returns to the bedroom, both of
the guys are done having sex. The light is off. They are
curled up together and drifting into sleep.
“Bitches!” she mutters to herself.
They didn’t save any room for her under the covers,
but she forces herself in anyway, behind Kevin. Kevin is
breathing heavily and covered in sweat, as she wraps her
arm around him. She feels Rick’s ribs against the back of
her hand and gently grinds her knuckles into them until he
moves. Then she’s able to slide her hand between the two
of them, all the way around Kevin’s body. She can probably
pull Kevin on top of her and have him finish her off, but she
decides to let it go. The sexual energy she had been feel-
ing all day has vanished. She closes her eyes and tries to
sleep. She tries to push the anger and dissatisfaction out of
her mind.
They’ve got a rule that nobody goes to bed until ev-
erybody has an orgasm. This is the first time that rule has
been broken. Since Desdemona left the room in a huff, she’ll
forgive them for it this time. But in the morning, she’ll have
her boyfriends make it up to her. Maybe she’ll even give
Rick oral sex and show him how it’s supposed to be done.
Stephanie’s room is on the ground floor. She doesn’t
want to be on the ground floor, because that’s where all the
big creepy bugs like to roam. She can’t handle bugs. She
decides to sleep on the living room couch in her sleeping
bag, instead of on the floor in the room she was given. She
would rather not sleep on the floor.
But she’s not able to sleep anywhere. Too many
thoughts are racing through her mind. She just reclines on
the couch and stares at the ceiling.
A window shatters in the next room.
She leaps off of the couch and looks around. The
noise came from the bedroom, the room she was supposed
to be sleeping in. Jason’s revolver is on the coffee table.
Stephanie picks it up. It’s not loaded. She searches the room
for the box of bullets.
Nobody else seems to have heard the shattering
sound. She wonders why they haven’t heard it. She won-
ders if they were the ones who caused the noise. The bullets
are on the kitchen counter. She frantically loads the revolver
with three bullets and drops the other three. Three’s plenty,
she thinks, and leaves the other bullets on the floor.
The gun is pointed out in front of her as she enters
the bedroom and turns on the light. The room is empty. The
window is intact. She looks out of the window. In the moon-
light, she can see all the way across the clearing. Nobody is
out there. She lowers the gun and leaves the room.
She doesn’t notice that the outside lamp has been
smashed with a rock.
After that, Stephanie realizes that she’s not going to
get any sleep. Her toothbrush is dirty now, so she can’t use it
to brush her teeth, even though she’s incredibly anxious. Nor-
mally, she keeps a toothbrush on her at all times for brushing,
and another hidden in her room for masturbating. She wishes
she would have brought that toothbrush with her.
Sitting on the couch with the gun in her lap, she sighs
and stares blankly at the Theremin centering the room. Then
she begins to cry.
She looks down at the gun in her lap and wonders
if she has the guts to use it on herself. She’s contemplated
suicide before, dozens of times, but she’s never been able
to go through with it. She often tells her mother that she’s
contemplating suicide, as a way of asking for help. But her
mother always smacks her across the face and says, suicide
is a one-way ticket to hell . And that’s always the end of that
discussion.
Unfortunately, the only cure for her problems that
she can think of at the moment is suicide. She doesn’t want
to kill herself but she feels trapped against a brick wall and
doesn’t know what else to do. She doesn’t want to have the
baby. It’s her brother’s. Stephanie’s brother never used con-
doms when
Clare Dargin
Prue Batten
N. E. Conneely
John Healy
Pamela Aidan
Ramona K. Cecil
Jessica Louise
Makenna Jameison
Watt Key
Susan Meissner