Page 107 of Vile Bastards
Widow skirts around Jennifer to keep her from touching him—she’s touchy-feely with everybody—and pauses to stare at the reverse side of the sign. I don’t need to go over there; I have the words memorized.
I’ll be your Nightmare, Baby. I want to be something better than a someday ex-husband. No matter what, no matter where you go, what you do, I’ll be there in the shadows. You might forget me. You might even hate me. But I’ll be there looking out for you. When the time comes and you can’t remember whether I’m a dream or a nightmare, just remember that I’m both, that I’ve got you, that I love you.
—Maverick, June 1997
The words aren’t just scribbled on the wood, but carved in. Nobody defiles that side of it. Once, a boy got caught with a can of spray paint, tagging the sign in the name of his baby gang. He ended the night with three broken ribs and a punctured lung.
This is Prescott history, almost forgotten, a trapped and frozen piece of crazy from a century long past. One day, the sign will probably fall over or be torn down or maybe it’ll just succumb to rot, and the idea of a Nightmare will fade into the past the way everything else does. A distant memory. A sigh. A whisper on the wind.
Honestly, if you really think about it, the sign is creepy as fuck. Maverick—whoever he was—likely wasn’t a Bohnes type stand-up character/serial killer. He was probably just the latter, and while I should condemn the term, it’s come to mean something so much more.
A Nightmare, by virtue of his definition, never harms the woman he’s pledged to. Death comes first, just as Bohnes aimed a knife at his own heart and encouraged me to stab him. Anyway, I don’t have time to analyze the fucked-up fuckery of an already fucked-up situation.
Widow moves swiftly back through the mud as Bohnes slips a cigarette between his grinning lips. He’s won. Without ever having to put a horse in the race, he’s taken the jackpot. Widow knows it; Bohnes knows it.
“Piece of shit, coffin-worshipping ghoul bitch,” he grinds out, hissing the words as he snatches my hand up and shoves the ring down my finger. It fits, perfectly. It’s like Cinderella and her ugly ass shoe. “Watch us from the shadows then, since you like to suck the dick of darkness. Go ahead. Gaze in the bright windows of our future house while we raise our children, spend our nights making love, and grow old together without you.”
His gaze meets Bohnes and lighting crackles between them. I know he wants to challenge Bohnes to a race, but that he also knows what’ll happen if he does. Bohnes will refuse, just to spite him, and the whole school—plus two others—will see it.
Instead, Widow smiles at me as I frown down at the ring.
Looking at it, I realize that it’s not a proper ring at all, but a piece of metal that he likely shaped in his sixth period welding class. It’s one of the few decent options Prescott students have at our school, to weld.
The ring is so trashy, and so Prescott, and so fucking rachet that I actually love it.
Shit. Guess I’mma have to upgrade this fuckboy, eh? Not like he wasn’t already bitchin’ me out anyway.
I close my fist and drop my hand by my side. Also, I don’t take off the ring.
“Oooooh, Queen,” Basti mutters, his voice edgy with excitement and anxiety. I ignore him.
“Do what you gotta do,” Widow whispers, and Bohnes sighs heavily, as if he’s just realized our chance to slip away and fuck has passed.
Chet Jr. Cody Archer is approaching me as Ash-pen stands beside the ruined Cobra, hands on his hips, head down. He looks this close to having a nervous breakdown, but then his head snaps up, and it’s as if he’s just remembered something, an idea or a memory that bolsters him and makes him smile.
He struts away, ignoring Cody as he approaches a group of giggling girls. Ash slides right into their midst, smirking and purring and annoying the shit out of me. How dare he? I think, but then Cody is standing right in front of me, sheepishly rubbing at the back of his head and offering up a watery smile.
“Scarlett Force, right?” he asks, and I blink at him. He knows my name. Cool. So does everybody else and their goddamn grandmother. “I’ve heard so much about you from Lucy that it feels like we know each other.”
Pain stabs me straight through the heart, but I rub a finger over the metal ring, and it bolsters me somehow. Widow notices and almost smiles. Almost, but then he’s tugging on the chains around his neck and looking Cody over like he might strangle him with one.
