After Midnight

“He’s got it.”

“Shit!”

“It’s…I know his answering machine. It’s got…everything.”

“Fuck!”

So then I sort of lost it.

I whipped the hell out of her with Tony’s belt, lashing her with all my strength, circling her as I swung.

Finally, my arm fell to my side, spent. The belt swaying by my leg, I stumbled around to Judy’s front.

She was limp, her feet on the ground but her knees bent, all her weight on the rope again.

The fire had burnt down low, so I couldn’t see her very well.

I staggered over to it, squatted, and added some twigs and branches. I could hardly catch my breath. Sweat poured off me. The shirt was clinging to my back and my loafers felt slimy inside. I didn’t like being this close to the fire. It was too damn hot. But I wanted the fire bright, so I kept adding fuel for a while.

Finally, the light reached Judy and turned her to polished gold. Along with her other injuries, she now had stripes. In some places, the stripes bled. All down her body, her skin was shiny with blood and sweat.

I rose from my squat and hobbled over to her.

She was panting for breath and crying. It made her shake a lot.

I picked up my cut-offs, then stood to the side and watched her.

She was really shaking. It made me wonder if she had a fever.

“Sorry you made me do that to you,” I said.

She raised her head and looked at me.

“Now, I suppose you’ll tell on me.”

Her head moved slowly from side to side.

“No?” I asked.

When she spoke, her lips made some small bubbles. Red bubbles of spit and blood.

She said, “You…saved…me.”

“You’re not gonna tell?”

“Milo…did…it.”

As I worked Tony’s belt into the loops of my cut-offs, I said to Judy, “How do I know you’re not lying again?”

She didn’t answer.

I fastened the belt, then looked down at the knife on the ground.

I knew that I ought to finish her off.

I’d told her that I wouldn’t, though. And besides, you should’ve seen her. She looked so vulnerable and hurt, hanging there in the firelight. And so beautiful. And she had that bandana hanging around her neck.

I bet you couldn’t have killed her, either.

“You’d better not tell on me,” I said to her. “If the cops ever come looking for me, I’ll hunt you down. And what I’ll do to you…you’ll wish I’d left you for Milo.”

She moved her head slowly up and down.

“Hang in there, honey,” I said. And then I left.

25

ON THE WAY OUT

Dumb, I know.

Just call me Miss Sentimental. I knew better than to walk off and leave her alive, but that’s exactly what I did. My heart got in the way of my brain.

I’d gotten to like her. That was the problem. It isn’t easy to kill someone you like. Let that be a warning to you.

Of course, as I wrote early on, it’s better not to kill anyone at all. Hell, look what happened to me all because I got carried away and whacked Tony with my saber. An accident, and look at all the shit that’s already flown because of it. And we’ve still got plenty of book to go, so you don’t even know the half of it yet.

You give some poor jerk a chop in the head and you’re in for a world of troubles. So try not to do it.

Anyway, I left Judy behind, hanging by the rope and pretty beaten up—but alive—and hurried out of the clearing.

After so much time with the firelight, the woods seemed blacker than a pit. I walked slowly, feeling my way with both hands, trying not to crash into anything or fall down again. Before long, I’d lost all sense of direction and didn’t know where I was.

Somewhere in Miller’s Woods, that’s all I knew for sure.

But I still had high hopes of finding my way home before dawn.

As I trudged through the woods, my night vision returned. No longer completely blind, I could make out the shapes in the darkness.

I kept thinking about how stupid I’d been about Judy. If only I’d finished her off, I would now be completely in the clear. The cops would never in a million years connect me with anything.

Now, I was in Judy’s hands.

She probably would finger me. Why not?

Because I’d saved her from the clutches of Milo?

I’d also spared her from myself.

I mean, I’d hurt her, but I hadn’t killed her. So, really, I’d saved her life twice.

She owed me, and she knew it, but she would probably spill everything to the cops anyway. As you may have noticed, she’s a goody-two-shoes. A regular Girl Scout. A gal like her might be grateful to me and she might lie sometimes—for instance, if she’s trying to pull a trick on someone planning to kill her—but she’ll have this compulsion to be truthful to the cops.

She’ll rat me out.

Which wasn’t exactly a sudden revelation. I’d known it all along. Sort of. Even while she’d been telling me about her big plan to leave me out of the picture, I’d never quite believed she would carry out her end of it.

Maybe she’d thought she would.

Or maybe the whole business had been a lie to save her ass.

Well, something had saved her ass. I’m not sure what. Maybe a combination of things.

Such as a ton of luck. Plus the facts that she was beautiful and friendly and all that. And I knew it was only by a mistake of mine that she got dragged into this whole mess in the first place. Then I had to feel sorry for her because she’d gotten herself raped by Milo. Then I had to feel grateful because she kicked him in the head. Then she confused me with promises about never telling on me.

Those are probably some of the things that saved her, but maybe not all of them.

Who knows why stuff happens?

Not me, that’s for sure.

I’m interested, and I like to look for answers, but the answers don’t seem to be very simple and I’ve got a feeling that there’re secret forces at work. Genes, for instance. Or Fate. Or God. Or gremlins. Or certain stuff you don’t want to admit, not even to yourself. I mean, who the hell knows? Maybe we aren’t even supposed to know the real answers.

Maybe “the truth is out there,” like they say on the TV show, but that doesn’t mean we can ever find it out.

All I knew for sure was that I didn’t kill Judy, so now my life was in her hands.

It made me feel like a patsy. A softie. A dope.

But it made me feel good, too, somehow. I liked knowing that she was still alive back there at the camp. And that she was only alive because of me.