By: Brittany Gonzalez
Mind your thoughts, as they become your actions;
mind your actions, as they become your destiny.
“I’m coming!” I yell toward my wife. Her constant nagging is getting in the way of the writing that I was trying so desperately to finish—well, more like start.
“We’re going to be late for dinner, Maxwell,” she says, poking her head into my study. “I refuse to cancel again because you want to stay in and pretend like you’re getting somewhere with this.”
“They can wait. I need to finish this. They’ll drop me if I don’t.”
In times like these I regret marrying Natalie. Neither of us can stand the other. We may have loved each other at some point, but now, honestly, who knows?
Besides, what’s love anyway? Is it wanting to be with each other constantly? Is it accepting the parts of people that none other than demons could have instilled in their very souls? Is it some clear rock fitted into a band that you slide on someone’s finger?
I don’t know.
Whatever “love” is, it isn’t this. At this point, it’s just putting up with each other for the plain fact that we wouldn’t make it alone.
“All right,” she relents. “You can stay. I’ll tell the Campbells that you needed to work late. Pass by when you’re done. I’ll order you something.”
Natalie leaves without saying another word, closing the door behind her. After I hear the front door lock, I take a deep breath and try to think.
I’m a one-hit wonder. In my prime, I had a modestly successful novel. Since then, I have yet to produce a decent paragraph.
After about five minutes of trying without anything to show for it, I head downstairs to the mini-bar. I had installed it during the days when I thought I’d use it to entertain publishers and agents. Nowadays, the only use it sees is when I am in a mood to flood my consciousness into oblivion with whiskey and gin.
* * *
When I awaken, I find myself sprawled out in an easy chair in the family room. I stand up and drag one foot after the other until I reach my study. My fingers hover over the keyboard. All by themselves, my hands start moving, and I feel the rush come on. I’d missed this feeling, when the words came without thinking, without effort; when the stories flowed straight through me onto my computer screen.
I check my email and see at least twenty messages from my publisher. If I’d read one, I’d read them all. They were all ultimatums: produce some new work, or you’re done for good.
Sighing, I realize that I am indeed done for, but in the larger scope of things. My life has amounted to nothing, with a failing marriage, a sad excuse for a career, and a full bucket list to show for it.
On my way back to the bar, I get a text message from Natalie: “I should’ve stayed home. I’m practically falling asleep here. I’ll try to get out as soon as possible. Anything specific you want?”
I frown at this. We aren’t in love anymore, and there’s no helping that. She does put up with me, though, and I’ve never been good for anything.
I settle down in my easy chair with a leather bound notebook and pen in my lap. The old chair has molded to my body shape from years of use.
What I need is a fresh start. I’ve written the same stories for thirteen years and they’re not getting me anywhere anymore. I need to write something different, something drastic, something real.
I get into thinking about what might be the furthest thing from what I’m writing now, and then it hits me: horror. A character name flashes in my mind and I write that down. That kickstart is all my mind needs to get to work. All of a sudden I’m scribbling across the page. If there is one thing that I can say that is even remotely positive about myself, it’s that once I get an idea, I can’t stop, not until the entire thing is down on paper.
I hear a door open and lock again, but I’m too into my work to bother looking up.
“Oh, are you actually writing, Max?”
It’s Natalie. I don’t bother responding. I can’t, not while I’m working.
“That’s nice,” she goes on. “You’re finally getting some work done. I brought you pizza, your favorite—pepperoni.”
I hate pepperoni pizza. Natalie knows this.
I look up from my work to acknowledge her. Her face shows no signs that what she’d said a moment ago was intended to be snide. This strikes me as odd. It’s not like her to forget details like this. I shrug and write this off, but when I turn my attention back to my work I realize I’ve utterly lost my train of thought.
Grudgingly, I decide to call it a night. I stand up to put the book away and in passing I glance at the clock.
It’s 2:43 a.m.
Since when do double date dinners last six hours?
Natalie might very well have stuck around and chatted with one of her obnoxious friends. I put this out of my mind for the time being and head to the kitchen.
Ugh. Pepperoni pizza. There goes my appetite, not that I was hungry anyway. More than anything, I need sleep. I put the pizza in the fridge and then set the burglar alarm before making my way to the bedroom.
Natalie stands beside the bed, changing into her nightgown.
“Do you work tomorrow?” I ask.
“Well, someone needs to support this house,” she fires back, punctuating her words with a roll of her eyes. She tucks into bed without another word.
Did I miss something? She isn’t normally this crabby. I blame it on her period to put my mind at ease as I crawl into bed beside her.
* * *
I awaken the next morning to a shriek. I get on my feet and yank the gun from out of my nightstand, then rush downstairs. Natalie sits on the floor at the foot of the stairs, tears streaming from her eyes. Lying in front of her is a little girl—she can’t be older than four or five. The girl’s clothes are drenched in blood.
“Is she alive?” I shout.
“How the hell should I know, Maxwell?”
I hand the gun to Natalie, then slowly, hesitantly, approach the little girl. She lies motionless on the ground, looking like a doll someone had forgotten to put away after playtime had ended.
“Are… are you alive?” I stammer.
“Did you just ask the damn child if she’s alive?” Natalie snaps. Cynicism is like second nature to her.
“Do you want to do this?” I fire back.
She crosses her arms. “Continue.”
I return my attention to the little girl. She doesn’t appear to be breathing, and this gets me into thinking the worst. I hope she’s not dead. Children just don’t die without people asking questions about it later. I am at a loss as to what I’d say if pressed.
I reach out a hand to touch her. She’s merely stunned, I’m sure of it, and she’ll snap awake if I touch her face.
“Don’t touch my sister!” a boy shouts from behind Natalie. Without a second thought Natalie whips her body around and fires. The flash has hardly left the gun barrel as the boy goes airborne, flops over backward.
“Natalie!” I yell at the top of my lungs.
I’ve just seen my wife shoot a little boy.
“Oh my god!” Natalie drops the gun and cups her mouth with both hands.
The girl on the floor stirs.
“John?” she asks. “John! Are you okay?” She runs to her brother’s side. “What did you do to him?” she shrieks, ire smoldering in her face.
“I… I’m so sorry,” Natalie blubbers between sobs. “I didn’t know, I was so scared, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…!”
“You’re a good shot, lady,” says the girl. “You got him right in the head.” She giggles as though tickled. “Get up, John. The lady’s crying is annoying.”
“You couldn’t keep it going for five more minutes, could you, Samantha?” The little boy sits up and wipes the blood from his forehead.
There isn’t a wound.
Natalie screams. She grabs the gun and backpedals, bumping into me. “Maxwell, do something! What are they? Help me, Maxwell!”
“What the hell do you want me to do, Natalie?” I yell back. I might have said more if I hadn’t noticed just then that the two children were laughing—and not just laughing either; they’re cackling as though Natalie and I are the funniest things they’d ever seen.
What are they laughing at? Why are they even in my house? None of this makes any sense. My mind hopscotches backward, remembering the events of the past few hours.
Yesterday. Natalie went out to dinner, came back, opened the door, locked the door, dropped the food off. I got out of my chair to put the pizza in the fridge. No, before that—I put my notebook away.
Wait.
The notebook.
My story.
“Oh my God,” I whisper breathlessly.
I remember now. I’d written a story about two demon children who go on a killing spree. The children lure their victims by pretending to be lost and scared. They’d put on their most pitiable faces in order to bait families into taking them in, and then brutally murder them in their own homes.
The children’s names ring out in my head. They are the names I’d have wanted for my children, if ever Natalie and I have kids.
Jonathan and Samantha.
“You…” I stammer. “Are… are you…?”
“Are… are we…? Ha!” John mocks me, imitating my frightened affect.
Samantha elbows her brother and giggles. “I think he’s finally caught on.”
“Are you scared?” John beams a devious grin. The way his face his is turned, the light plays in such a way as to make him appear to have fangs.
This can’t be real—I must be going crazy. Sure, every writer wants their words to lift off of the pages and come to life, but this is ironic in the extreme.
“You can’t be real,” I murmur.
I close my eyes tightly and hope that if I will it, I will wake from this nightmare and return to my boring life as washed-up hack.
I wish with all my being, straining at the act of wishing, but when I reopen my eyes the boy is still there, arms crossed and with a knowing smirk on his face.
“Well, Max,” says the boy, “if I’m not real, can I do this?”
In a flash, the boy reaches behind his back and heaves a dagger at me. The blade whirs past my head and buries itself into the wall behind me. The pain comes on a moment later. The upper curl of my ear is gone. My hand instinctively flies up to the side of my head. Blood surges between my fingers even as I press my hand flat against my temple.
“Now do you believe we’re real?” Samantha asks. “Don’t worry, we won’t kill you just yet. You seem like you would be quite a lot of fun to play with, so we’ll keep you alive for now.”
John beams his wicked grin. “You’d better take care of that ear.”
At his mention of my ear, the pain comes on so intensely that my vision ripples, but it could just as well be from the blood loss. There is a lot of my blood spurting from the side of my head, and despite my efforts to stem its flow, it just keeps gushing.
Run! the panicked thought explodes in my mind. I glance at the door and then back to the children, and now they each have a carving knife in their hands.
There goes any chance at escaping. That kid is deadly accurate with a knife. I’d have one lodged between my shoulder blades the minute I turn to flee.
“Now go on, get out of here,” Samantha says, waving me away with the knife in her hand. “We’ll be waiting.”
Between the shock and the pain, I hardly hear Samantha. Her words come to me muffled, as though from a long way off.
Natalie puts an arm across my back and hauls me along with her. As we shuffle away I get a look at her face, and I feel as though I’m seeing her in a brand new light. Her green eyes are ablaze with anger and terror. Her chestnut brown curls cling to her face from the sweat beading down her nose. She’s beautiful, I can’t help but think, and I’m surprised I didn’t pick up on this more often.
“Maxwell,” she says in a firm tone, “let’s go.”
My head is still spinning. I manage to keep my wobbly legs beneath me, but it’s Natalie who’s keeping me upright. All my weight—and trust—is with this woman I promised to love through sickness and through health. Oh, what beautiful irony if she decided to leave me here and make a break for it.
Thankfully, she doesn’t. I don’t know why; I probably would have ditched her and ran.
She drags me to the guest room across the hallway and hefts my limp body onto the bed. I’ve lost a lot of blood. Sleep is overtaking me, making my eyelids heavy. I can’t keep my eyes open, much as I try. Darkness marches in on the center of my field of vision until I’m looking out into the world through pinpoints, and then there is nothing.
* * *
I scream as pain stabs through my head.
Natalie stands at the foot of the bed, her chest rising and falling in a quick tempo. In her hands is a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Judging by how badly my ear stings, that bottle must now be empty.
My eyes are open but my vision is still so rippled that I can’t see much. The pain is blinding. It sets off a high-pitched ringing in my ears.
Natalie charges at me with a wad of torn bed sheets soaked in blood and—by its pungent smell—rubbing alcohol. She swats the wad against my wound and all at once it feels like my ear has become a hive of angry, stinging bees.
“That’s enough!” I shout, flailing my hands at her.
“Hold still!” She struggles against me, batting my arms away to get at my ear.
“It’s not working! You’re not a doctor! Stop, for Christ’s sake, stop! You’re going to kill me!”
She draws away, the dripping wad still in her hand, looking as if torn between easing off and charging in again.
I can’t close my eyes anymore; the pain won’t let me. It hurts more than when it was cut off. Worse, it’s a different type of hurt now. It’s one that demands to be felt—loud, obnoxious, and willing to do anything to be acknowledged.
Natalie has no idea what she’s doing. She reaches out with the wad and I put out a hand to stop her. She complies. That’s when I notice that she hadn’t torn up the bed sheets to produce this makeshift bandage. Her shirt is in tatters. A bunch more scraps litter the floor, except these are drenched in blood.
My blood.
The sight of so much of my blood everywhere sets my heart racing. This momentary lull is all Natalie needs to step in and slap a fresh ball of fabric against my ear—thankfully, one not doused in alcohol. In no time flat, she ties the bandage in place around my head.
The pressure from the bandage gets the pounding in my head started again. I clutch at my temples.
Inexplicably, Natalie giggles.
“Are you laughing at me right now?” I ask, awfully confused at her reaction.
“I always knew my origami skills would be good for something,” she says with a smirk. “Also, you look like Vincent Van Gogh.”
I glower at her.
“Okay,” she says, “so now what are going to do?”
“Call the police. We need to get out of here.” I can feel blood seeping through the fabric, damping my fingers. “We’ve slowed the bleeding, but it’s not stopping.”
I can’t tell if the pain is subsiding or if my body is just becoming acclimated to the throbbing in my head.
Natalie takes a breath to steady herself, and then heads for the phone on the nightstand.
She holds the receiver to her ear and freezes.
“Oh God,” Natalie whimpers. Her free hand moves to cover her mouth as tears begin to well up in her eyes. Her eyes lock with mine as she pushes a button on the telephone base.
“Am I on speaker, Natalie?”
It’s the all-too-familiar voice of the demon boy, John.
“You didn’t think we were going to let you out that easy, did you?” he jeers. “We’ve just started to have fun. I’ll tell you what—let’s play a game. Here are the rules: you and your little lover boy have to guess what we are. For every question you get right, we will give you something you need to survive. But for every question you get wrong, we get to play a little prank. Fair enough?”
“Leave us alone!” Natalie shouts into the phone.
“Come on, it’ll be fun!” John whines. “Oh, also, don’t try to escape through any windows or doors. We took care of that while you were fussing over little ol’ Max. Now, I’ll give you some time to think over what you’re going to do. After all, it’s only fair.”
John’s malicious laugh cuts out as Natalie slams the phone onto its receiver.
“What are we going to do?” I ask.
I’m at a loss. Without my saying so, I think Natalie has picked up on this as well, and suddenly I feel more ashamed than ever. Some man of the house I turned out to be. It’s the man’s job to provide and protect. In the shape I’m in, I can do neither—hell, I wasn’t great at these duties even before I had a chunk of my ear lopped off.
Natalie had always been our household’s backbone. In retrospect, maybe that’s why we’re married—I can’t be a “man” for her, and she doesn’t want a “man” to rely on.
“Think we can we sneak out?” I ask. “I mean, he said not to, but I don’t see how two kids can manage to block all avenues of escape.”
Natalie scowls. “Last time you doubted them, they took a piece of your ear off.”
She looks me dead in the face, fixes me with eyes that are no longer crying but that have hardened in anger.
No, not anger; something else. Her words are angry but they ring hollow. Is this desperation? Hopelessness? It makes me all the more ashamed to think that I am the reason she feels this way. While it may be a little late to be considering this, I guess I never was too good a husband to her. I guess…
“You may be on to something,” she says, jarring me out of my thoughts.
My cheeks flush with fresh heat. She interrupted me. We’ve been married eight years—doesn’t she know by now that when I get inspired I need to follow through until those thoughts are finished? She’s interrupted my writing countless times in the past, and now, of all times, she interrupts me. The nerve of her!
“Hello?” she says sharply. “Maxwell, this isn’t the time for you to be dozing off.”
There she goes again. I swear, if she does that again, I’ll throw her out the window and see what happens. Ah, but why wait for what I know is going to happen anyway? Might as well save us all the aggravation and shove her out the window right now.
Better yet, I’ll pounce on her and crush the breath from her throat. Yes! Just the thought of it makes me giddy.
“Are you okay?” Natalie asks with an eyebrow raised.
Wait a minute.
What did I just think? What did I just imagine I would do to her? I shake my head as if to shake out those deviant thoughts. I didn’t mean them; I didn’t mean any of them. I hope I hadn’t voiced those thoughts out loud. Natalie seems to be none the wiser, but still, I can’t be certain.
“Are you all right, Max?” Natalie asks.
As I turn to face her, I can almost picture my hunted expression. I’ve thought many times of taking my own life, but another’s? Never. She can’t know what happened. No one ever can. These awful thoughts must die with me.
I take a breath to steady myself, hoping she’ll be more at ease if she sees me relaxed. “That’s a loaded question, especially in the predicament that we’re in.”
“Touché,” she admits. “Okay, so I’m going to throw something out the window. That seems safe, right? Neither one of us will come in actual contact with the window, you know, just in case there are booby-traps or whatever.”
“Yeah, that seems like the best way.”
“Pass me that candlestick,” she says, pointing to it. “I’ll throw it far enough outside that a neighbor will see it and come help.” She pauses. “Plus, it’s really ugly. I never liked it anyway.” She giggles just a little bit.
With those awful thoughts weighing on my head, I can’t bear to look at her. I purposefully avert my gaze as I hand her the candlestick.
Natalie heads to the window and cocks her arm to toss the candlestick through the glass as soon as she draws the curtains aside.
“Well, here goes nothing,” she says, one hand on the curtain. She draws a breath, lets it out her nostrils, and flings the curtain open.
The candlestick stops halfway to the pane of glass. She’d frozen partway through the movement. With her arm up in the air she looks like Lady Liberty holding her torch aloft.
There are no boards on the windows or anything else that would bar our escape.
“Hmph,” Natalie grunts, and then turns her head back to toss me a smile. For the first time all night, hope glimmers in her eyes.
“Throw it anyway,” I tell her. “It’s better to be safe than sorry.”
“Of course. I’m not an idiot, you know.”
Her smile grows into a full-on laugh. I can’t help but smile back—hers is the kind of laugh you can stay up hours at night listening to; the kind that gives you goose bumps because of how contagious it its. Even if I don’t love her anymore, I can credit her that much.
Her hands stop partway to opening the window. It had snowed the night before and there is still frost on the pane. This window is always stubborn to open whenever it gets cold outside. She crouches a bit to aid in lifting the pane and plants both hands on the latches.
“Aaaugh!”
Natalie’s body jerks and dances, her fists clenched around the metal hooks in the window. Her knees give out and she collapses to the floor in a twitching heap.
I hurdle over the bed and stand beside her. She flinches occasionally. Her eyes are empty and glassy as marbles. I shake my head at her unconscious form.
What an idiot. John had warned us. He told us not to try escaping. If she can’t listen to simple directions like this, how are we going to survive this night? More importantly, how am I going to survive this night? In passing I consider how everything that has befallen us would make for an amazing story.
I shake my head at her again. She’s a liability. Keeping her alive would only impair my chances of survival, and I’ve got too good a story on deck to let something like dying keep me from writing it. It’d be best to do away with this idiot before she wakes up.
As if it had a mind of its own, my hand reaches for her and clenches around her throat. Before I can squeeze, an idea strikes me: Natalie deserves better.
Yes, of course! What was I thinking? I’m a writer; creativity is part and parcel of the job. I can do better than just regular, run of the mill strangling.
Suddenly, she snaps awake.
“Maxwell!”
I shove her against the electrified windowsill. Her back arches sharply as the jolt kicks in, making her look like a parenthesis.
“Max!” she screams.
Even through the convulsions, she manages to face me. Her eyes are wide, pleading.
“Max, please!” she cries out. “Maxi!”
A smile creeps across my face. Cry out to me, baby, I love it.
Oh no.
Not again.
My jaw drops once I grasp what’s going on.
I dive headlong for her, tackling her to the bed. She is clear of the electricity but her body is still convulsing. I pin down her shoulders but it’s no use.
I’m crying openly now. The shock of seeing her convulsing and my inability to do anything to help has stretched my nerves to their snapping point.
After what seems like forever, she stops shaking. She is alive—thank God!—I can tell as much from the shallow rise and fall of her chest. Oh, to think I almost killed her. I hide my face in my hands as my tears fall in streams. And to think, the only thing on my mind was that this would make for an amazing book.
I jerk erect as though it was me who’d been electrocuted.
My book—my characters!
How could I be so stupid? If our tormentors are characters I wrote, then who better than me should know how to beat them at their own game?
Natalie stirs, her head lolling groggily from one shoulder to the other.
“M… Max? Did you… try to… kill me just now?”
Her eyes are shut and she’s only half awake, but the intensity in her words is unmistakable.
I grimace. “Uh… yes… and no?”
She groans.
“I mean,” I blurt out, “I did attempt it, but it also wasn’t me. I… I get these thoughts… They force me to do terrible things… I’m sorry, I must sound crazy…”
“You do,” she wheezes. “You’re crazy for apologizing. You’ve never apologized to me, ever.”
“You… you forgive me?” I stammer.
How could she? I almost killed her.
I would have.
I wanted to.
What stopped me?
I replay the event in my head. The second she called me “Maxi” I snapped out of it. She used to call me that when we were still dating. I used to tell her that was her siren song—it’s what my mother used to call me, and it struck a chord with me whenever she called me that. Sure, our marriage may be on the rocks, but maybe I’ve judged her too harshly. When she called me by my pet name, it sounded genuine, like how we used to be before things went sour.
Natalie nods. “I forgive you. It’s us versus them, and we can’t get through this if we’re at odds with each other.”
“What should we do?” I ask.
She motions toward the phone with her eyes. “We play their game.”
I reach for the phone. Samantha’s voice comes on even before I can announce myself.
“It’s about time,” she chides.
I flick on the speakerphone.
“Ready for your first question?” Samantha asks. “We’ll start with an easy one: who’s older?”
Natalie shoots a knowing glance at me. “There’re only two answers, right?” she whispers.
I cup my hand over the receiver. “Wrong. They’re twins.”
“How do you know that?”
I open my mouth to respond, but stop short. I hadn’t yet told Natalie that these children are the ones I wrote about just the night before.
“Just call it a hunch,” I lie, knowing that if I tell her, she’d kill me.
Natalie sits up on the bed. “Give me the phone,” she says, reaching out her hand.
I comply.
“Are you ready for the answer?” she snarls into the phone. “You’re twins.”
Silence.
Natalie is practically radiating confidence. She glances at me. I can see the resolve welling up in her.
And then I see something else—that confidence, that cockiness, that hope, all gone in a flash. Her face turns a couple shades paler as the two children cackle maniacally through the phone.
“You lose! You lose!” Samantha chants in singsong.
“You’re right,” John says, “we are twins, but one has to be older than the other—that’s how science works.” He chuckles fiendishly. “Now we get to have fun. Come out, come out, or we’ll come get you!”
How could I be wrong? I wrote these characters. Granted, I was pretty sloshed then, and now I barely remember anything of what I wrote, but I clearly remember not specifying which of the two was older. I thought that’d be creepier.
Their laughter comes to an abrupt stop as the phone cuts to dial tone. Suddenly, there’s a knock at the door.
“Open up!” Samantha demands. The sneer in her tone is plainly audible.
“You don’t wanna open?” John snickers. “All right. Have it your way.”
I turn to ask Natalie what we should do, but before I get a chance, she jumps onto me. A length of torn fabric is clenched in her fists—she slips this over my head and beneath my chin, then yanks up hard, strangling me.
I thrash against her, and when that doesn’t work I hurl myself back-first against the wall. Natalie yelps upon impact but doesn’t let up.
My eyes fly to the door, drawn by the clatter of metal. A dagger—the same type that took my ear—slides through the crack beneath the door and bumps into my feet. I snap it up from the ground, nearly pitching forward with Natalie’s weight piled upon me, making a metal list of places I can stab her and—hopefully—not kill her.
Natalie hurls herself backward and nearly takes my head off. She takes a hand off the rag to grab a firm hold of my scalp and leads me like a disobedient dog to the window. She tugs hard enough to spin me halfway around, then rears back and rams my face at full force into the window.
There is a buzz and a snap as lightning fries my nerve endings, and in that moment I think: this is what death is. It’s not as peaceful as I anticipated.
Actually, it’s quite annoying.
Natalie’s quite annoying.
I apologized for trying to kill her, and this is how she repays me? The nerve of her! There’s no holding back now—say something now, baby, see if I give a damn.
My hands are balled into useless fists from the electrical current, but the dagger is still in my grasp. I can’t see a thing—electricity does weird things to your eyes; it’s like a front row seat to my very own laser light show—but I can feel her. I can feel where she is. I can smell her even through the stink of burning hair.
It takes all the force of my will but I throw my entire weight behind a mighty sweep of my knife arm. I know I’ve struck true when my arm stops abruptly. Natalie sloughs off of me and collapses limply to the floor.
What a rush.
Wait…
Oh my God, no; not again.
I snap to and I’m practically hyperventilating. Natalie—did I just kill her? I shut my eyes and face away. Part of me knows the awful truth and yet part of me struggles desperately to deny it.
This must be a dream—yes, a nightmare! I’ll wake up soon enough and it’ll be morning, Natalie by then will already be off to work, and I’ll shuffle over to the computer to write some more—attempt, ha-ha, attempt to write some more, who am I kidding, I’m a hack, and then she’ll come home and we’ll fight and everything will be like it always was.
The head-splitting pain in my ear reminds me that none of that is going to happen, because all of this is just too real.
“You have terrible aim, Maxwell.”
I whirl in place to find Natalie sitting up in a chair. Her shirt is completely off now—she’s tied it around her shoulder as a makeshift tourniquet to stop the bleeding.
She’s alive! I’m not a murderer! I laugh at my good fortune. My mirth quickly gives way to exhaustion as the adrenaline wanes. I settle down on the bed to catch my breath.
The phone rings. I stare at Natalie.
“Should I answer it?” I ask.
She says nothing, merely glowers at me.
I raise the phone to my good ear. “Hello?”
“See what happens when you ignore us?” John mocks.
“Are you ready to play fair now?” Samantha asks.
The children are plainly annoyed, and in a sick sort of way, I’m glad. They’ve ruined our lives. What we’ve done to annoy them is trivial compared to what they’ve done to us, but if it disturbs them just the slightest, that’s a victory for me.
“Hey, I’m talking to you,” Samantha shouts.
“What’s the next question?” asks Natalie from the other side of the room.
“Are you crazy?” I bark at her, perhaps more harshly than I intended. “That last one nearly killed us both.”
Natalie’s face hardened. “If we don’t play, it’s over, and we die. But if we get it right, then we’re one step closer to getting the hell out of here.”
“Now that’s the kind of mentality I love!” says John. “Our next question is: are we dead?”
The children laugh. I slam the phone onto its receiver.
“No,” Natalie says.
My brow knits instinctively. “No, what?”
“The answer. I mean: no, they’re not dead.”
I shrug my shoulders. “I don’t know…”
“Last time you based it off your hunch it didn’t exactly pan out.”
I level a hard stare on her. If she’s in any pain, she’s not showing it. No doubt she’s still got adrenaline pulsing through her veins to take her mind off the hurt. Enjoy that while it lasts, babe. I lost that luxury a long time ago.
“Fine,” I say. “You choose the answer this time.”
I can’t remember whether the children were actually dead in the story, so Natalie’s guess is as good as mine.
“They’re alive,” she insists. “I’ll bet you anything.”
I pick up the phone. John’s voice comes on immediately.
“Have you made up your mind already, little Max?”
That’s when it hits me. Oh, I’ve been such an idiot, I should have seen it sooner.
All this time I’ve been trying to remember the details of this stupid story I wrote while in a drunken haze. I’m seeing the forest for the trees; what’s been missing is the bigger picture, that this is just a story.
“I know the answer,” I say, perking up.
Samantha laughs. “Oh, do you now?”
“I do. You’re characters. You’re neither alive nor dead. Neither one of you is older than the other because you were never born, you were just created. Therefore, you will never live, nor will you ever die.”
The silence on the line rallies me. The children would have jumped at the opportunity to call me out if I’d answered incorrectly.
“You’re only alive in the pages that have been written,” I press on. “You can’t control me—I wrote you, I made you! I control you!”
The taste of victory floods my veins with pure, unadulterated adrenaline. I bolt out of the room and head to the kitchen for the biggest knife I can find, then run to the place I saw the children last.
I find them in the living room. Before I’m too sure of what I’m doing, I swing at John with my knife. He turns aside at the last minute. The blade misses his face but lops off a chunk of his ear, sending it airborne in an arc of blood. I elbow him in the face for good measure and he collapses to the ground, out cold.
Rage churns within me as I close on Samantha with knife in hand. I can feel hatred emanating from her and collecting inside me. The closer I get, the angrier I become—it is the sort of unflinching anger that never holds back, that makes you put aside your judgment, your morals. I know this feeling. This was the feeling that overtook me each time I’d threatened to kill Natalie. As if I weren’t angry enough, that this little girl holds such power over me—the power to set me off into a blind, bloodthirsty rage against the woman I once loved—is infuriating.
Samantha backs away, never taking her nervous eyes off of me. My, how the tables have turned. Given how she’d almost made me kill my wife several times now—strangling, electrocution, stabbing—I figure she deserves nothing less. I’m a writer, after all. I’m a creative sort of guy.
I rip my shirt sleeve off. Once I’ve gotten close enough to her, I lash out a hand and catch her by the hair.
“Let me go!” she protests.
I give her scalp a solid tug. She stumbles into me and I sling the torn fabric around her neck, making sure to give it a good squeeze.
I drag her across the house to the nearest window. Knowing how devious these demon children are, I’m certain they’ve electrified every window in the house. The second her body makes contact with the window, a pained yelp catches in her throat as her body goes into convulsions. I adjust my grip on the knife to position it point-downward and plunge it into her shoulder, burying it to the hilt in her arm. The current surges into me through the knife and I let it go before I end up like her. Then, as a final measure, I draw up my foot and ram my heel into her midsection. The impact hurls her into the next room, where she lies, motionless, on the floor.
I double over, resting my palms on my bent knees. Between the exertion and the blood loss, I am exhausted. The color drains out of the world as I pitch over and collapse onto my face.
* * *
When I awaken, I am no longer at home. This room is unfamiliar to me. Everything is white.
Have I died? Talk about one hell of a cliché.
No, that’s silly. I shake my head, and I come to learn that’s about all I can move, for my limbs are strapped into a tight-fitting garment. Whoever did this, maybe they did it so I wouldn’t pick at my injured ear?
Like a dog summoned by its master, that ear starts throbbing the moment I think about it.
The door swings open; rather, I hear it open. Leather straps anchored into my gurney keep me from lifting my head.
A man in a blue uniform—a police officer, I think—enters with a nurse at his arm. The nurse rounds my gurney so that she and the officer are on either side of me.
“Maxwell,” the officer says. Meanwhile, the nurse bends over me and shines a pen light in my eyes.
“Maxwell,” the officer repeats. “My name is Officer Damon.”
“Do you know where my wife is?” I blurt out. “Her name’s Natalie.”
Officer Damon raises an eyebrow. “Your wife?”
The nurse turns her attention to a machine at my bedside.
“Your wife is dead, Maxwell,” says Damon matter-of-factly.
“No,” I murmur, attempting to raise my head and forgetting it’s strapped down. “Not possible. She stopped the bleeding, she didn’t die! I got the answer right!”
“You killed her, you sick bastard,” Damon says in a crushing tone. “You suffocated and electrocuted her, then stabbed her in the shoulder to bleed out like a hog at slaughter.”
“No!” I yell. Much as I try to thrash against my restraints, I can’t move so much as an inch. “You’re wrong! It was the kids! John and Samantha! They forced us to do this!”
“There were no kids, Maxwell. You had a psychotic break. You suffocated yourself and cut your ear off—do you think these are things sane people would do?” He lowered his tone. “You tortured and killed your wife. You even ran electrical wire to the windows of your home so it would fry her if she tried to escape.”
“I’m not crazy!” I scream, hot tears streaming down my face. “Natalie! Natalie, where is she?”
Damon breaks eye contact with me. “Nurse, give him a sedative. Something strong.”
She taps the side of a syringe. “Hold still, Maxwell. This won’t hurt,” she says as she plunges it into my arm.
“No!” I howl, kicking, thrashing, leaping from the gurney, but there is no getting loose, there is nowhere to flee.
Everything in my field of vision gets cloudy.
“I didn’t…” is the last thing I hear myself say before my tongue freezes up in my mouth.
I didn’t kill my wife! I have to tell them!
The world spins and goes dark.
I didn’t kill her.
The voice in my head is tiny, distant.
I wouldn’t kill her.
It’s merely an echo now.
I loved…