I wipe my face with my sleeve as he leads me around the building’s edge.
Brennan is supine upon the pavement, faceup. His zebra-print pack peeks from over his shoulder. I don’t see any blood, but between his red sweatshirt and dark skin, my eyesight could easily smooth away a wound. I pull away from Cliff. Kneeling, I place a hand on Brennan’s chest, feel that he’s still solid, still breathing. Which—of course he is. He’s just pretending. I know how this scene works; he’s going to open his eyes at the most dramatic moment. All I need to do is create that moment.
I see a glimmer of orange and silver under the window.
Harry prods Brennan in the leg with his foot. “He wouldn’t stop,” he says. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
“I’m not going anywhere without him,” I say.
Cliff nods at Harry, who tucks his machete into a loop on his belt and hefts Brennan over his shoulder.
“He’s heavy for such a skinny son of a bitch,” says Harry.
I leap away from Cliff and snatch the rusty pipe under the window. Before either man can react, I smash Harry’s left knee. I half expect the pipe to fold like foam, but the contact is solid, rumbling through my arms and shoulders. Harry screams and drops, letting go of Brennan, who against my expectation does nothing to soften his own fall. He’s deadweight.
“Shit,” I say.
Harry yanks the machete out of its loop and I swat it with the pipe. The blade clatters across the pavement. I think I hear Brennan groan, but I’m not sure, and then Cliff is barreling toward me. I jump away—too late. His arms catch my waist and pull me down. I lose the pipe as my chin smacks the pavement; my teeth clatter, my vision sparks. Dizzily, I feel myself pulled around so my back’s to the ground, my pack lumpy beneath me. My vision’s swimming, but I see Cliff above me, scowling. My arms and legs are pinned. His forearm is pressed to my chest, my throat, holding me down.
I could have run, before. Without Brennan. I should have. Why didn’t I?
Cliff is snarling meaningless threats. He’s going to do this to me, and that. Pain stacked upon indignity. His lips move with fascinating slowness among the bloodied blond hairs of his beard. Everything else happened quickly, but this moment takes its time. I realize that he will kill me. Everyone has a breaking point, and I found this man’s. I see this in his too-close eyes. Hazel. A color, a name I circled in a book a lifetime ago, joking about dressing up a daughter for Halloween; baby’s first pun. I want to fight, but my muscles are unresponsive. Like half-waking from a dream, I’m aware of my surroundings, I can see, I can understand, but I can’t move. Maybe the fall paralyzed me. Maybe the best thing is for me to end, here, now.
I shift my line of sight. I don’t want this angry stranger to be the last thing I see. I look toward the scraggy trees behind the dumpster where I first found the pipe. My vision makes it easy to pretend the sight is beautiful. I blink, my lids sliding so slowly, so thickly, that they’re all I can feel. And then I make a wish. I wish for the producer to come running from those scraggy trees, sprinting toward us. Or Cooper, or Emery, or Wallaby, or even one of the busy-bee interns. Anyone, as long as he’s real and yelling for Cliff to stop. This is my wish, and like all wishes worth making I know it’s impossible.
This isn’t part of the show.
None of this is part of the show.
Nothing has been part of the show for a long time.
Something within me releases, an almost pleasant untightening; I don’t have to explain anymore. I’ve fought. I’ve fought and struggled and strived—and I failed. There’s peace in this, in doing all I could have possibly done; in failing without being at fault.
At least I didn’t quit.
A wet sound, a grunt. My eyes flick unwillingly to Cliff. Twin hazel abysses staring through me. I feel him atop me, but the weight is different now—gravity is the only force at play. Cliff’s mouth is moving, gasping. And then he collapses, his chin smacking my forehead. His bloodied beard covers my eyes. I should probably be screaming, but all I feel is confused. I don’t understand how he is dead instead of me.
A ruse, I think. The show, it’s all part of—
The distance and pain in Cliff’s hazel eyes could never be faked.
But my glasses are broken and I—
You saw.
I close my eyes. I feel coarse hair against my lids, I feel him crushing me. I see Brennan falling to the ground, limp. I feel the pipe hitting Harry’s knee, the crunch. A vise settles around my heart, my throat, as implication rushes me, and I squeeze my eyes tighter because it’s all I can do, but it’s not enough, nothing is enough, I know.
I’m alive, and the world is exactly as it seems.
I can’t breathe. I don’t want to breathe. I have to breathe.
Since when? When did it all change?
Above me, Brennan grunts as he tries to drag Cliff off me. He calls what he thinks is my name. The dead man’s chin slides off my face and thunks against pavement.
A prop, I think, desperate, but I’m trapped beneath something far heavier than the man on my chest.
“Mae!” I hear. “Mae, are you okay?”
The boulder was Styrofoam.
The blood was artificial.
The cabin was blue.
Was it?
The cabin was blue, it was. So much blue, balloons and blankets and gift wrap. The light was blue, everything was blue.
The inside of my eyelids are sparking. I see red light around the edges.
The curtains were red.
An orange vase on the table; I put kindling in it.
My eyes can’t close tightly enough. I see brown paint, red trim.
I killed him.
A coughing, crying baby trapped in its dead mother’s arms. A house that wasn’t as blue as I want to remember. I saw him and I panicked. I ran. I left him to die.
“Mae,” a distant voice right in my ear.
I didn’t know. How could I have known?
“Mae, are you okay?”
An endless forever. Mottled pink cheeks, crusty eyes, a divot on the skull pulsing lightly. It wasn’t static in the cries, it was need. I let the blanket fall and told myself that it was all a lie, but the only lie was mine. I knew.
“Mae!”
I open my eyes. Brennan’s face is inches from mine, and I feel his hand touching my shoulder. I look past him and see the machete jutting from Cliff’s lower back. My back is cold. I’m lying in a pool of the dead man’s rapidly cooling blood.
“I killed him,” I say. My voice is a sob, but I don’t feel tears. I feel the cold blood against my back, the dryness of my mouth, the throbbing in my forehead. The warmth and pressure of Brennan’s hand. I look back to Brennan’s face. It’s gaunt, but not long. His cheeks want to be round. Not even the promise of stubble on them yet. This isn’t a teenager’s face, it’s a child’s; he’s a child. A child who saved my life by plunging a foot-long blade into a grown man’s back.
“Can you move?” he asks.
How did I not see how young he was?
“Mae! Can you move?”
I’m nauseated and mired in sorrow and my muscles are stiff and resisting, but I find that I can control them. I nod. Brennan helps me up. My clothes are sticky, drenched in blood. I smell it, fresh death.
I hear a soft cry, a groan so pitiful, and that’s when I notice Cliff’s fingers are twitching. The man with the machete jutting from his spine isn’t dead. A whiff of shit reaches my nose. It’s not death I’m smelling but dying.
Brennan’s hand is on my arm. He’s shaking; we both are, I think.
A scraping sound from behind us. I pivot unsteadily, taking Brennan with me.
Harry is crawling toward us, dragging the leg I smashed. I feel a coyote’s skull caving and I nearly fall, but the boy is there and I keep my feet.
Brennan, softly: “We’ve gotta get out of here, Mae.”
Harry’s voice is a rumble of threat and grief, and at our feet Cliff’s groan is getting louder and his head is moving, rolling back and forth. He’s a feral dog, maimed in a misfired trap. He’s a coyote and I’m still swinging.