Page 170 of Pleasure & Prey: Vol. 2

A tear streaks down my cheek, and I wipe it away in horror. I haven’t cried in years, and this isn’t the time to start. Instead, I force myself to glare vehemently at both headstones as my hands shake at my sides.

“You really were awful,” I whisper to my mother’s grave. “Do you know that? You claimed I was a monster that took over your daughter. But you know what?” Stepping forward, my shadow is cast over the grave and gives the horses a sinister, shaded appearance. “I’m the monster you made me, Mom.” I can’t help the way I snarl the words, or how shaky they come out. Another tear attempts liberation from my eye, but I scrub my palms over my face until my cheeks and eyes burn.

“And you weren’t much better.” I round on my father’s grave, though some of the scorn fades from my words. “I can’t hate you like I hate her, but why couldn’t you help me?!” I don’t mean for my voice to get louder, and I look around to make sure no one is around to hear the way my words echo in the pine trees surrounding Sunnyside.

“Why couldn’t you help me?” I ask again, begging in a whisper. “Not the little things. I know you brought me blankets and food and tried to talk Mom down sometimes. But you could’ve helped me. You could’ve stopped her.”

My knees give out, and my legs fold until I’m sitting cross-legged on the ground between my parents’ graves with my face in my hands, my eyes dull. “And I’m scared,” I admit, more to the air around me than to them. “I’m scared because I thought you were wrong, Mom.” My eyes drift back to her grave, narrowing. “I thought you were just crazy, because there was no way I was a monster. I was the daughter you loved. I was—” My voice breaks, and I have to close my eyes against the hot pressure of tears that I won’t allow to fall.

“You weren’t right,” I insist finally, trying to sound sure. “At least, I don’t think you were.” Getting a hold of myself so I no longer feel like crying, I lean back on my hands to stare up at the cloudless sky, letting the sun warm my face as the breeze ruffles my hair.

“I wasn’t a monster before you made me one,” I say again, with more conviction this time. “If you hadn’t done that, I think I would’ve been fine. I would’ve grown up and been happy. I would’ve trained horses with you. But now?” I scoff. “Horses terrify me. Did you know that? They used to keep me up at night in that loft, and I grew to be so scared of them. Especially that bastard stallion of yours. He reminded me of you. It felt like you could watch me through him, that he would tell you if I did anything wrong.”

I’m silent for a few minutes, and I simply watch the island, from the whispering trees to the sliver of farmland I can just see down the sloping hills to my right.

“I was fine,” I sigh. “But not anymore. That’s why I came back.” I blink, and my fingers curl into the hard, cold earth beneath me. “I just wanted to talk to you both. Maybe I just wanted to see how you made me feel after all these years. Is that pathetic of me?” An unhappy smile crosses my lips, and I shake my head.

“I don’t feel like myself. Or rather, the version of me I’ve been trying to become ever since you guys died. I thought I could fix myself, you know? I thought it was just a lapse, just me going crazy for a night over what you did. But I don’t think that’s the case.” On a whim, I flop onto my back between the decomposing bodies of my parents in the ground below, and stare up at the sky, the wind in my ears sounding like some of the best white noise nature can provide.

“I think I’m falling down that well you tried so hard to drown me in, Mom.” My arms shift so I can fold them loosely over my chest, and I weave my fingers together just above my stomach. “I think you should’ve tried harder to kill me. Because this thing you’ve made me?” I huff out an unhappy, darkly amused sigh.

“I think she might really be a monster.”

16

Esme doesn’t really say anything the night that I get back. She just looks at me, and her questions about my day trip are careful, probative, rather than truly asking. She seems uncomfortable about something she sees in me, but I don’t think I can blame her.

I feel different, though I’m not sure how to explain it. Ever since going to the cemetery and lying on the cold ground between the bodies of my parents, I feel somewhat disconnected. Like that moral tether I’ve been clinging to is starting to fray faster than it ever has before.

I feel like a monster.

Not that I plan on telling Es that.

She’s excited when she’s called in for a special, late-night job at the news station, and I watch from the recliner in the living room as she bustles around the kitchen to throw things into her lunch box.

“It’s some storm thing again,” she tells me in a rush, looking only half awake with her hair in a messy bun and wearing an old, oversized hoodie I haven’t seen in a while. Normally, she looks more put-together than this. “I know, I look sort of uh, like crap,” she admits, but there’s no hint of being self-conscious in her voice. “It’s not at the station. We’re going to some part of the bay, maybe on a ferry, and⁠—”

She continues to explain, but her words blur together like white noise in my head. I’m good at nodding along, and once in a while I prompt her with a question or two while she finishes putting together a serviceable dinner to take with her.

“Why not just get food while you’re out? Surely that won’t let you starve,” I assume, still in my chair. I’m also dressed, though just in a hoodie and leggings like usual, since I came home from my shift at the bookstore and collapsed boneless on the recliner.

It’s not that I’m tired. Not exactly, and definitely not physically. My body vibrates with some kind of energy, and I can’t seem to relax.

It’s really lucky for me that Esme hasn’t noticed, and I’m more than a little thrilled by how distracted she is by this new situation at work. Otherwise, she’d notice the way I’m nearly twitching with restlessness and how I’ve deviated from my normal schedule of wearing sweatpants or shorts around the apartment.

“Ah, well, hmm…” She pauses, her hands hovering over the lunchbox as my words sink in. “You think so? I was just kind of assuming we’ll be too busy for all that. I’m assisting tonight, too. They’ve been having me do more with production lately. You know, trying to get my foot in the door in other areas, and…” she trails off, sounding a little nervous, like I might judge her.

But I don’t say a word about it, because I know where it comes from. I know her mom doesn’t think being a makeup artist is a good enough job, and she constantly lectures Esme about making herself essential so that if something happens, she won’t be let go. While I don’t agree with the sentiment, I respect Esme for her commitment to making sure that doesn’t happen.

“They’re so going to feed you,” I assure her. “But being prepared isn’t a bad thing.” I tilt my head forward to go back to scrolling through my phone, looking at the texts from Cass I’ve been mostly ignoring. He’s busy with Winnie, anyway, and thankfully I’m not the center of his worry.

I need his help.

But I don’t want his help. I don’t mind how I feel, and the thoughts that make my fingers itch. I’ve stopped pushing away the urges and the fantasies that crawl through my head with whispered promises and bloody delight. He taught me to stay away from that side of myself if I never wanted to end up like him and his friends.

We aren’t out there to help you, he warned me more than once, whenever I confided in him before that I had some unsettling urges. If you get in trouble, you’re fucked. Besides…you told me you weren’t that girl anymore, remember? That she’s gone and it was just a one-night thing.

God, how far I’ve fallen, that I don’t even shrink away from the idea it wasn’t a one time thing and that I want this side of me to come out and play.