Chapters (29)

Here I am, in my hidden corner of the world. Alone with my malevolent mind. Tuned into the one bit of distraction I’ve been granted aside from this guitar. A video monitor, like the one from back in the surveillance room behind the two-way mirror. My voyeuristic view into a world I’ll never rejoin.

I’m watching Cassie and Rox on a seventeen-inch screen. Grainy, black-and-white feed. She doesn’t leave his side, and that makes me both sad and relieved. I’m unsure who needs who more. But they’re not alone, and that’s what worries me. Malia was right – I would be told many lies, and they saved the worst for last. Not that this has ended, or will anytime soon.

I haven’t seen them eat in over a week. They don’t sleep. Sometimes they cry, and they hold each other and rock back and forth for hours, even days, inducing a kind of hypnotic trance.

Other times, like now, they sit facing each other, staring intently. Completely still. There’s no volume, so I can’t hear what sound is coming through their gaping mouths. Throats convulsing like homunculi chambering venomous spit. It looks like they’re singing, but that’s no song. That’s no song.

Cassie’s eyes have rolled back into her head, the lids fluttering over balls of white. Gorgeous on this ghostly screen. Rox turns and faces me like he knows I’m watching. Just like John B at that goddamn orphanage after he ruined all his friends. And he bares that dark smile again. The one underneath, like a shark in shallow water, his mouth opening wide.

I feel myself fade away as I drop the guitar, abandoning it once more, maybe forever this time. Another blackout in a lifetime of many. My mouth opens against my will. So wide I feel the skin split at each side. Type-O blood wets my wavering tongue.

This tune that will destroy us. I begin to sing along.

About this book

This is a FLAME TREE PRESS BOOK

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

FLAME TREE PRESS, 6 Melbray Mews, London, SW6 3NS, UK, flametreepress.com

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Thanks to the Flame Tree Press team, including: Taylor Bentley, Frances Bodiam, Federica Ciaravella, Don D’Auria, Chris Herbert, Matteo Middlemiss, Josie Mitchell, Mike Spender, Will Rough, Cat Taylor, Maria Tissot, Nick Wells, Gillian Whitaker. Front cover design by Todd Keisling.