Marlana And The Eel

Margot's face is stained with tears: a single black mascara track down her flawless face. But her eyes are steady and resolute.

'I'm taking what you promised me,' she says to her brother, 'and I've got everything I need from you now.'

'You can't kill me Margot,' says Mason, his own flawed face covered with Cordell's blood. 'You'll lose everything. In the absence of an heir, the sole beneficiary is the Southern Baptist Church.'

'But there is going to be an heir, Mason. A Verger baby: yours, mine...' She tilts her head. 'Mostly yours.'

Alana steps into the room: black pinstripe skirt suit, cream top, lipstick red as blood.

'Do you know what happens when we stimulate your prostate gland with a cattle prod?' she asks. 'Hannibal does. He helped us milk you.'

Mason snarls. As best he can without a face. 'Ah, you're dead, Dr Bloom.'

'No Mason. We all are. Didn't you know that?' Alana holds up a test tube filled with a milky liquid. Still warm. 'But these aren't.'

Mason lifts his hand with the gun, swinging it towards Alana. Margot tackles him, pushing his arm off course. He squeezes the trigger and the bullet cracks the glass aquarium beneath him.

He's helpless, strapped into his heavy wheelchair which shatters the glass. He falls into the water.

The two women act as one: kneeling beside the jagged hole. Holding Mason's head down under the water as he thrashes. Struggles.

And then the eel.

It likes holes. Likes dark cavernous spaces. It has been in the open for too long, swimming round and round in an endless figure of eight, looking for a place to hide.

It swims into Mason's gaping mouth and wriggles in. Down his throat, cutting off the last of his screams: a monstrous parody of what Mason made Margot do to him.

Take the chocolate, Margot.

Never again.

It's over.

They're breathing hard. Leaning together into the water as Mason sinks to the bottom. It is the first person Margot has killed. It is the second that Alana has killed, but only by about an hour.

'He was right,' whispers Margot. Her hair is wet and sticking to her face. 'That was very therapeutic.'

She reaches over with dripping hands and pulls Alana to her. Kisses her deeply, red mouth to red mouth, their tongues as wet and muscular as the eel. Both of them dizzy with relief and adrenaline. Jesus fuck (no Mason to punish her for blaspheming, hallelujah), she's turned on.

Is this how he felt when he hurt someone?

She pushes off Alana's wet jacket; it gets caught on her elbows but with some struggling she gets it off without having to stop kissing her. Her cream camisole is easier: she just pushes it up to expose Alana's breasts in cream lace. Margot suckles Alana's nipple through her bra, leaving a red mouthprint on the silk. She thrusts her hand down the front of Alana's skirt.

'We just killed someone,' gasps Alana. But she holds on tight to Margot anyway, and tears at the buttons of her gold satin blouse.

'Seeing death sort of makes you want to live your life, doesn't it?' Margot rolls on top of her and Alana wraps her legs around Margot's waist. Her hand is in Alana's panties now and shit, she's wet. As wet as Margot is—she feels Alana's hands pulling up her skirt, pushing down her panties, cupping her ass, dipping between the cheeks of it to feel the lips of her cunt.