“What?” was all Clay could manage as he fumbled along the wall for the switch. As if the lights would ground this chaos in reality.
With his other hand, he tugged on Essie’s arm, as if to physically demand an explanation. And the girl used this to her advantage—drew a knife from the dresser and came for the both of them. Essie snatched her wrist. They banged back into the dresser, rocking it on spindly legs.
Clay’s hand fell over the switch and the overhead lights burst on. Essie had the naked girl pinned to the wall. “Look!” she grunted at him. “Look at what she is.”
With the back of her hand, she swatted the mask off the girl’s face.
Even with the light reinstated, it was hard for Clay to fathom what he was seeing. At first he thought Essie hadn’t knocked the mask off at all, even though it was lying there beside his foot. The girl’s soft face was dark around the eyes, black scabs with red fissures of gore peaking through. She had been cut, or had cut herself, in the exact pattern of the masquerade mask. And then she had… peeled the flesh away.
The girl saw his horrified expression and groaned—a helpless, heartbroken sound that filled Clay with empathy. She was disfigured, horribly disfigured. Even Essie let up.
And the girl used their revulsion to wring herself loose.
Essie screeched and stumbled. “Shit. Clay, help—”
But the girl’s fist was clenched in Essie’s hair and she spun Essie around and slammed her straight into the wall, hard enough to dent the plasterboard. And Clay understood what was going to happen next, but wasn’t nearly fast enough to intercede.
The girl—or whatever she was—had all the time in the world to drive her weight forward, to thrust her blade into the soft spot beneath Essie’s breastbone. To bury it to the hilt and renew her smile as Essie hissed in pain and mortal terror. Clay locked eyes with his housemate and froze halfway to her, as much from the shock of witnessing her murder as knowing he was too late to change its course.
“You ruined it!” the girl screamed. “Now he’ll never fix my face!” She grunted and twisted the knife violently one way, then the other, the muscles in her narrow back twisting with the violence of each motion.
Essie’s eyes rolled to whites and her attacker released her, letting her crash forward. On cement legs, Clay reached out and slowed her fall. Then the girl was in his face, her wound fully exposed, a puss-colored tear leaking out of a fissure under one eye. “All I want is my life back,” she said, calming, petitioning him to understand. “It would’ve been easy if it wasn’t for your mother. Now what am I supposed to do? Tell him I failed?”
“Who’s him?” Clay said. “What does he want with me?”
The girl shook her head as if she hadn’t heard. “I’m not going back without the job done.”
She reached out, placed a hand on the button of his jeans, unsnapped it again. Her wrists were bruised black in several places. Paralyzed, Clay watched her smear Essie’s blood across the crotch of his denim.
“You can help me.” The school girl returned, sugary, forcefully sweet. “I can still be that piece of worshipping ass you wanted so badly. I’ll make it quick, then leave you and Mommy to your night.”
“She’s not my mother,” Clay heard himself say.
The girl only shrugged. Her bloody fingers pulled the teeth of his zipper apart. And fuck, he couldn’t help it—Clay reacted to her, stirred under her touch. “You can help me, can’t you, Ray?”
Clay shut his eyes. “Yes,” he gasped, as she pressed herself to him. “Yes.”
Her fingers reached through his open fly.
Clay stamped his foot down on hers and shoved backward with everything he had. The girl’s legs struck the corner of the bed and she went flopping over the mattress, slamming the top of her head against the floor.
He ran to Essie, meaning to lift her, drag her from the room. But the girl was already rolling to her feet, nimble as an acrobat—and Essie was already dead, her eyes hooded and unseeing. “I’m so sorry,” he told her, his voice breaking.
Then he hit the door and took the stairs two by two.
The faster he ran the slower things unfolded. The girl was on his heels, yelling, “I’ll take it from you. I don’t care if I have to break it off first!”
The front door was in reach. Clay had it halfway open before the girl leapt from the staircase onto his shoulders, yanking his head back. He went with the momentum and drove himself hard into the banister. The metal sang. The girl grunted and her grip slipped and Clay was off again, through the door, into the night.
On the empty street, his feet sounded like applause from a single pair of hands. Sprinting as hard as he could downhill. Wondering, even in the terror of the moment, if anyone in the dark houses around him were witnessing the unlikely scene of a man running for his life from a beautiful naked girl.
Gradually the noise of The Strip increased. Clay didn’t dare look back, for fear he’d find the groupie right there. Knowing that a moment before he reached the safety of the boulevard, she would seize him and drag him into a back alley and get what she wanted from him. He ran with his shoulders up, anticipating her fingers, the bloody knife.
Closer, closer, until Sunset at last intersected with his mad dash. Clay turned the corner and ran smack into a crowd of people. Any other day, a wild-eyed goon smeared in blood might have drawn screams. Tonight, he was just another refugee from the Halloween parade.
Clay hurried
