Post by nbonhagen on Mar 7, 2024 18:28:00 GMT
Somewhere in Lafayette, Indianapolis…
There’s a Mercedes in the driveway as I pull up to the otherwise unremarkable house in an unremarkable neighborhood; she’s at it again. Even as I feel the rage building, I know I’m going to forgive her; I always do, no matter how much it impacts the life I’ve tried to build. I know it’s not her fault; she’s a product of her raising. I’ve tried everything I can think of to deter her, but it’s like a compulsion she can barely control.
I suppress the urge to snap off the wing mirror of the Mercedes as I storm up the drive - an overpriced shitbox for a pretentious fool who thinks a few dollars makes him rich - I quell the trembling in my left arm as I turn my key in the lock, take a deep breath as I push open the door and enter the house. I hear her laugh, like crystal chimes, come from the sitting room to my left and head in that direction, steeling myself for the possibility of seeing something I don’t want to.
They both freeze when I throw open the double doors and enter the room; thank fuck they’re still clothed. The bottle of wine on the table in front of them is only half empty, but I know that’s usually more than enough for her purposes. He’s a handsome young man; square jaw, neat hair. He’s wiry and startled, though; he shrinks back at the sight of me, his eyes going wide and the blood draining from his face until his skin is almost as pale as hers.
Her eyes… her eyes flash like quicksilver; the pink rising in her cheeks would only be mistaken for embarrassment by a fool. She’s on her feet in a moment, angrily brushing her raven tresses back over her shoulder, incensed that I’ve interrupted her fun. If she’s ashamed of being caught in the act, I can’t tell.
“What are you doing here?” she snarls at me, as if I don’t have the same rights to this house that she does, “You can’t just waltz in and–”
“We’re burned, Lily,” I say in a level tone that changes her demeanor in an instant, “I saw Deneuve sniffing around the university; we have maybe a few hours before he finds this safehouse.”
“Wait, Lily?” asks the young man, his eyebrows drawing together as he turns to look at my sister, “You said your name was Elizabeth?”
I inspect him more thoroughly and note his youth - between eighteen and twenty - his awkward nervousness under my sister’s gaze, the way his eyes linger on her chest when he thinks she isn’t looking. I turn a disappointed frown in Lily’s direction.
“You know Bathory wasn’t a real vampire,” I say in a flat tone, “Bathing in virgin’s blood didn’t make her immortal, and it won’t make you immortal either.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” she snarks back with a roll of her eyes, “I didn’t suddenly buy into the hocus pocus bullshit; it was meant to be a commissioned Red Room livestream, but I guess that’s fucked if we’re burned. At least I don’t have to give refunds.”
“Look, I don’ know wha’s goin’ on,” the young man slurs, struggling to rise from the sofa as the sedatives in the wine begin to take effect, “But I don’ wan’ to get involved in nothin’, so I’m jus’ goin’ go.”
“Yeah, about that…” I say softly as I walk over to the young man, his glassy eyes having trouble following my hands as I pull a roll of duct tape from within my jacket, “You seem like a nice guy and all, and I’m really, truly sorry about this, but our father taught us to never leave loose ends.”
“Wh-whaddaya mean?” he slurs questioningly, his confused mind trying to focus through the fog, “Wha’s he talkin’ ‘bout, ‘Liz’beth?”
“Oh, sweet Darryl; my name’s not really Elizabeth. But if it makes you feel any better, it’s not really Lily either,” the predatory smile spread across her face is at odds with the honeyed tone of her words; were it not for the ice water in my veins, even I might have shivered, “As for what my dear brother means, well… once you walked through that front door, you were never walking out again.”
If her words leave any doubts in his mind, the sound of me peeling a strip of duct tape away from the roll washes them away. He has just enough wherewithal to realize his fate before the sedatives take him. In spite of myself, I smile a little at the tiny flicker of fear in his eyes before he passes out. I take hold of his ankles and begin to bind them together with practiced efficiency while Lily grabs his wrists.
“Help me get him to the basement,” she says excitedly, “I can skip the setup and go right to the–”
“No, Lily,” I say calmly, continuing my work at a steady pace, “We don’t have time for a proper clean up, and we can’t risk being sloppy again; not with Deneuve this close.”
“You already fucked up my livestream,” the heat in her voice could boil water from across the room, “You are not going to take this away from–”
“Lily.”
It’s a single word, but the timbre of my voice, the look in my eye when I glance up at her; I hear her teeth click as her mouth snaps shut. I see her jaw clench as she visibly swallows her anger, takes a deep breath, then meets my gaze. With a neutral expression, she nods for me to continue.
“We’ll take him with us and you can finish once we’re out of the city,” I explain as I move on to taping his knees together, “I know you can’t leave that itch unscratched; I wouldn’t do that to you.”
My words mollify her, and she favors me with a dazzling smile. With Lily’s help, we make short work of trussing our traveling companion, but as I move to gag the young man, Lily’s hand on my wrist stops me. My irritation fades as I see her thoughtful expression, and she nods to herself as though making a decision.
“Hang on a second, I’ll be right back,” my sister declares as she leaves the room, returning a few moments later with her underwear in hand; she stuffs the panties into the unconscious man’s mouth, then motions for me to continue, “I was going to fuck him as he bled out; it seemed too cruel not to give him something before he dies.”
“This is exactly the kind of sloppy I mean, Lily,” I say, gingerly removing the garment from the man’s gaping maw with my thumb and forefinger, “You’re just gift-wrapping evidence for the authorities; if you didn’t have me around–”
“But I do have you around, Nathaniel,” she says sweetly and gives me The Look she’s been pulling since we were kids, “And you always take care of me, like a good brother’s supposed to.”
God damn it.
“Go check the street and pop the trunk of the Cutlass at the end of the driveway,” I change the subject, hefting the young man’s weight across my shoulders and testing my mobility, “I’m gonna need about forty-five seconds to cover the distance carrying this much.”
“You’re lucky I picked a scrawny one this time,” Lily chortles, ruffling the man’s hair as she passes, “I did have my eye on a football player before I settled on poor Darryl here.”
“Stop using his name and go check the street please,” I try to rein in my growing frustration, “You know I don’t like doing this as it is; I don’t need you humanizing your toys and making it harder on me.”
“But I like acknowledging their humanity, Nate,” she replies over her shoulder as she saunters toward the front door, “The dopamine rush when the light fades from their eyes is just…”
The mewling sound she makes contains a distinctly sexual note, and inwardly I cringe away in discomfort. A few seconds after she exits, I make my way to the slightly ajar front door and peer out through the crack, awaiting a prearranged signal. I don’t give in to the sensation of time crawling; forcing myself to count each second as it passes. When the moment comes, I move like a guided missile; launching from the doorway and charging down the driveway. The package is secured in the trunk and we’re moving down the road before the front door swings shut.
Later…
The cold night air whipping in through the open window chills the sweat on my brow. The dull ache in my shoulder is back, brought on from overuse; despite the unseasonable weather, the soil had still been frosty and hard to dig through. Might have gone faster if Lily had helped, but she’s not suited to the task, and I had only brought the one trench tool anyway. With Lily’s broken toy disposed of, we’re making our way east for the moment; toward a safehouse in a backwater town on the outskirts of Dayton where we can establish our current identities. Until either Deneuve closes in again, or Lily makes too much of a ruckus.
“You really need to learn to control yourself better, Lily,” I say for what must be the thousandth time, “This isn’t what the old man trained us for; why he left us the safehouses and the IDs.”
“I don’t give two bags of rat shit what daddy dearest wanted,” my sister drawls, the picture of casual relaxation with her seat reclined all the way, bare feet up on the dash, and cannabis cigarette burning away between her lips, “We’re freeeee, Nate, which means I can do whatever the fuck I want!”
“Unless you get sloppy, and get caught,” I remind her levelly, my mind only half on the conversation while I assess potential backgrounds for the Bonhagen siblings, “All it takes is one time, Lily, and you’ll either spend the rest of your life in jail, or wind up who knows where at the hands of whatever vindictive fuck hired Deneuve.”
“Don’t be such a worrywart, Nate,” she says, drawing deeply on her intoxicant; my nose twitches at the scent and I open a rear window as well to draw it away, “I’m careful enough, and I know I can count on you to keep me safe; you won’t let me get locked up.”
A sickening memory rises unbidden; my sister’s dirty, tear-stained face peering at me through steel mesh, her tiny hand reaching out to me as our father drags me away for “lessons”. No. A controlled burn of anger sets the memory ablaze; returns me to the here and now with clarity. My life for hers; that was the first lesson our father ever taught me. I’ve sacrificed too much, suffered too much on her behalf, to ever see my dear sister caged again; I’ll die before I let that happen, but I vow I won’t die easily or alone.
As the long road stretches out, the car becomes a stationary point on a treadmill; stock scenery rolling past on a loop. A billboard flashes past us, and a seed is planted in my mind, growing quickly into an idea; a purpose for these identities as well as a way to put some of my unorthodox skills to use.
“I think, for Lily Bonhagen, you should stop dying your hair,” I tell my sister, the corner of my mouth lifting upward in my approximation of a smile, “And stop wearing contacts. We’ve been keeping to the underground too much the last few years, it’s time to change methods and hide in plain sight.”
“Ooh, ballsy; I like it,” Lily chuckles, then pitches the stub of her joint out the window and sits up, “What are you thinking?”
“Something nobody would ever expect from us,” I say, sparing a quick glance for my sister, “Pro wrestling.”
Her delighted laughter echoes across the open land as we speed down the deserted back road, heading toward our new lives as rookie talent for a fledgling sports promotion; the National Pro Wrestling Association.