20 Weeks – Chapter 5 (Part 2)

20 Weeks – Chapter 5 (Part 2)
 
 
“Did you ever find out what was wrong?”
 
“With what?”
 
“With your sister, dumbass,” Cory told the guy he’d always treated as a best friend, though he never returned his efforts.
 
“You know… Bijuu?  Did she call you back?” he asked, as the two of them stood in Cory’s very dirty kitchen, half-yelling over the noise emanating from the on-going party in the adjoining room.
 
“Nah, man, what does it matter anyway?” Chad asked in a patronizing growl, of the small Asian boy who played every instrument as flawlessly as if he’d been programmed to do it.
 
“Dude,” Cory said, his round eyes wide in a sad, but unsurprised, disbelief.
 
At that same moment across town, Bijuu was watching her would-be-savior dump her boss’ dead body (which was wrapped in a rug from the bar) into the back of her Jeep, so that it was was draped over the backseat.
 
“Thanks! She told him, as she hopped into the driver’s seat.
 
But Ben just rolled his eyes and opened the passenger-side door.
 
“It’s okay, I’ve got it from here,” she told him with a fake smile, as he climbed in.
 
Smiling, the boy calmly replied, “So, you’re gonna drag him outta the Jeep and into the woods, dig a hole and throw him in.  All by yourself?”
 
To which the dark-haired girl, with the hard to place ethnicity, just nodded vehemently.
 
Which immediately caused Ben to burst out laughing.
 
“I said I’d help, so drive.  Now.  Before somebody catches sight of us, for fuck’s sake,” the boy said after just a second’s worth of unrestrained mirth.
 
“Okay, but I have to go home first,” she told him, with a wince.
 
“Why?”
 
“Cuz I don’t have a shovel, do you?”
 
“You know, I just never seem to have a shovel when I need one,” Ben remarked dryly, as he turned to fasten the corpse to the backseat.
 
And just a few minutes later they were pulling into her Austin, Texas neighborhood, which was sporadically decorated in Halloween lights for the upcoming holiday.
 
“Stay here,” she told the tall boy with the wide grin, as she pulled into the driveway.
 
“Not a problem,” he replied.
 
But a second later, before Bijuu had even taken two steps, Nyx materialized out of nowhere.
 
“You don’t have to do this,” her murdered teenage ghost informed her, with her gossamer-fine arms folded defiantly over her chest.
 
“Yes, I do,” she told her ghost.  To which Ben raised a quizzical brow at ‘em both.
 
But Bijuu had already set her mind to the task ahead of her, and quite frankly, they both knew there’d be no way now - to deter her. 
 
However, Nyx never once thought guaranteed failure was a good enough reason not to at least make the attempt.
 
And so, she floated up the side of the driveway alongside her corporeal charge. 
 
But the dark hadn’t discouraged all of the party-goers from this side of the house, as some were clearly looking for privacy.  Like the two boys making out in a dark corner of the house.  
 
“Shit, sorry,” Bijuu told them after she ran straight into them.  But they both just stood there and stared at her, as if she’d suddenly sprouted horns.
 
But Bijuu didn’t give them a second glance, because a moment later she rounded the corner of her house to emerge out onto the back patio.  
 
And suddenly all Bijuu could see were the two young men sitting on the other side of the closed patio door.
 
“Don’t look,” Nyx said at her side.
 
“Don’t look,” Bijuu repeated out loud, though staring was the only thing she suddenly seemed able to do.
 
“There’s nothing you can do now,” Nyx told her, because that’s the way it is with trauma.
 
And suddenly Bijuu wasn’t there anymore.  Suddenly the sixteen-year-old was back in her room, back in a nightmare she only barely remembered.  If remember was even the word for it at all.
 
“Let’s go.  The shovel is in the shed,” her ghost said, and then she made a futile attempt to tug at the girl’s sleeve.
 
“In the shed,” Bijuu parroted back mechanically.  Because she wasn’t really listening to anything her ghost was saying.  Instead, she was looking at the crowd of people who were standing nearby, how all of their faces were transfixed, blankly moving back and forth between her and the two young men inside.
 
“They know?” Bijuu asked, in the tiniest voice.
 
“Yes,” her ghost answered truthfully.
 
“How?” Bijuu asked in awe, but only the awful kind.
 
“There's pictures,” her ghost informed her with a grimace.
 
Awareness slowly dawned on the girl then, as each of the ghost’s words sank into the girl’s adrenaline saturated mind.  And for a second, Bijuu nearly collapsed as a giant rush of terribleness threatened to destroy her.
 
Another moment later a huge gasping, grating sound emanated from her lungs, as if she’d been drowning for so long, for eternity really, and finally…. suddenly…
 
she had breached the surface, just long enough to gasp in some precious air.
 
Then, a moment later, her eyes welled with tears, and her throat and lungs burst into flame.
 
And when she spoke again it was in the rough whisper of someone who’s been crying for days. 
 
And as she spoke it was as if speaking alone was an agony beyond anything she’d ever imagined possible.
 
“Pictures?  When?”
 
“Bijuu…” Nyx began, cautioningly.
 
“When?” Bijuu asked again, but this time with a pinprick of fire illuminating the depths of her eyes.
 
“Twenty weeks ago.”
 
Bijuu stared then, at her ghost, as if she could set the woman on fire with just her eyes.
 
But it was no use. 
 
She’d said what she’d said.
 
And as Bijuu watched a line of murmurers reach the two nineteen-year-olds sitting on the sofa inside, as they turned and looked at her, and smiled… Bijuu remembered one thing.
 
“Where are you going?” her ghost asked, as she floated alongside the now swiftly moving teenager.
 
“To my room,” Bijuu informed her ghost, once she’d made it to the trellis she was very-much accustomed to climbing.
 
And a few minutes later she was shoving her laptop screen towards her ever-present friend.
 
“Show me.”
 
“No.”
 
“Show me,” Bijuu repeated, with a look of utter desperation plastered over her normally angelic face.
 
“No, Bijuu.  It can never do any good,” the murder victim with the Rebel Yell T-shirt said.
 
“Once you see that… once those images become part of your identity… it never washes off.”
 
Bijuu looked into her ghost's haunted eyes, and sighed.
 
“But… how?  Why don’t I remember?”
 
“Because you were really drunk that night.”
 
“What night?”
 
“Chad’s party”
 
“Chad’s party.”
 
“You were passed out.  In here.”
 
“And nobody did anything.”
 
“Except protect them,” Nyx clarified, because she too had seen the blunt end of justice, that men like these lived by – up close and real personal like.
 
“Even Chad?” the girl asked of her brother, as she slumped back in her chair.
 
“I don’t think he knows.”
 
 
 
 
 
© Raena Exe 2021
ISBN   978-1-7332979-8-1
 
*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.

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