A DARKNESS PALE

Knife

…Reba’s husband went nuts, embraced the dark lord, murdered Jacob and then accidently murdered himself, in front of Reba…

Knife

Clay bled out very quickly, a balloon deflating into stillness. Their living room was still and Reba’s head screamed WHITE LIGHT. She couldn’t think past the light. Nothing. The now and nothing else. Death. Asshole. He was such an asshole. White light. Alive.

His knife. Beautiful with the raw bone handle, made by that fellow from Aberdeen. It was important. She pride it out of his hand and in the kitchen found a container of plastic wrap and cocooned the knife and stowed it at the bottom of her backpack. She leaned against the kitchen sink and tried to get out of the now again, and instead got: Clay dead, messing around with Jacob, fucked up and stupid. Ridiculous. She was alive, and that was ridiculous too. And she needed to do something. Get rid of the knife and call SA and make something up. Get sent to a camp. Die in a camp. Haul his body into the woods.

Or ski to Jacob’s. Flash. She was skiing to Jacob’s. Flash. Everything was happening too fast. Decisions were being made without her. Jacob. Jacob owed her. It was more than survival, that was part of why she couldn’t track what she was feeling, why reality so different. On the trail she and Clay had been the masters of surviving. Getting attacked by a bear, almost freezing to death, getting ambushed by that pack of psychos who raped and tortured them. Clay had done a lot of killing. She’d watched it all. But death out there was different. Clay was different. He’d possessed darkness. The darkness had possessed him. He was gone. Too fast. When she saw Jacob everything would slow down again. It didn’t what the decisions were going to be.

At Jacob’s front door she awarded herself with more mudka. Was she wasted? She couldn’t remember.

Husky was owning that dent in the living room couch, with several sixpacks of the swill he liked at his side, half of him lit up by the fire in the stove. Husky Dew, the fool. The soft man who told lies and acted the king, with eyes like a scared little boy.

“What up Husky?” she said, brushing her sweaty hair back. She felt like someone else was saying her words. “Where’s Jacob?”

The big dorky loser cracked a fake benevolent smile, flickering fire light dancing across his face. “I’m very drunk,” he explained.

“Is Jacob here?”

“No. He went out. My thought was he went to you.”

Reba checked the closet just to be sure. Jacob wasn’t here. All of his stuff was gone. Had Clay given him some money and he split? Her brain started hurting and her mouth was a desert. She headed back into the living room and said, “Hey, Husky, you got any water?”

“No. You want one of these?”

She took the beer he offered and drank it in one long sip. The world became more uneven. She began to burn in a ragged, nagging way. She approached Husky, the decision already made. “I need to come down. You gotta help me come down.”

She pressed herself into him and the room did a loop de loop ending with them on the dirty carpet. Flopping around and she was sort of aware how she definately somewhere else, not very well tuned in but still noting how this was getting the job done. Mostly.

There was life power, the white light. The white light was violence that was pure. Husky gave it back to her, which was unexpected, and she blacked out. Then the frigid air, then hitting the snow. She’d been dumped in the snow. She couldn’t move. Bones were broken, too many bones were broken. Pain and numbness. She blacked out again.

…Husker receives another guest…