I stripped off my sweatpants and my hoodie for the same reason. Blood tainted every surface of them.
Bundling the clothes close to my chest, I burst through the door. Honey barked and howled, rushing toward me, but I couldn’t greet her. The entity wouldn’t let me.
First stop, fireplace. Still burning from the fire I’d lit before going to sleep, I dropped the clothes inside.
Then I was a tornado. Raincoat, gloves, bleach, duct tape, a tarp, and other items I can’t recall. They were in my bag, and I ran out the door. Then I was in my car, a cloud of snow floating over my taillights. Before I knew it, I was beside David’s car, jamming mine into park.
I jumped out and ran to Simone. Grabbing her beneath her armpits and sliding her across the gravel wasn’t much more difficult than hauling lumber up the steps for my fireplace. In heartbeats, I had her inside my car. Her head and torso draped over the center console, feet jutting out the door. But a quick forceful yank had her nestled neatly in the passenger seat. I slammed the door shut. The heat blasted through the vents. Hopefully, she’d wake up soon.
The entity returned as soon as Simone was safe beside me.
The car whipped a one eighty. I don’t remember the drive back to my cabin. I vaguely recall dragging her inside like a drunken college girl. Up the steps, through the threshold, and laying her on the floor. I tucked a pillow beneath her head and draped a blanket over her frame, before rushing back out the door.
The entity stayed with me as I unloaded my bag by David’s trunk. It took over while I flipped him onto the tarp from the mound of snow wrapped him in the thick blue plastic. It rolledduct tape around the tarp. But it didn’t do a good job, because when it dragged him across the snow, his feet slipped out, and all I could think of was refried beans slipping out of my burrito at lunch today. That’s what his feet looked like. Refried beans slipping out of a burrito.
Thinking about it that way made swallowing my bile bearable as I shoved them back into the plastic.
The entity didn’t return until I was hauling him into the trunk. Attempting to, anyway. I couldn’t deadlift a two-hundred-pound man.
But the entity could. It was smart enough, too, to lay the other tarp into the trunk first.
It was smart enough to return to the field it had dragged him through and churn it up. It dropped my body to the ground, making snow angels to disguise the drag marks. It even allowed a few tears to run from my eyes, a few anxious gasps and pants to float through my lungs, as I stared up at the star speckled cerulean sky.
It drenched bleach over the pool of maroon, diluting it to a pale shade of pink.
It was smart enough to put on my raincoat and tuck my hair into the hood and slip a fresh pair of gloves over my fingers before opening the driver’s side door of David’s car. It drove me to my cabin and led me inside.
For a heartbeat, only a heartbeat, it left me. For that single instant, I was in my home, and I was safe.
Until I locked eyes on Simone. She still lay on the floor, Honey curled up beside her, and her chest rose and fell with deep breaths. But I hardly believed it was her. Blood painted her face. The swelling had ballooned her cheeks to twice their size.
She was alive, but she was not safe.
Neither of us were safe.
Then I was in the shower. Then I was drying off. I was stepping into a pair of inconspicuous black sweats. A gray, indiscernible T-shirt. The two inch thick, puffer snow suit. Also black. As unnoticeable in the Montana mountains as jeans and a hoodie. All my hair, slicked into a bun and covered with a beanie. A pair of sunglasses over my eyes. New gloves lined my fingers. A paper mask tucked in place around my ears.
The entity did it all.
It led me out the door and behind the wheel of David’s car. And it drove.
