Slippin' into Darkness

11:38 P.M.

The coffin lid slammed closed, and Amy was trapped in borderless darkness.

April’s coffin, however, was not without borders. Amy’s heels pressed against the bottom wall. She couldn’t move them because her legs were bound at the ankles and the coffin lid pressed against her knees. Her wrists were bound as well, and another rope secured her forearms to her waist so she couldn’t get enough distance to lift the coffin lid. The tight bonds cut off her circulation, and she couldn’t fight the numbness that bloomed in her feet and hands. She could only lie there, the icy water soaking April’s clothes, cold fear snaking through her veins.

A whimper rose inside Amy, but it couldn’t go anywhere. The strip of duct tape that masked her mouth locked the sound inside her. She dipped her face to the side, into the cold water, but the tape didn’t loosen.

And she felt that she would explode. Her breaths came too fast through pinched nostrils, but she refused to surrender to the fear. That was what they wanted. They wanted her weak, beaten.

It’s a little late in the game to start fighting, don’t you think?

The coffin lining sagged above Amy’s face. Dank silk rubbed her nose. Cold drops of water struck her eyes, and she blinked them away. She moved her head, but the droplets only increased.

She closed her eyes and kept them closed.

People did this for fun. Amy had read about it. Sensory deprivation tanks. Floating around in saltwater, getting in touch with one’s innermost concerns. It was said to be very relaxing, but then again Amy was pretty sure that there weren’t too many sensory deprivation tanks that had once been coffins, and no one climbed into one of the things bound up like Harry Houdini.

And no one left four lunatics in charge of the keys.

But all this could change. She had overheard Bautista’s master plan. He wanted Steve Austin, the ex-Six Million Dollar Man who had become an unstoppable mummy in Amy’s own private mythology. Austin had something Bautista wanted. From what she had heard, Amy guessed that something had to be Marvis Hanks’s movie.

Austin cared about April. That much was certain. And, in his mind, at this moment. Amy was April.

The Six Million Dollar Psychotic would get her out of this.

And where would he take her? Back to his basement?

God. What would happen when he realized that she had tricked him? He didn’t want her. He wanted April Destino. He wanted her so desperately that he was willing to chase after her in death. Wanted her bad enough to push himself to the limits, until he found a way to believe that she could still be with him.

Amy struggled against her bonds. Stale water sloshed against the sides of the cramped coffin. Her wig slipped off. It lay beneath her head like the pelt of a dead animal, scratching her neck. She drew a sharp, frightened breath through her nostrils. Air. The word came to her in an instant. There was only so much air in a coffin. She couldn’t afford to waste it.

She lay very still, as still as the dead. Her fingers were completely numb. They were strangers, and her hands would soon be as well. She could no longer feel the gooseflesh dotting her legs. Only the damp cold penetrated her bones. She was dying a millimeter at a time.

This had been April’s fate. Lying in a trailer, a dozen drugs pumping through her veins as she waited for the end. Alone. Then cold in the ground, lying in a tight box in the borderless darkness. Alone.

Amy tried not to breathe.

She wasn’t alone. April was here in the darkness, but the darkness didn’t frighten her. She was dead. She didn’t need to breathe anymore.

For April, the coffin was a suit of armor. She welcomed it.

And suddenly Amy understood April Destino. April didn’t mind being alone in the darkness, because no rapists waited there. April couldn’t see fingers pointing when she masked her pain with drugs, and she couldn’t hear her name spit through laughing lips when she was alone.

Amy’s thoughts were foggy with cold, but her inner vision was clearing. She opened her eyes and stared into the void, blinking as cold droplets rained down from the silk liner.

The void was complete, perfect. It was the only thing there.

Help me, April, Amy thought. I’m scared.

How scared April must have been. Four jocks raping her. Half the people in school thinking she was some dumb bimbo anyway. Maybe someone would have believed her story, if she had mustered the strength to tell it. But she would have had to keep telling it, and then she would have had to face Griz and Derwin and Todd and Bat, and go on facing them until it was over.

Win or lose, she could never be the same.

Win or lose… There were four of them, and only one April. It was that simple, and it was still happening today. Some things never changed, because people never changed.

Bat and Griz and Todd and Derwin hadn’t changed.

But Amy had changed. She had grown up. People like Amy…

…tormented people like April. And they went on to torment husbands and lovers and friends, bending them to their own personal agendas. They leeched on misery, ripped up bright futures and stole the best of the scraps. They laughed and whispered and trashed lockers and trashed lives, driving the April Destinos of the world into trailer parks. People like Amy hated people like April, hated them for the things they had gained so easily, and the things they surrendered without a fight.

Suddenly, it seemed so simple.

April in a hot metal trailer.

Amy in a cold metal coffin.

That was the truth of it.

When you hit us, we bruise, every one of us… When you cut us, we all bleed.

April, I’m so scared.

Welcome to the club. Try living like this for eighteen years.

A c hill wracked Amy’s chest. April’s sweater was heavy with water. Amy knew there was no way to get warm. I never took any hits, Amy thought. Not really. I never knew what it was like, April. I swear to God, I never saw what it was like to be so alone. I never knew it could be so cold.

The darkness was waiting. The still water opened a welcoming hand.

April had been her teacher, leaving the sweater and the eight ball, leaving her Doug Douglas and Steve Austin. But the lesson had gone on from there, into what seemed another world, a place where the dead and the living existed on the same plane, a place where the same battles were fought again and again.

I can’t do it alone, April.

The cheerleader’s sweater was heavy with darkness. The wet Kleenex stuffed inside April’s bra cupped Amy’s small breasts, molding to her skin like the marble hands of the dead.

I don’t want to be alone, April.

April’s hands were on her, like stones.

Strong hands which had never become fists.

April, I…

The cold rushed in, and something froze deep inside Amy. The darkness blinded her. Icy hands increased pressure on her chest until her ribs threatened to snap, and violent tremors tore through her, and she rode the spasm until the frozen thing shattered within.