When you are with me, I am free, I am careless, I believe.

My Sacrifice by Creed

/

When they were far enough away from the bar and way in the dark of the road he reached for her hand. They did that sometimes if there was no one around that summer. It was hard to act like nothing was going on, but necessary and accepted by both of them. It was what it was. They could only hold hands if they were sure they were alone, because of people like Chelsea. They had to sneak out in the truck to have sex, unless no one was home at his house, and go far out into the canyon where no one would see them.

"You should ignore her you know?"

"She's a fucking bitch, nobody else you fucked acts like that." She complained, "It's good dick though and you don't see me being an asshole to everyone."

"Wow, you are so drunk." He laughed.

"Yup," Lucy laughed, "I'm fuckin wasted."

"I can tell," He laughed again, and decided to play along with her, "Told ya it was."

"No, you said it was above average," She grinned, "I concur, by the way, way above average."

"How do you know?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" She laughed again with a smile and swung their arms as they walked.

"Yeah, I do wanna know." He stopped dead in the road and pulled her closer by the hand.

She just smiled at him and moved away, still holding his hand, "Research is all."

"What kind of research?" His voice went up slightly, he wasn't so sure he liked this game she was playing with him.

Then Lucy grinned, "Gotcha." Then she laughed, "Still an easy mark."

They started walking again, still holding hands.

"You ain't mad at me?"

She shook her head, "This town is incestuous, pardon the pun."

"Pardoned," He said with a quirk of his eyebrow at her choice of words.

"I know how it is, everyone in each others business, in each other's shit, not many choices. It's like a dead end, from the road to nowhere. I'm not gonna be able to change decades of pathology."

"It's interesting that you say that."

"It's a fact, I'm not trying to beat my head against a wall, maybe one day things will change..." She sighed.

She stopped and looked up at the sky, the stars were bright and beautiful as always.

"I'm so glad to be back though," She whispered and he kissed her then as they stood in the middle of the road.

"Luce, do you think people are born evil, or do you think they're made that way?" He asked when they started walking again.

"Evil?" She asked, "Evil how, like..."

"Like serial killer evil, people that have no remorse or empathy, no conscious."

"I think that no one is 100% good or 100% evil." She explained, "How they got the way they are could be many things combined, a perfect stew of environment and genetics maybe?"

They were quiet for a few minutes then he asked, "Do you think a person like that could change if they wanted to?"

"It's hard to say, I think anyone can make a decision about their life, good or bad and act upon it, like quitting smoking. I mean look at the historical serial killers, I don't think one of them wanted to change, they stopped because they got caught, right? Or else they would keep doing what they were doing? So if a person did want to change, maybe they aren't in that classification at all."

"You think?"

"Yea, I do."

"Thanks, Luce," He said as they continued walking.

"For what?"

"For being you."

/

Killers worked in cycles, he was aware of that, almost all the books said so. Some had a long one that stretched out over years and some had very short ones. Mac's was short, he was seasonal, like the Zodiac; the fall was his worst time when she left and the air was cold again. He had a cycle too, he knew it and he never failed.

He wasn't a stalker, he knew people did that, but he didn't, he was more of a random opportunistic killer. He would go out with the intention to do harm, yes, but it was always random and in the moment, and it never failed him.

Was it his charm or his finesse, both probably; he wasn't sloppy he was meticulous and ditching his friends in favor of solo pursuits was the best decision he had ever made. Walter was cracking down on what went on in the cave anyway so this was a necessary separation. And he liked it better, no audience, and no one would know.

He thought about if he wanted to change like he had asked Lucy. He wasn't really sure, but he did think about it, so maybe he wasn't such a lost cause as he thought. As a young teen, noticing how different he was had been devastating, yet he embraced himself and his deviance as he got older. Except when Lucy was there and she made him want something more.

But without a doubt when it was cold and the days got darker earlier, so did he. It was like a kind of madness descended as the days got shorter. Soon he would experiment and see how long he could go, see if he could break the cycle somehow.

Lucy made him want to be a better person, that was the thing. Now that she had moved into a different position in his life he started thinking about more than just how he felt in the moment. Now he was thinking of the future, and of her. For the first time in his life, he realized how his actions could affect another person. Having that knowledge didn't matter a damn if you didn't act upon it though.

When he was a kid it seemed like the winter was so long and the summer so short, now it was worse. As he pulled up outside the house and honked the horn two days after Lucy had gone home, he tried to push her from his mind as he watched Chelsea coming down the front steps of her house.

He didn't even want to be there, he didn't even like Chelsea all that much.

/

Walter pulled him aside one day in early September after he had taken Sylvia to a doctor's appointment that afternoon. Mac hadn't even known about it until Walter told him. Sylvia and Walter had made peace finally and Mac was pleased by that, they weren't breaking bread together, but they talked some and that was good. But his father taking his mother to a doctor was strange, even for them. Mac could tell by the look on Walter's face that something was up when he showed back up just before seven o'clock.

Mac and his mother had been getting along much better lately, she was more patient and didn't hassle him much anymore and he was about to find out why. Walter sat two shot glasses down on the bar and poured them each some Jack. There were just a few customers sitting down at the other end out of earshot and it was clear that this was not a business talk. This was family business, the kind of family business you needed to do shots first before you spoke of it.

"Have a seat, son," Walter sat down at the bar and Mac sat down next to him.

"What's up?" Mac asked, lighting a cigarette.

"Took your Mom to Salt Lake City today, I know you know that," He started, and then stopped as he took his drink in one swallow, "She had to get checked into the hospital."

Mac took his shot, he knew whatever Walter said next was not going to be good and he didn't want to hear it.

"It's Cancer, Mac..."

"Bad?"

"She has a year, maybe less..." He answered, "They wanted to do some tests, we can go get her the day after tomorrow."

"Alright," Mac said, still trying to process the information, there were so many questions he had, yet he could only come up with one, "Why was it you that took her?"

"She's still your mother, Mac," Walter answered and Mac was never really sure but he could swear he saw his father's eyes getting wet as he said that.

/

Two days later Lucy and her mother were back for a long weekend, they flew into the nearest airport instead of driving like they usually did and rented a car. This was a trip planned in a hurry and there was no time to waste driving twelve hours when you could fly in two.

It was good to have her back but it was bittersweet, the circumstances were shitty, there was no way around that. Lucy and Sheila helped Sylvia get settled after her hospital stay, went grocery shopping and picked up her prescriptions. She came home with a lot of medications and very little hope, she was only 48 years old.

Sheila could do little else but sit by her younger sister's bed and hold her hand as she slept. Life was so cruel, Sylvia would never get out of this town the way she had, Sylvia was going to die here, where she was born. It just wasn't right and life was so unfair.

That night Mac and Lucy laid out in the hammock he put up in the backyard and it was dark enough that no one would see them. They laid there looking up at the stars in the sky, passing a joint back and forth in silence, there wasn't much to say really. She sat between his legs and lay her head on his chest as he played with her hair, and held her tight in his arms; they didn't talk at all, they didn't need to.