Damn, I look like hell.
I almost laugh. I’m horrified, but I almost laugh. Even in death, I can’t help but crack a joke.
When I look up at Bo, he’s silent, his chest heaving and his face glistening with sweat. His fists are still clenched and he’s still glaring down at me. I glance down at the bulge at the back of his hip. He had a gun. He could’ve shot me and ended it in a split second.
But he didn’t.
He stands over me for what seems like an hour. What’s he thinking while he’s just staring at me, motionless, in the middle of the woods?
Fucking weirdo.
Finally, Bo rolls his head back and flexes his shoulders, shaking the tension out of his arms. He crouches down and slips his hands under my arms, lifting my shoulders off the ground. When I’m in a sitting position, he takes me by the wrist and lifts my arm over his head, ducking under it so he can lay my body over his shoulder. Then he straightens up and starts walking.
I follow Bo close at his side, like I always do when we come out to the woods. As we walk, I glance up at him periodically. He’s calm and indifferent, like he’s carrying a coiled-up garden hose through the woods instead of a dead body. We walk for a long time until the trees open up and give way to a dip in the landscape. Bo stops here and looks around, then leans forward and bucks his shoulder, dumping me off onto the ground with a thump.
He crouches down to examine my busted knee, then pushes his hands under my back and rolls me onto my stomach. He grasps the back of my calf and turns it toward him, examining the back of my knee. The bullet didn’t go clean through. It hit the bone and shattered everything inside before lodging in my kneecap somewhere. He steps over my legs and straddles me. After a few moments, he reaches into his jeans pocket and pulls out his Buck knife. Holding my knee steady with one hand, he starts digging the bullet out of my flesh.
It takes him a while to find it in the dark, even with moonlight flooding through the break in the canopy. But Bo’s good. He finds it. His fingers slick with my blood, thickening by the second, he drops the bullet into his palm and examines it in the dim light. He doesn’t care about the shell lost somewhere out in the woods behind us. Or maybe he’s already found that, too.
Bo stands up and drops the bullet in the side pocket of his joggers. Then, with his knife still open, he circles my body, like he’s deciding what he wants to do. He stops behind my head, then cocks his head from side to side before kneeling down.
Bo squeezes my braid in his fist and pulls it taught until my face is hovering just above the dirt. He flattens the blade between my scalp and my hair band and starts slicing back and forth, letting locks of bright red hair flow free with each pass.
I cringe, then scowl at him for ruining my hair.
By the end, longer, jagged pieces fall over my cheeks and forehead while the back is as short as a pixie cut. He stands back up, holding my bright red braid in his fist—the final thing he can take from me. But instead of being done with it, Bo decides to leave me something to remember him by.
He kicks my shoulder, rolling me onto my back. Then he opens his mouth and bites down on the knife handle, holding it between his teeth while he carefully rolls my braid around his fist into a ball. He gently slides it into his back pocket and takes the knife from his mouth.
Bo crouches down again, straddling my legs, and plants his hands on either side of my hips. After gazing down at my bare stomach for a few moments, he places his palm just under my belly button. Slowly, he drags his hand over my skin, brushing his thumb up and down in waves as he goes. With his other hand, he raises his knife and repositions it for precision, with his forefinger at the hilt.
Then he starts cutting.
I tilt my head, peering around his shoulder as he carefully slices the blade through my flesh with all the concentration of a calligrapher. Blood still seeps from the wounds, a single word slowly materializing across my stomach like magic ink.
SLUT
I thought I would’ve puked, seeing something like that, but I don’t. I don’t feel nauseous or queasy. I just watch Bo with disgust, lamenting the utter uselessness of what he’s doing.
Is it not enough that you killed me?
Bo crosses his “T” and straightens up, admiring his work. He doesn’t smile, he doesn’t scowl, he just stares at it—at me—emotionless. Finally, he drags the flat edge of his blade across my tank top, wiping the blood from it. And all I feel at that moment is…let down.
I’m not in pain. I’m not afraid. I’m just disappointed, but in the way you’re disappointed when it’s time to leave a party but you’re still having a good time—when something good ends too soon.
I look at my carved-up stomach, then at Bo, and just shake my head.
Bo turns and walks a few feet before suddenly hopping off the edge of a ditch. There’s a splash, and he bends down and starts swishing his hands around in the creek water. After a minute or so, he stands back up and shakes the knife off before flipping it closed and tucking it back into his pocket.
Bo examines something on the side of the drop-off, then looks at my body lying in the dirt. He jumps back out of the ditch and strolls back over to my body. Lifting my foot, he pulls my Adidas sneaker off, and then my white sock. He does the same to my other foot before moving up my body and pulling my torn tank top and bra off of me. Once they’re free, he stands back up and studies my bra, fingering the tiny pink bow where the cups meet.
Bo takes a step back, his feet planted on either side of my calves, and stares down at me. He scans my body for an inordinate amount of time, ogling my dirty, twisted, scratched limbs, my dull, half-closed eyes staring into oblivion, my butchered whisps of hair sticking to my face, and the fresh slashes across my stomach oozing blood that’s quickly coagulating. Then he smirks, letting out a whisper of a laugh on his breath.
My eyes round and I feel my jaw clench, you goddamn son of a bitch.
Bo drops all my clothes in a pile on the ground and bends down, scooping up my limp, naked body. He carries me down the slope of the ditch and steps into the foot of water gently flowing through a pipe.
He was looking at a culvert.
Bo crouches down in front of the 5-foot-wide corrugated steel pipe and tosses me halfway inside with a splash. He drops down into the water on his hands and knees and grabs my partially submerged body, scooting it further into the culvert. The farther he crawls, the more compact I get, until I’m lying in the fetal position, partially submerged in the tunnel of creek water. Bo backs out of the pipe, hops out of the ditch, grabs the pile of my clothes, and continues his walk through the woods, dripping as he goes.
I hesitate. I don’t want to leave…myself? But I need to find out where the hell I am. There’s a culvert here, which means there’s a road nearby.
I start following Bo through the woods. We walk for a while, but not as long as before. If it weren’t for the fact that he just murdered me and stuffed my body into a pipe in the middle of the woods, it would feel like I was spending one of my favorite nights with him—wandering around the woods together.
Then he had to go and ruin everything.
He’s probably thinking the same thing about me.
I stop abruptly, glaring at his back as he continues his march through the trees. In the first extreme emotion I’ve felt since waking up, I grit my teeth and feel the rage—the injustice—spark in my chest. It instantly ignites, engulfing my heart, and threatens to turn me into a fire-breathing dragon and incinerate everything in my path.
Glancing at the ground, I see a broken limb lying a few inches away. The bark’s flaked off, leaving the smooth, dried out wood beneath. A quarter of the way down, there’s a jagged, razor-sharp nub where another branch snapped off. I slowly crouch down and grasp one end in my hand. It’s about 30 inches long, the weight familiar and comforting. I rise back up and rotate my wrist, swinging the limb at my side. Glaring at Bo’s back, muscle memory takes over and I tap the end of it against the side of my sneaker. But this time, I’m not in a softball diamond. And, this time, I’m not aiming for a ball.
I lunge forward and start running toward Bo, the leaves, rocks, and loose brush recoiling like a spring floor under my feet. As I come up behind him, I angle my hips and sashay to the side. Raising the limb, I bring my other hand up, clenching the wood in my fists as I reel back. Rotating my torso with my shoulder, I bring it around with the weight of my entire body and smash Bo square in the shoulder blade with a force harder than any home run I’ve ever hit.
The limb splinters in half with a crack that echoes through the woods and Bo flies forward, falling face first onto the leaf laden hill. He flips over, gasping for air through yells and curses while his feet spin out, kicking up leaves and dirt as he tries to get up. He reaches back and jerks his gun out of the back of his jeans, thrusting it out in front of him. His eyes are wild, darting around as he aims the gun into the shadows, searching for his assailant.
Grinning with pride, I stand squarely at the bottom of the hill, glaring at him, so close I could reach out and touch him.
