell, Snow White bites into a stranger's apple and learns a valuable, posthumous lesson.
Karen wraps the blanket tighter around her as the old witch appears in the window, chuckles, and says "All alone, my pet?"
Kenny has always told her, "Never tell anyone if you're home alone. This is why Snow White is my least favorite princess."
One time Karen countered with, "But she was being nice. That's just who Snow White is."
"Yeah, so was Cinderella. But she stopped taking the bullshit, eventually."
The phone rings. Karen wipes her nose and stumbles to the kitchen landline.
"Hello?"
"Hi, is Kenny there?" the voice sounds surly. Demanding.
"This isn't… This isn't Kyle is it?"
"It's not fucking Kyle. Is there anyone else there?"
On the screen, Snow White's frail arm falls and the apple rolls out. The tape goes ashy and stops.
"My dad is in the shower," she says, though it's a lie. No one, including Kenny, has been home for over a day. She hangs up on the stranger and returns to the couch to sleep. She hopes that by the time she wakes up, Kenny will be home.
He has always reminded her of the Axe body spray commercial where the man turns into actual chocolate and every woman - on the streets, in the park, the theatre - takes a bite of him. She watched Kenny over the years, who had the most amount of girlfriends and the most amount of loneliness.
Her father seemed to do the same thing with alcohol. Just keep filling up and up to get rid of the emptiness. Distraction, she learned very quickly in life, was the key to pretend happiness. Their pastor did always teach them that an idle mind was the Devil's workshop. Sometimes she wondered if the Devil created distractions, too, to prevent people from finding real things about themselves.
Karen spent most of her free time reading and drawing. If she was going to be addicted to something like her father and brother, she at least wanted it to be useful.
Her room was taped from floor to ceiling with drawings, maps, poems, greeting cards, photos… Anything to make it look like she was any other incoming high school freshmen with a normal life and a quirky sense of interior design.
On her dresser sits a shoebox diorama of her last book report, Anne of Green Gables. She drew the Cuthbert home and used crumpled construction paper as foliage. Her teacher chided her for using a children's novel until Kenny came to the school, pick-up truck squealing, oil spatters all over his work uniform, to "have a talk" with him.
She kept on with the project. She loved how Anne could be so sensitive, yet so imaginative and blunt about what she wanted in life.
She worked on the diorama all night at the front desk of McCormick Auto. At some point, he left a Coke and a Snickers bar next to her but she was so engrossed in the project that she didn't notice until later.
…
When Kenny wakes up, there is a white sheet over his body. He can hear the footsteps of investigators and journalists walking around him and the other corpses. He's still sitting up against the wall where Cartman left him. Carefully, he pulls the sheet down. The sky is violet blue and all around him is ash. Debris is littered around him and the walls he once thought sturdy have mostly come down. In the distance, he can make out firefighters, police cars, and detectives. They're searching in Stan's car, scanning everything for clues.
They haven't noticed Kenny moving. He is covered in soot. Most of his clothes have burned off. He can still feel pulling and tearing from his throat, the stinging of his own flesh as if he were still burning.
The people are stepping over burned corpses with flashlights, talking to each other, speaking as if the scenery didn't disturb them to the bone.
Then he hears, I think an inmate started it, sir, and it all comes back to him: Cartman's face, his fingers digging into his throat, Kyle's face, Kyle's fingers digging into his chest as he pushed him.
(i will have my way)
Slowly, quietly, he removes the rest of the sheet, flattens himself on his belly, and crawls out. He digs his elbow into the grass, keeping an eye on the officers the whole time. If he has to crawl all the way back to South Park, he will.
…
How it always happens: she's at a family reunion or a birthday party, or her parents introduce her to a co-worker and the inevitable question pops up:
"What do you want to do when you graduate, Nichole?"
And the answer is always:
"I'm not sure yet." Accompanied with a shrug.
"What about college?"
"I'm taking a gap year. I just want to work."
She often pictured her parents' disappointed faces when she changed the trash bags at 2 am in front of the 7-11.
The owner, Earl, was at least 70, wore his uniform shirt open enough to show off his chest hair, and coiffed his gray head like Elvis. He hired Nichole instantly at the start of summer because she reminded him of his first (and deceased) wife.
Whenever she went to wipe down the Slurpee machine counter, Earl talked her ears off about his Martha was also a hard worker, smart, considerate. How once he knocked a guy out for throwing a beer at her because he accidentally brought her a segregated bar.
She took all of this in, until one night she finally asked, "Haven't you written all this down? It's pretty interesting stuff."
Earl frowned and said, "I'd rather leave it. I don't talk to anyone else about it."
"Oh-kay, Earl." She folded the damp cloth and headed back to the counter when a wide, sullen-looking boy came in. The clothes he was wearing, red flannel and jeans looked small and were dirtied as if he'd just stolen them off of a corpse. He hung in the door for a moment. Nichole glanced at the digital clock behind the register. It was only 9:53 pm. The drunks and crazies usually made their rounds between 1 am to 4 am.
"Do you guys have coffee here?"
Earl walked with Nichole behind the counter. "Self-serve is by the ice cream box," he said.
Nichole's finger hovered over the panic button. Something sounded familiar about his voice.
He sauntered to the coffee station and started drinking blueberry blend straight from the pot, steaming amber snakes running down his cheeks and neck.
"Sir, sir, that is hot coffee," Earl warned.
The boy flipped them off, smashed the glass on the Slurpee-stained floor and started another.
"You can't just break our shit, asshole!" Nichole yelled. She pressed the button. Hopefully, someone would come in time.
The boy dropped the other pot, sending shards everywhere.
"I hope you know you'll be paying a fine for that," Earl stepped in front of Nichole.
Something like this would happen eventually, Token warned her when she took the job. A stranger with no other agenda than to fuck things up and she would be in the way of it. He wanted her to quit. She reminded him time and time again that this could happen with any job she might have.
"I won't be paying for anything."
"Dick," Nichole muttered.
"You want to say that a little louder?" he started approaching them, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.
"Don't get any closer, punk!" Earl threatened. He continued to push Nichole away but she stood her ground.
She wanted to text Token "HELP" but there wasn't time. She reached over and simply called him, letting it ring so when he picked it up, he could hear the confrontation.
"What? I'm sure you've been called a dick before." She glanced down and saw that Token had already picked up, one of his selfies filling up the screen.
"I'm telling you to say it louder." He grabbed her wrist, feeling the tiny bones grinding together.
"Take your hand off of her, now." Earl reached for something behind the hotdog machine like he might bluff with a weapon.
The boy cocked his head, and Earl flew to the side, crashing into the sandwich case, his neck breaking in several places that Nichole never thought possible.
"Oh, god… please let go," she whispered.
"What's that?!" he pressed his ear forward. "If you're going to beg for your life, you need to be louder about it, Nichole!"
Nichole shuddered. He said her name. She knew he sounded familiar.
She looked into his small, yellow, bloodshot eyes. "Cartman-"
Trill sirens echoed down the street, and suddenly the parking lot filled with red and blue flashing lights.
"Fuck!" Cartman looked at Nichole, and her body was pushed back into the cigarette display before falling into a sobbing heap, boxes of menthol showering her.
When she woke up, he was gone, replaced by two officers and Token dabbing a cool cloth on her face.
…
Kenny walked in the front door to see Karen wrapped on the couch, sleeping away.
Right away, he dials Kyle on the landline.
"Hello?"
"Kyle! Are you okay?"
"I'm fine… are you calling me from your house?"
"I lost my phone in a fire."
"Wait what-"
"Lock all your doors and windows. Don't leave your house. Fuck, don't even leave your room."
"Why?!"
"He's out, Kyle. We're fucked."
"I…"
"Just wait for me. Give me 20 minutes."
He went to the bathroom and takes a hot shower to wash off the soot, though the water feels scalding on his delicate, new skin.
There's still streaks of dirt around his eyes when he gets out, but it's better than nothing.
He pulled fresh clothes from the closet, then turned to leave.
Karen stood in the doorway, still wrapped up.
"You okay, Karen?"
Karen shook her head, "I feel sick."
"What, like a fever?" He reached down and put a hand to her forehead. It was ice cold.
"God, you're freezing. Come on, I'm giving you my hoodie."
"I don't think it'll help."
"Why?"
Karen thought back to earlier - before the phone call, before the movie was over, she was hugging the toilet, vomiting the stuff of nightmares. Mostly blood and black grime. Her throat burns and she wants to scratch it out.
She doubled over, gagging, finally puking on top of her feet. Worms fell to the carpet.