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“Are you ready?” he asked, moving his mouth mechanically, a strange sight, since only half his mouth had lips.
“Ready for what?” I blinked, and just like that, he was back to laying down, like he’d never sat up and asked if I was ready. Maybe he hadn’t, and it’d been all in my head.
I looked down at my sketchpad, watching as the red smear from my hand began to bleed through the paper, growing bigger until the whole thing was swallowed up by the ghastly color.
Crap. I didn’t remember making such a mess. I should go get something to clean it up with, or maybe I should just toss this sketchpad and get a new one from my room. I had countless of notebooks and pads of paper, waiting to be used. You never knew when extras might come in handy.
I got to my feet, setting my bleeding sketchpad down. When I turned toward the house, I found I wasn’t outside anymore. The backyard of my old house had somehow changed, morphed into the inside of a familiar place, filled with canvases painted with various hues of red.
Ah, the pool house, where Gareth usually did his work.
Speaking of, Gareth stood before me, paintbrush in hand, green eyes focused on the canvas situated on the easel in front of him. He faced me, and every so often those eyes of his flicked up and glanced at me, almost like he was painting me.
I didn’t remember agreeing to be a live subject, though.
Gareth dabbed his paintbrush on the tray beside him to gather more paint—though I wasn’t sure I could call it paint when I knew how he made it. His special blend. “You’re so fucking perfect,” he was busy saying as he nodded eagerly, “especially when you’re covered in blood.”
Blood? I wasn’t covered in blood. My sketchpad was.
I looked down at myself, finding my sketchpad was no longer near me… nor did I have any clothes on whatsoever. The only thing I did have on me was blood, and lots of it. The red stuff dripped from my fingertips, oozing to the floor with thick, red drops. It coursed down my body, covering me from head to toe.
“Gareth,” I whispered his name, “I don’t—” I was about to say I didn’t remember how I’d gotten here, that I couldn’t even recall whose blood this was, but Gareth gave me a deliciously sinful smile that stopped the words in their tracks.
“Are you ready?” he asked quietly, his voice low and deadly, the same voice that used to fill me with nothing but anxiety and a hint of fear. Now that voice only made me warm in my lower half and gave me certain ideas I should never have.
“Ready for what?” I didn’t want to ask, but the question came out of me before I could stop myself. I had the feeling I wouldn’t like the answer.
The smirk that tugged at Gareth’s mouth was the kind of smirk that could knock you off your feet if you weren’t careful, sexy and dangerous at the same time. “Ready for the big finish,” he clarified, lifting his paintbrush off the canvas and pointing at me.
No, not at me, but rather something behind me.
When I turned to see what Gareth was talking about, I found someone laying there, completely naked. Neo. I could only see half his face from where I stood; he stared at the ceiling, as if it held all the answers to the world’s toughest questions. All the furniture had been moved aside, letting him lay right there on the floor.
And, what was more, his cock was hard, and it stuck straight up, reaching for the ceiling itself, like a third arm.
I looked back at Gareth, a knot forming in my gut. “I don’t want to do this,” I whispered. The blood dripping off my fingers, falling to the floor, suddenly got louder. So loud I could hear each individual drip like thunder.Boom, boom, boom.Nothing more than an omen of what was to come.
“You don’t have a choice,” Gareth told me. “The big finish will happen with or without you, so don’t you think it’s better to do your part?”
Well, I guess that made sense… as long as I didn’t think too much about it. Yeah, it made perfect sense. He’d convinced me, just like that. Or, maybe deep down, I didn’t need that much convincing to begin with.
I turned back to Neo, finding he’d turned his face to look at me, and in doing so he’d revealed the other half of his face. Or, I should say, what was left of it—and there wasn’t much. His eyeball, but no eyelid, which made it seem like he stared at me with one normal eye and one horrifically wide eye. No lips from the center of his face to that corner of his mouth, revealing every single tooth on that half of his jaw. His skin was completely gone, nothing left but the gory underside.
“Are you ready?” Neo asked, the question reverberating in my ears. He’d whispered it, but it echoed, bouncing around in the air, and it sounded so much louder.
I didn’t know if I was ready. I didn’t know if I’d ever be ready. Sometimes, I think you were forced to do things in life whether you were ready for them or not. Life never slowed down. It kept going and going, and it didn’t give a shit whether you were prepared or not.
In the end, I didn’t answer him. I simply walked toward him, lifted a leg so that I stood over him, and then, with Gareth watching, painting the whole scene, I sunk down, lowering myself onto Neo, taking him in as much as my body allowed.
A moment passed, and Gareth asked, “What are you waiting for?”
Something cold appeared in my hand, and I glanced down at it to see what it was: a switchblade. Its silver metal dripped with maroon, its sharp end already out. I didn’t remember using it, but maybe I had and I’d just blocked it all out.
I must’ve stared at the switchblade too long, because even Neo muttered, “Go on. You’ve already started. Might as well finish.” The last few words were nearly swallowed up by the sound of liquid in his lungs, and when I lifted my eyes off the switchblade, I saw a deep red gash forming on Neo’s neck, from side to side, just above his collarbone.
It was like I stepped out of myself, watching a generous amount of blood flow from that fresh wound, like I became someone else, enthralled with the sight. A sick, twisted soul who wanted only to sate her curious, depraved nature, someone who didn’t care how much blood had to be spilled to get there.
I always said I was nothing like Gareth. I wanted to believe it was true, that I was better than him, that I knew right from wrong and could follow the directions society laid out for its people. But I was beginning to see that Gareth had been right all along, that I was just like him.
