Page 13 of Hunting Ground

I see the moment Lily notices me, and my stomach twists. If she makes it obvious, I’m so dead.

But her gaze barely wavers from the bride. She takes another big, stumbling step backward, thankfully realizing that I need this woman’s attention on her completely.

My clammy hands shake, no matter how much I will them not to, but as the woman continues to speak and Lily fires off some reply that I can’t hear over the blood rushing in my ears, I adjust my grip on the crowbar and lift it up. My steps are still slow and anxious, and the shaking is more obvious now that I hold the crowbar up over my head. I need to do this now. Right now, before I lose my nerve.

I force through my fear and the sudden flutter of butterflies in my stomach. Rearing back, I swing the crowbar like a baseball bat, just as the bride says something that I cut off with my swing.

She screams and turns, stumbling to one knee as she lashes out with the cattle prod. Lily lurches forward, her leg giving out, but still manages to grab her free arm.

Unfortunately, that means the hand holding the cattle prod is free. She hits Lily with it, the end snapping with electricity finding purchase against her shoulder. My comrade in terror screams and drops her, unable to keep holding on, but it’s all the time I need to lunge back for another swing.

This time, my crowbar connects with the side of her veiled face with a crack that sends the bride straight to the floor. Standing over her, panting, I ready myself for a third swing, the crowbar poised up above my head.

But she doesn’t move. The only movement coming from her is the snapping of the cattle prod thats still pressed into her grip, and the blood that seeps from her skull.

“Oh my god–” Lily turns and stumbles once she gets to her feet, and as I kneel down next to the woman, she retches against the wall, turning my stomach a little with the noise.

Carefully, I peel the veil back from the woman’s face…or what’s left of it now that I’ve caved in her jaw with the crowbar. “Fuck,” I breathe, surprised at the damage. I don’t look at it for long, however. Just enough to see the pale blue eyes staring up at the ceiling without focus, the light dimming from them as I watch.

What a place to die. And what a way to be dressed up to do it.

I only remember the cattle prod once it stops snapping and spitting at her side. Leaning over the dead woman who’s quickly turning the carpet around us muddy and dark instead of confetti-bright, I hesitantly pick it up, a little nervous it’ll somehow shock me anyway.

But the moment it’s out of her hand, it turns off. I press the switch and the trigger, managing to get it to snap a few times, before I let it fall quiet again. “Here.” Getting to my feet, I approach Lily with slow steps, like I’m worried about spooking a wild animal.

She jerks at my approach, her eyes wide on the cattle prod. “W-what?” she asks, her gaze going from it to me. “What are you doing?” The hysterical suspicion in her voice is probably something I can’t exactly blame her for. But I’m a little offended she’d suspect me so fast after I’d smashed in a woman’s head for her.

Which is…really not how I’d planned my Halloween-eve to go, but I suppose changes must be made sometimes. And it’s better than the alternative of watching the bride kill Lily.

“I’m giving you a weapon?” I reply uncertainly. “Feels like you should want one. Your choice, I guess.” I hold both out and immediately she snatches the cattle prod from me with nervous fingers. Leaving me with my ol’, trusty crowbar I’d inherited from Ben.

There’s no way he’s still alive, I think to myself. No way in hell, unless she’s really decided to take her time with him.

“She’s dead?” Lily whispers in a tiny voice, looking behind me at the corpse on the floor.

“Oh yeah,” I’m quick to assure her. “So, so dead. Like, would scar you for life to look at her face, dead.” I hesitate, then ask, “Did you know her?”

Lily gives a dry, humorless laugh that sounds more like sandpaper rubbing against her throat. “I met her once. Some lady who wanted to hire me for…” she shakes her head. “Anyway. She thought we were something else. She thought it wasn’t just a job. I had to get a restraining order against her. But I thought she was just a harmless woman, you know?”

“Not someone intent on breaking the unspoken rule of not killing other women?” I can’t help but finish. Lily just shakes her head, her eyes still on the body. It gives me a few moments to look her over, and my eyes fall to the rip in her leggings where her skin is blistered and burnt from the cattle prod. When she moves to get up, she nearly falls, and I have to catch her under one arm.

“You can’t go anywhere,” I murmur when she attempts to limp towards the exit. “Lily.” Pulling her to a stop, I make her look at me, only to find a face full of quiet panic. “Hey, it’s okay.” I don’t actually know if it’s okay. None of this feels particularly okay, and constant fear stirs the nausea in my stomach every few minutes, as if to remind me how not okay this really is.

She shakes her head, still clutching the cattle prod like a lifeline. “I don’t want to stay,” she murmurs. “I don’t want to be left behind. I can still help you–” She wavers, stumbling hard, and I have to drop my crowbar to catch her.

“I’m not gonna leave you, okay? Not for real. I just need to find…” Fuck, I don’t know what I need to find. There’s no magic key or code to get us out of the gate. No magical time where we’ll be let out of the Pier to go back to our lives.

I don’t know how to get out. But I know the answer isn’t here in this arcade, where the best I could do is huddle in a corner with Lily and hope we can take out whoever comes to find us.

Unfortunately, I think we need firearms for that. Or something with a blade. As she slowly manages to come back to consciousness, I drag Lily towards the small staff lounge where I’d spent so many hours of four different summers camped out.

“Just stay here, okay,” I murmur. As much as I’d rather not split up, this seems like the right choice. Lily will only slow me down. “I’ll find the others again, hopefully. We’ll figure a way out of this.”

That feels overly optimistic, but Lily jerks her head up and down in a nod. I take that as my cue, and I’m back across the arcade before I can even consider if this is the right thing to do.

It’s the only thing to do.

My eyes flick to the bride on the floor and I fight the urge to flip her off for my own peace of mind. But I manage to withhold myself, and instead slip out the door, closing it behind me and hoping Lily will be safe without me.