For someone who had died some time ago, he felt quite aware. He was too afraid to move and give away his location, yet he knew she could find him no matter how deeply he burrowed. She had found him, hadn’t she? He tried to remember but his memory was hazy. He wondered if he was breathing; he focused his attention on his lungs, and couldn’t tell what they were doing. He ventured a blink, and that seemed to work. The rush of terror every one of his moving eyelashes sent what surely was his whole heart into a panicked race.
She heard me. I know she did. The sound of my eyelids moving woke her up, and now she’s going to come and destroy me. Not just kill me, but take my body and turn it to dust, or less than dust. Every molecule in my body will turn into basic elements, and then she’ll destroy those too. He waited, and heard nothing. Maybe she was finally gone. But gone where? There was nowhere left to go, was there? No place on Earth where he could hide. Isn’t that what she said before she ended it all?
“You are awake,” she said, her voice in his head. He screamed, his insides loosening into warm liquid.
“Nonsense, there’s no piss left in you. Come here.”
No way, he thought, and began to move, not by choice. The walls of the hole where he had hidden all this time seemed to recede, and when he tried to run he realized he couldn’t turn or move his legs beyond simple muscle twitches. He screamed again.
“No, silly man; you’re not really screaming. You’re not really here either… or won’t be for very much longer. You weren’t in a cave either. There aren’t any of those left.”
He looked down and screamed again. He wasn’t really walking, and the floor was a lethal distance away. It wasn’t really floor, wasn’t it? It was blackness, complete and terrifying.
“Where am I?” he asked, feeling the words in his throat, but nothing came out that was audible. He looked up and saw stars in the sky, which comforted him until he realized they were not blinking. “Where are you?”
“I’m everywhere, and the stars no longer blink because there’s no atmosphere left. It’s been gone for a while.”
“That’s bullshit. There has to be air. I’d be dead, and you’d be dead without it. And I’d be frozen. There would be nothing left.”
She laughed quietly. It was a wonderful sound, a cascading, loving purr that made his head tingle but his heart freeze with fear. He knew better.
“You are right, little man. There are still a couple of things left. Or rather a couple of people. Would you like to see?”
“No, I don’t want to see. I don’t want to see anything. Just kill me, please. Kill me now. You should have just killed me, instead of murdering everyone.”
“Ah, I see you begin to remember. Ask me who’s left.”
“Your son. Your son is left. You saved him.” He immediately felt the wrongness of his words, because everything turned cold. Not just chilly, but the kind of cold that destroys flesh, that breaks apart worlds.
“Don’t ever mention my son to me. If you hadn’t taken him from me, none of this would have happened.”
“Please, I’m sick. I couldn’t help myself! I’m a killer, a bad man. I was compelled! You should understand, after everything you did.” He saw a way out. “I enjoyed it, you know? I enjoyed taking him, luring him to my car, and drugging him. I enjoyed-”
“Tom.”
“What? I enjoyed wrapping my hands around his throat. So kill me. Kill me now or I’ll tell you everything I did to your son.”
“Tom.”
“My name is not Tom. You know that.”
“No, it isn’t. But your brother’s name is Tom. Thomas Bradford Cassey. Tom-Tom is what you called him, right?”
“What are you talking about? Don’t talk about my brother, you bitch. He’s sacred and I’m glad he was dead before you wrapped your fucking claws around the world and destroyed everything and everyone.”
“Ask me about Tom-Tom, little monster.” When she finished saying those words, he discerned her outline. A massive female shape clothed in darkness, her features hidden in it. He was somehow standing (hovering?) somewhere near her face, because when it erupted into his field of vision, all stars in that side of the sky disappeared; her face occluded them. He looked down a hundred feet to the delicate notch at the base of her throat where something twinkled like a pendant. It was a coffin.
“You carry your kid around? That’s nuts. Besides, I didn’t really leave much of him for you to bury, did I? He was so delicious...“
“This here is Tom-Tom, bright guy. Tom-Tom, say hi to your brother Ed. Say, ‘hi, Ed-Ed’!”
“You are crazier that I imagined possible. My brother is dead.” But he heard something then. A banging. There was someone in that coffin, someone struggling to get out.
“Say hi to Tom-Tom or I’ll rip off his arm.” The coffin opened, the lid flying to one side as though someone had kicked it like a door, and in it he could see his brother Tom, his face blue from lack of air, his mouth wide in a tortured scream, his eyes bulging, his chest rising rapidly as though he had been running out of air.
“Tom-Tom?” he croaked, his lips suddenly dry.
“Ed! Eddy, my man! There you are! We’re in a pickle, aren’t we?”
“A barrel of pickles, but we’ll swim out, won’t we? We always do.”
“Ed, what’s going on? Why did she do this to me, Eddy? Why am I here?”
She sighed happily, and interrupted the happy reunion.
“See, Tom-Tom… Ed is a brutal serial killer who made the mistake of taking my son. But you knew that, didn’t you? You knew because you got in on the action. You were the one that had fun with the bodies once they were dead, right? Dead a few days, and you turned hard like steel, you little pervert. But then you got very sick, and you left Eddy all alone.”
“I don’t remember-“
“Of course you don’t. Your brain rotted away the same way my son’s body did in your stinking lair. All the stress of losing my son and not being able to find him, all the hours making flyers and scouring the streets, all the pain got to me. When you guys finally got rid of him and his remains were accidentally found, something broke free inside of me. A force. It made me grow. And I grew, and grew, and tore it all apart. A world without my son is a world that doesn’t need to exist.”
“I don’t understand-“
“You boys are slow on the uptake. I brought you here for a little party! See, now our man Eddy has to ask me what I did with everything he loved, so I can tell him.”
“You fucking cunt, I’m not gonna ask you a thing. Kill us already.”
“Okay,” she added cheerfully, and brought a single finger closer and closer to Tom’s body in the coffin. She gently tapped his shoulder with the very tip of that finger’s nail, separating it from its socket. Tom-Tom screamed in agony. Ed joined in with his own shrieks, and tried to run to her, to hurt her.
“Stop that, silly man,” she said lovingly, and his brother’s arm flew closer, until it reached his side; the hand end of it lifted to his face, and caressed the side of it. There was nothing he could do to stop it. His brother’s hand felt warm, and he felt the steel ring he had given him years ago as a birthday present run down his cheek.
“Tom-Tom? Tom, buddy? It’ll be okay. Just let go, you’ll bleed out in no time, okay? I’m with you, and we’ll be together soon? Can you hear me, Tom-Tom?”
“I’m afraid Tom is in too much pain to hear us, Ed-Ed. And he’s not going to bleed out. See? See the stump? No more blood. He’s still suffering marvelously though, and he will continue to suffer unless you ask me what I did with the things you loved.”
“Fuck you. I loved nothing but my brother.”
She brought another fingernail to Tom-Tom’s writhing body, and scraped off half his leg. Bones and flesh pulsed into a light of their own, and Tom screamed louder than ever, not stopping for air. Ed thrashed where he hovered, and screamed just as loudly.
“No! No! Stop it. Oh, God, please, stop it. I’ll do it, I’ll do it, just leave him alone!”
“I’m waiting.”
“I loved Texas. What did you do with Texas?”
“I drowned it in cum. I sat on in and rode it like a man’s face. Didn’t let it breathe, though. I’m a gusher, so when I came the whole thing was covered in my pussy’s juices. Next.”
“Ice cream.”
“I set every cow on fire. I roasted them alive. You should have seen them, going from grazing to running, to roasting in place like the biggest barbecue. They were delicious. No more dairy for ice cream. Next.”
“The president.”
“You loved that bastard? Well, Eddy! Now I’ve lost all respect for you. He was a fun one. I peeled off the White House’s roof, and lifted him in my grip. I then waited for the eyes of the world to turn to me, every camera, every phone, every channel… and I peed on him.”
“Piss doesn’t kill.”
“No, but a steady, five-minute stream did drown him.”
“You bitch. He was making great changes.”
“Next.”
“Fuck it. I’m done.”
Again, her fingertip returned to Tom-Tom, who had just stopped screaming, but started a fresh batch of shrieks when she flicked off the rest of his leg, bringing the two sections of it to Ed’s side, where they commenced to kick his groin. Hard. He screamed and then he couldn’t even do that. She stopped the leg after a few dozen kicks, and snapped him into consciousness.
“Next.”
“Fuck… you…”
“Okay,” she chirped, and turned her attention back to Tom-Tom.
“No, no! I’ll do it. Tell me what you did to my home.”
“Your home is in Texas. It marinated in cum for a while.”
“But then what happened? What did you do with the trees?”
“The trees went when I set it all on fire. Trees, buildings, cities, everyone in them.”
“Everyone is gone?”
“Everyone but you two. And me, of course.”
“You’re worse than I ever was. I only killed dozens. You killed billions.”
“Wrong, little monster. When you killed my son, you killed everyone.”
“What are you gonna do now? There’s nothing left to destroy.”
“Wrong again. See the stars? They’re still there. See the ground on which I’m sitting? It’s still here. The sun still comes up every morning. It’s next. Everything else is next. When I’m done there will be nothing left but me.”
“You are a fucking lunatic. You could have had another son. You could have moved on instead of killing everyone’s sons and daughters.”
“You could have not killed him.”
“I had to. I can’t stop myself.”
“Then we understand each other.” She removed Tom-Tom from his coffin, bringing him closer to Ed until he hovered only a few feet away. There, she began to peel off Tom-Tom’s skin from the toes up. Slowly, so slowly it went on for years.