Echoes

I met a boy named Elliot the first day I moved into Niche, Kentucky. He lived across the street from me. He was rather sweet, and he didn’t smell too bad, so I didn’t dislike him. He helped my sister and I unpack some things and told us a little about our new neighbors. He spoke nicely when we were with my sister, but he spoke nicer when we were alone.

He told me he was sixteen, and he didn’t have a girlfriend.

I never thought much of boys ‘til then. I didn’t dislike him, I thought, though I gently reprimanded him for moving a little too fast for me. That made him frown a bit, but he rushed past my discomfort. He didn’t outright ask me to go steady with him, so I didn’t keep track of the unbroken, one-sided promise that apparently lay thick between the two of us.

I went about my first, fresh, high-school days, finding friends.

I used to live in Georgia. My parents divorced and my mother packed up, quick as can be, and whisked away my sister and I to the forgotten lands of Kentucky. We had family there, she said, but that was a bit of a stretch, honestly. She’d just wanted to get away from my father. We all wanted to, but mom did the most. It wasn’t as though he was overtly mean or anything, he was just uncomfortable to be around. He’d stare, or hold hands too long.

Elliot Robinson reminded me of my father in this aspect.

Occasionally, we would sit in the treehouse in Elliot’s yard and play games. The games changed after a while. He got less appropriate. I didn’t understand why the things that we did were bad, but I knew deep in my chest that I wasn’t supposed to be doing the things I was doing. I felt responsible.

He eventually took me in the backseat of his Safari, in the cinema parking lot. I say “took” because he stole something from me. Thieved away my dignity with each caress of my body, and took off with my resistance with each silencing kiss he carefully placed on my lips.

He’d asked if I had ever “known a man.” I said no. That made him smile. He stepped out of the car for a smoke, and I sunk into the leather seats. I wasn’t sure if I existed anymore, but the uncomfortable feeling of blood soaking into the skin of my thighs, that couldn’t be a dream, not even a nightmare.

My mind became an echo after that. Each word he said, whether it was sweet or not, would resound in my head, a grating tune, stuck on repeat. I love you, Beatrice. I love you, Beatrice. I love you, Beatrice.

My hell continued for months passed that first slice. The treehouse had become tainted. And Elliot continued to pollute it, to pollute me. He wouldn’t stop, not even when I cried. I still felt responsible. Why can’t I say stop? Why can’t I say stop? Why can’t I say stop? I doubt he would have stopped even if I asked.

One particular day it was especially bad. He’d said that his parents yelled at him for failing three classes. I wasn’t really paying much attention, but the word failure echoed in my head for a moment. He was rough that day, in all ways. He swore at me and at one point… At one point he wrapped his hand around my neck. He held it there for a long time, but I didn’t really feel it until I was already passed out. He said sorry for choking me. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

I almost wished he’d killed me.

The next day, my sister came in for a visit. I didn’t notice her at first. Elliot didn’t notice her at all. Adelaide wasn’t a fighter; she dealt with problems by talking about them, and she spent her time doing arts and crafts. They said my name at the same time when she stabbed him in the back with a large set of pink scissors. Only once. He passed out from the pain. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

Adelaide dropped the scissors before sighing and puddling on the floor. She put my bloomers into my clenched fists and asked me if I was alright. Her eyes were alight with sympathetic rage and she clasped my hands and cried when I spoke. Baby, I’m so sorry. Baby, I’m so sorry. Baby, I’m so sorry. This shouldn’t have happened to you.

Her eyes and hands found the bruises on my neck. She just barely touched them and her petite frame shook with anger and sadness. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Elliot’s eyes squint open. I was a statue. I’m not angry. I’m okay. I’m.

Elliot writhed on the floor, groaning, and grasping for the wound on his back. “Bea…?” Before I even thought about it, I grabbed the scissors and made him silent. Minutes passed and I hadn’t stopped. Each push of the scissors into his skull was accompanied be a breath of satisfaction. The smell of metal pierced my nostrils, but I didn't stop.

His face was nothing but gashes. His nose was gone and his eyes were mush. I didn’t look away from the gore for a second. I don’t know why I couldn’t stop. Blood pooled around his head and I couldn’t stop.

I felt hands curl around my bloodied wrists and Adelaide pulled me away from him. I dropped the scissors and they met the floor with a clink.

She held me on her lap and rocked with me. It’s okay. The echoes had ceased, and my head nearly pounded with the unusual silence. I’m okay. I had never felt so clear.

“What are we gonna do with him, Addy?” My voice sounded weird, too soft. She stopped rocking me and I turned. Her eyes were watery and red-tinted, filled with pity. I felt mortification fill my cheeks.

“We’re going to clean up and go home.” She smiled reassuringly, before closing her eyes and facing the ceiling. She squeezed my wrists and started to move towards Elliot. She paused over him, before stepping out of the small space that only got smaller.

I was left alone with him for only a few minutes, before she came back with trash bags and a handsaw. She held icy eyes on him for a moment, before turning her head to me, her eyes not leaving the bloody mess where his face once was.

She told me that I didn’t have to help, that she could do it alone, but I told her that I wanted to see the end of him. I wanted to know where my demons were buried, no matter how hard it was going to be to get them in the ground in the first place.

We spent the next few hours chopping him up and putting him into bags like food left too long in the icebox. He was leftovers of an at-best-horrible entrée. We didn’t speak, except to ask for a tool. My eyes never felt so delighted as when I saw him, in pieces, before me.

I felt my gut twist in a fantastical way the longer my gaze lingered. This was the way things were meant to be. His legs were chopped into neat, cylindrical chunk, and his arms were just the same. We didn’t cut up his torso.

As she tossed one of his hands into a bag, I felt him touch me again. I remembered that he was dead and felt relief again fill my being.

We set one or two black bags in all of our neighbors’ cans, and put his legs into our own.

It was a week before his parents had made a call to the police, worrying about their son, but by then it hadn’t mattered, the trash was too far gone.

My sister and I were normal. We celebrated at Elliot’s little brother’s birthday about a month later. The Robinson’s were still worried about their oldest son.

Adelaide told them that they’d find him surely, they’d just have to be patient. She smiled sympathetically when she said this and I doubted that any smile was as convincing as hers.

I took after her, and told them how he told me he’d loved them so much, and how he would find his way back home to them. As I spoke about him, I felt a final echo. Everything is okay. Everything is okay. Everything is okay.

I also doubt that anyone could lie as convincingly as me.