Page 58 of Miserable Marionette

I reach out, trying the handle, to find it locked. The doors are never locked. Just like the lights in the foyer are never off. But they are now. Something awful builds, and it feels like the death of something monumental, like an ending that’s brutal and final.

“Gideon, I know you’re in there!” I yell. “Why is there a moving truck? What are you doing?!”

I don’t want to knock again, don’t want to bang on the door, but before I know it, I am. Thunder sounds across the sky, echoing off the hills and through the woods, and I peek into the window, banging on that too. “Gideon Lewis Bell, you promised me! You promised me you’d never leave!”

I kick the door, a frustrated scream leaving my throat as I back up, down the steps, staring at the upstairs window just in time to see the curtain move. That festering, horrible feeling… perhaps years of them detonate like a bomb inside my chest. I scream again, this time it’s his name. One of my nails bends painfully as I dig my hands into the gravel, grabbing fistfuls of rocks. Another scream, another unanswered plea to the stupid, horrible boy inside as I lob them at the house. “Gideon! You’re a liar! You’re a liar, and if you leave, I swear I will hate you for the rest of my life, Gideon Bell! I will hate you so much, and I will never ever love you again!”

I sob, picking up more rocks. “Why won’t you talk to me!? I said I’m sorry! I’m sorry I saw your mom! I’m sorry I’m not worth saying goodbye to you—" I cough, choking on the lump in my throat. “You horrible fucking person! You’re a freak! You’re a freak and you're weird and I never ever liked you!”

This time, when I let loose another volley of gravel, the front doors swing open. The gravel pelts my best friend, and the sky seems determined to cry harder than I am. Gideon is haggard, enraged; hell froze over as he barely flinches.

I say it again, quieter this time, but he hears me over the rolling thunder. I know he hears me. “I hate you.”

What starts as a fast walk devolves into a sprint as I pick up another handful of rocks. I barely get my arm above my head when he reaches me. His hands are hot against my rain-soaked flesh as he jerks me up so quickly my stomach drops to my feet like going over the crest of a huge rollercoaster.

I don’t have a second to react before my back meets the moving truck so hard it knocks the air from my lungs. My head hitting the side, making me wince. Gideon slams his forehead into mine, his face red and streaked with something…

Tears?

No, Gideon doesn’t cry.

It’s the rain.

It's got to be the rain.

“You fucking hate me, huh?” he all but roars, his lips inches from my face. “You fucking hate me, Audrey!?”

I let out a miserable little sound. “No.” I sob. “Why are you leaving? You’re going to leave and not say goodbye? You’re eighteen, Gideon. You can do whatever you want. Why would you go?”

“Because I fucking have to! Do you have any idea what I almost did to you?! Do you have any fucking idea? Do you even care, Audrey, or are you too fucking stupid and self-centered to see what’s happening in front of you, huh?”

I sob as he slams me against the truck again, my hands flying out to grip his arms. His skin is hot, veins bulging underneath my palms. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Gideon. Please don’t—"

My words cut off as his hand bands around my throat, squeezing. My eyes flying wide open as his lips skim over mine, fireworks pop across my flesh. “Stop saying you’re sorry, Audrey! You’re making this worse,” he begs.

Gideon begs, his voice made of gravel.

“Why, why do you have to go?” I choke out, my neck aching. My body is on fire as he presses into me so close in a way he’s never dared before. Nobody has ever touched me like Gideon is touching me now, and I innately feel every inch of him. His body is so close, melding against mine, and my head is light.

He doesn’t answer me. What he does do is both infinitely better and horrifically worse.

Gideon’s lips slam into mine as he releases my throat. The ragged gasp I let loose is swallowed by his mouth. My own lips are frozen as he commands them, devours them, not coaxing me but demanding I return his musings, but neither of us has done this before. I can hear his ragged breathing and my pulse whooshing in my ears as Gideon kisses me. The agonizing beat of my heart is softened, if only for a moment, by the desperate way he grips me, and I grip him back. Clinging, clawing, desperate to pull me closer. His hand grips my jaw, a choked sound leaving him as he suddenly wrenches it to the side, ripping our lips apart by force as if he couldn’t have done it on his own.

My mind is reeling, barely a second to steady myself before I’m shoved harshly to the gravel. Crying out as the rocks stab and scrape. I don’t sob, don’t beg or scream; I’m silent as Gideon towers above me. Soaked and glaring. “Go home, Audrey.”

He never answered my question.

It was a horrible way to say goodbye.

28

Formaldehyde & Missed Opportunities

Gideon, Present Day, 1994

The two days before a funeral are hectic with a full staff, the speed downright punishing when you do it alone. I had only given half a passing thought to hiring someone to help from out of town, but that would mean less alone time with Audrey. I hadn’t seen her, save for what I’d gathered lurking outside her house, since the station yesterday. I’d come home, dropped off by a random officer who was less than pleased to be tasked with carting me around, to find my car parked in my driveway. I’d known before I’d walked inside I wouldn’t find her there, and it irritated me either way. Before the Jordans entered the foyer, I barely had enough time to straighten myself.

Jessica Jordan, all reddened cheeks and glares. Her mother numb and coping the best she could, given the fact that her only son had been a waste of the damage he’d caused when he’d exited her twenty-five years ago. I was grateful then that I’d kept up volunteering my mortuary talents in my spare time, slipping back into the song and dance, like slipping into a warm tub, despite my mood being about as foul as it could get. My thoughts strayed to autopsy reports and murderous fantasies where I removed Detective Altman’s head from its base. My fingers ticked, manipulating on cold flesh.