The man fell over, still.
Victor hobbled down the last step and paused. He was leaning heavily to the side. His pants were soaked with blood. I did that to him, she thought.
He spread his hands wide and tried to speak but nothing came out. It didn’t matter. He wanted her to come at him. He was out of weapons and bleeding profusely. She could run away and he would be dead before police ever arrived, but he was daring her to finish him off. The man who had raped her and would have killed her, was daring her to be a killer, too.
She got her feet under her, leaned against the car.
This will define who you are for the rest of your life. She wasn’t sure whose voice that was. It didn’t matter.
That voice didn’t understand that Mercy was no longer herself. She had broken. There was the Old Mercy who lived a quiet, reclusive life and loved books and daydreamed that a handsome guy would walk into her life. And then there was the New Mercy, a woman scarred from a horror that seemed interminable and yet had finally ended.
Almost, she thought. The last move is mine.
The split did not happen when Victor forced himself upon her or even when he hunted her through the woods. That was still the Old Mercy, fleeing for her life, praying for rescue. The Old Mercy had the chance to end this back on the mountain but she had pulled her grip at the last minute. She should have gutted him. Strewn his entrails for the animals to eat.
Sometime between then and the car crash, a new Mercy was born.
This Mercy’s mind flooded with blood-soaked fantasies. This Mercy was a danger. A genuine threat. She recalled her old self, screaming and beaten, and knew that the voice was right: what she was about to do would define her for the rest of her life.
Victor wobbled but kept his balance enough to wave her on.
As Nietzsche said about the abyss, when faced with evil like this, there was only one thing to do.
Mercy smiled as best she could and charged right at him.
SIXTY-NINE
The bitch knocked him backwards onto the steps and half on top of Lionel. Her hands clawed at his face, tore his nostrils, ripped the corner of his lips.
He tried to punch her but his left arm was useless and his right was crushed between them. He tried to push her off but she was too heavy. No, that wasn’t right. She wasn’t too heavy; he was too weak.
As blood slipped from him faster and faster, his strength dissipated. He couldn’t even scream. He laid back and let her tear at his face. She pierced one of his eyes but the pain was slight and numbed, as if it were happening to someone else.
She was screaming enough for both of them. Her hands fell away from his face and a calm, soothing coldness took its place. Like sliding into a pool on a hot day. He could let himself fall into this pool and it would be grand. He had failed in his quest as a cleanser, but he would find peace in this pool. All was not for nothing. His reward was coming.
He was sure of it.
When Mercy’s hand drove into his bleeding wound, however, Victor was yanked from the pool as if a predator had spotted his vulnerability and snagged him in its jaws. Now it was dragging him off to a hot, empty desert where it could feast on his organs so Victor could watch his intestines dangle from its massive jaws before finally dying while the hot earth burned his flesh.
Hot breath against his face, the beast spoke. “Now, I rape you. How’s it feel to be penetrated? You like it when I do this?”
Her hand pushed deep inside him. Pain like an earthquake that ruptures the ground rocked his body in a spasmodic shutter. Through pulsing flashes of bright white, he saw her arm thrust into him, faster and faster. Blood splashed up her white arm and across her face.
“You stupid bitch,” the beast said. “Take it all.”
Please, he tried to beg. Please stop. Please, Mommy, make it stop. Mommy, please, make it stop!
I can’t help you, Mommy said. Her severed head rolled through the leaves. Something had chewed off her ears but her eyes were still there, still staring at him, and her mouth moved. Her voice echoed to him.
You’re Mommy’s little angel, she said. I’m waiting for you, baby. I’ll open my legs for you. I’m going to swallow you deep inside me. Mommy’s going to keep you warm, angel.
“Fucking like it,” the beast said. “Don’t you?”
Fingernails scraped the inside of his ribcage and the vibration shook into his jaw. This could not be what the universe wanted. He could die and be content but not like this, please dear God, not like this.
Scream all you want. But for Christ’s sake, be tough about it.
He tried to scream and couldn’t. Couldn’t release any of the pain.
“What’s it feel like?” the beast hissed. “Is it a good fuck?”
A flash of white like an electric zap directly into his mind and there was Mommy and Daddy in the bedroom, naked, Daddy’s thing deep inside her. Get out of here, you little perv, Daddy screamed. No, let him watch, Mommy said. He’s curious. Daddy flipped Mommy on her stomach and attacked. Her screams sounded like he was ripping out her insides.
Yet, he couldn’t turn away.
“Fuck you till you bleed.” Who was that? Daddy? Mercy? “Then fuck you some more.”
Mommy and Daddy vanished in another explosion of light and there was Mercy’s bone-white arm pumping at his guts--slap-slap-slap.
The world faded at the edges and tilted as if about to fall off into nowhere. Mercy’s face tunneled toward him. Blood poured from her mouth. The beast was eating him.
“I hope that was good for you,” the beast said.
The world fell into the Dark Time.
The jaws came free and a moment later something hot and wet splashed against his face. The beast sauntered away but the pool did not return. He was alone in this barren world. Eventually, death would come for him. But not soon enough.
Not soon enough at all.
SEVENTY
Mercy pulled her arm free from the gaping hole in his midsection and tossed a handful of red guts on his face. She had no idea what it was she had pulled out of him. She had been trying for his heart.
She walked up the steps leading into the kitchen. Her arm was sopping blood all the way to her elbow. Blood dribbled over the concrete.
She stopped at the kitchen entrance, her back to Victor. There would be time, too much time, for her to reflect on everything that happened. She couldn’t go back down the steps and ask him why he had attacked her, why he had devised a scheme to rape and kill her. He was almost dead and out of his mind in agony. That was good. She didn’t really want answers. She also didn’t want to go back in time and undo everything. That was the pathetic wish of cowards. No, Mercy wanted only to rescue her father and then sleep for several weeks.
Behind her, crows cawed, wings flapped, and the feast began.
She didn’t watch them swarm over Victor Dolor and ravage his flesh but she smiled when he managed a scream.
He said people would die. Billions of people. Systematic murder. A necessary cleansing of the world to prepare it for the Great Change. Caleb had been in on it. And the goddamn cook. Could she trust anyone? Maybe the universe was conspiring to show her something. Maybe the Great Change was approaching and the coming days would be dark.
She walked through the kitchen and into the open diner. A waitress stood at the far end of the counter, phone in hand as if she might use it as a bludgeon. A man was seated at the counter, head on his arms. He could have been dead and it wouldn’t have surprised Mercy.