The veins in his hands finally burst, opening up his wrists so fiercely that the holes it left looked as though they had been made with shotguns shells. The blackness clung to him as it spewed forth from the open wounds, powered by each and every beat of his powerful heart. It took on a life of its own, crawling over him like a million black worms. It had already encompassed both his arms and most of his chest when he felt his kneecaps shatter, his legs painfully bending back in the opposite direction.
The blood kept flowing, sticking to him until it became a second flesh. He felt like he was sinking into it, drowning in it, rather than it coming over him.
Long nails formed over his toes as it finished covering his body, the worms moving upwards towards his head in an open defiance of gravity. His lips started to turn blue as he held his breath, thrusting his head skyward to belay the darkness as long as possible. He closed his eyes and spoke with a voice not his own, just as the blackness finally closed in around him.
“I won’t.”
Mike stroked his thumb back and forth along his upper lip, staring off into space from his perch atop a high barstool. His legs were tucked up beneath him and his back was as straight as he could make it, making him feel high above the floor below him. The teetering of the uneven chair even made him feel a little dizzy as he swayed back and forth.
All around him arcade games and pinball machines buzzed and chimed, calling out in a jumble of bells and sirens. Some had spinning lights on the top of them that flashed whenever the computer-controlled characters on the screens scored a point, dominating his vision in sporadic beams of red and blue. They made it hard to see the vintage posters of Zeppelin and Petty that lined the walls, but he still knew what they looked like. Could have seen them with his eyes closed if he had wanted to.
Just a few inches to his right, Cathy was leaning over the bar and taking a long sip of her drink. She twirled her hair around her finger as she always did, humming a tune he couldn’t quite recognize between gulps.
As cute and endearing as he found it, he tuned it out. He closed his eyes for a moment, mentally willing himself not to hear any of the things he didn’t want to. He got rid of Cathy’s sweet humming first. Then the clink of a soda machine in the kitchen. Then the bass beat of a car passing by. What was left was the chime of the video games combined with the sharp crack of pool balls hitting each other and the buzz of the fluorescent lights above it all. He opened his eyes to see the Stones poster bathed in blue light, the putrid smell of cigarette smoke filling his nostrils until he thought he was actually at a concert.
He smiled.
This was The Factory.
It was a local arcade club where almost every teenager in Coral Beach could be found at some point or another in the day. Located in the scenic downtown of Coral Beach, the Factory jutted up out of the otherwise calm rural Maine landscape, always loud and exciting and neon. This had been where Mike had learned everything he really knew in his life. His first real fight was just outside the back entrance (followed almost immediately by his first nosebleed). His first date had started here, with some pool before a long midsummer walk. This was the place where he had uttered his first curse in anger and heard his first dirty joke. This was home.
It hadn’t felt like it in weeks, not since the murders. There was something about being here that reminded him of that period in his life a little too much. Even though the building itself had nothing to do with it, this whole street was as much a part of the horrors that had happened, as they were a part of this town. More like a vein running through a living organism than a street running through a city. Like any living thing, it could be damaged. It could be hurt. But if he tried hard enough, like now... he could look past the scars and be home again.
“Mike, I’m worried about Xander,” Cathy said, taking a long sip of her slush-puppy and snapping him out of his trance. She pushed a strand of her long black hair out of her face, its darkness a complete contrast to her pale complexion, then slid her straw in and out of her paper cup to mush up her slush.
Mike sighed as all the sights and sounds that he’d fought so hard to block out came screaming back to him with all the subtlety of an oncoming train. He winced as he heard Jennifer Bradley rip into the green fabric of the pool table, feeling his chest grow tight as though he had felt it too. “Yeah,” he agreed, ruffling a hand through his short blonde hair. He shifted into a more comfortable position on the stool, letting his legs dangle a little more than they had been. He felt the skin along his right side pull tight when he moved, sending a burning pain up his side and into his rib cage. A few weeks ago he’d been stabbed there. By Xander. His appendix had ruptured and had shot poison and bile throughout his system, until the doctors had removed it. It was mostly healed, but when he turned it a certain way, it still hurt. Still felt like it was going to rip. Maybe that was why he reacted so
