The Death of Us

by C.A. Mariah

If there's one thing people love to read about, it's a disaster.

And we’re taught very early on, better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.

“I will be somebody! One of these days, when you’re drowning in your own piss and shit, you’re going to see me on TV. I’ll be surrounded by cameras and flashing lights, and the crowd will be cheering my name!”

I didn’t let it show, but it’s a punch to the gut when someone taunts you for having dreams.

Life has taught me on more than one occasion that if the world deems you pretty, you have to sleep with one eye open. There’s always someone lurking in the shadows, just waiting for the opportunity to make you hurt.

“How old are you?” “Eighteen.” It’s not too far from the truth. I will be eighteen soon…right after I turn seventeen next week.

He knew what I came to the city looking for, and he expects me to quit because he's fallen in love? That’s bullshit. He’s been in love countless times, with his first wife, his second, and his third. I’m sure there will be another, but it won’t be me.

Every man I ever met took and took, but this is the first time a man has been successful in taking it all.

He was a newly married man, he cheered jovially in my ear sometime in the night, explaining that he had finally tied down the woman of his dreams. I remember asking where his new bride thought he was. Does she know her husband is a raping, pedophilic sack of shit? He rammed his fist into my gut for that.

It never amazed me how blind people could be. I’ve seen it happen since I was a child, and it shouldn’t surprise me that the men and women who swore to protect me are the most eager to look away. But I guess if you don’t see the desperation in my eyes, it’s easier to sleep at night.

“Fuck, and you know, maybe we were. Maybe we lost our senses. Maybe we were just two kids desperate for something other than darkness…but we found it. In that moment, we found a light that had been stripped from our lives.”

“But it was more than that. It started with a look when he walked out into that ring. He didn’t feel like the butcher everyone was cheering for. Did he kill? Yes. Was it brutal? Absolutely. I was terrified when I saw it for that first time. I was horrified when Marone’s minions threw me in that room. But the minute he was there…I don’t know. I knew I was safe.”

A tear slips from my eye as he fully enters me, not from pain but from finally having a choice. I picked Cade. He picked me. We wanted this, and having a choice is something neither of us has had the privilege of before.

Every pause she took, I utilized that moment to run through everything I read about Cade Harris. Some of it was public knowledge: a southern boy from Texas who left home at eighteen to commit heinous crimes. None of those articles ever included the pain he suffered at home or the dreams he often spoke of.

The more the story unfolds, the less I see the monsters that graced the covers of the New York Times. The longer I sit here, gazing into the eyes of a killer, the more I see a child who went through hell.

“How could we be so fucking stupid? How could we put ourselves in those situations?” Because what else did they have? You were an orphan. You were abused. You could only dream of dreams. The question shouldn’t be, how could they be so stupid? How could they put themselves in such dangerous situations? The question should be, how could you blame yourself for wanting to get out? How could you call yourself stupid for wanting more?

How did society see two teenagers slaughtering grown men and women and not think there was a good reason for it?

I take my time, watching my reflection in the mirror. Unable to stop, I can’t help but compare my features to some of the girls Bunny described and how fortunate I am to have never been in their place.

Children are far brighter than people give them credit for. They can pick up on cues, understand emotion, and when something is wrong, they know better.

“One day, we will go anywhere you want us to, but we’re going to kill these fuckers first, Bun. I’m going to fucking murder them for me, and I’m going to murder them for you.”

I can’t ignore that, but he’s also the same killer who folds his arms around my waist and kisses me with a tenderness only love can explain.

“On my life.” It’s a promise he meant literally, I learned eventually. A promise he truly kept…until the end.

“No?” I question. “We’re planning on killing people.” “Rapists,” he snaps. “Murderers. Kidnappers…child molesters. They aren’t people, Bun. And we aren’t villains for slaughtering them. You know that. I know that, and Susie knows that.” But if I’m ever caught, will the world know that? Will Missy?

If I didn’t know them, I’d think we were witnessing a romance, but people who help whore out children don’t deserve that kind of happiness.

People weaponize weakness, but Cade simply holds my hand.

There are no words or actions that could even come close to repaying what he’s done for me—what we’ve done together, for each other.

He makes no sound, but wails rack his body, and I’m reminded just how old we are. I see him now, not as Blade—the killing machine Marone made at eighteen—but as a nineteen-year-old forced to survive. A kid.

“Just go, babies, or you’re going to regret it.”

“I would have done it for you anyway, Bun. I would do anything.”

I prefer to think of us as something better than a hero. Heroes are selfish, only doing good in the brightness of the day, where everyone can see their righteous deeds. The mayor is a hero, doing all he can for those foster kids in front of the cameras while leaving them soulless at night. We are not heroes. I will never allow us to be put in the same category.

“I’d rather die than let either of them have one more child.” Bending at the waist, Cade takes me by the chin. “I got you.” Until the end.

“Cade… God, he was so good. He was better than the world deserved—than I deserved. All he wanted—all he ever told me was that he’d do whatever it took to make sure I felt safe. So…no, he didn’t tell me anything, nothing but what he always said.”

“So we could be fine… I thought if they were gone,” she mutters, “that we would be fine—that we could be happy.” I can see how a teenager would think that, and how, even in her mid-forties, Bunny still begs for it to be true. “You were only kids.”

“I chose you because you came from the same tracks I did. Because you got out when I couldn’t. And because if anyone was going to hear me, it was going to be the little girl who grew up right across the street.”

Tell the world we were monsters but that we were kids, too. Raped, beaten, and brutalized kids. Tell them what they did to us. Tell them how they got away with it. Tell them the truth about us, and don’t let them slander Cade’s name…not anymore.”

We’re not bad. We’re just broken.