Dark Places

wait around for the life insurance.”
    “Well, of course we can’t leave tonight. Now we need to stay, it would look suspicious if you left. But you see what a gift this is— people are going to forget all about the Krissi Cates bullshit, because you’re the victim now. People will want to be good to you. I’ll try to hide this,” she fingered her belly, “for another month, somehow. I’ll wear a coat all the time or something. And then we get the money, and we fucking fly. Free. You’ll never have to eat shit again.”
    “What about Michelle?”
    “I got her diary,” Diondra said, showing him the new journal with the Minnie Mouse cover. “We’re cool.”
    “But what do we say about Michelle?”
    “You say the crazy man did it, like the rest. Like Libby too.”
    “But what about—”
    “And Ben, you can never say that you know me, not til we leave. I can’t be linked to this in anyway. Do you understand? You want me to give birth to our baby in prison, you know what happens then, it goes into foster care, you will never see it again. You want that for your baby, for the mother of your child? You still have a chance to be a big boy here, be a man. Now go get me Libby.”
    He took the big utility flashlight and went out into the cold calling Libby’s name. She was a quick kid, a good runner, she could have made it all the way down their road and toward the highway by now. Or she could be hiding in her usual place down by the pond. He crunched through the snow, wondering if this was all a bad trip. He’d go back to the house and it would be just like it was earlier, when heheard the snick of the lock and everything was normal, everyone asleep, a regular night.
    Then he saw Diondra crouched on top of Michelle like some giant predator bird, them both shaking in the dark, and he knew nothing was going to be OK and he also knew he wasn’t going to bring Libby back to the house. He brushed his flashlight over the tops of the reeds and saw a flash of her red hair amidst the bland yellow and he yelled, “Libby, stay where you are, sweetheart!” and turned and ran back to the house.
    Diondra was chopping the walls, chopping the couch, screaming with her teeth bared. She’d smeared the walls with blood, she’d written things. She’d tracked blood in her men’s shoes all over, she’d eaten Rice Krispies in the kitchen and left trails of food behind her, and she was leaving fingerprints everywhere, and she kept yelling, “Make it look good, make it look real good,” but Ben knew what it was, it was the bloodlust, the same feeling he got, that flare of rage and power that made you feel so strong.
    He cleaned up the footprints pretty good, he thought, although it was hard to tell which were Diondra’s and which were the man’s— who the fuck was the man? He wiped everything she’d touched—the lightswitches, the axe, the counters, everything in his room, Diondra appearing in the doorway, telling him, “I wiped down Michelle’s neck,” Ben trying not to think, don’t think. He left the words on the walls, didn’t know how to fix that. She’d gotten at his mother with the axe, his mom had strange new gashes, deep, and he wondered how he could be so calm, and when his bones would melt and he’d collapse, and he told himself to pull it fucking together,
be a fucking man, do it be a man do what needs to be done be a man,
and he ushered Diondra out of the house and the whole place already smelled like earth and death. When he closed his eyes he saw a red sun and he thought again,
Annihilation
.

Libby Day
NOW
    I was going to lose toes again. I sat outside a closed gas station for almost an hour, rubbing my ringing feet, waiting for Lyle. Every time a car went by I ducked behind the building in case it was Crystal and Diondra, out searching for me. If they found me now, I couldn’t run. They’d have me and it’d be done. I’d wanted to die for years, but not lately and definitely not by those bitches.
    I had called Lyle collect from a phone outside the gas station I was sure wouldn’t work, and he’d started the conversation before the operator even got off the line:
Did you hear? Did you hear?
I did not hear. I don’t want to hear. Just come get me. I hung up before he started in with his questions.
    “What happened?” Lyle said, when he finally pulled up, me in full bone-chatter, the air frosted. I threw myself in the car, my arms in a mummy wrap from the cold.
    “Diondra’s