Until Death Does us

The liquor flowing through the basement of the Davis house was cheap, lukewarm and flat. The air was stiffling when it was being siphoned by as many soon-to-be Juniors as could fit, the rest trickling out onto the lawn and even into the pool, dressed and sated. There was a low haze over everything, making the LED's and flickering light show that was flash photography dull. Tori took a shallow breath, the haze that was really bong smoke and steam from the overworking tower fan stuffed in the corner suffocating just the bit.

Tori's eyes rolled to the sides, looking to where her little group stood. Xavier, the host, stood animatedly explaining something that definitely did not happen (if the acting of a sword slashing was anything to go by to) to Alison, who watched him with a quiet fondness from years of knowing each other, Alison's sister Amy downing a cup of beer until the imaginary hilt of the sword (an overexcited swing of the hands) hit Xavier in the balls and he keeled over, a fountain of liquor spilling from her grinning mouth. But as always-- like there was some kind of tether in the back of her mind, she was drawn to Faith.

Faith-- all confidence in her gait, sat flocked by more juniors than Tori thought were in their year. She had a knee over the armrest of the beat up leather lounge chair, her leg bent to kick nearly below the belt of a luckily quick reflexed guy, the other spread in a way she'd heard people ruminating as butch. Never to her face. God, no.

Faith is.. an enigma. She had only joined the school that previous year-- deciding to sit at Tori's table without a word one morning, stealing the pancakes she had been looking so forward to. Faith often did little meaningless things without preemptive thought, that tended to hit like a lash toward her victim. Like insult Xavier's glasses, which were circle rimmed and thick prescription that made him look buggy. Or prod at Alison, for looking too much like a dyke when she'd cut her hair too short. Or push, and pull, with all the causticness that just left pale skin charred with the constant ribbing. She couldnt quite remember evrytime Faith hurt her-- with words or actions. But she did remember the lingering pain, between her ribs that shed love to take her fingers to and dig out. Flay Faith out. But then,

Faith could be sweet. She had been there when Xavier's dad took off-- teaching him wordlessly how to fix a tire, and to shave the late growth patching his face. She'd saved Alison from ridicule when she'd fallen at the ankle of one of the cheerleaders, and subsequently broke that same ankle and any want to humiliate the bookworm again. And with Tori ...

Well, Faith was something she couldn't describe. A piece that didn't fit into the puzzle because it was from a completely different image. The cold, guarded Faith wasn't a danger under the guise of midnight star gazing with grass at their heels. That Faith-- Tori's Faith, couldnt manage threats when shed light up with that sunny euphoria while her eyes darkened with – what Tori could only assume would lead to her complete undoing. But it never lasted.

Faith had tons of boyfriends in her brief stint at their school-- always hanging off the lapel of some jock, or found half naked in the drama room atop a theatre techie. She didn't need Tori then, or late night baking sessions with her mom while singing at the tops of their lungs. She didn't need the gentle assurance of her next to her, when she awoke with a panic from long ago that clung to the film of her mind.

But now, Faith was offering a glimpse of that Faith. Her Faith, in a curious little half smile-- because Tori had been caught staring. The curiosity morphed to amusement.

Tori breathes in shakily, the smell of whatever was fermenting in the plastic cup making her stomach twist. Or, maybe it was just Faith's fingers-- puppeteering her with a come hither motion she was helpless to obey. Her feet shuffled across the sticky concrete until she was awkwardly stood in front of Faith like a queen on her throne. But Faith was soft tonight-- offering her hand. Tori weaves through the crowd, her eyebrows inexplicably drawn.

(It feels horribly like she's forgotten something important.)

Their fingers twine like all these threads that leads Tori to splitting in half for this girl, just so she might sew her together and linger as apart of her. She clears her throat.

"Hi."

Faith nods in greeting. "You alright? you're red."

"Alcohol, and all that." Is her lame reply. Faith glances down at the untouched cup shed given her when they'd walked in, eyebrows raised. She reaches out for the cup, to drink it maybe, but just rests it against her thigh and the armrest.

Tori clears her throat again until it's raw. "So... you seem to have quite the fan club."

Faith rolls her head back and forth, soft, glimmering, dark eyes blinking up at Tori. She takes the sip to bite back the burn of Faith's attention

"Please. They're all just a means to an end."

"Am I?" She can't help but ask. The haze is phantom hands around her lungs, now.

Something clatters by, someone, Reid-- a boy from chemistry with mousy curls and a boyish grin with a football and apologetic smile in tow as he sidesteps the mess of empty cups he'd crashed into.

Faith glowers, and he simpers off.

Faith doesnt answer, her teeth digging into he bottom lip, eyes casted off to the game of beer pong going on. Tori tugs on their joined hands. "Faith?"

Faith snaps out of whatever hold she's found herself in, turning that gaze-- that Faith gaze onto her thats one part regret and one part rage. Her smile isn't calming in the slightest. "Come on! We should all take a drink together. Take this private."

"Faith--" But Faith is strong, way stronger than she's ever been with Tori as she drags her along to the little group of friends, sobering up from Xavier's one man show. She mutters something about shots, celebration.

It feels like walking to the gallows, with Faiths set jaw like the desensitized guard that carries the remaining moments of mortality to the big, bold numbers at the end of the timer.

All five of them slip into Xavier's room-- a mess of clothes that Alison immediately sets out to fix only for Faith to clamp a hand too harshly on her shoulder, making the other girl reel back with frightened eyes.

Faith smiles, again, softer but still with every bit ratus ratus that she's shown to many prey.

Tori starts glancing around for any kind of metal pipe Xavier might keep handy to stop those teeth from sinking into any of them.

But Faith sweeps about, in her own search. She finds her weaponry-- four crystal glasses, rimmed with frost from... where, the never used laundry hamper? Tori doesnt question the how, she just watches each of her friends take a chilled glass and waits for her own. But it never comes.

Faith offers her... the cup shed taken from her hand. Still lukewarm, and untampered with. Tori raises an eyebrow. "Where's mine?"

Something feels different suddenly, like when the air grows still and humid before a thunderstorm.

"I have something special for you." It should be spoken with delight-- but it's more manic. Tori looks away from those eyes-- dark and blown and its--

"Now! I have a speech to make!" Faith makes another stop by the bed, pulling out a cooler bag with ice (oh) and a bottle of something without a label but sparkling rose gold. She doesnt cock it yet, giddily stepping over the stray childhood bear Beary to finish the formation of their group. The missing link, so it'd be. Her thumb circles the cork.

Her thumb presses into the divot between the mouth of the bottle and the cork, freeing it. Xavier makes an awkward exclamation, and gives a few pitiful claps but it's just.. it feels off. Tori meets Amy's eyes, wide and unsure, and knows she feels it too. Faith breaks their only line of communication by sweeping the bottle to fill each glass.

She steps back, clearing her throat and her... eyes are clouded.

"And I love you. All of you, so much. I wish I could just.. stay here with you, and the life I made with you, forever. You have all served such an important part in my life." Faith's words are quiet and sincere, and she immediately follows them with a bitter laugh, trying to wash the taste of honesty from her mouth, to clear the air of its sound. "Anyway-- cheers to that!'

And they down them in one. In that same count, Tori wonders if God is real.

Someone had to make the world. Or was it resallly just the colliding of rocks and chemicals, making a point that expanded? How were humans made, beyond skin and bone? What made a personality, feeling? What invoked the urge to build and create. Families, business, trades.

Who led the one individual out of billions-- one specific individual with an instructional manual fixed upon by hundreds others-- to sit at a forge and toil away under hours and hours of they life to form one thing?

(She remembers, now, what she had forgotten. Faith is not fact.)

The fact is the blade in her chest, ebony and glinting where the half inch between torn shirt and skin meet the hilt. Her eyes slot down to a bloody point, that expands with the drag of steel.

Did the artist, wielding hot metal into a perfect, buffed point know it would taste blood? That of a teenager, in the bedroom belonging to her friend-- her friend, choking around the liquid in his throat. She can see the two ginger sister's facing the same fate, on their knees, clawing white and pink strips into their throat in case their fingers might dig deep enough to let them breathe.

Tori wants to call out. Scream for them. Beg God, the Devil, things of myth to spare her bright eyed bunch. But she couldnt. Her throat felt hot with the steel that released its carving into her sternum.

There's a thrill in suffocating. It's that moment right before you panic—- where the air is stolen from your lungs and you feel the thrill of mortality in your chest. It burns from the sternum up, until moths fill your stomach in anticipation for a gory snack.

"Wh... Why?" her voice thick and her words slurred, the blood making her throat pool in to her mouth making her tongue heavy and unwieldy.

Faith doesnt smile. Not that scary, half one that looks like it's going to peel away to reveal bone, or the soft one that promises of brushing hands in the grass. Theres nothing. And thats worse.

Tori forces the blood down, this is very wrong. She can see how tightly Faith's jaw is clenched, her hands balled into fists. Firecracker wick sparking dangerously low.

She wants to call out, to reach out-- but her hands had curled around the blade in her chest, clawing at it uselessly because she didn't have the strength to pull it out. She also couldnt decide whether it was best to leave it in or not, for medical reasons.

Faith reaches up, her face obscured by her sleeve as she wipes act her face but for a second-- a heart aching second, Tori can see the tightening of her lips until they're a line, white line. Her fingers are curled into a ball, white and trembling and this...

It's not right.

Faith pulls her knuckles from her eyes, eyes blearily and cheekbones flushed where liquor would kiss-- but it's not. It's Tori's blood, staining the soft skin there.

Faith looks green noticing it, too.

Like a stone thrown in the ocean eroding with each wave just a bit, is her footsteps. Over the bodies, her friends. Useless, hapless drones that have served their purpose and are set to destruct now.

Tori uses what's left of her strength to roll on to her side, her forearms braced but one thrown out to grab Faith's ankle like a trap that tightens the more you try to escape, reaching her hand into the burning ember wick, dipping them into the wax and forcing those eyes-- a maelstrom of emotions that can't settle in the murderous depths. But Tori knows. Its pain.

She opens her mouth to speak, lips blistering pain and seeing the pooling of blood by her forearms then feels it. "What.. did I do?"

Faith blinks, like shed been lambasted.

"You--" She becomes the embodiment of an awkward ballet recital at the wordless accusation in pooling eyes of blue and water; she clumsily shoves herself away from the grip and almost trips over her feet and pile of clothes as she turns away from Tori and then back, keeping eye contact for milliseconds at a time as she speaks. "It takes evil to know evil. You know me. So, your life for mine, T, and the horrors stop. And--"

She stops. Tori can't see so much, now. Edges from liquor blurred, and centre pitch faded from the steady blood bubbling in her lungs. Faith seems to notice, too, because she pales and stumbles back, guarded and so uncomfortable, as though this wasn't her doing. "There cant be two evils... maybe this is redemption."

And then, she was gone...

...Until now.

Thanks for reading a little piece of my current project! The title is Until Death Does Us, a supernatural-post modern novel following the journey of our protagonist Tori as she tries to uncover why her attempted murderer has returned, and more importantly why her town is suddenly being overrun by the undead. Grappling with how they're all apart of something bigger then their pasts, the antihero Faith teaches the rag-tag group that forgiveness is earned, not expected.

Im a 21 year old Canadian raised horror and fantasy writer, who got her start publishing fan fictions at the tender age of 10 when my ideas began to get too big for my body. A decade later, I have produced screenplays, short stories and poems whilst I worked to receive my undergraduate degree in creative writing, when I then began focusing on writing my first novel. My ability to write across genres has given me the breadth needed to step above myself and create mixed worlds I've never seen in media, as well as bring well loved humour into play that targets the young adult market who rapidly find themselves lost in my works (for better or for worse.) Ive spent countless hours, and 80-thousand words curating the perfect mix of comedy,, horror, heartache and self discovery in this book that I think gives every reader a little something, from touching hearts to killing newly thought out monsters.