Gabriel Tallent - My Absolute Darling

Martin must be just on the other side of the door, standing on the deck. She hears the boards creak. The girl turns very quietly and looks back at Turtle. The shotgun is clearly not aimed at her, but there are some people who believe a shotgun can fill an entire hallway with buckshot. Turtle puts up her hand: Don’t move. She is trying to say: Stay where you are. She wants them to know she won’t hurt them. The boy does not look away from the door. They wait. The low-recoil rounds Turtle is using have about a third of an inch of spread per yard of distance. She’s five yards from the door. Turtle thinks, come on. Come on. She waits, her guts uncoiling within her, tucked hard against the wall, looking around the corner with the gun laid out and herself half hidden beneath the end table. She welds her cheek to the stock. The carpet smells of some kind of shampoo. In the kitchen, the refrigerator cycles on. Turtle can see no shadow of him, but knows that he is just beyond the doors and she waits, thinking, come to me now, you bastard.

The doorknob turns, and the door swings open, a soft toss. The girl jerks in surprise, and stays silent. Turtle’s finger tightens on the trigger, but there is no shadow in the doorway, no sign of him, and she can imagine him hard against the edge of the open door, trying to draw her out. He seems to be deliberating. Come on, she thinks. Come on. The stock is slicked with sweat where it lies against her cheek. The sight bead glints. Dim yellow light from the deck fans across the tiles of the entranceway. Her mouth is dry with fear. She tries to swallow and cannot.

The boy pushes away from the girl, takes a step toward Turtle, and Turtle shakes her head, mouthing at him, and he stops. Martin is capable of shooting through the door into the hallway, and he will, if he hears footsteps. He knows that Turtle might be waiting for him, and he will be sensitive to the dangers of trying to come in through the door. The boy hesitates. A silence drags on. The girl stands holding herself, shaking. The boy is partially in her line of fire, but she does not want him to move. The deck boards creak, and Turtle unwraps and rewraps her left hand where it lies on the pump.

She is beginning to think she’s missed something. The silence drags on too long. Turtle puts the shotgun stock against the floor and crutches herself up with it, thinking, no, no, no. She limps back toward the living room, supporting herself against the glass case, and as she comes to the living room door, a slash of light cuts beneath it. She knows what it is: Martin has walked around the side of the house and climbed up onto the deck and is panning his weapon light across the room, looking for another way in, and then she hears the hiss of the glass deck doors on their sliders and the double kiss of their seal and Turtle thinks, shit, shit, shit. In the other room, just beyond the door, Cayenne screams, and Turtle can hear Martin’s voice dimly through Cayenne’s protracted, gasp-broken shrieking, but she stays where she is. Go through that door and die, she thinks. Go through that door and you’ll just fucking die. Cayenne’s screams cut off.

“Kibble,” Martin says.

Turtle walks through the door. Martin is standing in the middle of the room. He is carrying his short-barreled AR-15, modified for full auto. Two thirty-round magazines are duct-taped end to end. More magazines will be stuck behind his belt. His lips are broken open. Rilke is holding Cayenne.

“What did you do?” he says. He spreads his hands. This occurs to her only now. There is no going back from this. Not with witnesses.

Turtle opens her mouth, cannot talk.

“Kibble,” he says, pursing his lips. He holds his arms out.

Turtle stands.

“Right now, kibble,” he says. He spits blood onto the white carpet. When Turtle does not speak, Martin looks around at them. He says, “Why doesn’t everybody give us a minute?”

The other high schoolers bolt for the door. Brett and Rilke stay where they are, Brett with his hands up, Rilke holding Cayenne. One of the others will be calling the cops. Perhaps somebody already has. Turtle is wondering, if she goes with him, what happens to Cayenne?

Turtle tries to speak, cannot. She swallows, tries again. “The girl?”

Martin says, “Leave her.”

“No no no no,” Cayenne says. “No no no, he’ll kill you. He’s gonna kill her.”

Turtle is holding the shotgun one-handed, down by her leg.

“Kibble,” Martin says. He walks toward her. He kicks the Monopoly board out of the way. He spreads his hands reasonably, the gun hung loosely from one, saying, “Listen, kibble. Listen. You have to come with me.”

Cayenne is whimpering, “No no no no no no no.”

Martin says, “I love you too much to ever let you go. You made a mistake. You maybe forgot that we tried this already.” He smiles, falls silent, then gestures, run up against some mute extremity of language. “We tried it and what we found is that we are nothing, apart. There is no going through that again. There just isn’t. You have to see that. And these others—” He gestures again. Set pieces. Objects. That is her mistake. To believe in a world outside of him. He takes his last step toward her and pitches out onto his knees and wraps his arms around her, pressing his cheek to her pelvis. Brett and Rilke watch silently, Cayenne closing her eyes. Turtle lifts her arms like a girl waist-deep in cold water. She thinks, kill him. Kill him right now. Do it before he kills you or Cayenne or Jacob or Brett. But she does not have it in her to kill him here on his knees, and she thinks, what would Brett think of you then, what would Cayenne think of you, a murderer, an executioner, and is this where it ends, because, she knows, it doesn’t have to. He is talking, at least.

Martin’s shoulders jerk. He clenches her, closing his eyes so tightly that the corners crease, and he says, “I love you. Hell.” He tightens his grip even more. She doesn’t know what to say. She looks over him at Brett in mute appeal, but Brett will not go. Martin’s face is furrowed with intensity and Turtle opens her mouth to speak and cannot. “Fuck!” Martin yells. “Fuck! Look at you! Fuck! Fuck!” He pauses, and in the silence he watches her. Then he rises. “Come with me, kibble.”

She stands in place.

“Everybody,” he says. “Get out.”

No one moves.

“Everybody,” he says again. “Get the fuck out!”

Brett says, “No, man. No, I don’t think so.”

Martin turns to him. He says, “You’re Caroline’s boy, right?”

“That’s right,” Brett says.

“You better go ahead and get the fuck out”—Martin gestures with the gun—“before you get yourself shot.”

Brett stands still, his hands up. “I can’t. Sorry. She’s my friend.”

“You and me, kibble. What do you say?”

Turtle spreads her arms, empty, helpless. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Don’t go, Turtle,” Brett says. “We aren’t letting this asshole take you anywhere.”

Martin considers her, one eye squinting more than the other.

“I’ll go,” she says. She does not know what she means. She will go with him or she will take him out into the hallway and kill him there. She needs to get him away from Brett and Cayenne.

He weighs her, nods to the shotgun. “Drop it.”

She hesitates. She tries to speak. Her voice breaks. She is weighing the chance that she drops the shotgun and he kills all of them.

He turns away from her. He looks at the wall. He looks at the room. He purses his lips into a kind of speculative grimace and runs his hand down his face. He is trying to decide what to do.

She says, “I’ll come.”

He smirks at her, knowingly, shaking his head, his smirk souring into something hateful, something bitter, jaw-clenching and darkly speculative. He runs his thumb along his lips. He must see some expression in her face then, or he must make some decision.