Page 41 of Bent Heavens

“Here,” Doug said. “A present.”

He dug a hand into his pocket and withdrew a tiny object held between thumb and forefinger.

“You’re the one having a birthday,” she protested.

But she took it anyway. It was a key to the Armory padlock. When she closed her fingers around it, it was like absorbing the metal directly into her bloodstream. It hit her like two more glasses of wine. She was abruptly moved, almost sobby. She knew it was the wrong feeling. She should have had a copy of the key all along. She leaned back on her arms and stared up at the stars in hopes of purging herself of every feeling, as none were to be trusted. A plane, or satellite, or something unidentified eased its way across the night sky.

“It feels like a dream,” she said. “All of it.”

“Sometimes I wonder what it knows about the universe that we don’t.”

“You think there’s more things like it up there?”

“Doesn’t there have to be? Think of all those Internet posts.”

“You think Dad’s up there, too?”

“In space? Or in heaven?”

She let her arms slide to the side until her back was flat on the ground. She wished, in a childlike way, that space and heaven were one and the same, and she closed her eyes and imagined it until there was a thump from the shed, the skinner rolling over. It stirred awake Liv’s practical side, not quite soppy with wine, damp and sullen in the knowledge that outer space wasn’t heaven. If anything, it was hell.

19.

The next day, her new life began. It would be one with no Monica, no Krista, no coaches, no teachers. Those who’d always believed Liv had made a brisk comeback from the tragedy of her father would now believe she’d succumbed to the same mental deficiency that had brought him down. Bruno Mayorga was the exception—he didn’t know enough about the past to see it saturate her. Every time she talked to him, she felt better, filled with unearned hope, and so she’d just have to stop talking to him. She’d just to have stop caring, about everything and everyone—or almost.

Her Bloughton narrowed to Population: 1, Doug Monk, and it was a realm in which he held absolute control. As with the corn mazes he’d plotted as a kid, he put every ounce of his energy and creativity into building something even he could get lost inside. Before leaving her beneath the stars on Saturday night, he’d claimed he had the whole week planned out. And he had.

On Sunday, Doug followed the Army Field Manual ’s humiliation tactics and chased the skinner around the shed, spanking it with the table-leg baton until it collapsed.

On Monday, Doug dug up Liv’s old Chicago Bears helmet to protect the skinner’s skull and rigged up a pulley system that would dangle it like a rabbit for skinning. He’d hunted with his father; these things were second nature.

On Tuesday, Doug brought in John as a “force multiplier,” only to be driven to fury when John tucked his tail and whined.

Liv helped, tried not to think, tried not to feel. Why do we have to? she wanted to beg, but she felt she’d burned up all rights to ask that question by participating in activities that also had no good reason why. The skinner jabbered from within its Bears helmet—Car bow hole car bow hole car bow hole—and Liv smiled and said, “Shh,” to reassure it that the furry four-legged beast, unlike the two-legged ones, wouldn’t harm it.

It was a smile she’d regret on Wednesday. The daytime was like that of the previous two days: hiding her face from anyone at school who might talk to her, hiding her whole self outside at lunch. Time decelerated to a glacial pace the second she entered the Armory and her foot booted the Bears helmet across the floor. Doug was already there, which meant he’d ditched school early. He stood before the hoisted, dangling skinner, holding a pair of pliers and a paring knife and wearing a barbecue apron streaked with blood.

Things crunched underfoot. Liv looked down, expecting a plastic piece from the helmet. Instead she saw most of the skinner’s teeth, those irregular, misshapen gravestones. Closer to Doug, plopped red and meaty on the floor, was its tongue.

Doug shook his tools to clear them of blood.

“It’s done talking,” he said.

“Doug.” Her head thundered. “What did you do?”

He glanced back at her with wobbly, bloodshot eyes.

“This isn’t a buddy for you,” he croaked. “You gotta remember what we’re doing, Liv.”

Liv braced a hand to the wall so she wouldn’t pass out. This was her punishment for cooing at it, petting it. Doug had noticed, of course he had, and now there would be no more words from the skinner, not ever, and it was all her fault, because she had forgotten their respective roles: torturer and tortured. Liv fought down nausea and sent a silent plea to the skinner to try to not make any new noises, not ever. It might be its lips that went next.

Doug staggered away from the skinner. He peeled off his blood-soaked gloves and dropped them to the floor with two squishes. He shambled for the door while ripping the wet apron from his body, as if shedding a final skin. His expression tried for pride, but it was a mask nibbled away by an underlying acid of revulsion.

“See if you can stop—”

He gagged. He may have used his knowledge of hunting and trapping to perform his crude surgery, but it didn’t look like he’d found pleasure in it. Maybe punishment for Liv was not how he’d viewed it. Maybe he’d been trying to rescue Liv from feeling too much for the subject. Maybe this was standard procedure, buried somewhere in Army Field Manual 2-22.3.

Stop what? Stop the bleeding? Stop me? Stop yourself? Liv didn’t know: Doug was gone, their shortest session ever was also their most brutal. With the door still wide open and banging, Liv grabbed the first aid kit and rushed to the skinner’s side. This was beyond contusion, bruise, or scratch. She knew how to lower the skinner from the pulley system and did so, arm muscles straining, until the skinner struck down. Instantly, blood bubbled from its mouth like hot tar. It was choking on it, hard and fast.