Xander looked hurt and confused. He brought his hands up to shrug and Spider took each of them in her own, placing them on her waist. She was warm all over, comfortable. As if he could snuggle into her and sleep safely until he died. Like Sara had felt on the nights they’d sit at her house watching stupid movies until the TV turned white. Spider leaned back into the shadows slightly. When he squinted to see her in the darkness, it was Sara.
“Hello,” she said softly, her lips moist and good.
Cathy stirred, her arm reaching over across the bed instinctively. She opened her eyes suddenly when she realized that there was no Mike there. All she saw was the old, ratted Led Zeppelin poster that had hung on that wall for years, for a moment becoming very scared and forgetting where she was. She rose, then realized that she was in Xander’s room. She sighed with relief, her chest still rising and falling with the panic that had overcome her. Slowly, she began to remember.
“Have a nice sleep?”
She turned in the direction of the voice, and Al slapped her alongside the face. She went back down onto the bed, the entire mattress shaking from her sudden impact. He climbed on again, straddling the poor girl in her best friend’s house. She screamed, hoping for Mike or anyone to hear her. No one did. Al drew back and slammed his hand across her mouth, her jaw taking a queer shape momentarily, then he drew back to do it again.
This time when he moved to strike, his hands floating over her thin body as though he owned it, his fist was caught in mid air. He stopped and turned, coming face-to-face with his partner’s stone-cold resolve. “What?” Al asked, but got no response. He chuckled. “I’ll save a bit of skin for you, don’t worry. You went first last time, pig.”
For what seemed like hours, Bram Raine just stood there, staring at his partner. “We’re taking her back to Phillips, like he told us to,” he said flatly.
“Aw, come on!” Al laughed. “I’m just having a little fun,” he reached over and grabbed Cathy by the face the way a grandmother might, but with more lethal force. “You like it, don’t you? Don’t youuuu,” he babied her, then pushed her back onto the bed and slammed her shoulders down, slowly caressing her blouse downwards.
Again, there was a pressure on his shoulder. “We’re takin’ her to Phillips and gettin’ our paycheck.”
Al grimaced in pain, then relented. “Yeah,” he agreed finally, turning and slapping Cathy once more. “We’ll let him take first crack at the bitch.”
“Hello.”
Her voice echoed off of the darkness as if it were solid, bouncing back and assaulting his senses from all around him. Slowly, the darkness began to close in and the blood around him faded into the ground. He turned and looked away from her, staring instead into the deep beyond.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, her voice almost tired. Her voice was always tired when she asked that question, because she knew that he was just in one of his moods. She reached over with her index finger and stroked the side of his cheek. It sent chills throughout him, because it felt so much like her.
“You’re not her,” he responded dryly, turning to look at her. She was so amazing, her blonde hair wet with sweat and sticking to her head. She sat on him with her fingers all over his neck and face, wearing Spider’s uniform loosely over her perfectly shaped, hourglass like body. She bounced a little, and it made him melt. He shouldn’t have been looking, but he couldn’t help it. Had to treat himself to these last few seconds with her again, for he hadn’t realized the first time around that those were his last moments alive with her.
She smiled devilishly at him, the way she’d done a million times before. The smile that knew she had control over him and liked it. The smile that had forced him to run ten blocks just to get her a Kit Kat bar more than once over the years. She bit her lips slightly, the white contrasting the perfect ruby red of those slivers of soft flesh. “Of course I am, Xander,” she pleaded, her big blue eyes growing sad all of a sudden. Her face was the shape of a heart, and he wanted to take it in his hands. As if reading his mind, she gripped both his palms and slid them over her body, working their way up to her neck. She leaned in and kissed him lovingly on the lips, her small tongue darting between their two mouths. He heard the faint sound of their teeth clicking together, but did not feel it. She tasted like strawberries, just like she had on the night of her death. With that thought, the kiss slowly broke off. She leaned back up into her sitting position atop him, staring down at him as if she never wanted to take her eyes away.
Somewhere, he heard a door close. No, slam.
“I love you, Xander Drew,” she assured him. He tried to speak, but she brought a finger to his lips. “I have always loved you. Ever since we were kids and I used to catch you carving our initials into wood, I knew that you were the one person who could love me. Who I, in turn, could love back. Someone who wouldn’t use me, like so many have been used now.”
A tear rolled down Xander’s cheek as he remembered the kiss, wanting so much to stay.
“She looks much
