THIS BOOK WILL KILL YOU

24_readandbedamned_

I'm halfway out the apartment door before I stop, before I turn. My head's a chaos of white noise, it feels like my thoughts are screaming at me. I'm still too scared to look at my hand but I can feel the piece of me that's missing, that she chewed away. My shirt is drenched with the blood she's let and the fear is big, but my anger is bigger. My rage is big enough to fill the world.

I move to the kitchen, to the big block of big knives. I slide one loose with my left hand but it's so slick that I drop it. I scrub my palm down my pants and take another, holding it Psycho-style as I walk back toward the bedrooms.

"I can hurt you too," I'm saying. "I can hurt you too. I can hurt you too. I can hurt you too."

And I have no idea what I'm doing but I know I'm right, I have to be. I'm going to hurt her.

The duvet's still standing there, standing there like somebody's dressed up in it for Halloween. The fury boils in me so hard I can barely even see what I'm doing but I'm slamming the blade into the linen, tugging it free, again and again and again. I grab the duvet and throw it to the floor, but she's gone, of course she's gone.

The worst thing is she's taken my fingertip with her. There's a piece of me choking down her throat, settling in the rotting mess of her stomach, and I can't bear it, I just can't bear it.

Bedsprings squeaking, and I'm running into Cara's mom's room but the bed is empty. I grunt in frustration, almost passing out as I head back to the kitchen. I run the faucet, gritting my teeth before holding my finger under it. It's the worst pain I've ever felt, it makes the whole right side of my body burn. But it's a good pain, because it blasts some of the panic away, it sharpens me.

The witch has taken the top joint of my middle finger. Blood's still pouring out of it and past that I can see the bone, as yellow as tooth. I can see the indentations where she bit me, the strips of flesh torn loose and just hanging there. I have to take my finger out after a minute or so or I'm going to lose myself, but even when the water stops running there's blood in the sink and suddenly I see mom, my mom, running her finger around the plug hole, I remember that lump of flesh there, the dirty nail.

There's a dishtowel hanging by the sink. It's greasy to the touch but it's cleaner than anything else here. I use the knife to tear off a strip, winding it tight around my finger, seeing it turn red almost immediately. I cut off another one and knot it on top. Then I lift up my hand, what's left of my middle finger upright and shaking.

"Still works, you bitch."

It still works. I still work.

It takes me almost five minutes to find where Cara's mom hid her whisky and I swig deeply from the bottle, spraying half of it back out. The rest scalds its way down my throat, setting fire to my belly. I pour some in a glass and hold my finger in it until the world starts to fizz like sherbet. Then I grab my knife, stagger to the apartment door.

And I stop again. I stop because I don't want to prove to her that I'm weak. If she's watching me now, and I have no doubt that she is, then I don't want her to see me scuttling away like a roach. She's right, she can hurt me. She has hurt me. But she can do that anywhere, right? She's as likely to attack me in the stairwell, or the street, or back at my house. And I don't think she wants to kill me. Wouldn't she have done it already? Maybe she wants me to kill myself, like Cara, but I'm not going to do that. No, I'm staying right here. I'm not even sure I have a choice, I'm so drained I won't make it out the building without passing out.

I take a deep breath, then I turn around and walk back to the bedroom. The duvet is upright again, defying gravity like it's hanging from the ceiling. I ignore it, take the folder and the papers Cara left, aiming for the sofa back in the living room. I fall into it so hard that for a few seconds part of me thinks I'm still falling, the room tumbling like an acrobat. My arms actually lash out to the side to steady myself, papers flying from the folder I'm struggling to hold. From here I can see the opening to the bedrooms, I can hear Cara's mom turning over in bed. The witch could stagger out of that door any moment, could come and chew off another piece of me, but I'll see her coming. The important thing is there's a solid wall behind my head, and a knife in my hand.

And a story on my lap.

It's another story that wants to be read, I know. Cyrus told me he couldn't take it out of the apartment, that it wouldn't let him. I think maybe it wanted me to find it, and I did.

Read and be damned.

The story that started it all, Cyrus said.

My finger is throbbing and I prod the paper with it, leaving a bloody smudge. I do it again, and again, marking my territory. I'm not sure if it's the madness or the fatigue or the blood loss or that single shot of whisky but I can't stop giggling, especially when I fumble the paper open and see what's there, see what's written on that first page. I'm howling with laughter now, so much that my chest hurts, that I'm coughing with it, so hard I can barely breathe, screaming with it—laughing, screaming, I can't even tell the difference anymore, laughing, screaming at the all too familiar first line that stares back at me.

You were six years old when you first saw the witch.