Apeshit (19 page)

locked in the basement.

Kevin puts his hand in his pants, trying to rub the

crusted blood off the head of his penis as he hikes up the hill

back to the cabin. He had called 911 and they said that for-

est rangers would be there shortly. He asked if they could

send in a rescue chopper, but they said that the forest rangers

will be able to get there sooner. By the tone of her voice,

the operator didn’t sound very optimistic about Stephanie’s

chances. She acted as though she’d never even heard of any-

one surviving a gunshot wound to the head.

“Are you sure she shot herself in the head?” said the

operator in an annoyed voice. She thought Kevin was play-

ing a practical joke.

“Yes.”

“The bullet went into her head?”

“Half her fucking head is gone.”

“Don’t you swear to me.”

“Half her head is gone.”

“And she’s alive?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Okay . . . If you say so, kid.”

It was such a ridiculous experience. He wonders if

he should sue them if Stephanie dies because of their neg-

ligence. He wonders if Stephanie has a chance even if they

weren’t negligent.

Kevin has HIV. He hasn’t told anyone yet. He’s

not sure if he’s ever going to. Des and Rick had no idea

that Kevin cheated on them during most of junior year. He

cheated on them all the time. Kevin really liked having sex

with Des and Rick, at first, because they were the ones who

introduced him to sex. But he actually wasn’t very attracted

to them. He was only with them because he didn’t want to

lose them as friends. Once he started sleeping around, he re-

alized that he liked having sex with other people a lot more.

He got HIV from some hood rat that he fucked when

he was really drunk at a party one time. He was too drunk to

care to wear a condom and the girl was too drunk to realize

that he didn’t use a condom. After they finished, and the girl

noticed he wasn’t wearing protection, she flipped out.

She said, “Why the fuck didn’t you wear a condom?”

He said, “I don’t know.”

She said, “I have HIV.”

He said, “What?”

She said, “You fucked up.”

He said, “Why the fuck would you have sex with me

if you knew you had HIV?”

She said, “I thought you’d wear a condom. Every-

body knows I have HIV.”

Later, he got tested, just to be sure, and the result was

positive.

He didn’t tell Des or Rick that he had contracted the

virus, but he continued to sleep with them. Without protec-

tion. He didn’t want them to know he had HIV or that he

had been cheating on them, because he was worried that they

might not want to be friends with him anymore. So he gave

them HIV. He figured that it would be best if the three of

them had it together.

Once the others find out, he will pretend he has

no idea how they got it. He thinks that since they are in

a threesome relationship, nobody will exactly know who

brought the STD into the group. Desdemona won’t know

if it was Rick or Kevin. Rick won’t know if it was Des-

demona or Kevin. Kevin will pretend he thinks it’s either

Rick or Desdemona. In the end, they will be forced to

forgive and forget. Then they will move on and focus on

living with HIV together.

As Kevin walks up the dirt road in the dark, he won-

ders if he had just given Stephanie HIV when she had his pe-

nis in her brain. He doesn’t like the idea of Stephanie having

to live with both severe brain damage and HIV. He wonders

if it would be better for her if she didn’t survive the night.

Crystal collects a handful of nails and puts them into

her pocket. Then she grabs a hammer with her butcher knife

hand and off the wall takes a couple of boards that were being

used as shelves. She can still hear the banging of the base-

ment door as she goes down the stairway. She has no idea

why the door hasn’t broken yet. That creature looked very

strong and the latch on the door looked pretty weak.

Once she gets downstairs, she finds Desdemona lean-

ing against the basement door with the Theremin to keep the

creature inside.

“Where the hell were you?” Desdemona croaks.

“Where the hell were you?” Crystal responds.

They nail the boards across the door. Then they

break apart the Theremin cabinet and use the wood to secure

the door even further. The creature shrieks on the other side.

It continues to slam and claw at the door.

“Let’s put the couch in front of it,” Desdemona

says.

Crystal agrees.

Desdemona drapes her entrails over the couch as they

carry it to the basement door. The couch is wide enough that

it takes up most of the width of the hall. They only need to

stuff a few chairs in front of it to keep it locked in place.

“Is that good enough?” Crystal says.

“There’s no way it can get the door open,” Des croaks.

“It’ll have to break the door into pieces in order to get out.”

“We should keep reinforcing it,” Crystal says.

Desdemona agrees.

Crystal runs outside to grab the front door out of the

dirt. She thinks nailing the door across the basement door

will be enough to do the trick. Before she gets the door

inside, a figure staggers out of the woods towards her. She

drops the door and holds up her butcher knife and the ham-

mer.

“Crystal . . .” says the figure.

She recognizes Jason’s voice. He steps into the light.

His half-naked body is covered in dirt and large bloody gashes.

“What happened?” Crystal says, rushing into the

woods to great him.

She helps him limp into the cabin. His knee has

swollen to the size of a baseball from moving around on it

so much after the dislocation, so he can hardly walk on it

anymore.

Jason is completely exhausted. Between heavy

breaths he says, “The thing won’t die. No matter how many

bullets I put in him, he won’t stay dead.”

“Where is it?” Crystal says. “Are there more of

them?”

“Behind me,” he says. “It’s following me.”

Crystal looks into the woods, but doesn’t see any-

thing.

“It’s been keeping its distance but I think it followed

me all the way back here,” he says. “I don’t think it real-

ized I was out of bullets. If it had I would’ve been dead for

sure.”

“We have one in the basement,” Crystal says. “A dif-

ferent one. A female.”

“There’s more of those things?” Jason asks.

“Des and I are barricading the door so that it can’t

get out.”

“Desdemona’s alive?” he says. “How the fuck is

Desdemona still alive?”

“Stephanie didn’t make it,” Crystal says. “Kevin

went down the mountain to get help.”

Jason helps Crystal nail the loose door over the base-

ment door. The creature bangs and scratches on the other

side. Desdemona stands in the hallway with her guts in her

arms, glaring at Jason.

“You motherfucker,” Desdemona says.

Jason doesn’t look at her as he hammers a nail.

“You should have fucking died out there, you fuck-

ing bitch,” Desdemona says.

Jason turns to meet her glare.

“What the hell’s wrong with you?” he says.

“What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you?”

Desdemona flicks intestinal juice at him.

“What’s your problem?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know, asshole.”

“What are you talking about, Des?” Crystal says.

Desdemona spits blood at the wall. Then she says,

“For starters, he left me hanging off of the balcony. I had to

climb my own guts to get back up.”

Jason wipes the blood from his face.

“Is that true?” Crystal asks.

“And he shot Rick,” Desdemona says.

“What?” Crystal cries.

Jason keeps hammering as he speaks. “You’re fuck-

ing crazy. I never shot Rick. And I’m sorry if I left you

hanging from the balcony. I didn’t see you.”

“Sure you didn’t fucking see me,” Desdemona says.

“Just as you didn’t see your bullet going into Rick’s chest.”

Jason finishes hammering the door and turns to her.

“What do you want from me? An apology or something?

Rick would have died whether I shot him or not. You were

going to survive whether I helped you or not. What’s the big

fucking deal here? You should be happy you’re even alive

after all the shit that’s happened to you.”