Devils' Day Party

by C.M. Stunich

play with that delicious darkness, but do not let it consume you.

I should never have slept with him. My mistake. I don’t often make the same mistakes twice, but … I’ve just rammed him, apparently. Different sort of ramming, still not a good idea.

“Don’t do something you might regret,” Luke whispers as I glare at the backs of their heads. “I won’t,” I reply easily, but I’m pretty sure I’m lying. No, I’m certain of it.

“This is the sort of world I want to live in, where people like Cami Alhambra wear gauzy fairy wings to school, and Barron Farrar sits and sketches like he’s an artist instead of an asshole.”

I’m not a violent person. I don’t like to have to fight all the time. I don’t like feeling scared all the damn time.

Now that I’m standing here, looking into Calix’s dark eyes, I think I know why I hit his car. I snapped. I broke. There he was, at the gas station with his awful, awful friends, lounging next to a car that costs more than some people make in a decade. And yet … he looked miserable to me. That’s what really pissed me off. How can someone who has everything look so damn miserable? Calix is handsome, smart, rich, connected, normal. He fits into society like a puzzle piece while people like me and Luke and April, we’re singled out and cast aside like extras, like pieces to a puzzle that nobody wants to finish. That’s why I hit his car. And look where it got me.

“He didn’t hurt me,” I choke out, “not physically.” But into my heart, he stabbed a knife, twisted it, laughed as I bled.

I’m weightless, flying through the darkness and into nothing. There isn’t even time for a scream. Just regret. I fucked today up, I think, but really, not just today. Everything. Everything.

I choke on a sob, burying my face in my hands. “You hate me so much,” I murmur, not caring what he thinks of me. “Why don’t you just kill me now and put me out of my misery?” Calix goes disturbingly still, like we’re both in a play together, but I’m not saying my parts right.

If I wake up tomorrow and that’s the worst of my problems, I’ll jump for fucking joy and compose a ditty to sing the rest of the day. The Knight Crew can hang me by my shoelaces from the loblolly pines near the courtyard and I’ll thank them for the privilege.

I’m not some kind of folk hero. Instead, I’m just a girl living a nightmare and wishing it would end.

Stupid Barron and his white sweatshirt smeared with charcoal, the smell of watermelons, and that weird way he always defends me and destroys me at the same time.

Because I have to know if she’s alive. The thing is … at this point, I’m not sure that I am.

my body is boneless. In the narrative of my own story, I was drunk all of ten minutes ago. Got in a car crash all of five minutes ago. Saw my friend's dead eyes staring at a thankless sky two minutes prior. I am not okay.

They're wanton, ribald, lascivious little mischief makers. They have no king.

That first night, I died. Essentially, I killed myself by acting like an impetuous asshole.

If the universe wanted to break someone, why not him? Why me? I'm just … average. There's nothing special about me, no reason for this.

Dangerous inevitability. There is no escaping this. There is no denying this.

“Don't stop.” The words are quiet but firm. “It doesn't matter if you're ashamed of me, or if you hate me, or if you're …” Or if you're lying. I wish you'd just tell me that you were. I wish we could drop all of this bullshit. “Keep going.”

Unlike that first night, there are no pretty lies tangling between us.

I push up to my feet, brush off my skirt and try to recollect my dignity. But I'm pretty sure I lost it somewhere near Calix's feet. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice … shame on me.

But even if the slate of the world's been wiped clean, I'll never forget the way he looked at me yesterday. Like I meant nothing. Like I meant everything.

I like that. Something about his confusion makes me feel powerful.

Raz Loveren might hate my guts, but he wants to fuck me, that much is for sure. I mean, I'm not exactly flattered. Pretty sure he fucks anything with a pussy.

“And that makes you a good guy? Because you let me out of the hole you trapped me in?”

Whereas Calix feels like he's always on the verge of breaking, Raz is already snapped and unfettered, a wild devil raging in the light instead of sneaking in the shadows.

It's almost possessive, the way he holds me, but for him to hold me like that … he'd have to really want me. And not just in the way a boy wants a girl, but something different, better, more intense. I'm not saying he loves me, but there's hate there, and that's a powerful emotion in and of itself. It takes effort and energy to hate someone when, if you truly didn't care for them, it'd be so much easier to just forget.

“Now, bend the hell over and let me fuck the loathing out of you.”

“You hurt the things you like. And I'm pretty sure you don't want to like me. You're angry about it.” “You're everything you want to be while I'm nothing like I want to be.”

“Then let's talk. What's it like to live a hideous little trailer with dykes for moms?” “It's …” I pause for a moment to consider, ignoring his homophobia for a brief moment—exposure and education can cure that. “Fucking wonderful, actually.” “How?” he asks, but the question doesn’t sound as awful as it could. So we talk. We talk until the sun peeks above the horizon and the clock on the nightstand reads 4:22 in the morning. That's the last thing I remember. And then … there's blood all over my steering wheel. Nothing lasts forever. That is the nature of beautiful things.

“Sugar might kill me eventually, but I don't hurt people when I overdose on it. So for now, this works. Come on.”

He tastes like the devils I'm supposed to be avoiding on this most unholy of all nights.

“Oddly specific,” I say with a soft smile and a laugh. “But that's what feminism is about: you make your own choices, whatever makes you happy. If it's a fucking ferret, it's a fucking ferret.”

Time is quite literally standing still for me. I'm not sure how I feel about that: important enough for time to bow down to … or so insignificant that my entire life can be manipulated on a whim.

There's a beautiful girl in charcoal, staring back at me, her smile almost too tight but happy, even if she doesn't know it. Her eyes say she tries really hard, but she's human, and she's not perfect, and she fucks up a lot.

Baron's drawn … me. In a timeline he doesn't even remember.

“You remember the other timelines,” I whisper, and he gives me a look like he's fighting between fury and genuine interest.

“No, it wasn't the dress,” he says, leaning in, wearing the red devil’s mask. He seems to only wear the butterfly mask on days when I've managed to impress him before the party starts. “It was the curve of your lips, the shape of your face, your eyes. I've drawn you enough times, Karma; I could pick you out of any crowd.”

“Raz and Calix are both in love with you, just thought you should know,”

“You don't get to judge me, Barron Farrar, not after the things you've done.”

“Thank you for defiling this sacred space with me,” he murmurs, kissing me so deeply that I forget what it's like to breathe.

The way he's looking at me, I expect a trick. With him, I'm always expecting a trick. “I know this probably won't help matters much …” I start, swallowing back a sudden surge of desire at the closeness of his body, his smell, even the cocky arrogance spreading across his lush mouth. “But please don't hurt me here.”

I smile back, but it's hard to resist the words clinging to the tip of my tongue: yes, you will. He will hurt me, even if he doesn't mean to, just by not remembering tonight ever happened.

That's the shit I need to stop doing, letting other's actions influence my own happiness. I am the source of my happiness. I must also remember that I am the designer of my own catastrophe.

“But they won't look. They know that anyone who touches my sketchbook gets their face broken.” Barron pauses to look up at me. “Except for you. You pepper sprayed me, and I let it go. That must account for something?”

“I'd rescue you; I'd be the Rose to your Jack.”

We spend hours like that, naked, touching, kissing, fucking. I don't even remember falling asleep. But when my eyes open, and I see the blood on my steering wheel, my heart breaks just a little.

Every night, he draws me in a different place, and as I flip through, I see all four days represented somehow, someway. My throat closes up as I curl up beside him and cry myself to sleep. I don't repeat that same day again.

He looks like hell. And yet, I'm not sure if I've ever found him more handsome than I do in this moment. Stripped of his pomp and circumstance, there's that tired face I recognize from the gas station parking lot that fateful morning, the one that pissed me off so damn much. It's not fair for him to do that, to shed both his masks. When he looks like that, I start to question everything.

“I'm going to miss this.” “Miss what?” Calix is staring at me like he wants to understand, to unwrap all of my secrets. “This.” I gesture between us with a finger as the waitress comes back with our pancakes, and my heart breaks in two because I know we share the same favorite breakfast food. “Me and you. This talk.” You won't remember this tomorrow; you'll stare at me like you hate me, leaving me to pick up the pieces to understand why.