Unfinished Business

CHAPTER 14: WHAT HAPPENED TO CLAIRE TONKS

Claire Tonks stomped through the woods, taking no joy in the sound of the crunched orange leaves or the dry twigs that snapped under her high heels. The air was cold on her exposed skin. Her shoes sank in the dirt, catching leaves like a restaurant check spindle.

Her mother was right. Girls who dressed in skanky animal-themed Halloween costumes really did have a worse time with guys. Claire should have listened to the modesty rules she was taught in church; regret filled her head and chest and she stepped over yet another root. If she had listened, then at least she wouldn't be freezing out here.

What stung more than the bitter, nearly-November wind was the reality of what just happened. She didn't want to think about it, though. She didn't want to think about James, and what he did, and--

Claire kept walking. She wished, for a moment, that she had thought to bring her jacket with her. It wasn't like she was thinking ahead when she stormed out of the party. In fact, she wasn't thinking at all. All that was on her mind was the look on their faces when she caught them in the act, and how she was trying to keep the hot tears from leaving her eyes.

They were flowing freely now, warm on her red cheeks until the chilling wind and pressing darkness nearly froze them. The trees around her were thick and she paused, chest heaving under the strain of her choked sobs and walking in the cold, dry air. Here was as good a place to cry as any. The roots in this section were tall, exposed, and easy to trip over.

She sat for a while, crying until her eyes were puffy, her throat was sore, and she was almost entirely worn out. It was only then that she looked around and, woozily, took stock of her surroundings. The moon was barely visible through the overlapping branches overhead.

After a few minutes, she took a deep breath through her nostrils and prepared herself to stand. All she wanted was to go home. 

Something dripped from the branches above her. Claire tilted her head upward, slowly.

It was hard to see what was up there, especially when it was silhouetted by the moon above her and the moon. Claire squinted at it, trying to make out what it was.

The face was horrific and overdone; Claire was instantly reminded of a trailer for a horror movie she was never allowed to see. James loved those movies.

James. Just thinking about him made her simultaneously want to weep and punch something. Cheating on her? With her best friend? After she dressed up as a sexy duck for him? And after she kept the secret of his inexplicable attraction to Donald and Daisy Duck a secret for the entirety of their relationship? The nerve of that boy, to cheat on her with her best friend (who Claire no longer wanted to be associated with).

Nearly blind with rage and fuming so hard that her cheeks were warm and burning like coals in a dying fire, Claire huffed. "I don't know who you are, but I'm not in the mood."

Whoever was up there (probably one of the guys from the stage tech classes, judging by the special effects makeup) didn't respond. Their head, which had been staring down at her with bloody puts where their eyes should have been, thin skin stretched over their lips, turned 180 degrees and upside down, twisting its neck like a piece of saltwater taffy. It was in that moment that Claire knew. This wasn't a person. This was a thing.

Claire backed up so quickly that she tripped on a root behind her and fell flat on her nearly-bare butt. Wood bit her flesh like rug burn and splinters jabbed into her like knives. Almost immediately, the thing dropped from the branches, landed on all fours with its head still upside down, and began crawling toward her. The sound of its joints popping in and out of place, without cartilage, was unmistakable. If she ever got out of this alive, Claire knew that she would never forget the sound of bone grating against bone.

Claire's hands hit rocks and leaves as she backed up while searching for something, anything, that would help her protect herself. There wasn't much in this clearing; there was just a circle of rocks, ash, and trash where there had once been a fire and a whole slew of trees.

The thing, whatever it was, jumped on her, teeth bared as though it was preparing to bite her head off. Claire jerked her head out of the way, but the monster (she could think of no other word for it) nicked her collarbone with teeth that were like nails as sharp as an insult and stung like hand sanitizer in an open wound.

Claire felt parts of her body and costume become slick with blood before she was aware that she was bleeding. It was on her neck, her arms, her breasts. It was seeping into the fabric of her close-to-lingerie costume. Something in her knew that she had to fight back or lose her life forever.

So she did.

Claire reached behind her, grabbed one of the twigs that had snapped under her and jabbed it forward the same way she would a knife. It was charred from the fire, blackened, and it sank into what little flesh there was with a sick squelching sound. Almost immediately, she saw a shattered glass bottle glinting in the moonlight despite the gray-black ashes coating most of its outside. Regret filled her bones.

The thing grabbed the stick jutting out of its body one finger at a time, reminding her of the Grinch. This thing was so much more terrifying than Jim Carrey, though. That was saying something, because Claire was terrified of the Grinch when she was younger, to the point of recurring nightmares.

As Claire stared, terrified, into the empty, dark-red eye, dripping sockets of the creature that was nearly on top of her, she was keenly aware of two sensations. The first was of something sickly-sweet, oddly-savory, and uncomfortably warm leaking between and to the front of her thighs. The second was that of slipping into a memory she was trying to forget.

It sparked in her mind, this thought. She was caught in the moment when she saw James (her James) under Lena (her Lena), and the look on their faces. She was stuck in the thoughts she had then, of betrayal and of what she could have done better.

As if her mind was being invaded, and something was probing deeper into what she regretted in her life, Claire found her mind going from one horrible, guilt-ridden memory to another. It was enough to keep her from recognizing the life slipping from her body. It wasn't enough to keep her from realizing that one of her eyes (which James said he found so beautiful) had been plucked from her head and put into the socket of the monster in front of her. The last thing she saw, through a skewed perception, was her own eye staring back at her.