Apeshit (15 page)

head into a messy pulp.

The gray man thrashes his arms wildly after his con-

joined twin is decapitated. He slams himself through the

railing of the balcony, and falls over the side, taking Rick

and Desdemona with him. Jason runs over to the edge,

but he doesn’t see anything down there. Just a cracking of

branches as the bodies hit the trees below.

It smells like sour shit inside the cabin as Jason steps

in from the balcony. On the carpeting, Desdemona’s brown

footprints trail across the room. He rubs the smell out of his

nose and goes downstairs to the living room, puts on his ten-

nis shoes, and repositions his penis within his whitey-tight-

ies. He reloads his revolver and puts the rest of the bullets

into a fanny pack that he wraps around his waist. He’s only

got nine bullets left. He prays he doesn’t need any more

of them. He opens a bottle of Johnny Walker Red that he

planned to save for the last night and takes a swig. It burns

nicely. Then he exits the cabin and enters the woods.

Jason is going to prove to his father and to himself

that he isn’t afraid of anything. He is going to climb down

the cliff and make sure that creature is dead. If it somehow

survived, he’s going to find another way to kill it.

He’s not sure if Crystal and Kevin are going to make

it to the hospital in time to save Stephanie or not, but he

hopes they stay there for the rest of the night. He’s not sure

if he’ll be able to save them if they come back too early.

Crystal is outside of the van, guiding Kevin down the

hill towards the cliff. They can’t see very well in the dark, so

they are going one inch at a time, trying to do it as safely as

possible. It has taken them a long time just getting as far as

they have. The flat tire doesn’t move very well on the rough

terrain. Kevin offered to hike down the hill by himself to

call for help, because he thinks that would be quicker, but

Crystal believes it’ll be easier for the paramedics if they can

get Stephanie as close to the highway as possible.

The edge of the cliff is not clearly visible. The van’s

headlights are so blinding and casting so many shadows, that

Crystal is finding it difficult to approximate the distance they

have before the path ends at a drop-off. Just moments before,

the full moon was bright enough for them to see perfectly,

but just when they needed the extra light clouds moved in

and blocked out the moon.

“Keep going,” Crystal says.

Kevin follows her directions, rolling down the hill

and hitting the break every few inches.

Stephanie moans loudly from inside the van. She’s

beginning to regain consciousness and babbling in an alien

language. Crystal tries to block the moans from her thoughts.

It’s going to be twice as difficult if Steph wakes up and they

have to keep her calm all they way down the mountain. But,

then again, she might live longer if she’s awake.

Crystal knows that Stephanie is pregnant. She spot-

ted the signs earlier in the week. She could tell by the way

Stephanie’s been acting and the way she’s been feeling. She

knew Steph wasn’t sleeping with anyone, so she doesn’t

know who the father is. She was worried that it might be

Jason. The way he always shunned her, it seemed like Jason

didn’t want Stephanie around because he felt guilty about

something. He wasn’t the faithful type. And the way Steph

was always the first person to arrive at Jason’s house when-

ever he threw a party, it was as if she had a crush on him.

But now, after all that has happened, Crystal is starting to put

the pieces together. She is beginning to suspect that it wasn’t

Jason who impregnated Stephanie, but somebody closer to

home.

She hasn’t told anybody about it yet, but Crystal is

also pregnant. Her plan was to tell Jason about it later on in

the weekend, but she might just wait until next week when

they’re back home. She got pregnant on purpose. After

she masturbated with Jason one time, while he was in the

bathroom, she collected his sperm from the paper towel he

masturbated into and put it inside of her with a long cotton

swab. Of course, Crystal has no plans of having a child. She

wanted to get pregnant so that she could finally fulfill her

ultimate sexual fantasy. She wants to have an abortion.

It would have been perfect. She would have told Ja-

son all about it and then they would have masturbated to-

gether, imagining how wonderful it’s going to be to abort

their own baby for real. She’s never done this before be-

cause she was always worried that the process would turn

out to be not as sensual and erotic as she imagined, that her

fantasy would be ruined by reality, but she had become so

obsessed with this fetish that she can’t wait any longer. She

has to try it out for real.

As she waves Kevin closer to the edge of the cliff,

Crystal feels her belly and tries to imagine the size of the

creature inside of her. She can’t feel anything yet. It’s still

too small. She can’t wait until it grows bigger. She wants to

wait until the last possible moment before getting an abor-

tion, so that it will be as developed as possible. She wants

to be able to sense another being inside of her before it hap-

pens.

She is too busy feeling herself to notice Stephanie

sitting up from the backseat behind Kevin.

Jason walks through the woods, holding his gun like

an ice-cream cone. He is following the cliff, looking for a

way down. The wind chills his bare back. Now that the

moon is covered by clouds, he can hardly see a thing in front

of him. He’s beginning to wish he would have been better

prepared for this excursion into the forest. He wishes he had

brought a coat and a flashlight.

He tells himself,
don’t be afraid of the dark. A flash-

light only attracts the enemy. The cold keeps you alert.

Tricking himself into believing this only helps a little.

He can’t help but feel crippled by the dark and the cold.

Once the lights of the cabin are completely out of

his view and the darkness is at its thickest, he finds his way

down: a rope ladder. He touches it to make sure he’s not

mistaking the ropes for something else in the shadows. It’s

real. He smiles. He was hoping that it would still be there.

When he was younger, his dad and uncle hooked up this rope

ladder so that they could get down to the river in five min-

utes rather than taking the forty minute hike down the hill.

Jason’s mother never let him or his brother use the ladder

because she thought it was too dangerous, so this is his first

time giving it a shot. It is also the first time anyone has ever

tried to climb it in the dark.

The ladder is tied to a large tree. Jason pulls hard on

the ropes to make sure they are still sturdy. He’s not sure if

the ladder has been used at all since he was a kid. He pulls

again, this time putting all of his weight on the ropes. It

seems fine. As strong as ever.

Peering off the edge and taking deep breaths, he tells

himself
no fear, no fear
, over and over again. It is a lot

darker and a lot farther down than he thought it was going to

be. He puts his gun into his fanny pack and zips it up. Then

he gets down on his hands and knees. He holds onto a rope

with both hands and leans his legs over the cliff until they

catch onto a rung. Then he lowers his weight onto his feet.

He doesn’t look down as he descends the ladder. He just

focuses on each rung, taking them one at a time, pretending

that it’s no big deal.

I’m just as good as you
, he says in his head.
I’m just

as fearless as you.

Living completely without fear is the most important

lesson that Jason’s dad wants to teach him before he dies.

He thinks Jason must be fearless in order to succeed in this

world. After high school, he wants Jason to join the military.

Not because he thinks the military is the best thing for him,

but because he knows Jason is afraid of joining the military.

Jason is afraid he might have to go fight a war for a cause he

could care less about.

It’s like the time his dad called the cops on him for

stealing and crashing the neighbor’s car when he was four-

teen years old, getting him put in Juvenile Hall for 30 days.

He did this because he overheard Jason and a friend talking

about prison life while watching an episode of OZ on HBO.

Jason didn’t even tell his friend that he was scared of the

idea; he just said that he couldn’t handle going to prison.

This was enough for Jason’s dad to think his son was too soft

and needed to be toughened up.

It wasn’t until two years later that Jason’s dad told

him that he was actually the one who stole the neighbor’s

car and that he did it to teach him a lesson. Jason was

pissed at the time and wouldn’t speak to his dad for weeks

after that, but he eventually forgave him. Looking back on

it, Jason is happy to have had the experience. It had made

him a stronger person, even though he fell far behind in

school because of it.

Jason thinks of nothing but his father as he climbs

dozens of feet down the ladder. Once he is at level with the

tops of the trees, he realizes that the rope doesn’t reach all

the way to the ground. He climbs as far down as he can until

he gets to the end of the rope, but he’s still about twenty feet

off of the ground.

It is a consolation to him that the clouds are moving

away from the moon, so at least he has some of his sight

back. He looks down and sees the rest of the rope in the dirt.

It must have broke a long time ago, while somebody else