1
Chloe
Inever really gave much thought to how I’d die. Not beyond the fleeting thoughts that I’m sure everybody has.
Best case scenario? Old age. Worst case? Car accident.
I’m sure the men my mother married never thought they’d die under her roof.
Well, technically, the first two died in the yard.
Husband Number One fell off a ladder and split his head open. Bled out with an audience and everything. The colorful glow of the Christmas lights he’d been hanging twinkled in the reflection of the puddle of blood that formed around his skull.
A horrible accident,she called it. Nineteen-year-old me wasn’t terribly sad about him. May his soul never know peace, the perv.
We were all surprised when Husband Number Two drowned in the saltwater pool my mom had installed the summer before his death. He was a strong swimmer, and the pool wasn’t even that deep—six feet at its deepest. He had a good six inches on the water that took his life, not tomention a few pool noodles he could have grabbed on to for support. I was twenty-three then, and they’d been married for three years. I wondered how my mother even managed to find a guy so quickly after the death of her first husband, let alone marry one. And another bastard? Jeez. What luck.
When Husband Number Three died of an accidental overdose of his heart meds six years later, our little town started getting a lot more suspicious. As did the police department. Or rather, one detective in particular who wouldn’t stop connecting the coincidences dotting my mother’s history.
Fucker.
My father is the luckiest of them all. He never married her, and he split before I was even born. At least that’s what my mother tells me.
Maybe that’s where it all started for her. The desire to chase love, even in its filthiest forms.
All three husbands had wandering eyes. Fast and heavy hands. Crude words, and even cruder fantasies they inflicted on both of us.
Still, having witnessed all these very creative ways for people to die, I never pictured what my own end would look like.
Certainly didn’t picture it looking like this—face down in a mud pit with poison oak tickling my neck and a colony of ants making a nest in my pants.
God, I fuckinghateants.
I’ve been on the ground for barely a second, and I can already feel them crawling inside my coveralls, all the way up to my knees.
I shove my palms into the sludge, lifting myself off the ground and wiping my hands on the butt of my pants before trying to clear my eyes. Beads of mud flick to the ground as I shake my hands out, and I spit a brown pool of saliva onto the forest floor before turning to face the man tied to the tree whose legs Iclearlyfailed to secure. His legs are longer thanI accounted for, and he didn’t hesitate to kick one straight into my back the moment I turned away from him, launching me face first into the heaping pile of muck.
I swear I thought I was going to drown for a second. How embarrassing would that have been?
“Now that you’ve got that out of your system,” I drone, continuing to haphazardly wipe my eyes and mouth with equally filthy hands.
“You fucking bitch!” he shouts. “I’ll fucking kill you!”
I don’t blame him for the threat, or the foot to my spine. I’d do the same if I was in his position: roped to a tree God knows where, under the shade of a dark forest ceiling. Not to mention the puncture in his gut that’s slowly oozing the life from him.
I pull the switchblade from my pocket, flipping it open. I really want to wipe each side of the blade across my thigh, because it freaks them the fuck out, but the entire front of me is now caked in mud. Asshole.
His pupils dilate when the moonlight peeking through the leaves of the overhanging trees glints off the blade, and all color drains from his face. That’ll have to do.
“That would be a really good plan, but it won’t be necessary.” I walk behind the tree he’s secured to, careful to keep a wide berth so he can’t swing another leg at me.Lesson learned.
“What…what are you talking about?” He’s nervous now that he can’t see what I’m doing, trying unbelievably hard to hold on to his rage and temper his fear at the same time. He’s straining against the ropes, but I can barely tell on the other side of this giant redwood. It’s remarkably sturdy. Very dependable for situations like this.
“I’m going to cut this rope, and you’re going to want to run. Okay, Gary?” I wait for a response from him before I begin slicing my blade across the fraying rope.
“What the fuck? Why? And who the hell isGary?” Oh shit. Forgot his name already.Whatever.
I continue sawing my switchblade against the rope. Usually I’d just untie the knot, but Stone tried to teach us all a new fishing knot over the weekend, and I was an idiot to try it on Not Gary. Now I can’t get the damn thing loose.
