Slippin' into Darkness

8:13 P.M.

Amy kicked the balled-up cheeseburger wrapper. It ricocheted off of April’s foot and spun away at a weird angle.

“Hey, nifty shot,” Amy said. “Not bad for a corpse. Score’s only ninety-seven to one, now.”

Amy didn’t retrieve the wrapper. She was tired of kicking it. Instead, she sank into the La-Z-Boy. The cool leather smelled like Steve Austin, and his undeniably male scent stirred primitive feelings of safety and protection in Amy. That was too weird, considering that Austin-the owner of glands that produced the manful odor of hearth and home-had locked her in his basement.

False imprisonment was what most people called it.

So here she was, snuggled up in the big guy’s favorite chair, just like Goldilocks in the bears’ house. Wondering what was going to happen when Papa Bear came home. She leaned back, reclining comfortably, and found that the end table was now within reach. On it sat the Halcion bottle, the bottle of Jack Daniel’s, a glass, and an ice bucket.

Why the hell not?

She grabbed the glass. It was fairly clean. She scooped some cubes from the ice bucket. They were the little hollow cubes you bought at the grocery store. Ice for midgets, she called it. She tipped the bottle, filled the glass. The first swallow sparked a fire in her empty belly. The second swallow warmed her and she found that she needed to be warm.

The chair creaked as she settled into the soft leather.

She closed her eyes and listened to the fluorescent flight buzz.

She sipped Jack Daniel’s.

Two drinks improved Amy’s demeanor. It was high time that she and April had a little talk.

“Y’know,” Amy said, imagining what she looked like wearing a cheerleader’s outfit and holding a glass of whiskey in her hand, “you never did this kind of thing when you were a good girl.”

April didn’t reply. Her face remained slack, her closed eyes puffy, as with sleep.

“I’ll bet there were lots of things you never did back then,” Amy continued. “But, on the other hand, I’ll bet you ended up doing lots of things that you never imagined you’d do.”

Amy smirked at that last dig and took another sip of whiskey. That’s telling her, she thought. That’ll hit her where it hurts. But then the voice inside her added. But you did lots of things you never imagined you’d do, too. You played all those little get-ahead games you thought you’d never play. You always thought that you were different, better, but you weren’t different. Not really. Maybe a little smarter Maybe a little tougher. But nobody ever took you on. Nobody ever came at you when you weren’t expecting it and tried to break you into little pieces. Not until tonight. Not until you met up with Doug Douglas and his sidekick, Miss Mortuary Science of 1994. So we don’t know how tough you really are, do we?

“I’m sure,” Amy said aloud. “Give me a break!” She stared at the stupid little sliver of lettuce stuck between Doug’s teeth and buried her laughter. “I’ve been in a basement with Doug before. I guess he told you about that. If you’ll remember, I ended up calling the shots back then. I’ll end up calling them this time, too. Just you watch.” She sat up in the chair. “You have to learn to fight if you want to survive. You don’t just give in and let someone beat you. You don’t curl up in some trailer park somewhere and kill yourself with drugs.”

No, the voice inside her said. You take your club membership seriously. You count every fucking calorie and you worry about every little wrinkle. You worry about skin cancer so you stay out of the sun. You mummify yourself without even recognizing-

“Okay, I worry. But it’s a matter of pride. I care about myself. That’s what it is.”

Is it?

“Sure it is. Believe me, April, insecurity isn’t my problem.” The words seemed to hang in the air, and it was as if Amy could see them floating before her eyes. She set the glass aside. Okay. That was enough. When you start talking to yourself, when you hear corpses arguing with you in your head… Okay. That’s enough.

Amy tipped the bottle. Whiskey spattered over the cement floor. She rose and kept her balance very nicely, considering the drinks sloshing in her very empty stomach. She dropped the empty bottle onto the chair.

“Maybe you had me figured out,” she said. “Maybe you wanted to hurt me because you found out that I’d hurt you. Hell, maybe you even planned this crazy reunion. I know you were pushing Doug’s buttons, and it looks like you were pushing Ozzy Austin’s, too. Making me come here dressed like this…that was for him, wasn’t it? Did you want to drive him over the edge? Did you want to give him what he really wanted? Or did you just want to hurt me?” She shook her head; she’d never know the answers to those questions, not with Doug and April dead. “But I’ll tell you one thing: whatever happens, I’ll make it through. Whether you planned it or not. You were never as strong as I am. I mean, just look at us. I’m a survivor. You’re a corpse, and I hope you rot in hell.”

Amy rammed the door with her shoulder, then stepped back and kicked it several times. Nothing. No good.

Damn. Tears welled in her eyes, but she didn’t want to cry in front of April. Christ, that was so stupid. “Let me tell you something, April,” she said. “There was a time when I really wanted to be you. I would have given anything. But I don’t want to trade places now, and it’s not going to happen, no matter what your fucking books say.”

Amy raised the hem of the cheerleading sweater to her shoulders. The toilet paper stuffed in April Destino’s bra chafed her nipples as her palms passed over them. An invisible wave of cold raised gooseflesh on her bare skin. She held the wool hem just under her nose, smelling her own scent and the lingering ghost of April Destino’s favorite perfume. Both scents mixed together in the sweater.

Amy’s grip tightened on the hem. “I wanted to be you,” she whispered.

At first, she had been nothing. Just another high school nobody. And Amy couldn’t understand that, because April Destino was somebody, and they looked so much alike. They were both pretty. They were both smart, though Amy didn’t like to admit that April had a brain. But April was somebody, and Amy was nothing.

Until April’s rape. After that. Amy became somebody. She found something in herself, something rooted deep within her, and she nurtured it, and it made her somebody. She found it in Todd Gould’s basement. April wasn’t the only one who had her share of spiked punch at Todd’s party. Amy got drunk, too. She and Doug were the first to make use of the basement. They found some old blankets down there. Amy took Doug by the hand and led him into the darkness, stumbling through a tangled maze of old furniture until they found a spot between a couple of old desks that was large enough to accommodate the blankets.

But Doug was blitzed. She couldn’t get him interested. She almost cried, because she thought that it was her fault somehow. She kept on trying-kissing him, whispering dirty things in his ear, doing everything she knew-but none of it worked.

Until Doug saw April. Until he saw what the A-Squad did to her. Watching from the shadows, his breaths coming rapid and eager, pushing her away from him. Then, when it was over, he was very interested. He wouldn’t let her go.

He was drunk. Sure, he was drunk. Sweating over her. Leering at her, but not recognizing her. Touching her, but feeling someone else.

Calling her April. Whispering the name in her ear, over and over.

More than anything. Amy hated April for that.

But it freed something in her. Something evil. She never let Doug forget the things he saw in the basement, or what they did to him. When word got out about the A-Squad and April, Doug had a serious attack of conscience and wanted to tell what he’d seen. But Amy didn’t want that to happen. She wasn’t going to allow Doug to forget any more than she was going to furnish April with a knight in shining armor.

Amy promised Doug that if he said one word, she’d tell her story, too.

Doug knew that story. A day wasn’t complete without Amy reminding him what he had done-and not done-in Todd’s basement. He kept quiet.

Amy didn’t get what she wanted, of course. She eventually broke up with Doug. He just wasn’t the guy she wanted anymore. But she knew that she was the winner. Doug was broken, and she wasn’t. Doug fell apart. She went on.

She went through other men the same way. She came out the winner every time. She always showed her men that she was the strong one. Husband number one learned the lesson. Husband number two was going to learn it.

And Ethan. Would she do the same thing to him?

No. She cared about Ethan. She…she loved Ethan.

But would that last? Could she trust him? And even if she did, what if he got tired of her? What if he looked for a younger woman?

No. She had to show him, just like the others. She had to teach him before it was too late. She had to be in control. She had to be the winner.

And then what would she be?

Alone again, naturally.

Suddenly, the pattern was clear. Here she was, locked in another basement with Doug and April, only now she was wondering if she really wanted to be the person she had become eighteen years ago. She held April’s sweater at her shoulders and she wondered who she would be if she took it off, wondered if her hard core would shatter without it.

April was dead and had no answers for her. Still, Amy couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Did you know? Did you understand?”

And then she heard the footsteps.

Upstairs. Then descending, entering the garage.

Papa Bear was home. Amy lowered the sweater. Smoothed it. She grabbed the empty Jack Daniel’s bottle, imagining the sound it would make as she broke it against the wall, visualizing a spray of blood geysering from Steve Austin’s face as she slashed him with the jagged edges.

She waited for the sound of a key sliding into a lock.

Something hard hit the door, and it exploded inward, and a man came tumbling after it. Amy broke the bottle and lunged. And Bat Bautista’s eyes widened in terror.