Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Daisy had pretty, almond-shaped fingernails. Perhaps the last time Maud saw her with dirty hands was when they were ten, and they built the last mud fort of their lives. Instead of the sticky dirt, Daisy was pressing the radio button now, trying to change the static noise to some tune, or even to a news report, as they drove through no man's land in a particularly sultry part of Texas.

"You won't catch anything here. Turn it off." Grant said from the driver's seat. Maud knew this voice well, this schoolboy whine that could stand no discomfort.

"Okay then," smiled Daisy, running her manicured hand through Grant's rich, auburn locks.

"Um."

Maud needed to make it clear that she was still there. She knew Daisy didn't even expect her to get mad anymore, as if her silence meant an inability to feel jealousy.

Grant leaned into Daisy's without thought, then looked back from the rearview mirror at his girlfriend, who was fixated on a fly resting on her denim dungarees.

"Is everything alright back there?"

"Where you banished me?"

They laughed and Maud smiled with them. She was a master of fun with her under-her-breath comments, yes. Back in Wilson County, Daisy kept complaining she couldn’t handle the long trip in the van’s back seat. So naturally, it fell to Maud—who could famously roll with anything—to take the spot for the ride to the festival.

The fly flew from her knee to the stained window, as if to greet its fellows trapped outside, more and more of which crashed against the glass. Maud smelled something strange, a sweet, musty stench; this was what he encountered in her mother's shop when the meat cooler had a short circuit.

"Uh, damn it." Grant wrinkled his well-shaped "Convey-nose", as they called it, but noone remembered the origin of that inner joke anymore. "What's here, a pig farm?"

"Maybe. Or a slaughterhouse."

Maud pulled down the window for a crack to let the fly out. Despite the stench, it seemed more pleasant outside than in the company of the two people closest to her, not counting her half-sisters. Why didn't she stay at home with them? To stop Daisy and Grant from having sex?

Maud was often slow, but she wasn't a fucking idiot.

Daisy turned around, the tag from her embroidered red blouse peeking out at the neck. She had tanned skin and jet-black hair, which she styled into lush curls before they left.

"Would you gimme some water, Mommy Maud?"

Maud reached under the seats for the water bottle, but as she handed it to her, she gave her a vexed look.

"Don't call me that, please."

"That's a compliment, baby," interjected Grant. "You know that too. None of us could handle your bratty little sisters. Sometimes I could just slap them across the room."

"They won't even let you have sex, huh?" Daisy laughed.

Maud wanted to be with the flies.

"I really need to pee." She spoke softly, knowing what Grant's reaction would be. "Can we stop?"

"You have just done a leak!"

"I have to."

After a quarter of an hour's drag, Grant finally pulled over at a seemingly deserted gas station. The ad promised a full tank and excellent barbecue, but all the three youngsters encountered was scorching heat as they climbed out of Grant's light blue '65.

Grant Finch slammed the car door and hooked his fingers into his belt.

"Hey!" he hollered, demanding to be noticed.

Maud saw movement from the building, its once-white walls covered in hot southern dust.

'’Good day, kids.” An aging man stepped in front of them. "What’re you doin’ squealin’ like a stuck pig, son? I’m comin’." Despite his reproachful words, he had a friendly face, almost comical with his irregular set of teeth and straggly cut, dark hair.

"Grant." He offered his hand at once, and the old man took it with a little delay. He introduced himself as Drayton. "This is Daisy and Maud. And Maud is about to piss herself."

Maud blushed, but Grant just grinned and rubbed her back. The gas station attendant also smiled, but the joy did not reach his oedematous eyes.

"Well, there just might be a solution for this. You hungry, too? We got the best barbecue in the whole state—heck, the whole damn country, if I do say so myself." With a heavy movement, he opened the door for them, and Maud hurried forward.

She thought about her sisters, wondering if their mother could handle three full days with them.

It wasn't the first time she questioned whether it was a good idea for her to come, but it was the most definite. The inside of the gas station was unkempt and plain, the cash register was pulled out and stood empty, the walls with brittle plaster framed lots of nooks and crannies. They could smell the carrion here too. Daisy involuntarily rubbed her nose, which made the bangles on her wrist jingle.

“My nephew is here too, Johnny boy," said the old man, inviting them all up. "He's gonna look at your vans too, because its sounds isn't the best."

Grant objected, of course, because he hated it when anyone dared to criticize Gus, as he nicknamed the van. G and G.

"I'm not hungry, thank you." Daisy looked at Maud; she didn't want to fight with Grant either, who threw himself into Gus's defense.

Maud just kept her mouth shut.

Her boyfriend will be so angry that they ended up in some bugger's gas station, only because of her.

A door opened somewhere, creaking and tired, and then slammed shut. Maud saw the silhouette of a tall man and heard a deep voice, which was drowned out by the pounding of blood in her ears as something hard and cold hit the back of her head.

She woke up with a splitting headache, to the fact that there was no ground under her feet. A numb ache shot through her wrists, followed by a shooting pain as she tugged at the thick ropes that hung her from the ceiling of the cold, rotten-smelling basement.

"D- Daisy…?" she moaned. Maud instinctively kicked forward with her weakened legs. Looking up, she faced her bonds and white knuckles, and realization rushed through her guts like an icy stream.

She had been kidnapped. The goofy-looking gas station attendant and his… nephew, whose name she couldn’t remember—only his dark, strong figure in the doorway as he sent Grant crashing to the dirty floor with a single move.

Is Grant here somewhere? The first and only love of her life, who one day just walked into the cramped little discount store of Maud's mom, and asked with a flirtatious smile if he could have a Dr. Pepper even though he didn't have a single nickel. Maud remembered he was wearing a leather jacket and a cigarette behind his ear.

The thick but loosely tied ropes gave way around her wrists and she let out a loud squeal as her back hit the ground. Unstable-looking beams supported the walls patched with corrugated sheets. Maud stumbled to the door, first on all fours, then hunched over, from wall to wall, as if she had just been at one of Daisy's parties in a drunken daze. Her corn-blonde hair stuck to her neck from dried blood, and the striped T-shirt she wore under her dungarees clung to her skin, wet from cold sweat.

She listened, but heard only the flies in the room; there were many. Loads of them.

"Grant? Daisy?"

She had no idea what they might want from them. Money? It would’ve been easy enough for them to rob them, though they wouldn’t be a big catch. Grant was the most well-off among them, being the son of a small-town school principal. Daisy was still trying to find her own path, but for now, all she really enjoyed was walking dogs.

Maud climbed through a gap in the wall that led to a large, red-lit room where the flies were even noisier. Maud looked up, caressing her wrist, to be confronted by a torso, dangling from chains, that could only have belonged to a human being. Some of the flies settled on the mangled flesh.

She turned her head in the direction of the metal tables in a delirious stupor. On one of them was a blue box, inside which she guessed tools, but she didn't have time to think, because then she noticed Grant in the cover of one of the pillars. It was him, no doubt, with the Convey-nose and in a Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt. He whimpered half-passed out at a meat hook that pierced his right shoulder.

"Maud? Is that you?" His voice was thin as he spoke, looking at the girl crouched under the cover of the rickety furniture. "How did you get there… no, it… doesn't matter. Listen, these are… fucking freaks… he will come back…"

Who? She wanted to ask, but she couldn't form words with her lips, and it didn't seem like a wise idea to make a sound. She always knew what she had to do. Take care of three little girls, survive, do your job, Mommy Maud. Free Grant, now.

It’s my fault, it’s my fault, he's about to say that.

The scurrying of quick footsteps filled the hell room, coming from another door. It was a scrawny man with greasy, black hair hanging in his face, his dark green shirt revealing pale skin around his thin neck.

"Little piggies, little piggies, my little piggies... Big guy is coming!"

"Maud, move! Move, help me!" Grant gripped the hook piercing his shoulder with a hint of panic in his voice. "There must be something in that thing, in that box... MAUD!"

She couldn't move. She stared at the scrawny man hurrying down a short flight of stairs.

"Maud, you stupid cow! You come here immediately!" Grant forced his voice back into a distorted snort, and as Maud had expected, his every word was laced with accusation.

She didn't, she couldn't, all her instincts were against the idea. At that moment, her boyfriend also noticed the man, his teary, blue eyes widened in terror, and the next moment he started screaming at the top of his throat.

"There she is! The bitch is hiding behind the barrels!"

Grant. Oh, you.

Tapping the wall, she tried to turn back towards the gap through which she had come, the taste of bile overwhelming her tongue like a bitter poison. However, the thin man's cold fingers grabbed her hair and pulled her back.

"Little piggy, why are you running?"

Chapter Text

Maud was not an easy person to anger. Or to make cry.

This was the key to survival for her, and she already realized this when she wasn’t supposed to understand anything else but the multiplication table. The patience and readiness she had now, was once an eight-year-old daughter's, to open the door for her mother even at four in the morning, when she was just walking home from the bar, with flattened hair and the smell of on sale perfume, struggling with her torn stockings.

Maud also had to look after the girls, whom life tossed to an involuntary sister-mom in a package of three. With no father around, only Maud was left to step up, and she quickly gave up her dreams of higher education. Instead, she split her time between packing large bags of instant mashed potato and cutting meat in the icy back room, while also looking after the triplets.

Perpetual uncertainty is a good teacher.

Now, however, Maud's seemingly apathetic spirit flared up with anger.

"Why?" she asked in a hushed voice. Ten fingernails screeched along the top of one of the metal barrels as she desperately tried to hold on, to break free from the thin man's grip, who pulled her by the hair like a toy doll, and laughed like an unruly child.

"Why, why?" he repeated with a sarcastic gurgle, his childishly pursed lips made a strange contrast to his stubbly face and musty-smelling clothes.

But Maud's question was not for him, nor was her anger. She couldn't be angry at the nameless nothing, at a fever-dream-like apparition in a fever-dream place. She had no idea what it wanted from her or why it was tormenting her.

Grant was different. He tormented her because he was a sleazy, petty piece of shit.

"You wanted to let me die here! You wanted to leave me here!" Blood and phlegm dripped from Grant's nose into his mouth as he sobbed and yelled, focusing all his agony and terror on one point. "Damn bitch, you deserve it, it's all because of you, we're dying because of you!"

She grabbed the man’s fist with both hands, stumbling along in the wake of her captor, but her tearful eyes were fixed on her boyfriend who was writhing on the hook.

"Shut up, you! You’re gonna wake up Grandpa, and if you wake up Grandpa, Bubba will chop off both of your arms and legs one by one, like a grasshopper’s!"

He paused momentarily as he spoke, and Maud seized the moment, half consciously and half on raw instinct. She tore herself from his grip, but lost her balance, and fell forward, rolling down half a dozen metal steps. On the dirty, blood-stained floor lay a pile of what looked like pieces of wood sticks, and she had already picked up one of them when she realized that the dry, sharp object in her hand wasn’t wood at all.

"Do something, fuck me!" Grant shouted, even on that goddamn hook with all the entitlement in the world.

Maud dodged out of the way of the thin man charging towards her and trying to grab her.

"Come back here immediately!"

She didn't. Gripping the piece of bone with all her strength, she ran up the steps she had fallen down earlier, straight for the meat hook, straight for Grant. She didn't say anything when she stabbed him the first time, nor when she tore her improvised weapon out of the screaming boy's chest, and doing it again and again, shrieking like a lunatic.

"M- Maud... no..."

Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!

There he was, the first man in her life, behind his gray T-shirt with more than ten stabbed wounds. She didn't hear her own screams, she only felt the tearing pain in her laboured arm and also in her mind, which had now thrown off all brakes. It hurt, her mind was in pain.

And the blood.

On her face, her tongue, her eyelashes. Grant's blood.

She looked at the bone scrap in her hand, then in the direction of the stairs, expecting the thin man to grab her by the throat and finish her off. That was what swept away the last barrier against the surge of her rage that had been whipping higher and higher for years: certain death. There were no consequences to fear. That was the end.

A grander finale than I expected.

Beside the scrawny man stood another, taller and unmistakably stronger, leaning his hips against the rusted metal railing. He held the thin one back from attacking. Maud had no idea when he’d entered the room. A man of his size couldn’t possibly move quietly—but then again, how would she have noticed him as she was...

She looked into the young man's eyes. In the unnatural light she couldn't tell what colour they might be. Thanks to the survival-senses she had developed over many years, she immediately knew what he felt. The man was curious - and obviously having a great time.

"So?" He pushed himself away from the the railing and moved closer. He wore mustard yellow work gloves and his dark hair was slicked back; framing his handsome face. A razor-sharp skinning knife flashed tucked into his belt.

Grant coughed, smearing their faces with slushy blood.

Maud had no intention of attacking the men. She wanted to be done with quickly, and so she didn't have to worry about Grant or her mother anymore.

"So?" she echoed almost in a whisper. She was completely dwarfed by the man.

"What you start must be finished. He's still alive."

His voice was deep and melodious, quite unlike what you'd expect from someone who sneaks out from behind back doors, hacks people to walls, and walks the corridors of a basement full of mutilated corpses. And someone who orders a young woman to execute her boyfriend.

Maud looked up at him, not understanding why he hadn't wrestled the bone scrap from her hand yet. He might have sensed what was on her mind; his gaze was sharp, like a hunting dog’s, aware of every move its prey would make next.

"Don't…" Grant begged. As if it mattered anymore.

The boy's blood pooled on the floor. Maud almost slipped as the tall man (what was the gas station guy calling him? Johnny?) grabbed her neck from behind with a gloved hand, his fingers pressing against her larynx, his nose brushing her matted hair as he leaned close to her ear.

"Either you finish it, or I'll rip you open right here from your navel to your throat like a fish."

So she did.

Leaning against the wall, she listened if they were coming.

After ripping Grant's femural artery, Johnny immediately grabbed her wrist, disarmed her with ruthless force, and drove her into the thin man's arms as he hopped like an exalted dog. While he dragged her out of the hell room, Maud looked at Johnny the whole time; at the wide, wide smile on his face.

Not that she wanted to buy her freedom with that. Not that she had a plan. Not that she'd ever fantasized about murdering Grant in the five years they'd been together. Or did you just not notice? Didn't you realize how angry you really were?

He betrayed her. He wanted her to hang next to him so that she wouldn't hurt any less.

Love, that is.

The skinny man in the green shirt locked her in an ice-cold room that must have been some kind of cold storage. There were coolers all around and a table with so much dried blood on it that would have been enough for a whole man. At least that much slowly froze on her face, dishevelled hair and clothes too, the colour of which would have been difficult to tell.

Here, too, there was a hole in the wall, but it was blocked by timbers from the other side as if someone else had tried this escape route before. Who are they and why are they doing all this? Anyone in Maud's place, anyone who hadn't just massacred their ex, would have been wondering about that.

Maud didn’t search for answers in the chaotic nothingness. She just cried and cried for hours, her shoulders shaking and her weak arms wrapped tightly around herself, until finally, in a moment, it just… stopped.

Johnny was right, she had to finish what she'd started.

Maud stared at the door and waited.

Now it's your turn, she thought.

Chapter Text

It hasn't been as easy for Johnny as with these three music geeks for a long time.

He’d heard about the festival, but it was clear the little group had somehow lost their way along the line. The road of Drayton’s gas station was not one that festival goers would have typically used.

Johnny had been there before, the last time maybe two years ago. He didn't go primarily for the music - although he liked that too.

When Drayton signaled to him, he targeted the boy immediately. He was a thin fellow, but soft, completely unprepared for any kind of danger, or to defend himself even against a hairbrush swung harder. Comfortable type. In one move, Johnny slammed him into the peeling plaster wall so violently that he fell to the ground. He pushed his booted foot hard into his back, and tied his hands behind, quickly, accurately and with ease. It was almost boring.

He only glanced at the blonde for a moment. The girl seemed completely idle, almost dumbfounded, staring back and forth between the kid in the Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt and him. At least, that’s how Johnny interpreted her reaction at the time.

He wasn't sure about that anymore. Anyway, Drayton knocked her out with a well-aimed blow.

Her friend in the pretty red blouse was a tough cookie, though. At first, Johnny thought she would be the more interesting one of the two girls because she didn't give in so easily. She ran across the room screaming, tearing open the gas station door, and trying to slam it in his face. Johnny parried her attempt and kicked the massive door open, sending her flying into the air. She clawed and screamed as he climbed on top of her and finally silenced her with a punch.

Drayton stayed at the gas station for a while longer, so it was his job to take their guests over to the family's house. He left them over to his cousins, as usually, since he didn't really enjoy this part of the job. There was no challenge in it. Even then, he only bothered with the blonde while he shoved her onto the floor of his car. After that, he sat by the shed, quietly smoking a Chesterfield, watching as Nubbins, grinning, slipped the bracelets off the dark-haired girl for keepsakes.

Mad dog.

His tantrum was that finally called him down to the basement. Rolling his eyes, he pulled open the metal sliding door, but the sight that greeted him...

The wimpy kid hung on the hook where Bubba had put him, hurling curses and accusations, but not at Johnny, the one who beat him up, or simply at the world for screwing with him so much, but at the blondie. And she bit back, ignoring everything around them, including him and his dimwit cousin. Looking at the brutal blood bath the small girl'd made, Johnny started to wonder what kind of past could be behind these two. That wasn’t an everyday show, that's for sure.

It would have been stupid to let Nubbins screw it up.

"The hell happened here? What is your cousin blabbering to me about?! "

His uncle arrived, jolly and friendly as always. Johnny was in the process of cleaning up the piles of bones. Most of the visitors here didn’t have the opportunity—or the guts—to try anything bold, but Blondie’s action served as a warning. Nubbins could’ve easily ended up with some extra decoration on his face if things went differently.

"Such a shame you missed it, old man."

"Huh? What did you do again? Or that brainless Nubbins …"

Johnny shook his head and jabbed his chin at the bleeding corpse hanging from the hook.

"It wasn't Nubbins who did it," he said, casually hoisting the sack full of rattling bones onto his shoulder. It could have been a very thin person. Even his mother - the dead one.

Drayton stared at him impatiently.

"The little blondie went wild. She made a pincushion of her friend. Although she had to be encouraged a little to finish the job." He couldn't help but smile at the picture as she, well, for lack of height, opened the kid's femoral artery.

Which she knew exactly where it was - another thing to note.

"The girl? His girlfriend?" This surprised even Drayton, wiping his sweaty palms on his shirt and looking around Bubba's lair as if the blondie could be crouching in any corner. "Is that for sure? Did ya see it with your own eyes?"

"I watched it all from the front row. Would’ve asked for a rerun if I could."

His uncle didn't appreciate the comment, instead, trying to be efficient, he questioned where this girl had been put. Johnny didn't know exactly that either, Nubbins locked her up somewhere, but Johnny didn't want to ask him about it; he wanted to find the girl himself. To smell the blood on her clothes and on her peach-colored skin, and the scent of lily of the valley in her hair. He could feel it when he leaned into her ear, and when he confronted her with a choice.

"Do your thing," he said to Bubba as he put the screeching, puffing chainsaw into action. "But leave me the head, Big Boy." His cousin, a head taller than him made an unintelligible hum behind his mask of crumbling pieces of leather, but Johnny just patted him on the shoulder. "I have plans for it. It will be a surprise for someone."

Bubba gave another hum that sounded like an echo of the word "surprise", then nodded.

Drayton parked the boy's van among other rusted cars of all ages and quality that were on the verge of falling apart. The bastard also gave his car some stupid name, Johnny overheard him arguing with his uncle about it.

It was already dusk, and the crickets and cicadas started their concerto in the shadows of the tall grass, unkempt bushes, and sunflower fields bursting into the sky. The blazing afternoon sun was replaced by the orange glow of the dying embers on the horizon, providing just enough light for Johnny Sawyer to retrieve their guests' personal belongings from the van.

He took only the two women's bags into the shed and into the strong light of the lamp hanging on the wall. He sat on the table and unzipped both backpacks. On one of them dangled a crocheted dog with its little red tongue hanging out. It belonged to the black-haired one, who wasn’t the least bit interesting anymore. Johnny looked through her stuff, but quickly put it aside. His curiosity pulled him toward the other backpack, a clay-colored, worn-out thing that its owner had clearly been using for ages.

A bottle of water, keys, two thin t-shirts, and a faded, maybe once bright burgundy red velvet jumpsuit.

Bingo: a wallet. According to her papers, the blondie's name was Maud E. Raines, and she was twenty-three, like her friends, though she looked older than them. In her photo, her face was exactly as in the moment Johnny had seen her at the gas station, but that docile neutrality now seemed deceptive.

She can't be a simpleton with such a bloodthirsty temper, can she?

Johnny carefully put Maud's papers in his bag, as well as the water bottle with the girl's tiny fingerprints on it, and the folded photo he found in one of the bag's inner pockets: it showed her with three little girls who looked the same, kneeling in front of a store cash register. Maud put her arms around the grinning little ones' shoulders, her hair pinned up, and Johnny would have taken her as their mother rather than their sister. Yet on the back of the picture, it was written in cat-scratch-like handwriting: With my sissies, 1972

Before heading to his own car, he went back to the shed. He reached into the worn bag and pulled out one of Maud's plain white cotton panties. He crumpled the soft fabric into his back pocket and turned off the light.<

Chapter Text

She woke up to the touch of buzzing little wings on her face. She shuddered, but hardly moved, her stiffened limbs were so weak and rigid in the freezing air of the cold storage, as if she were just a clay figure molded by a small child's hands.

Vulnerable, thrown aside, soon falling to pieces.

Her mouth tasted of blood, and probably her face as well, because three flies were crawling around on her skin. Others were having a feast on her wrists and on the laces of her white trainers, which were loosened and dirty. Maud took a deep breath and raised her hand with great difficulty, scaring away the insects. She couldn't tell what time of day it might be in the bleak, glimmering ice light, but she was used to cold stores by now, also to the smell of raw meat and the sound of the elastic tissues coming off the bone. This was always her job since her mother could afford only one part-time employee, a matron with trembling hands and a backache, who, even when she was in, mostly managed the cash register.

It took a few seconds for her brain to process her memories of everything that had happened. When she realized that basically they ended up here because she had to pee, she giggled in agony. She didn't even feel the urge to do it anymore, but she didn't want to think that she might have wet herself in the meantime. Maud didn't need more humiliation.

Grant might have preferred to be the butt of the joke rather than dead. Maud, though, when she faced the thin man and Johnny, with her whole being covered in blood, was really ready to let it all go. She had no idea why she was still alive—and that's when she remembered Daisy.

Does she blame her too?

"Why are you doing this to us? Answer me... Please! What do you want? WHAT DO YOU WANT?"

Maud moved to the boarded-up hole and listened from there. Daisy's voice sounded distant. She must have shouted at the top of her lungs, and Maud imagined her clutching her chest, aching from the exertion, and her stumbling around in a room similar to the one where she first came to her senses. She thought about yelling back to Daisy, but in the end, she didn't. It seemed smarter to stay there quietly, with the flies.

A moment later, with a thunderous noise, a huge figure passed in front of the closed door of the cold room, and the behemoth let out an incomprehensible, angry sound like an aggravated animal. Maud waited with bated breath to see what would happen. She heard a door slam and more angry grunts from… the something.

"Oh my god… what are you? Don't touch me!" Daisy squealed horrified.

There was a thump and the girl fell silent. Not long after, the lock on the door of the cold room was also opened, and the "Big Boy" appeared in the door frame - he had to be the one the man in the green shirt was talking about).

Sitting on the floor, Maud looked up at him with wide eyes. Although she was sure she was seeing a person, Daisy's question seemed legitimate. Some kind of mask covered the man's face. Behind the gaping hole around his mouth, oversized teeth protruded from his lips, that made his appearance even more strange, and at the same time sort of childlike, in some horrible, sick way. He was wearing blue pants, a baggy, short-sleeved, gray t-shirt and a yellow plastic apron that covered most of his body and was smudged with blood.

The man - Bubba, Maud remembered - didn't move, just stared at her.

"I will be quiet," said Maud at last. Some Grandpa had been mentioned. "I won't wake your Grandpa up. I… I promise."

Silence. Finally, Bubba gave an approving, almost gleeful grunt, and left. Only for a while, though. He soon reappeared with a chipped earthenware plate in his paw. Freshly cooked porridge was steaming in it, and he almost hit Maud in the face with it as he handed it to her.

"Thanks."

The cook, whoever it was, dripped garlic blood onto the salty porridge. Maud clutched the hot plate to her chest, warming herself in the smell of death and milk.

The next thing she woke up to was an argument over her. She was woozy and still clutching the plate with the porridge which had gone cold, some of it spilling onto her denim dungarees.

"You can't do that!" sneered the peevish voice familiar from fever dream moments. "Drayton will be angry! Grandpa will be angry!"

"Get outta here, Nubbins."

Johnny blocked the entrance with crossed arms, while the thin man with some kind of strange fur pouch around his neck gripped the doorknob in annoyance.

"They gon' find out, I’m tellin’ them! You messin’ around with some girl again, and if you push it too far, you’ll end up with another scar on that face of yours!"

Johnny's snorted, deep, ominously calm voice was polluted with biting mockery.

"Maybe," he answered. "But I'll smash yours in before that. Why don't ya just go on and play nice in some ol' cemetery?"

He slammed the door in the man's face and locked it, slipping the key into the pocket of his tight, dark blue jeans. He still wore the rough gloves, the touch of which Maud could vividly recall, and the shiver that ran through her as he gripped her neck, deliberately close to the wound the gas station attendant had inflicted on her.

She followed Johnny with her eyes as he walked around the table and crouched across from her, his elbow resting on his knee. His broad chest rose and then slowly fell back as he inhaled deeply, taking with it all the scent and doubt that emanated from her skin and clothes. Salt. Blood. Sweat. Mud. The dawning memory of lilies of the valley.

"Hey there. Can I see your little hands, Blondie?"

What? No one called Maud that way yet, most of them didn't call her anyhow at all, maybe the customers called her " miss", her younger sisters called her "sis", and of course that doggone nickname, Mommy.

Mommy Maud, you don't have to worry about becoming a real mom, because this madman will cut you from your navel to your throat, just like he promised.

Anyway, she raised her numb, goosebumpy hands in front of him, palms up. Johnny looked at them humming, and Maud could see it from this close: his eyes were the color of the thick bark of a strong tree, but not on a damp, cold day, but kissed to red-hot sear by the last light of the setting sun.

"Why?" Maud asked hoarsely.

"Why what?" Johnny threw back the question with his head cocked. Maud nodded suggestively at her own helpless, spread fingers. "This? Ah. Well, ain't you full of surprises, Blondie? I thought you'd be wondering why you're here or why I’m here, and that's all you care about? It’s clear as day—ain’t nothin’ good gonna come if you get your hands on more of that trash Big Boy left behind."

Maud shook her head; she was too cold to speak, and her lips were blue.

"It's amusing. The way you’re sittin’ there now, I’d almost believe you’re just another scared little thing, hopeless and all touch-me-not. But it’s too late for that—can’t fool me, not with them big ol’ doe eyes."

She looked away, and if it hadn't been so freezing, she might have blushed at his words, which was absurd considering that this was the first time she was truly afraid. It was strange that this moment had only just arrived, but until now, she knew exactly what she was showing and what they were seeing from her. This has helped her throughout her life so far; she kept the peace around her with her gentleness, thick skin, and above all, her image of serene foolishness.

Grant. The prospective fathers. Her mother. The triplets. The aggressive costumers. Maybe she slept more peacefully that way as well.

"I'm not like that," she croaked, pushing aside the half-spilled porridge from her lap. "He just…just…" Try as she might, Maud couldn't find the right words. She didn't understand exactly why she did what she did, but she was perfectly aware of it, and she felt no desire to deny it, nor did her conscience. And in front of Johnny, who was watching her and smirking, she wouldn't have seen the point at all.

"You're cold, aren't you? You're real cold, and you're so covered in that poor fella's blood, I can barely see that lovely face of yours." With his large, gloved hands, he cupped her face, and she instinctively withdrew and pressed herself against the bumpy wall. Johnny didn't bother, running his thumb along the line of Maud's cheekbones. "Stand up."

Her legs nearly buckled under Maud as she struggled to her feet leaning against the wall. It startled her when Johnny made a firm move to reach under her arm to keep her from falling back. She looked up at the man towering over her, whose naked arms had goosebumps too in the cold of the storage. It was one of the few things that reminded Maud that Johnny was human too.

He walked closely behind her, both supporting and handcuffing her with his grip on her shoulder. If it had been him who caught her when Grant struck her with those vile words in the hell room, she wouldn't have had a chance to break out.

"Where are we?" she asked as Johnny opened one of the blue sliding doors and pushed her to head upstairs.

"This is our family's house. Go." Maud started cautiously up the wide flight of stairs but stopped when Johnny grabbed her hair with his free hand. This time, though, he wasn't rough. "Watch your head, Blondie."

A wind chime fashioned from human bones hung before them; it was made up of femurs, stripped ribs, shank bones and pieces of skulls. She felt acid rush into her throat, but her face remained blank and tired.

This decoration was characteristic of the whole house. Animal and human remains hung on the walls, furniture edges, stair railings, windowsills and shelves. Grant was right about that, if nothing else- they were crazy. Perverted savages who don't know God.

And yet, Johnny didn't let her fatigued limbs turn against her as she stumbled upstairs. Behind one of the doors, there was music playing, scratchy and hoarse from an ancient radio, something so wild and strange that maybe Grant wouldn't have known either.

" Sissy!" snorted Johnny, still not letting go of her. "Shut this crap off and come help!"

Chapter Text

The music stopped. Barefoot steps whispered over the creaking floorboards, and a frail young woman emerged from behind the door. She did not look older than Maud herself, and despite her flat chin and broad features, she radiated a kind of fairy-like charm. Not the beauty of the benevolent fairies from bedtime stories, but rather one of the deceptively sweet forest faes.

"Johnny, dear, of course, it's you, the master of bad timing," she said, reaching to the nape of her neck to release her shoulder-length dirty blonde hair from the bun. She wore a short yellow dress with sunflower patterns, the only simple and homely thing she had on. "And… oh! Sugar, ain't you the one everybody's talkin' 'bout in the house right now?"

She clapped her hands cheerfully, as if they had just met over a cup of tea and as if Johnny was introducing his new girlfriend to his…sister? From the name " Sissy" Maud came to that conclusion, but apparently the two had nothing in common, apart from the obvious psychosis.

"I think so."

"Poor thing, you look terrible." Sissy stepped closer to her, and she had no chance to avoid the thin fingers that tucked her dirt-caked locks behind her ears. Johnny still held her rock solid in place. "Grandpa can't see you like this. Don't get me wrong, the blood looks splendid on you, but all that muck... Ouch."

"That's why I brought her here," Johnny said. He let go of her; without support, she was hardly able to stand on her feet. "To fix her up."

God knows why or how, but words came out of Maud's mouth that she herself didn't even expect. They simply spurted from her ever-pressed-together lips, like Grant's blood from a torn artery or porridge from a bowl.

"Fuck, what a gentleman you are."

Johnny's eyes flashed with anger. His remarkable muscles tensed, and Maud was sure her reward would be at least a broken nose.

"You think you can talk to me like that?" he snapped, but he didn't hurt her. For now.

Sissy grabbed Maud's arms by the elbows, and began to guide her towards the bathroom.

"Boys... Just look at 'em. And Johnny, he can be downright nasty sometimes. You did right telling him." She finished the sentence with a tinkling giggle.

"I just don't want to be talked to like that, never again in this goddamned life." Maud stood motionless as Sissy latched the door. Johnny didn't like that, and demanded that it stay ajar. It was hard to tell if he was concerned about a possible escape attempt of their victim, or about Sissy having second thoughts and finishing her off.

"Don't be such a nasty boy! Phew!" Sissy barked back at him.

"Screw you, Sissy!"

He could be heard sitting down by the door like a distressed hunting dog. Sissy didn't even bother, and with a thrilled glint in her little elf eyes, she unbuckled Maud's overalls and kicked them aside after she stepped out of them with clenched fists. She stood there in a pair of panties and her once-white striped orange t-shirt while Sissy opened the faucet of the white tub whose enamel was severely chipped. Maud expected rust and blood to spout out of it, yet hot, clean water began to fill the tub.

Sissy opened the cupboard and took out a small chest. She selected one of the neat bags lined up in it, and sprinkled a good amount of its contents into the bath. Fragments of purple and green plants were floating in the water, filling the rundown but clean bathroom with a rich, sweet scent that was a sharp contrast to everything Maud Raines was feeling at the moment.

"And what's your name, Sugar?" Sissy asked later, pouring lavender and arnica water from a plastic jug on Maud's hair.

"I'm Maud. And…um, you?"

"I have a name but no one calls me that, hahaha, so feel free to call me Sissy."

Maud curled up, awkwardly covering her small, lemon-shaped breasts with her hands, and pulled up her legs which were littered with blueish-green bruises. Although she was vulnerable, and an insane woman was sitting on the edge of the tub and washing her hair gently, a strange feeling stirred in her. One that was over the top and scary, and maybe crazier than anyone in this house.

Comfort.

With Johnny guarding the door and Sissy deftly untangling the knots in her hair, she felt noticed.

"Sissy," Maud sighed. It was a liberating feeling as the congealed filth dissolved and mixed in her bath water. "The black-haired man… your brother maybe… mentioned that Johnny's not the first time getting into, well, trouble with girls. What's gonna happen to me?"

Sissy didn't answer right away; she was singing a song, giving every word a soulful twist.

" It's time we put our love behind you
The illusion has been just a dream
The Valley of Death and I'll find you
Now is when on the sunshine beam "*

"Nubbins always blows things outta proportion. Hahaha. This is only the second time with you. See, Johnny never used to mix buttering a biscuit with family business. Y'know, Sugar, he'd just take what Newt and the Bonham girls were more than willin' to give him, then come home for supper."

Maud's stomach lurched and she couldn't have said exactly which part of the sentence caused it.

"So he will…"

Sissy swiftly leaned close to her ear, and wrapped her arms around her, not caring that the sunflower dress would get wet.

"No, he ain't that kinda boy. I've known boys like that, and there was one who did to me what you're scared of now, Sugar." She softly brushed Maud's freshly washed hair behind her ear again. "He might cut off your little fingers one by one or squeeze your neck 'til you black out for good, hahaha, but he won't do that to you. And if he still tries… I swear, Sugar, I'll slit your throat before he ever gets the chance."

Maud glanced back at her after a short silence. Her face, though white as a ghost, showed relief.

"Thank you."

The underwear was hers: the white, soft panties and the wireless bra, but not the dress. As a matter of fact, Maud had no idea where her belongings might be, or what might have happened to them. Most probably, the family destroyed everything. She pictured the crocheted dog swinging from Daisy's bag, Grant's camera and his favorite chewing gum being tossed into the greedy flames of a stove, along with her only truly personal possession: a photo of her and her sisters.

She sat down on the edge of the bed, which was part of the cramped room Sissy had sent her into after cleaning up. Of course, she locked the door, but that didn't hit Maud's threshold anymore. It felt good to not be completely naked anymore, and being in a room without blood and guts. She touched the faded bedspread, with the dress in her lap that Johnny had supposedly brought her from… somewhere.

It was a feminine, pretty piece, with short, a bit puffy sleeves, and a summery mix of white-orange-green colors. The dress was decorated with dragonflies, which touched each other at the tips of their wings, forming a chaotic yet never-ending web. It was too large for Maud in the bust and a bit small in the waist, and the original owner of the dress was taller than her. And, no doubt, dead.

It was not difficult to work this out from the circumstances. The blood stain on the side and waist of the dress, albeit barely noticeable, but still indelible as a whole, made everything clear. Maud was wearing the clothes of a dead girl—perhaps the one who had been Johnny's first... slip-up.

You can hardly be alive if everyone talks about you in the past tense. And if I'm here...

It was then that she really understood what was going on, what the man called Nubbins and Sissy were talking about. Johnny had a strange interest for her, for some unfathomable reason, and she was having a ridiculously hard time wrapping her head around that, harder than the fact that she was being held prisoner by a crazy murderous family on a remote Texas ranch.

"Do you really think she was telling the truth?"

She knew that voice better than anything, even though she thought she would never hear it again. Every muscle convulsed in her body, and she stared straight ahead with her hands on the faintly bloody side of the dress as she felt the bed sink behind her. She was hit by the smell of blood and decay, along with Grant's pungent-smelling aftershave.

"You can't be such a stupid cow, Mommy Maud," the boy whispered in her ear. His voice was gurgling, speaking from near and far at the same time. Maud didn't look at him; she couldn't. "We both know what your fate will be. That fucking maniac will rape every hole of yours raw, then, or in the meantime, he will maim your face and carve his name into your stomach."

Dozens, hundreds of flies buzzed in Grant's hair. Maud began to tremble, both from terror and blind ire. Grant could achieve this even from beyond the grave.

Yet, she was still unable to speak up.

"It's also nothing new that you only asked about yourself," he continued. "What's going on with Daisy… where do you care about your best friend? Or that I… that I…" His voice trailed off and Maud heard a horrible, wet squealing sound as Grant fell to his parts on the bed behind her.

"SHUT UP!" she screamed, enraged and terrified, and she struck behind her with the first object she could get her hands on, a lamp with a bone cap that was right next to the bed. She struck down once, twice, and a third time too, but only crinkled the tired-colored bedclothes with it.

There were no signs of Grant, neither of the blood nor of the flies.

Suddenly the door burst open. Johnny rushed into the room like an unstoppable force, ready to deal with whatever the source of the trouble was. Maud, still in her feverish delirium, span around, the half-fallen apart bone lamp pointed at him like a spear. However, when her eyes met his and she heard his voice ( "Blondie, what the hell are you doing?" ), she dropped it from her hand.

"Are you sure I killed him?" she asked without really thinking it through.

Johnny, seeing that Maud wasn't about to charge at him, pulled his hand away from his belt where the skinning blade was hidden, and he frowned.

"You mean that excuse-for-a-man boyfriend of yours? Couldn't be more dead than that, Blondie."

"You shoulda just let it."

"What?" Johnny stepped closer, and Maud inhaled the scent of his cologne, relieved after the smell of rot and tasteless aftershave. His t-shirt with its sleeves cut off and already a little torn at the neck had a faint smell of tobacco, which matched the glow in his eyes.

"If I hadn't stabbed him in the thigh, he would have kicked the bucket anyway. Just slower."

"Is that what you wanted?"

Maud's lips parted, and for a moment she looked as if she would burst into tears, and then - again, like in the cold room -, it just seemed like as if had been cut short. She sat back on the bed and looked up at Johnny from under her thick blonde bangs.

"I just wanted him to shut the fuck up."

Johnny stifled a laugh, a dark strand of hair fluttering into his eyes, while he leaned closer to her, grabbing the wooden frame of the bed. In addition to his radiating strength, there was an unquestionable charm emanating from every inch of him; it was worryingly easy for Maud to believe that Johnny wasn't going to hurt her, not now, not yet. She understood why those girls in Newt and who knows where else would throw themselves at Johnny.

"He will, darlin'" he promised, almost purring. "I brought ya a little surprise."

He gestured with a finger to wait, then stepped out into the corridor, but only seconds. He soon returned, ready to give Maud the most memorable gift of her life.

Chapter Text

1973, 03.18.
a cloudy day somewhere in Wilson County

Maud popped the sharp, jagged-edged caps off both of their beers. They were lounging in the stands of the small town's deserted sports field, with Daisy sitting next to her in a bright pink, knitted sweater and a pair of jeans embroidered with ivy patterns.

"There you go. But it's very cold, drink slowly." She immediately regretted saying that, but there was nothing she could do about it. Her brain couldn't always separate the situations when she had to act as a mother or as a friend. She protected instinctively, scolded from her gut, comforted from her bone marrow.

"Oookay," Daisy mumbled, teasingly holding out the letter "o".

Maud laughed to herself. She couldn't be surly. It was never worth it. Why would she ruin her only free morning of the week when she didn't have to be at the store and the triplets were still at school?

Daisy sipped her beer, tapping her manicured nails absent-mindedly on the brown glass. Her beauty and confidence were just like that; it looked solid, impossible to get a glimpse behind, but in reality, it was fatally fragile.

"Sometimes I just start to think..." After another swig, she placed the bottle between her knees and half-turned to face Maud. "How time flies. God, how many years have we known each other? Fifteen?"

"More than that, Daisycake. I wasn't even six when you moved in next to us."

"Well, this is it. But will it be always be like that? We'll always be together, you and me, no matter what?"

Maud smiled at her and rubbed Daisy's knee. For the most part, she refrained herself from wondering what, beyond the years, kept them together. She was convinced that she loved Daisy, and loving Daisy was as natural a part of her existence as playing surrogate mother to the girls. When they built their first mud fort together, that was settled - how things turned out in the meantime didn't matter.

Daisy grew into a glimmering star of high school, a striking little lady, whom the boys on the street were whistling after. Meanwhile, Maud was roaming about in sneakers and dungarees, the most appropriate outfit for running after ever-moving little devils and carrying bags of powdered sugar. She would have loved to go to college, but she couldn't; meanwhile, Daisy's parents begged their daughter to try it, fruitlessly. Daisy could afford herself to devote her days to daydreaming and fooling around. And to dogs. And to Maud's boyfriend.

"It didn't start yesterday with Grant either," Daisy said, trying to sound cheerfully indifferent. "Is everything working fine? Are you happy?"

She chuckled and drank more before answering. She was sure she loved Daisy, but over the years, her friend had grown far too accustomed to treating her as if she were entirely clueless.

"We haven't done the deed in two months."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

Everything was revealed by how the black-haired girl scratched the back of her head under her ponytail. Maud was lost in the distance. On the other side of the fence surrounding the sports field, some motorcyclists were riding their boisterous machines. From there, they looked like ants chasing each other, and she felt like smashing something with the very cold beer bottle in her hand, something even smaller and more pathetic than herself.

If there was one thing she loved about herself, it was her preparedness. She rarely panicked, seldom reacted on raw instinct. This characterized almost every minute of her time at the Sawyer house. It seemed suicidal to think that she could fight her way through Johnny, Bubba, Nubbins, Sissy, and the broken broomstick-wielding Uncle Drayton.

This somewhat grotesque composure has kept her alive until now. Except for the time when she not-so-calmly butchered Grant, whose head Johnny was offering to her in a cast-off basket, richly loaded with sunflowers.

"Big Boy also helped," he revealed. "I hope you like it."

Sadistic lust permeated his voice and his gaze, and at the same time, a kind of boyish excitement lurked on his clean-shaven face. He must have been waiting for her reaction the whole time he was planning this "gift": would she freak out, scream, pass out, or even be grateful in the end?

Maud grabbed the bed frame where Johnny's hand had just been, and stood up. Her warm-toned, hazel eyes widened, her nostrils flared, and she just stared at the head covered with blood-stained auburn locks on the festive flower bed. Grant's eyes were closed, his face was pale blue-gray, and his skin was dipping over his bones. Someone - not someone, but Johnny - forced a honey-oil-smelling sunflower into his mouth, that was twisted into a dreadful grimace. Johnny might even have shoved the shaft down his throat to make sure the flower stayed inside.

"This mouth won't talk any trash to you anymore, that's for sure."

Maud dragged closer, unable to take her eyes off the dissected head. From here, the arousal emanating from Johnny almost burned her as he eagerly watched her every twitch. He wanted her to react, he wanted her to panic, or maybe lose her mind altogether.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked, looking up at him. Until now, she hadn't noticed the scar that ran from his left eyebrow to his cheek; whoever made it, must have plunged with a sharp object, without caring about that it could have taken his eyesight. "You coulda done it. I was standing right in front of you. Daisy’s puttin’ up a fight, and she won't give in easy, but I don’t wanna go down that road." She remembered Grant's words and how she was probably expected to offer her life for her best friend right now.

Johnny wasn't interested in this conversation.

"You won't even thank me, Blondie?"

At this point, Maud was about to beg for answers. She just knew that - unlike Daisy -, she had no reason to want to go back to the outside world, especially after unleashing that angry and cruel… something inside her.

Mad Mommy Maud.

Johnny pressed a gloved index finger to her lips as she tried to speak again. He smiled, seeing that she gasped, and slowly ran his finger over her bottom lip, then up her now clean face.

"Take it in your hand," he ordered with a hushed but demanding voice.

Maud watched the face of the alive and breathing man towering over her almost in a daze, while she took her ex's sawed-off head between her hands. It felt cold and vulnerable, just a dead weight. In his life, only the latter was true for him. Grant wasn't callous, but he was a spoiled brat, too lazy to get rid of her, but too gluttonous not to eat elsewhere.

"And now?" Maud whispered, still only watching Johnny. She clung to the smell of his cologne to keep herself from acting crazy. She felt his hand travel down her neck, then the soft valley of her cleavage, circling every little mole that dotted her skin.

"Just admire it."

She glanced down at the monstrosity in her hand, then slowly lifted it up, and pressed a kiss to the sweetly carrion-smelling center of the sunflower forced into Grant's mouth.

"Thanks."

Johnny chuckled and his lips parted as he wanted to say something. However, it had to be delayed, because acid and water erupted from her mouth - due to the lack of food she could've eaten - and drenched Johnny's tattered shirt.

They came for her as dusk fell. Until then, she was left in the small room with the pieces of the broken lamp and her present, and Maud huddled in the window looking out at the back garden of the family house. It was punctuated by fences made of barbed wire and debris, which in some places were completely overgrown with grass and weed, shriveling from the heat. She also noticed a well with a wide brim, but she doubted that there was any water in it.

Johnny wasn't upset that Maud threw up on him, in fact, the flat, brazen look he gave her was more like… teasing. As if Maud had just done some cute little clumsiness, such as breaking the rim of a mug, or accidentally spilling her lemonade on him.

The key turned in the lock, and the masked Bubba entered the room. Now he was not wearing his yellow apron, but an almost elegant blue suit and bold red lipstick applied on his mouth with unskilled, rough hands. He uttered a voice of greeting and also of urgency, and grasped Maud's arm with his huge, thick fingers. He was unintentionally brutish as if he didn't feel the limits of his body and the magnitude of his own strength. Maud stumbled after him, hit her head on one of the bone chimes on the stairs, and yelped loudly. Still, he didn't slow down, just proceeded to drag her into the dining room with the excitement of a dog waiting for its owner. All of the family was already there, waiting. Three homemade skull lamps, similar to the one above, illuminated the room next to the dimly lit chandelier, which contrasted sickly with the porcelain dishes lined up in the cabinet and the neatly set table.

Maud was seated in front of the window overlooking the darkened garden, and Nubbins reached directly in front of her to tie both of her hands tightly to the armrests. He definitely knew more about knots than Big Boy; she wouldn't have been able to get out of this with all the struggle of the world, but she didn't really have time to think about complicated escape plans either.

Across from her, at the head of the table sat a dead-looking old man in a creaky rocking chair. His skin was yellowish-grey, like curled-up papers left at the bottom of musty cellars; his gray, sparse hair reached almost to his shoulders, his eyes were half closed, and ailing sighs rose from his throat irregularly.

"Look, Grandpa," enthused Nubbins with a smile almost covering his face. He bounced around Maud's chair, pointing at her with both hands. "How do you like her? She killed that boy! I saw it! It was all blood, spilling everywhere. Too bad that it was crap!

"It wasn't good for nothing!" Sissy added.

Bubba took a seat next to the old man, and Maud couldn't interpret his excited hums as anything else than overflowing joy at the family... being together. Sissy smiled at her cross-legged as if she really was a special guest at their table, not a prisoner in a dead girl's sundress. Nubbins grabbed her face from behind with cold hands, forcing her to look at Grandpa.

"Do you like G-grandpa? It’s a real b-big honor gettin' to know him!"

Bubba pounded the table in his excitement. Johnny, resting his arm on the back of his chair with a satisfied, cocky half-smile, just observed what was happening.

If the hell room seemed like a fever dream, then this was the manifestation of one of the never-described pits of hell itself - utter, unhinged madness in shapes, odors, and vivid colors.

Maud knew she must not scream now. So she said:

"Yes, I like him. My name is Maud, Grandpa."

Her voice was shaky, but it sounded soft. Polite. Bubba beat the table even louder, while Nubbins snickered and tousled her hair so that Maud couldn't see him from her tangled hairstrands, only the outline of the thin man as he ran to his chair.

"Quit bein' stupid, ya idiot boy!" boomed Drayton's voice, who arrived carrying a huge pot.

"You're just a c-cook! Don't lecture me!"

The bickering turned into a heated argument, in which Sissy also joined, and the whole thing grotesquely resembled the quarrels of Maud's sisters. She sat frozen in place until a hand lightly swept her hair from her face, which had become a hen's nest.

Johnny didn't wear gloves this time.

"So you like him, huh?" he taunted, quietly so that no one else could hear, and then threw himself back into his chair.

Drayton made chili, which he again said was the best in the world next to his barbecue. Half a dozen more times he berated someone from the family, either Sissy for not remaining quiet or Johnny for not sitting in his chair properly. Finally, however, his attention was drawn to Maud, who didn't really know what to expect from him.

He did not display the maddened glee about her presence that Nubbins or Sissy had. Nothing could be read from his almost fatigued look except for the disapproval and that he wanted her to eat.

"Come on, don't be disrespectful." He held a spoon in front of her face like she was a baby. There was a surprising sense of practice in his movement - had he raised almost all of them?

Maud sought Johnny's eyes, almost begging him to look at her, though she didn't know why. He was as awful, if not worse, as anyone at the table. Anyone… including her. As for eating... no matter how hungry she was and no matter how obviously her stomach alerted that it needed food, all her instincts screamed that this chili, however appetizing, rich and hot it was, was bad.

"Come, eat with us!" Nubbins barked with his mouth full.

Maud opened her mouth, and for a moment she thought she was about to have the spiky stem of a sunflower shoved down her throat. She just ate and ate, silently, accepting every dip from Drayton like a toddler, and god damn it, that chili was divine.

The family was at the end of the meal, and she just sat there for a while, tied up, mouth smeared, feeling Johnny's scrutinizing gaze, but this time Maud was the one who wasn't looking at him. She couldn't. She didn't want to throw up again.

Grandpa tensed in his seat, threw his head back, and a cry-like whine escaped from his frail body. Maud thought for a moment that something was wrong with him, but then she heard a noise from the basement passage.

Daisy?

Everyone jumped up from the table, talking and cursing at the same time, but their voices were drowned out by Bubba's scream. He immediately picked up the brutal, bloody chainsaw, and without hesitation started it over the dining table. Sissy headed in the opposite direction, retrieving a razor blade from under her dress.

"The third kid is runnin' around here somewhere! How the hell did she get out?" Drayton rushed for the bushy back garden.

Soon only Grandpa, Maud, and Johnny were left in the room. With one hand clutching his blade in his belt, and the other gripping Maud's chin with steely force, he made her look at him.

"You stay here. Grandpa will let me know if you try anything. You stay here and wait while I spill the guts of the feisty little gal."

Maud nodded, slowly and convincingly. Johnny wiped the red chili smudge from her lips with the bottom of his shirt.

"Later then, Blondie."

Chapter Text

This was not a moment of obedience.

Maud still had the will to convince herself that she hadn't completely lost her mind. In the light of what had happened before, a sane person would hardly consider listening to Johnny and sitting across from the mummy-like old man, waiting for the family to return.

Especially with Daisy out there, and everyone involved in the previous madness hunting her.

The ropes dug painful trenches into Maud's skin as she moved her wrists back and forth. She didn't know how much Grandpa saw of her, or what it would take for him to start yelling again, so she moved carefully, enduring the pain without letting out even a small whimper. This didn't last long, however, because a red blouse flashed in the shadow of the open dining room door.

Daisy looked horrible. The stunning curls were gone from her hair, and her face was covered with a bunch of small gashes caused by the heated stones of the road when Johnny kicked the door on her, and she was sprawled on her stomach by the Texas driveway. A purple bruise darkened the skin around her flax-blue eye, perhaps the memory of Bubba's fist, her lip was torn, her blouse hung in shreds, revealing her tanned skin, her ribs flashing in her panting, as well as the deep, bleeding wound between them.

Still, she was on her feet, scrambling ever closer to the table, and to Maud at the same time, ready to free her.

Maud shook her head trying to deter her from the reckless act. She suddenly forgot everything that she had been contemplating about the two of them for the past few days. The resentment that had soured in her over many, many years (for Daisy's frivolity, her freedom, her flaming irresponsibility, and the whoreson Grant Finch) meant nothing anymore.

"Holy shit, Dee, you're alive," Daisy moaned, paying no mind to her warning. In her hand, she held a piece of bone similar to the one Maud had recently put in use. A lockpick with a broken handle was hidden in the back pocket of her shorts. "Don't worry, I'll do it..."

She cut Nubbins's ropes with the bone shard, and Maud's hands were freed, her chafed skin responding with stinging pain as the air caressed it again. Grandpa rocked back and forth in his chair and let out an ear-piercing howl that caused the blood to drain from both girls' faces.

"Don't!" Maud grabbed Daisy's hand as she started to rush in a blind panic towards the back garden where Drayton was patrolling. "Come!" She held her hand as if she were little Shiloh or Tina, who wanted to run through every crosswalk without looking around.

She almost tripped over the long skirt of the dragonfly dress and cursed to herself. She didn't know how to move in such a drag. She never had the opportunity to learn it, and yet she was flaunting in it now while Daisy looked worse than a run-over dog.

"Fuck, what did they do to you?"

Her throat tightened at the honest, desperate concern in Daisy's voice. They crept through a room bordered by ceiling-high shelves. It was dark as pitch beyond the lights that filtered in from other rooms and glinted on the stained jars that were lined on the shelves.

"Nothing. I mean, it's complicated, but… They barely touched me." She remembered Johnny's warm palm on her cheek, his probing fingers on the curve of her breast, and Sissy's arms around her body as she embraced her almost protectively in the tub. "Daisycake, how the fuck could you…and this…"

She looked at the hideous wound on her stomach. Daisy pressed her thin fingers on it, and the thick, scarlet blood immediately seeped through them.

"You really are a shedload of surprises, Blondie! I figured this time you wouldn’t be such a sweet, obedient little doe. You know that's absolutely pointless, right?"

Johnny's voice came from the dining room, dangerously close. Once again, Maud knew through her pain-grown intuition that despite his slurred words, he was actually kind of... disappointed, which was both a ridiculous and a somehow… bugging feeling to her.

What?

"What the fuck is he tal-"

Maud covered Daisy's mouth with lightning speed. It was nice of her to wonder what she had been through, but she had no idea what Johnny was really like. That he brought her ex's head in a basket to her, that he was a hunter who never gave up, and once he caught a whiff...

"Oh-oh. Your friend left a nice little trail behind…"

The floorboards creaked under the man's boots as he entered the dark room, and they both knew they had to move. They slipped through a hole at the base of the wall and ran as fast as they could to the roofed porch. In the middle stood a table, furrowed by deep cracks from time and thermal expansion. Someone had plunged a meat cleaver in its softened wood and left it there forgetfully.

It was exactly like the cleaver Maud used in the cold room of her mother's shop. She knew how to hold it, and with a firm move she plucked it from the table; she could almost smell the odour of freshly separated pork cartilage.

She crouched and, hiding between the freezer cases, peered out one of the wide windows, looking for movement in the yard. She was convinced that there was no way that nobody was watching that area, especially since she spotted the silhouette of a gate in the far distance - although she didn't know if it meant anything promising for them.

Were she and Daisy one again now? The situation reminded her a bit of the time when, at the age of fifteen, they hung out among the caravans of the circus that came to their town. They were hiding among the giant, dung-smelling wheels of the animal transport trailers, high with adrenaline, while the aggravated workers were searching for the hooligans with their flashlights.

"I could wiggle out of the ropes" the black-haired girl whispered, reaching to her back pocket to make sure she didn't lose her screwdriver. "I found a very, very narrow gap in the wall… I don't know how long I struggled. But there was a protruding nail in the middle… I had to push through it…"

Maud squeezed her free hand.

"It's nothing though. I have no idea what you must have been through, Dee... that psycho, that Johnny... he did something to you, didn't he? Or all of these people. Sick things."

That was on point, even if reality and what Daisy must have imagined didn't exactly match.

Sissy appeared on the other side of the window, holding her razor blade with such grace as if it were not a weapon, but an instrument or a paintbrush, her footsteps almost noiseless.

"Poor little thing, poor little girl. Come here, I won't hurt ya. The others are different, they wouldn't understand... But I can help."

She opened the door and peeked into the next room, hiding behind the wall and showing her back to them. Maud felt Daisy's hand slip from hers. She glanced over to see her clutching the bone scrap again.

She hesitated for a moment, and a thousand conflicting feelings dashed through her tortured neural pathways. Exhaustion. Uncertainty. Anxiety. But what really made it all weird was that she didn't want Daisy to attack Sissy.

She didn't want her best friend to harm one of her captors, an obviously insane killer who was still whistling a song in good spirits.

She put the cleaver down and took both of Daisy's hands in hers, keeping themselves in the shadows as she mouthed the word 'no'. Daisy resisted at first and stared at her with justified bewilderment, but she had enough brains to speak only after Sissy moved away.

"Dee, I could do it! Why didn't you let me? Maybe she killed Grant. Because… because he's dead, right?"

Her voice trailed off at the end of the sentence. She leaned her heavy head against the black freezer, and her blood-slicked hand wandered back to her injured stomach. It was a pitiful sight, even more so when, after Maud's nod, tears rolled down her face. She clamped her mouth shut, trying to hold back her mournful wails.

It was sad, for someone, perhaps, but Maud felt monstrous rage rising in her chest, the ghost of which had followed her all her life, but it was in the basement of the Sawyer house where it first surfaced for real.

"Why?"

"Um?" sniffed Daisy, her head didn't move, only her eyes fluttered in grief towards Maud.

Dust billowed from the boards as Bubba ran overhead with the chainsaw roaring, then with a spine-chilling noise, he began sawing something apart, maybe a door.

"Why were you bangin' him?" she asked, and her voice was shaking, but not from sorrow. Daisy immediately looked elsewhere. "You could have had anyone in that shithole. We told each other first when we lost our virginity, or well, I only told you, who else would I, er? Did you seriously think I didn't know he's been cheating on me with ya for a year now?"

Daisy stared at her dumbfounded as if she didn't know deep down that Maud could see through the sieve. Or rather, the wire fence, considering the moronic obviousness of what they were doing.

"Not now, please..."

"I asked you something!"

Her hand, sticky from Daisy's blood latched around her friend's neck faster than she thought she could move, and she slammed her head against the hard freezer with sheer force. Daisy flinched in shock, her eyes filled with terror and disbelief as if she had no idea who Maud was.

"I don't- neh -I don't know," she cried, her eyeshadow falling in large chunks from her soaked eyelashes.

"You do know," Maud snorted. Her other hand found a familiar object, and she felt like she could smell the damp bones again. "Because you fucking hated your life going nowhere, and this was the biggest thrill you could get out of it. To have the forbidden fucking fruit and mess around with Grant, who would've never dared to be with you, because eventually, you would've left him. Am I right, Daisycake?"

When instead of an answer she only got a shake of the head and sobs, she again bashed the girl against the freezer, not caring about whether they would be found. She still had an advantage over Daisy in that regard, and even though she was shorter, she was tougher and a thousand times more determined.

It was the smell that gave Johnny away - his cologne. The pleasant scent that Maud was clinging to up there, to keep her mind from collapsing. She felt it sooner than Johnny started laughing behind her back.

"Have you already told her, darlin', that you stabbed the fella to death?"

She immediately let go of the dizzy, gagging Daisy's throat, her fingers leeaving furious red marks on her skin. Maud felt as if a stone had fallen into her stomach, and she swallowed hard trying to force everything that wanted to hurt Daisy back into its well-formed place.

As soon as she turned, Johnny caught her hand, and as he noticed the meat cleaver, a cheerful light twinkled in his eye. He took it from her with ease, but it wasn't Maud's intention to use it on him anyway.

"Run!" she shouted to Daisy. She was coughing hard, but managed to rise to one knee, and began limping towards the door.

"Oh, come on! There's no chance for you to get out, but... Frankly, I like it better when they run."

Maud took advantage of the moment, and grabbed at his slicked back, dark brown, almost black hair, forcefully pulling his face back towards her. By then the smile had faded from Johnny's face, only surprise remaining from his earlier expression, and now he was angry. Maud knew.

"You are about to make me lose my temper, Blondie. You may be overestimating how interesting I find you."

Maud's arms were shaking desperately as Johnny strained against her. Anyone her size, who hadn't spent their lives doing hard physical labor and enduring ruthlessness, would have collapsed under it, but Maud took it like a crooked nail in a plank. She could almost feel the floor giving way under her heels.

"I'm not interesting at all."

She knew she wouldn't be able to last long. Her left hand, which was holding Johnny's with the sharp knife, was shaking dangerously.

Johnny smiled like a wolf again but purred like a cat.

"You don't even want to hurt me, do you?"

Maud gave a deep, almost painful sigh at this, and in the next moment she bobbed her head; her forehead slammed into Johnny's nose. He cursed loudly and jerked her blindly to the side. He also swung the blade without an exact aim, slashing Maud's right leg. She fell against the table, but was soon on her feet again, and after Daisy as fast as she could; their traces were only shown by the dark blood stains and the door swinging back and forth on its hinges.

Chapter Text

It was almost strange how clean the air was, pleasantly cool in the evening, after the pervasive, heavy, rotten smell of the Sawyer house. Maud took big gulps of it as she crawled between the boards of the picket fence, shortening the way to the wire gate left ajar, through which Daisy also had left. Her forehead throbbed from the collision with Johnny's nasal bone, and her torn dress hitched in the rusty nails sticking out of the fence boards. Gritting her teeth, Maud tugged at the fabric, ripping it up to her thighs. The dragonflies were soaked red in the blood pouring from the wound on her leg; it was deep and long, although it was only the result of a hasty movement.

It was horrifying to imagine what could have been suffered by the ones who Johnny struck with full precision and presence.

Maud found a second's rest among the sunflowers, bending along the fence. She tried to pull herself together and ignore the numbing pain that tormented her leg. Her palm rested on the faded blood stain on her dress, which was not hers.

Did you try to escape too? Were you fierce like Daisy? I wish you had some good advice for me, homegirl.

She listened like a doe, knowing that Johnny was following them—though he made no secret of it.

"I like this, Blondie! Hit me again!" His words were accompanied by a loud, repetitive noise, as if he had kicked something over and over again, followed by a metallic screech. Maud guessed that Johnny might have destroyed the gap she had just climbed through. "Oh, I know you hear me!"

Maud wanted no part in this game. Johnny'd caught her red-handed, and that in itself was jarring enough.

"You don't even want to hurt me, do you?"

Not. Not. Yes. Not. Yes and no.

Go ahead, Mommy Maud. Run!

She moved slowly among the flowers that had closed up for the night. Their rough, broad leaves caressed her shoulders and face, hiding her from the eyes of the family like faithful accomplices. She was tempted to look back to see where the now-silent Johnny was going, but it was enough for her to know that she was being followed. And she had to find Daisy, who was perhaps as terrified of her as of Johnny.

"Daisy," she said in a hushed voice when she reached the end of the fence section. "Everything will be fine. We'll get through it."

Her friend had to be somewhere nearby. There was nowhere else to go, and from here, the gate—holding that slim promise of freedom—was in clearer view. But, naturally, fate threw another obstacle in their path: a ruby-red light beside the gate signaled it was electrified, like a barrier meant to keep a herd of cattle penned tightly within the property’s bounds.

"Liar."

She snapped her head toward the snuffing sound. The huddled little pile of a person, hidden in the tall grass was only an arm's length from her. Her thin face was streaked with dried tears and her legs were bare. Her cork-heeled slippers probably flew off her as she staggered to get as far away from Maud's condemning grip and Johnny's predatory grin as possible.

"No," Maud drew closer with relief, but she didn't touch her. "I'm telling the absolute truth."

Daisy didn't flinch. It went against her instincts to assume bad things about her, Maud knew that well because she was everyone's goddamn Mommy, who would rather bite her tongue than causing trouble.

She looked in the direction of the gate, vibrating with electricity, and thought of the world beyond it. Her mother's torn stockings and perpetually irritated glances. Tina and Iris rubbing glue in her clothes and calling her a cow because they once heard Grant doing the same in anger. The tepid saliva that a disgruntled customer spat in her face after she refused to give a discount on his gin and Kellogg's Variety Pack.

"You are. Because you never said… that you were so livid with me."

"Oh, please, Daisy. Just stop bulshittin me. I was the one who opened your fucking blood test papers for you because you were terrified you were pregnant. What the hell did you think of me? That I'm so legendarily stupid, or that I don't even have feelings?"

"More like you just don't care," Daisy corrected, her gaze drifting to the gaping gash on Maud's thigh.

She wanted to ask something, but she didn't. She knew they had to hurry. The sunflowers bent with a painful rustle around Johnny's strong frame, and his steps no longer sounded as if he were searching at random.

The bastard is following my blood.

"I'll try to pick the lock." In Daisy's slightly trembling hand glinted silverly the screwdriver she had acquired in the basement.

She drew Daisy's attention to the cattle grid. It was clear that she had to leave something from the ill-omened to-do list to her, provided she wanted Daisy to get out, and she did. When she smelled Johnny's cologne in there, an image popped into her mind: that soon Daisy Anderberg would be writhing in Grant's former place, crying and choking on snot, the same girl with whom she had slept under a big, fluffy blanket once, huddled together like hedgehogs. And she no longer felt anger. No pain either. Just some haunting sadness.

Daisy rushed to the gate with the same foolhardiness as in the dining room. Maud limped among the piled-up cars of all ages and in various stages of disintegration at the end of the property, looking for the power source that could have supported the gate. She thought of Gus, that unfortunate, idiot named van; is it also resting here somewhere? Along with the many vehicles that, thanks to tough luck, transported all those who set foot on the Sawyers' property to their doom?

" Nubbins, you shifty little sumbitch," Johnny said with a chuckle, the waist-high blades of grass falling in mass under his long steps. "I'll give you that!"

It was good to know that Nubbins was lurking around here too, for Maud saw no sign of him. She seemed, though, to hear the clinking of the purse full of mysterious—and probably hideous—things hanging around his neck.

But Johnny didn't stop there.

"I just had a taste of ya, darlin’. You couldn’t deny your blood—it’s just as rousin' as you are. And I ain’t sharin’ it with nobody else, just like I ain’t sharin’ you with anyone either."

In a different situation, she might have had the opportunity to be shocked by these words. If she hadn't been following a conspicious electrical wire in the dim moonlight to get her best friend out of this hell on earth, she would have blinked in deep embarrassment at the thought of anyone calling her a 'teaser' for anything. That anyone wants a part of their being, even in Johnny's sick way.

She stifled a pained hiss as she pulled into the shadow of a car that was missing its tires, but under its flapped hood, two diodes sent a low buzz of power through the insulated wire. She pulled her still bleeding leg under her, but then she noticed something in the grass, just below the battery: she leaned closer and saw that it was a contraption made of pieces of bone and metal wires.

A trap.

"Shit" she grunted. She spent precious seconds searching desperately for the next step in her head. She had no choice but to stick her head out to look at Daisy, who was completely defenseless, clearly visible to anyone, fiddling with the lock with her flimsy tool, occasionally uttering a curse word filled with terror.

The Big Boy started the chainsaw.

With a roar, he swung it over his head, hurrying towards Daisy and the gate with huge, thunderous strides. Maud's despair sank to an unreachable depth, and she couldn't understand why Daisy wasn't running yet. What could she hope for? That Bubba wasn't even that close or that he was chasing someone else? Or was she simply and blindly trying to believe that, like in some lame movie, the lock will give in at the last second?

"Daisy, run!" Daisy didn't listen to her, and by the screaming, Maud revealed herself. She already heard Johnny's approaching footsteps. He also said something, but it didn't reach her anymore. As fast as she could, she made her way towards the gate, dragging her injured leg behind her. "GO, FUCKING GO!"

The lockpick fell from Daisy's hand and she looked up, to find herself facing the behemoth with the chainsaw a few feet away. Her eyes widened and she screamed aloud. Bubba did that too, and there was something akin to anxiety in his voice as if they were a threat to them and he should be the one to protect the family from the malicious strangers roaming the estate. The gasoline-fuming saw cut into Daisy's side; fresh blood sprayed into the air and she fell forward, screaming and sobbing at the same time.

"Bubba, don't!"

Holding both hands up, Maud fell to her knees next to Daisy, prepared for that he wouldn't stop before the next brutal blow, cutting her face in half. Bubba's expression was not visible behind the lightly made-up leather mask, but confusion appeared in his witless eyes, and the chainsaw stopped in mid-air, blood dripping from its edge onto the grass.

"Mh-huh?"

He looked back and forth between Daisy and the other girl whom he recognized from next to their table, whom Johnny had given a present and who liked Grandpa. Maud was hoping for just this to gain a few precious moments to use all her strength to make Daisy stand up, who was weeping in her arms in agony. She dragged her towards the well, and she could only hope that she guessed right where it was leading to.

Nubbins and Johnny were on their trail, the former scolding Bubba for his hesitation. Maud wrapped her arms around Daisy's waist, or what was left of it, and swung themselves around before taking a deep breath and clutching at the last straw of her courage, she threw herself backward into the well, holding her half-passed-out friend close to her.

For seconds, the world around her was blindingly white, her lungs flattened, her legs were shaking uncontrollably. Her arms fell from Daisy, who was bleeding on her as much as a human might not even have. She felt that she wouldn't be able to proceed, that she wouldn't be able to finish what she had decided to do. However, her stubbornness got the better of her again, and she struggled to her feet. She yanked the other girl behind her through a tunnel reminiscent of a mine passage.

"Maud, stop."

Daisy's words were gagged with blood. Maud collapsed with her against the uneven wall and pulled her friend's head into her lap. She wouldn't have been able to stay on her feet much longer either, carrying the weight of the two of them. With a wounded leg, sleepless, having caught Daisy's fall at the bottom of the well... the crooked nail had cracked, and she was aware of it. Every part of her burned with pain.

"They're coming," Daisy breathed, her unfocused eyes scanning the ceiling. Maud turned her head to face her.

"We still have time."

"Am I dying?"

Maud didn't look at her wound, or anywhere else but her face. That's how she could keep her exhausted but calm expression, and that's how her gentle words could ring genuine.

"No, Daisycake. You just need to get some sleep." Daisy was already too weak to doubt her, so she just blinked a few times and cried in a small voice, like a little girl. She reminded Maud of her sisters, and this hateful feeling brought the mother back to life in her. The loneliest mother in the world. "Nothing bad can happen anymore. What he said about Grant– "

Daisy interrupted.

"It was a lie," she said with the conviction of the dying. "Did he really think… I'd believe it? Ha… you loved Grant—that's why you were angry with me. I'm so sorry … I didn't mean to… I'm sorry, Mommy Maud…"

There was no mockery or spite in her voice. Come to think of it, she'd only used that nickname in a mocking way in Grant's company, and Maud had never thought about it until now. That Daisy would respect her for her struggles and what she had become in that sense.

"I'm not givin' a crap about Grant Finch. Rest, Daisy."

The girl mumbled something, but it was no longer possible to understand. It was something about sleep, dogs, and about something soft, maybe a blanket.

Maud just sat with her in the clay-red tunnel lined with beams, in the dull light of the mine lamps, in which they both looked like ghosts. When Daisy's chest sank for the last time and never rose again, a convulsive cry broke from inside Maud as if something had been torn from her ribs, with or without a chainsaw.

The next few minutes were spent in the same trance that was familiar to her from the red room. She dragged Daisy's lifeless body through the tunnel and into a room full of barrels and buckets. She looked into the closets; two of the three were filled with trash, old newspapers and more buckets, but one was empty. First, she lifted Daisy's cold, dirty, bare feet, then her body. She brushed her messy hair from her face, which she then turned toward the back of the closet. She slowly closed the wooden door, then left the room limping and crawling and wandered through the mock labyrinth of the basement until she came upon a ladder. The door leading to it was open. Someone, maybe Nubbins, was rushing after them.

She lost a lot of blood, felt woozy, and almost fell off the ladder twice because her legs couldn't support her weight properly. She crept out in the back garden, close to a shack, but didn't try to hide in it, she simply went around it, hobbling straight towards the open door of the house. She noticed Drayton's face in the upstairs window and he saw her too. He shouted something that Maud couldn't hear from there, but it must have alerted those in the house.

Maud just tiredly raised one hand, holding her filthy palm towards him, a gesture that was both salute and surrender. Then she sat down in the grass, or rather slumped, the borrowed dress hanging torn from her shoulders, revealing her bra strap, her bloody leg lying in plain view, and now she felt more naked than she did up there in the tub.

"Well, well, well," Johnny's deep voice came from the door. Soon a pair of black boots appeared in Maud's field of vision, but she no longer had the strength to look up at the face that was ridiculously beautiful for a vicious killer. "Who is back with us?"

Chapter Text

Johnny crouched down in front of her since Maud refused to look up at him. Again, in a way that was both invigorating and annoying to him. He had no idea what was going through her mind. With others, it was so easy. They were either terrified (this was the most common), or they hated him, wanted to fight back, to bite him, to tear him apart, to spit on him, to kill him.

For a little while it looked like things were clearing up, and this girl would also be foolish enough to try to run away from him and his family. He had to admit, she was a tough chick. She could stand the cold of the storage room, the sleep deprivation, and she’d even held her own against his strength, despite her small frame—even if just for moments. And now, here she was: with an injured leg, after a nasty fall, sprawled in the grass before him, her limbs limp like a discarded rag doll.

"Silent treatment?" He playfully fiddled with the hunting knife he had received from Grandpa. It was already clean. He'd wiped the blood wrung from Maud's leg in his jeans, on his own thigh when it was still fresh. "Well, I think it's fair. You almost broke my nose, Blondie."

That didn't work either, Maud kept on staring at the ground, her eyelashes at half-mast. It was a peculiar reaction to stress, this deceptive passivity and silence. Johnny really wondered who or what had instilled this in her. He didn't really believe that wussy could've achieved that on his own.

He got tired of questioning, so he chose a new strategy; he pressed his blade under her chin, forcing her to look him in the eye. The brown doe eyes were dry, but they radiated utmost exhaustion. She looked awful, and the summer dress was completely ruined, the one he had so carefully stowed away in a paper bag with a few sachets of fragrant wildflowers he stole from Sissy.

After She…

"Let's try it again," he said, putting the playfulness aside. "Where's the other girl?"

"She's dead."

"Of course. Big Boy kinda put her through it. But I want to know where she is. You better not test my patience anymore."

He pressed the blade tighter against the soft peachy skin, and Maud grimaced, sweat running down her neck between her breasts, which were stained with the other girl's blood. Johnny's gaze lingered on them for a long moment and he felt a faint shiver resonate along the blade of his knife.

And what may she think now?

"You flinch when a man looks at your tits, but it’s no big deal if someone holds a knife to ya?" he cooed with raised eyebrows. " Blondie, I have bad news. You're so messed up."

"If you say so" she sighed. Johnny didn't like the cynical edge in her voice, but it was cute - the way she shrugged her shoulders, balancing her chin on the edge of the knife and covering her cleavage with her filthy hands. "I can't go on with this now. I need time."

"Time, darlin'?"

"Yes," Maud blinked slowly. "Please give me some time, Johnny."

It was the first time she called him that, and he liked how his name rolled off her full lips. Even if - for now - there was no life in it, only apathy.

He pulled the knife away from her neck and tucked it into his belt. He was almost certain that she wasn't going to try to escape again. She wasn't in the right state to do so. Now, even in the absence of the knife, she was looking at him, obviously calculating what his next move would be, and how she should react to it with her masterful little eggshell dance.

"Luckily for ya, I'm in a generous mood." Before she could answer, he reached under her knees and wrapped his other arm around her waist. She didn't weigh much, she couldn't have been more than a hundred and forty pounds, and she carried most of it on her thighs and bottom. "Stay put."

He held Maud against his chest. She remained motionless, just frozen in place. She was clearly not used to being held and carried, and the way she peeked at him, his face, then his chest, which she involuntarily rested her tired head against... if it hadn't been for that pathetic boyfriend of hers, Johnny would have thought she'd never seen a man before up close.

Although she had surely never seen a man like him.

"Blondie" He stopped by the stairs. "There's a big ol' piece of bone stickin' right out of your shoulder blade."

She didn't answer, she didn't have the strength anymore. They could do anything to her, anything on earth, and she'd willingly walked back to them.

Or to him. This possibility spurred a delighted smirk from him. There was something particularly thrilling about the fact that he might have already managed to worm his way into that puzzlingly unpredictable little head.

"What are you doin', boy?" Drayton snapped at him, who was on his way down the stairs, adjusting his previously rolled-up sleeves. He was out of breath, still gasping for air after the chase, but he could rant with the same edge as in his most relaxed moments.

"You're in my way, old man."

"You really think I’m gonna put up with your next-in-line toy always stirrin’ up trouble in my house? That some horny kid’s antics are gonna make my heart give out early?"

Drayton didn't give up, blocking Johnny's way with his whole body and poking his index finger towards the girl lying in his arms. Then the whole damn family arrived, and Johnny didn't feel like discussing the matter with any of them, least of all his uncle.

"Is she d-dead? Is she d-dead?" Nubbins buzzed behind him. "Oh, no. She's alive. Huh. B-but for the other o-nne, she's so d-down."

"Bubba took care of it nicely," said Johnny, and his cousin in the blood-stained suit, standing in the doorway let out some happy hums. "I'll be needin' you again, Nubbins."

"Er, why, what do you want? L-leave me alone, P-pretty Boy!"

Johnny rolled his eyes, and since he wasn't going anywhere with nice words, he forced his way past Drayton. They had no intention of leaving him be, of course, and he was seething with rage, but he'd never crossed a line against his uncle. That was forbidden - family always had to come first.

"So where's the other girl?"

Drayton followed them into the small room where Maud had been locked before.

"The gal is already pushing the daisies. Go easy, old man, corpses usually don't go anywhere." Johnny laid her down in the middle of the bed, positioning her on her side so that the piece of bone, which could have been human or animal, wouldn't dig deeper into her body. He didn't even know what they had been throwing into that well already. "And I can find her anytime I want. I’d catch her easy, even alive and kickin'—you know that better than anyone."

Drayton slammed the door on the howling Nubbins and the others lurking in the doorway. Now he wasn't in the mood for indolence either, his frustration was bloody serious, but Johnny had high hopes that it wasn't that serious after all.

So much so that he wants to involve his mother.

"She'll tell where her friend is right now." insisted Drayton. Johnny casually flipped his unruly baby hairs back from his forehead, then reached for Maud's white sneakers to untie the laces. The girl jerked, half regaining consciousness at the touch of the again-gloved hand on her sensitive ankle. "Come on girl, where's the other one?"

Maud's lips parted and an unintelligible garble escaped from between them, but Johnny doubted it was an answer to the question. Without hesitation, the older man reached for the wound on her thigh, digging his fingers hard into the ripped flesh.

Maud's eyes popped open, and her scream was raw and anguished.

"I am asking ya: where is the other girl?! "

He pressed those onion-smelling fingers even harder into her thigh, and Johnny felt an irresistible urge to fly his uncle across the room. The blondie was his, he wanted the right to hurt her or spare her for himself, and Drayton was once again fucking ignoring his will.

He grabbed his wrist with his gloved hand before he could force another cry of pain from Maud.

"I told ya I’d find the girl! You ain’t got no business here, Drayton!"

His uncle wasn't weak, but he wasn't young either, therefore it wasn't hard for him to push him away from the girl. He didn't do it too harshly, though, he didn't want to harm the old goat, but it was time for him to understand how they stood.

He sat back on the edge of the bed and applied gentle pressure to her wildly shaking shoulder.

"Take a deep breath, Blondie."

Maud first stiffened and then slowly quieted under his touch. His - how ironic - didn't bring pain. She already knew his smell.

Johnny had plenty to talk about with her, but not now.

"Your mother will know about this, boy," Drayton growled indignantly as he tore open the door, revealing the eavesdropping Sissy and Nubbins. "Nubbins, tie this little wench up right! Can’t trust any of your dimwit cousins to handle this!"

Nubbins was more than enthusiastic about the task. He tied the unconscious girl's wrists together and then secured them both to the bed frame, all the while rambling about how he could do this best in the whole family, and that Maud should learn her lesson.

He had just finished when their uncle appeared again, holding a small blade.

"Don't even open yer mouth, Johnny boy." He didn't even look at him as the old hysteric passed by. "If she's here, we'll have some use of her."

Johnny obeyed him this time, knowing what he wanted. Grandpa, as Sissy and Nubbins told Maud at dinner, was not satisfied with the kid's blood, he needed a new fill, a warm one, full of life.

Drayton made a small cut on the girl's outstretched arm, catching the gushing, warm blood with a small gray vial. Johnny had sweetly fresh memories of her taste and was once again tempted to push Drayton aside, but this time to catch the red heat dripping down Maud's skin with his tongue.

He felt Nubbins' eyes on him. His scrawny cousin pursed his lips disapprovingly as if he knew what he was thinking, but he really didn't. Neither of them ever understood the other, and Johnny made it clear that he would never forgive or forget Nubbins' constant nagging during their teenage years. Anyway, after Johnny almost lost his left eye, he ceased bringing that up and instead came up with the nickname Pretty Boy, a name ironically used in newspaper articles and radio broadcasts a few years later.

"What w-was it you wanted t-to ask me to?"

Johnny waited until Drayton left before speaking, causing Nubbins to let out more resentful chirps.

"Patch her up. I ain’t sayin’ it twice, but your damn hands are the best in this stinkin' house."

Nubbins' face brightened immediately, then grinned and stuck his tongue out at him.

"Ask me n-n-nicely, Pretty Boy!"

"I'm asking you kindly, you mad dog, to do as I said, or I'll throw you off the fucking floor."

Some things don't change. Anyway, Nubbins got to work with his little... sewing kit, which Johnny told him to disinfect beforehand, and he made him wash his hands too. He stood at the end of the bed with his arms crossed while the other man cleaned and sewed up the gaping cut on Maud's thigh, muttering to himself all the time. He also took the piece of bone out of her back and tended that wound as well. Gingling exuberantly, he slipped the bone into his pouch among his other treasures.

This time, Johnny did not comment on this. Not, because Maud had gained consciousness in the meantime; he noticed that the dry eyes were open and watching Nubbins working above her as he prepared to sew up the wound.

"You're still alive, darlin'," he said. "You asked for time, you got it."

"Mmm."

She soon fell asleep again, and Nubbins finished. Johnny didn't thank him, but his cousin was too fired up by the bone, the one he'd taken out of the blondie's back, so he didn't whine about it.

By then he knew for sure that he would not be going home that day and that Nancy would be very upset about it. Especially if Drayton were to tell her why, and the thought made his hands clench into fists.

He locked the door and entered the bathroom to take off his bloodied, sweaty shirt that the girl also threw up on. The memory made him smile, as did the chili print of her lips on the fabric. He rubbed it with his thumb, then tossed the dirty shirt in the corner. After a thorough shower, he put his jeans back on and returned to the quiet little room. For a while, he just stood over the sleeping Maud, who suddenly reminded him of someone else, with her hair falling in her face and her bloody, tattered dress, even though the two of them were nothing like each other.

And he didn't want them to look alike. It would have been a damn bad omen, so he made sure it wasn't like that anymore. After that, he patted the festive head of Maud's ex in the basket and sat down on the armchair by the door, legs outstretched, muscles tingling with the pleasant exertion and excitement of the hunt.

She asked him for time and he gave it to her.

Time with him.

Chapter Text

The pain faded and all the sharp noises with it.

She saw herself as strong and - as many believed - she could endure almost anything. Like a heavy concrete pillar, she held herself even against a mudslide if she had to. However, her strength failed her, just like her patience down there in the basement. She needed to sleep, she needed to stay away for a while.

The ten-year-old Daisy Anderberg sat across from her with a gappy smile, in a thick sweater with little boats on it. Her thick ponytail, fixed with a ribbon, gently swayed in the wind. "Look," she said, but her voice was vague and strangely distant, her tiny hands busily kneading a lump of sticky mud. "It's gonna be a huge wall. An impregnable fortress!"

Maud could not see her own body, so she did not know whether she was a child or a grown woman. She wanted to warn Daisy, to tell her what not to do, so that when she grows up, the same thing as in that eerie dream wouldn't happen to her.

A nail slashed your stomach open and a chainsaw tore through your ribs, liver and belly

and I almost crushed your pretty little head

But when she looked into the little girl's pale blue eyes, she saw an empty, milky mist in them.

Oh, Daisy, it didn't work.

She reached for her, but Daisy's eyes suddenly changed to a different shade of blue, melting more watery and fragile. Grant looked down at her as she was lying in his lap, and the boy sang Lynyrd Skynyrd to her.

Maud screamed, writhed in his arms, and yelled his name again and again. She idn't hear her own voice, and the late Grant just continued to sing. At one point, he pressed his cold hand over her mouth, so that nothing but his song could be heard.

She woke up to the sound of rain hitting the window. Light flared up slowly in her mind, like a campfire made of wet logs; her nerves sizzled and fumed plaintively, longing back to unconsciousness. Her arms hung numbly above her head, and an uncomfortable, tight feeling immediately gnawed at her thigh.

Her senses pieced together reality in a disjointed blur: the gray rain clouds outside, the sluggish, rusty windmill turning slowly in the distance, the red cut in the crook of her elbow whose origin she couldn't recall. The fiddly knot of Nubbins around her wrists. Daisy is dead. A fly fluttering on the white sheet.

And she was wearing nothing but her bra and panties.

Her fingertips turned cold with the realization, and she didn't even see the torn dragonfly dress around her. As much as she hated it, she missed it dearly. Her terror quickly shrunk to a bearable level, though, since there were no physical signs that anyone had touched her, and... someone had laid a blanket over her. The soft, somewhat wardrobe-smelling blanket covered her up to her neck, benevolently shielding and warming her tormented body.

She didn't have many memories of the night, but she did remember Nubbins' stubbly face as he leaned over her, meddling with a needle and thread (and ripping the thread with his teeth). She remembered how Johnny had laid her down on the bed and carried her up the stairs holding her close to his warm and strong body.

She was just starting to get embarrassed when she realized she wasn't alone. Johnny sat across from her in the wooden armchair, his head resting on his palm, one long leg outstretched while the other was thrown aside, his bare chest rising and falling steadily. Maud just gazed at him for long minutes, and the sight of him was enough to put her dormant thoughts in motion.

Although not quite in their usual way.

Did he spend the whole night here with her? Was he so afraid of her trying to escape? Maud doubted it. Even a halfwit could see the night before that she couldn't take a single step, and Johnny was a lot of things, but not stupid. Maud guessed that maybe he wanted to keep the others away. It was the only plausible explanation for her because she simply couldn't imagine that Johnny's decision was solely about her. That he would have watched her in leaden silence for hours as she slept soundly, like a wolf resting in the hide of the gorse bushes, until he dozed off himself.

She couldn't take his eyes off of him: his now relaxed features, his pretty-cut lips that curved slightly downwards even in his sleep. His burly chest covered with dark hair and littered with grim, jagged scars, just like his broad shoulders. She remembered how she groggyly leaned her head against this chest, but not what it felt like.

Johnny, as if he heard her thoughts, slowly raised his head from his palm. His dark eyes immediately fixed on her, and he flashed a little smile at her, that was both lazy and cheeky, as if they were just waking up after a night spent together.

"Are you stalking me in my sleep?"

Maud huffed dismissively. Her white bra was stained with water-diluted blood, but otherwise, she was clean. This raised even more questions for her.

"You got me…?" She tried to sit up. Fortunately, Nubbins had left her bonds long enough to do so without feeling like a spread-out carcass, but the blanket fell into her lap. "What happened? Where did my clothes go?"

"Ain’t much left of it now, thanks to your stunts." Johnny answered scratching his neck. He was more than comfortable with the situation as if there was nothing strange about it. Maud, for her part, was never in her underwear, tied up in the company of a shirtless man.

"I'm sorry..."

"About the dress?"

"Yes. It wasn't mine."

"Well, not mine either." Johnny rose from his chair, and rolled his shoulders, banishing the night's rigor from his muscles. "Nubbins patched you up, but don’t worry ‘bout it, Blondie. That little shit, trust me, doesn’t care about your body like that at all."

That was kind of comforting and not hard to believe. Even for Nubbins' sadistically childish madness, it was clearly devoid of any sexuality.

She remembered Sissy's words when she told her about Johnny's flings and how, in the spirit of female solidarity, she would kill her rather than let her be a victim of rape. Another memory from the night before dawned on her, namely herself not allowing her best friend to drive a bone scrap into Sissy's back. Whatever Grant was whispering in her ear in that same bed, deep down she believed her without a doubt. She believed Sissy might do it for her. Likewise, she was inclined to believe that Johnny hadn't touched her.

Not solely because of Sissy's description. The way he flaunted his body in front of her, and the way he was obviously enjoying every confused little reaction he had coaxed out of her so far, almost screamed to Maud that it would be below Johnny to take something like that by force. As conceited as he was, he could rather find pleasure in being almost begged for his cock.

This thought made her face turn red. How on earth could such a thing come to her mind?

"Oh, no exaggeration, I’d kill to know what’s runnin' through your mind right now." Johnny chuckled as he sat on the bed next to her; the springs mewled under his weight, and Maud pulled the blanket up over her chest. "The truth is, at first I thought you were a dumbhead."

"And not anymore?" Maud was long past being offended by that. Those closest to her thought so too, or - as Daisy admitted last night -, that she didn't care.

"Good question. I don’t really get why you tried to escape, why you fought me, only to walk right back to us in the end."

Maud turned her head away, and watched the blurred outline of the windmill through the rain-stained windowpane.

"I wouldn't say I tried to escape," she replied. "I wanted to get Daisy out of here."

"Blondie." Johnny's warm palm rested through the blanket on her thigh, close to the stitched wound, but it didn't hurt. "Don't lie to yourself. You smashed her head into the freezer in front of my eyes. Twice. In a way that even I haven't done many times." His fingers closed across the covers to her thighs, still not enough to cause any serious pain, but he implied a glimpse of the possibility. “Mm, maybe I'm asking too much. You’re probably just too used to lying."

Maud knew that she had to look him in the eye, that she couldn't ignore either him or the conflicting feelings boiling in her.

"You may be right. But now I am telling the truth."

"Are you saying you wanted the girl who was fucking your boyfriend to get out?"

"My best friend who was fucking my boyfriend." Johnny laughed shamelessly and Maud also smiled miserably. She resented being laughed at because it had happened to her far too many times in her life, but this time she had to admit the absurdity of what she was saying. "But I fucked up."

Johnny was still laughing. Of course, Maud Raines was the funny one on duty again. She just smiled half-heartedly, as the door opened and Sissy walked in, wearing a pretty little black dress with a white lace collar, and carrying a tray in her hands. She greeted them in a chirpy voice and planted a smack of a kiss on Johnny's cheek. He grunted irritably and made a shooing motion.

She brought herb tea in a simple white pot, which was scalding hot and Maud couldn't find a better word for its smell than green. She also brought her a large glass of water, saying that she had lost a lot of blood, so that she must replace it, or she would be parched and gloomy.

"Don't drink it," Johnny said grimly after the door closed behind Sissy. Maud raised her blond eyebrows questioningly. "For once in your life, listen to me without me forcing ya. Don't drink it."

"Okay" she gave in, and in some way… it felt nice that he didn't want her to get hurt. Even if she didn't really think they were trying to poison her. It seemed far too simple for a death here. "Did you find her?"

"No. For now."

"Good."

"Wherever you hid her, it was a waste of time, Blondie." Johnny stood up and picked up the teapot from the tray. He sniffed it and grimaced like a little boy at the sight of steamed vegetables. "She was bleeding like a skewered pig, and so were you. How long do you think your tracks will take to lead me to her?"

She really didn't think it through enough then and there, but it wasn't that surprising. Bleeding, after jumping into a well and his childhood best friend passing in her arms, she wasn't at the peak of her mental capacity. However…

"Surely soon, but by then it might be too late," she said, taking the glass of water between her clasped hands. "Especially in this damp, hot weather. By then her body won't be… fit."

It was hard for her to express herself, especially since then she would have had to say that Grant had been eaten, and that she actually wanted to save Daisy from that fate.

Johnny put the teapot back on the tray with a loud thud. Maud expected him to hit her and she was dead sure that he would be furious, but it didn't happen that way.

Johnny just crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his head to one side.

It was not easy for her to see through him, and this was new to her – she was used to the fact that although everyone considered her harmless, even a self-appointed doormat, no one could surprise her. For the most part, she knew exactly what others wanted to hear and what they didn't. Since, however, she'd crossed the threshold of the world of madness and met this family, met Johnny, all her tried and tested strategies had lost their purpose.

Besides, in these three days, she was the most forthright in her life. Freed from the weight of conformity, with the closeness of inevitable death, far less frightening for her than it should have been, the mud and lime plastered over her real self began to crack.

She drank all the water in big, thirsty gulps.

"How could someone like you, Blondie, be with a loser like this?" Johnny nudged Grant's head with his finger. He apparently dropped the Daisy-topic to dig into this even more perplexing one.

The tap water soured in Maud's mouth.

"As you can see, I'm not the second coming of Brigitte Bardot myself." Johnny stifled a smile at this, and noted that while her humor was for his liking, he had meant the question quite differently. "I don't understand why you care, Johnny, but I'd rather drink poisoned tea than talk about Grant Finch."

"Did you have anyone else besides him?"

"No."

"You're not lying now, are you?"

She looked into his eyes, calm and dispassionate, letting him take her glass from her hand.

"No, I'm not lying." It was clear to her that Johnny wasn't asking her about it because he was hungry for gossip. It was rather the irritation of possessiveness that was radiating from his voice. Not that any of her possible hanky-pankies mattered much as a prisoner of the family, exposed to Johnny's whims.

"Alright."

To her surprise, Johnny untied her from the bed frame, though he left her hands bound. He helped her out of bed and wrapped the white blanket around her, putting the edges in her hand so she could pull them together. He steered her ahead of him, firmly but patiently as she limped down the stairs barefoot, then out the front door, following Johnny's instructions. She was struck by the deliciously fresh air; the relieved, fragrant evaporation of the farm's plants and dry soil permeated every part of her like a medicine. She was taking deep breaths, clinging to the air like the cold water up there, and she would have liked to stumble out into the rain, turn her face to the cloudy sky, and drink up the moment.

They were not alone; Bubba was sitting on the middle step of the stairs, also enjoying the rain, with a soaked, white chicken resting in his lap, between his big paws. It seemed calm, peacefully tolerating being stroked by the masked man. Bubba made a cheerful sound of welcome at the arrival of his cousin and Maud, and motioned for her to sit down beside him and his chicken.

Maud did so, wrapped tightly in her blanket as Johnny lit a cigarette behind them. Cool raindrops patted the leaves of the trees and bushes and the rickety roof overhead, the windmill squeaked softly and the chicken clucked under Bubba's caressing hand, but beyond that there was silence, and Maud couldn't remember the last time she had been so… left alone.

The three of them rested there in silence for more than half an hour, and this hard-to-understand idyll was broken by the appearance of a car. It honked, and Johnny hurried down the steps to see who it was, but as soon as he recognized the car, harsh curse words escaped him.

"Huh?" Bubba blinked at him, half rising before Johnny gestured for him to stay put. With a nod, Johnny jogged off toward the generator, aiming to shut it down and let the driver through.

A faded yellow, old Chevrolet was driving along the long dirt road leading to the house, feminine in style, apparently with little mileage. Johnny got back at the same time and went straight to the door over the driver's seat, but in the quick glance he gave to Maud on the steps, there was a strange tension. Like he wanted nothing less than her to be there, in plain sight.

"Hi, Ma," he said, opening the car door.

Chapter Text

Johnny wanted to go after Drayton right away to kick his old ass.

He hated that he could never be a grown man in this family, and he knew it would be that way as long as Nancy and her uncle were alive. Grandpa was another matter; his existence connected them profoundly. He was the putrefied, wormy, yet strong root of the family tree. Johnny was attached to him on a core level even though he wasn't his flesh and blood, and how much he resented the duties of looking after him.

"Johnny, my precious angel." Nancy's sugary voice was not accompanied by a smile. She lifted her stockinged legs out of the car, and rose up to cup his face between her hands that smelled of weedkiller and talc powder. "Heaven bless ya, I was worried sick about where you might be! I’ve told you a thousand times—you gotta let me know if you’re not spendin’ the night at home!"

"I'm not a little boy anymore. I told you this a thousand-"

Nancy put her finger up and this immediately silenced him. His mother's finger was like a sharp blade, held not at his grown-up self to just laugh and dodge it, but at the five-year-old, still lisping Johnny. He hated this automatic reaction of his with all his heart, even when there was no one to witness it. Bubba was kind of okay, but the blondie also watched the whole thing, with that familiar, tame serenity on her face - which, as he knew by then, could hide anything.

Wonder. Embarrassment. Even contempt, from which, considering the fate of her little friend and wimpy ex, she had enough for ten people under her skin.

Frustrated anger coursed through his chest, a well-known feeling like a cut in one's mouth that gets torn open over and over. But he knew that he owed Nancy gratitude, that she was his mother, even if she didn't become one in the usual way, that family came first, which meant he could do anything at any time, except going against Nancy's will.

She didn't come here because of him, that was plain as day.

"Hello, dear," she greeted the girl, who was still wrapped in a blanket, and Bubba's chicken wanted to peck one of her long, corn-colored locks in its beak at any cost. Nancy reached into her car and picked up the checkered, clip-on duffel bag lying on her passenger seat. "What a pleasure to meet you. My brother’s told me plenty 'bout you."

Maud greeted Nancy with the same practiced politeness as Grandpa. Her gaze followed carefully Nancy's every move, her gray-brown hair pinned up with a velvet clip, her plump figure, her neat, graphite-colored dress with black polka dots. In a word, everything that professed to the world: I am the most average housewife in the state of Texas.

"I can see you’re wearin’ near to nothin’. This is terrible—no young woman should be seen in such an embarrassing shape!"

Coming closer, she also took a good look at the girl: her shaggy hair, her bound hands and her numerous wounds. Motheringly, she took her hand and began to lead her back into the house, complaining that she had gotten soaked in such a short time, but promised that they would drink a nice hot tea and talk through everything. Maud was twice as slow on her side as she was on the way down with Johnny, and this could hardly be blamed on her injury. She looked back for a moment, trying to catch his gaze, but he was staring at the back of Nancy's neck stubbornly as if he hadn't noticed it. Sissy frowned at them from the bottom of the stairs, and then, as she always did, whether she was happy or sad, she began to sing.

"Now we're gonna talk about women's matters, my boy," Nancy turned around in the corridor leading to the small room, shielding Maud from Johnny with her body. "You will surely find something useful to do in the meantime."

He wanted to argue, but there was no point. His mother had already closed the door behind them, and once again he had no choice but to sit there like some stray animal. Rainwater dripped from his hair onto his shoulders, and he tensely scratched the darkened blood stain on his thigh, which he'd smeared in his jeans from his knife the night before.

The blondie's hot blood. Which his mother will probably spill on the floor and the wall in the next moment.

Johnny, however, heard no sounds of altercation. Apparently, Nancy was really just chatting with Maud for the time being, asking her questions that weren't at all relevant to her. She asked Maud about her family, her life out there, her likes and dislikes (they were really all...women's things). She wanted to know about her experiences here, what she thought and felt, like when she finished the kid off, when Sissy bathed her, when Drayton fed her, or when Johnny gave her a gift.

He didn't even try to hide the fact that he was eavesdropping when Nancy finally left the room, now without her satchel, but with an impish smile on her face. Johnny immediately looked for blood on the polka-dot dress and his mother's bejeweled hand, but it was spotless and tidy.

Nancy reached over to him and stroked his face, tracing the features she particularly liked on him with her fingertips.

"Why do you always assume the worst about your poor old mother, Johnny?" she sighed. "Interesting little thing she is. You really could have told me about it. You know I don't like it when you keep secrets from me."

"What was I supposed to say, anyway? I’ll just have my fun with her for as long as I want." he snapped, shrugging his shoulders and leaning against the stair railing with his elbows.

"Your pleasure means everything to me, my boy. I know you hold a grudge for what happened with the Latina, but like you’ve admitted too, there really wasn’t nothin’ we could do. Now this one—she’s different. She can be molded."

"What do you mean, Ma?"

Nancy adjusted her white-framed glasses, wrinkles deepening around her eyes as her smile widened.

"One woman listens to another woman differently. This girl, - oh, forgive me, I can't remember her name -, she lacked kindness and care all her life. When I gave her the comb and the tissue I bought her, she didn't even know what to say. She is the kind of first-born daughter who usually has a miserable fate."

"Why the hell did you buy her a comb? "

"Cause she can’t look like a gypsy," Nancy answered with a wave of her hand, then added, "And because, thanks to this small gesture, she’s already a little attached to me. If you want loyalty from her, pamper her. Get your cousins to do the same."

Johnny knew very well that Nancy's mind was a barbed-wired, dark place, cunning and cold, and that was why her words made sense. He felt the same about the blondie, although he couldn't have defined it that way. Mainly because Maud hasn't talked to him about her family yet, or about anything of substance (he didn't even ask, he was more occupied with chasing or teasing her).

But he smelled bullshit.

"I'm not an idiot," he grumbled and turned his back on his mother. He raced down the stairs with thundering steps, and bumped into Nubbins, who was munching on a piece of dry bread. "I’m outta here. All that mess and Blondie are your problem now."

He refused to go through this again, to endure this vile humiliation, not even for his mother, not for Drayton, not for the Devil himself.

For his part, he closed the matter with his harsh words addressed to his cousin. He stormed out to his car and took out of the trunk the black polo shirt and jeans he always carried with him just in case. Having now changed his clothes, he set out for the drying driveway; he wanted to get as far away from the ranch as possible, and from Maud at the same time, because he was quite sure that, despite all her humbug, Nancy had already decided what her fate would be.

Johnny gritted his teeth as he turned the dial on the radio, then slammed his fist down on the dashboard, welcoming the pain shooting through his fingers.

Did they seriously think he would believe that Nancy would let him decide this for himself?

They've already gone through this damn thing once. He had already had his episode as a naïve ingenue - sure, though, that time his mother had been rigidly against it all along, and demanded that he get rid of Her straight away. But well, being a naive fucking first-timer, he thought he could convince Nancy that he knew what he was doing.

"I could never love you, Johnny."

Instead of music, he heard these words in a thin, veiled voice, crawling out from somewhere in the back of his mind. "You were lying," he replied to the voice. "You just felt betrayed and hoped that you would be able to hurt me with your last breath. Silly girl."

He kept flipping the radio until he finally found his favorite station. This is not a love song was on from Public Image Limited, which he also owned on tape at home. He would have preferred to step on the gas to make the engine roar as loudly as the anger was raging inside him, but it wouldn't have been nice to be pulled over by the cops for speeding.

He drove through counties, into the descending night. He smoked Chesterfields by the half-rolled-down window, and during a quick stop at a gas station pulled on a pair of black leather gloves that he kept in the glove compartment next to his comb and pomade. He checked his face in the window glass, then carefully smoothed back his thick curls. He didn't want the long journey and the family's crap to make him look intimidating, and so make his plans go astray. His looks always made it easy for him, and he knew very well how to use it to his advantage.

Pretty Boy Johnny.

Arriving in a small town called Sweetwater, he felt he was in the right place. He drove slowly, almost at a walking pace, through the increasingly depopulated streets. He passed an empty kindergarten and the main square, observing a crowded bar and men and women of all ages chattering in front of it. A group of teenage boys were playing on the fenced soccer field and told each other dirty jokes.

Just as he didn't have a specific destination, he didn't have an exact idea of what he was looking for - he was waiting for something to pique his interest. It happened eventually in front of a gift shop. It was a dusty little place, the sign above the door was hardly legible, and the storefront was decorated without any originality; just a bunch of figurines, boring home ornaments and postcards.

A smiling woman, not much older than Johnny, walked out of the door, hugging a book wrapped in paper in the midst of many goodbyes. She wore her light brown hair in two loose braids, her elegant, powder pink blouse tucked into her gray, high-waisted trapeze pants. She looked nervous like she was about to take an exam. Staring straight ahead, she walked with short, quick steps through a long series of blocks. At last, she rested in a quiet little square; she sat down on a bench, placed her book beside her, and took off her round glasses to wipe them with the sleeve of her blouse.

Johnny parked in a grassy area at the edge of the park, and as he expected, the woman in the pink blouse didn't go anywhere during that time. Curling her fingers, she sat on the recently painted bench. In the amber glow of the street lamp, moths and small flies hovered above her head. She was an unsuspecting, lost little lamb. She seemed like the kind of egghead who always knew the order of things and spent her high school years writing other people's assignments for them.

Johnny had been watching her from the cover of a tree for at least ten minutes, only making his way towards her at what he thought was the most perfect moment.

"Hi there."

She raised her head and instinctively reached for her glasses, further confirming Johnny's assumption that she was a nerd. She had small hands, a faint smell of disinfectant, and didn't seem to have any financial problems. He guessed she was a doctor or a private nurse.

"Good evening" the woman greeted him with obvious puzzlement. "Can I help you?"

"Actually, that's what I was going to ask myself." A crooked smile appeared on his lips, his voice sounded friendly and pleasant. She averted her glance. "I couldn’t help but notice you were lookin' a little overwhelmed."

Her name was Kendra. He got her to tell him that about herself in less than a minute and a half, and it didn't take much more for her to offer him a seat next to her. Just a few well-timed kind words, a flirtatious compliment and a charming smile, and Kendra already shared with him that she wanted to make up with her fiance after they had a nasty fight. She thought it was her fault, which is why she'd bought a copy of the biography of Cary Grant, her fiance's favorite movie star.

Johnny offered her a cigarette, which he lit for her. He explained with apparent sympathy why it's not Kendra's job to court her fiance, who is clearly an asshole for not turning everything upside down after her. She was smiling and blushing, and unlike Maud, Johnny knew exactly what she was thinking. She was a dreamer who read a lot, and who perhaps always hoped that a handsome stranger would come for her on a humid summer night, and free her of the rut of everyday life. Or at least give her a good fuck in his car.

Unfortunately, he didn't have any intentions like these, but he soon offered to drive her home. He could see the uncertainty in Kendra's eyes, that she knew she should say no - still, she didn't.

"I'll navigate you, then" she said with a shy giggle as she sat next to him, clutching her book. "That's very nice of you."

"Oh, don't mention it."

For the first five minutes, Kendra was completely calm, regardless of her excitement and hope that Johnny would make a move on her. However, the coy little adjustments of her glasses were replaced by more and more nervous looks, as he obviously didn't follow the directions he was told, but headed out of the city. The streets became wider and emptier, then came a trailer park and an industrial building, and finally only the tall, now inky black, murky row of trees.

"Johnny, where are we going?" she asked, but Johnny wasn't looking at her. He turned into the woods, fallen branches and downed bushes crackled and crunched grievously under the wheels of the car.

He turned off the engine but left the headlights on, and apart from Kendra's heavy breathing, all that could be heard was the melody of crickets and the high-pitched screeching of bats. He turned his head toward her and smiled, just like he did at that sad bench in the park. The woman, though trembling, smiled back at him.

Johnny thought of Maud, and the first time he saw her smile. Her whole face changed as if it was a completely different person emerging from her.

He pressed the skinning knife to Kendra's throat and the book fell from the hospice nurse's fingers. She put both her hands up like they were in a western, her eyes filled with terror, completely draining the lust from her features. It was hard to make any sense out of her panicked ramblings, but she asked him to take her valuables, and not to hurt her.

"Do I look like some freaking robber?" Johnny couldn't help but chuckle and nudged Kendra's shoulder with his gloved hand. "Get out, slow and nice."

"Please… please…"

She stood next to the black car with her hands still in the air, only looking at the ground. Her first tears streamed down her face, neither sooner nor later than the average. Johnny vibrated with excitement. The unmistakable smell of her fear was exhilarating, and also the fact that she was his, his alone, not just the woman, but the control, and Kendra couldn't make the decisions for him, no one could, not even his mother.

"Why?"

"Obviously, this is what every little rabbit asks itself before the coyotes devour it," he grumbled. He traced the line of Kendra's neck with his knife, then slid it down and thrust at her navel, now drawing blood. "You know, there’s a girl at home who’s kinda... grown on me, but my mom is most probably just choppin' her up after cracking her skull. So it's your job to cheer me up a bit."

She cried and tried to back away, but Johnny yanked her back by her pink blouse, her glasses flying off her, and she let out a desperate scream, which soon turned into a gurgling whimper as the knife sliced open her throat. He turned the blade in his grip and stabbed her twice in the stomach, and she could no longer scream, only shake and bleed.

"It's gonna only hurt for a minute" he whispered into her ear before letting her fall to the ground.

Chapter Text

"Have you lost your damn mind? I thought you’d set things straight and make that boy see he can’t be puttin’ our family in danger on a whim, but instead you..."

Nancy didn't even look at her brother, she was beholding the overgrown greenery around the porch swing, her hands resting on her wide hips. She waded through the thick eleusine, knelt next to the generator, and began to rip out the strands of wheat-grass and bindweed tangled around the machine.

"What do I have to do with what you expected of me? You said what you wanted and I did what I wanted."

Drayton followed with shuffling steps, and Nancy could see his angry gesturing from his shadow.

"So what, Nancy, huh?" he insisted. "You sayin’ you think this girl can fit in with us? Or you wanna keep her here like some kinda pet?!"

"You don't need to understand that, you old fool." She grabbed a particularly stubborn, stringy weed and tore it out of the mud mercilessly. Thanks to the soggy ground, she had an easier time, her tights slowly soaked around her knees. "I want my son to do with her what he did with the other one." She knew that her brother would be confused, so she instantly cut into his words. "Johnny is a young man, it's inevitable that he'll want the company of a girl - it's healthy. And sex ain’t everything. Good Lord, that dumb look on your face right now!" She couldn't help but laugh.

"Up ‘til now, it was enough for him to fool around with them city whores!"

"Johnny is a good boy and times change. But there's no need to worry." When she was done, she stood up and brushed off the leaves stuck to her knees. She turned to Drayton, with a calculating, cold light gleaming in her remaining eye. "I have no intention of keeping the girl. I want a child, Drayton."

"You what?"

"A child," Nancy repeated, but before she looked around making sure that Nubbins or that insufferable Sissy aren't listening. Drayton looked at her with wide eyes, a vein bulging on his temple, at a loss for words. "Let my son believe that I gave my blessing to his decisions. I want them to warm up to each other, and it has already started. Johnny isn't a little kid anymore, and as time goes on, he's going to be more and more defiant. Alas, I can't gut and bury time."

"But for heaven's sake, Nancy-"

".... With the girl, I will do that myself, don't worry. After I got what I wanted. I want a sweet, beautiful little boy like my Johnny. This girl may be able to give me that. She’s broken and so starvin’ for affection. And don’t forget, she’s already a killer, and she knows it. That other one? Ah. We could’ve never broken her in. Even if she was pliant, she only cared ‘bout savin’ herself, and she detested us. That hateful brown girl could never give birth to Johnny’s child, my child."

"You're crazy!" Drayton reached for his head, but there was hardly any hair to grab onto. "And the… and the boy? Johnny? He’s gonna lose his mind if you go through with this! He's gonna hate ya and with a reason!"

Nancy shook her head.

"No way, Drayton. A boy cannot hate his mother. And anyway - this will teach him a hard lesson, that no one would stay with him who isn't part of our family. That only we, only I can love his real self."

They were supposed to get home that day.

Maud didn't know exactly what time it might be, but the moment was slowly coming when the Finches will ring the phone at Grant's rented apartment for the first time, and no one would answer. Harold and Paula Anderberg will check the kitchen clock numerous times, and start watching the road in front of the house, waiting for the blue van to arrive. The triplets begin to ask about her, even though they've surely been impatient and fussy about their mother's burnt pancakes already, and Laney herself... If she hadn't chewed all her fingernails in these three days and gone nuts being left alone with her own children, it was bound to happen now.

It didn't even occur to her that if a week passed, or two, they would cry after her, for her mere being, without any functions and expectations. She was somewhat pessimistic about the matter.

Her mother, perhaps after the Anderbergs begin to push the subject, will report her missing. The image of the three of them sitting in Anderbergs' old-fashioned living room and trying to cooperate on the issue of their children's disappearance was absurd. Daisy's parents, as they're sweatily trying to hide their always-obvious contempt for the low-life Laney Raines, who's also sweatily trying to hide that she's already downed two drinks.

Maud imagined her face printed on a missing person poster. The crumpled paper ruffles on an electric pole, the cello tape curled up, while she stares meekly and wearily into the world. Thinking about it, she's been hardly more than a missing person poster all her life.

Maud was still sure that sooner or later she would be killed too. She had no reason to think otherwise. The odd moments when she found herself having inexplicable flashes of emotion towards Sissy or Johnny, or finding Bubba quite adorable with his chicken, spoke volumes only about her psyche, not her future.

Nancy Sawyer also had a weird impact on her.

If anything, she didn't expect a lady from the cover of a housewife magazine in this place, with a checkered bag and complaining about the weather. Johnny's mom. Her first thought was that she didn't imagine the woman who raised a man like Johnny like that at all. It didn't take much to change her mind though.

Nancy's finger held up like a weapon and Johnny's breath immediately hitching was enough.

She has already noticed that the members of the deranged family respected each other in their own way. Johnny didn't follow them into the bathroom with Sissy, everyone was gentle to Bubba, and even in the frequent taunts toward Nubbins, there was some warmth. Yet what she saw on Johnny then wasn't respect, but fear.

She didn't know him, of course. The few moments they shared, laughing at her shitty dark humor, and that she almost broke his nose while he cut her thigh; weren't exactly a sign that they could read each other like a book from now on. Still, she recognized this fearful reaction. From herself.

"Johnny… is he gone?" she asked Nubbins softly as he came into the room, which was completely permeated by the stench of Grant's decaying head. Maud turned him to face the wall and threw a pillowcase over him, but before that, she pulled the wilted sunflower out of his mouth.

"That's n-none of my business!" This time there was no unhinged glee in Nubbins; he looked just as grumpy as Shiloh, Maud's oldest sister, when someone came to visit them unexpectedly. She hated strangers. "They g-get in each other's faces and I g-g-grasp the damn nettle! I always have t-to do everything in this family!"

He slammed the plate full of sausage and bread onto the nightstand, then grumbled and began to pick up the pieces of the half-broken lamp.

"Did you make this lamp?" Maud wondered. Nubbins just hissed like some rabid street cat. "Did they insult you?"

Nubbins didn't answer right away, just grunted from behind his long black hair falling into his eyes. By this time, Maud had realized that the red spot on his face was not blood, but a large birthmark.

"P-pretty Boy’s down ‘cause of his mama. He’s m-m-mad ‘cause mommy always tells him what to do, and if he don’t listen, poof poof. It’s r-real ugly. Twelve years ago, it was so d-d-damn ugly. But me? I don’t really care. I'm Grandpa's favorite be-because I only pay attention to what matters, I'm the best."

He didn't reveal more than that, and Maud felt that this wasn't a good time to question him. Nubbins let her out to use the toilet, and then she was left alone again, locked up, but fine. For a while, she put on a slightly moth-eaten robe that Nancy had brought her from her own wardrobe, but eventually, the woman gave her back her dungarees, which she had soaked in baking soda to get rid of the blood. It wasn't perfect, but she'd never been so happy to finally have it back, even without her irreparably ruined T-shirt.

She was twirling Johnny's bloody stemmed sunflower in her hand. Her wrists had fringed wounds showing the marks of bondages. Nancy untied her during their… conversation. During one of the most bizarre conversations of her life, for that matter. Johnny's mother asked her about her past and feelings as if a long-lost aunt had come to visit her. The only thing marring the picture was Nancy Sawyer's left eye, her eyelid hanging limply over it, blind and useless.

Maud didn't know what she wanted from her, but most definitely, she wanted something. As they stared at each other in the yard, like two wild animals in the dead leaves of a forest, she was almost caught by the throat by the drippy ruthlessness radiating from Nancy.

The evening slowly descended, deepening into night. Daisy had been dead for a full day, she had been lying in that moldy closet in the basement of a ranch for twenty-four hours. And Johnny still hasn't returned.

Maud couldn't understand why she kept thinking of him, and wondering what he could be doing. What made him so furious that he just left without… well, what? Without kindly saying goodbye to her?

She laughed into her own palm, then thumped her forehead against the window frame, once, twice, then again.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Delving into the psyche of a cold-blooded murderer was a wild thing to say the least, but - she had to admit - it was still better than washing up her mother's mess and begging her sisters to do their homework, only to be called a cow afterwards. Of course, this was not normal, she should have fought with all her strength, and come up with new and new plans to escape. The fact that she had killed Grant was of little importance beyond the opaque moorland of her own conscience - who would have believed that she, the clueless girl from the store, was the one who'd butchered him?

When Nubbins appeared at the door again at a late hour, she was still looking out the window at the back garden, playing with Johnny's sunflower. Nubbins was sweaty and still glum, mumbling incoherently under his breath. A wooden-handled pocketknife flashed in Nubbins' hand as he pressed it against her back through the denim.

"Come on, Piggy, let's feed Grandpa," he said, wiping the drops of sweat from his mole-marked face with his free hand. "But don't try to mess with me, because I like to play differently than Pretty Boy!"

Maud forced calmness on her face and obediently limped down the stairs, for the umpteenth time now. She feverishly searched her memories for something that could have explained the "feeding of Grandpa" as such. Blood was mentioned at the dinner table, and also Grant. But no, it wouldn't be possible to feed Grandpa blood, would it?

No.

She soon realized what the small cut in the crook of her elbow was, which Nubbins opened again, making her hiss quietly, and Maud turned her head away as the black-haired man brusquely pushed her hand to Grandpa's dead centipede-like lips.

"Is this… good for him?" the question slipped out of Maud, but she spoke only so as not to show her repulsion. She took inventory in her head of the old furniture, the half-drawn curtains, the carpet covered with chicken feathers and animal skulls scattered around, as if she were in the store.

"It's g-good because it's fresh. If Grandpa was s-still able, your jaw would drop! He was the best."

Nubbins let go of her arm and fished a handkerchief from his trouser pocket, which he casually tossed to her. Maud pressed it on her elbow with little enthusiasm. The man wiped the blood off the blade of his pocketknife with his own hand, then without looking at her, he sat down on the floor in front of the sofa, pulling his thin legs up to his chest.

"No, no, I'll be f-fine, haha, and then I'll tell him w-w-what... The little pigs knew, I told them all the secrets one by one... No, I won't tell you. I won't!" He was not talking to Maud, nor to the old man, his face glistened wet with sweat, despite wiping it again and again. He began rocking back and forth in his place and laughed, loud and sharp; this painful laughter tore through him with such force that for a moment Maud expected his dented chest to split open.

Maud stood stunned, like some clumsy cartoon figure. Then she brushed the blood off her forearm, and looked at the doors, the gaps, the already sleeping Grandpa, waiting for someone to appear on the scene, like Drayton, but she seemed to be completely alone with Nubbins, who was clearly not well. She assumed Bubba hadn't left the family house, but since she couldn't hear his voice, he must have been asleep.

"YES, I AM THE B-B-BEST! I'm going to slaughter the damned little p-p-piggies, come here, piggies!" Nubbins began to squirm, slicing through the empty air, but suddenly he looked down at his own palm and with a snarling smile sank the blade into his own flesh.

The rag fell from Maud's hand, and the chicken feathers stirred around her white sneakers. She already remembered - her lying half-knocked out on the bed, and looking up at Nubbins tending her wound, talking, muttering, jerking his head, almost convulsively. She also recalled thinking of Shiloh, who also had these strange seizures. No one knew what to do with her younger sister's strange inventions, randomly timed tantrums, panicked rushing, eye-rolling, and flashing her white baby teeth - her teachers said she was disruptive and would grow out of it.

It was a crazy feeling to compare an eight-year-old blonde girl to a frenzied man writhing on the floor, growling and smelling of sweat. Maud took a hesitant step toward him, and when she caught Nubbins' eye, she grabbed his wrist with both hands.

"I'm the only one here. My name is Maud. You are harming yourself, you can also harm Grandpa." She always brought up their mother to Shiloh, and although Nubbins wanted to attack at first, he almost froze when Grandpa was mentioned. "It's just us here with you."

"No, you're lying, you b-brat, can't you hear them?" he barked, trying to wriggle out of Maud's grip, but she panted her feet hard. It came at a price, she could feel the stitches tearing into her skin and it brought tears to her eyes. "I'll g-g-gut you, piggy!"

"Shh. It's okay. Listen… you know, there's that tunnel with the rat."

Maud wouldn't bet too much on her surviving this night. Trying to use the same method that she used to calm dow his little sister back home seemed like a total folly. However, she couldn't think of any other solution - even if she brought Nubbins down in this state, by the time she got to the gates, Bubba, awoken by the noise, would shred her to pieces.

"Ra-at?" echoed Nubbins. He lowered his completely darkened rabid-dog eyes, in which a faint spark of interest was kindled in addition to madness.

"Um, yes, a rat. They are very smart, you know that for sure; but this rat was put in a tunnel in its sleep, a tunnel that seemed to never end. At first, it thought he was in its sewer, and just wandered off somewhere, so he wasn't afraid. He ran, the ground ruffled under its tiny paws, and his little nose moved to-and-fro, looking for food. Rotten cheese or…"

"Meat."

"Yeah." She hadn't told this story to Shiloh exactly like that, the protagonist was also a mouse instead of a rat, but it seemed to work. Nubbins's panting subsided, and he lowered the blade, so Maud slowly knelt down beside him. The man didn't let go of the knife, he just stared at his own bleeding palm. "The rat soon realized that this was not its sewer at all. Someone wanted to make fun of it, to make a fool of it so that it would just go where he wished. And since the rat is a damn smart animal, it also knew that whoever did this to it had also laid traps for it to destroy it at the right moment."

She fell silent as Nubbins drove the blade into the floor. He gripped on her pants with his unharmed hand, not like a man, but like a child, pressing his damp forehead against her shoulder, his teeth gritted. Maud tensed, but not so much that he could notice or decipher it. She touched the stubbly face timidly, checking to see if he had a fever, smelling the memory of her little sister's baby oil in her nose.

Just as she could not help her resentment or her long-cherished temper, she could not help this instinct either. Caretaking has become too deeply ingrained in her, too elementary of a part of her.

"Go on," Nubbins snapped impatiently. "I want to know."

Well, she did. Maud told the story of the rat, adding quite a bit to it, and stayed up until dawn with Nubbins and the snoring Grandpa, until she couldn't hold her own head in place. She was roused from her numb half-sleep by the opening of the front door and a tall figure in black entering the room, finding her there and the sleepy Nubbins who had snuggled up to her as a small child.

Maud raised her heavy head, and although she recognized the man's face, she could no longer read the expression on it.

It was kind of… relieved. Awestruck. And somehow soft.

Chapter Text

Now it was pretty sure they were searching for them. It would be unlike for all of them not to call home if something hindered them, such as a broken undercarriage or a raging hangover. Maud assumed that Daisy's and Grant's parents were still hoping that their children had just suddenly become careless, that they'd got light-headed in the company of other music fans, or - God forbid - some drugs. More than likely, they still tried not to believe that they were lying dead.

Maud sat on top of a barrel, watching Johnny minding his business. He collected piles of bones lying around the house - as he let it on, inspired by her -, so that one day someone wouldn't use them against the family. Bubba also helped, he was cleaning up by the car graveyard, where Gus was also resting.

Her legs didn't reach the ground. She was swinging them gauchely, resting her palm on the spot where she had her stitched wound. She'd taken part in the work for a while when Johnny brought her out here. After an hour, however, he ordered her to stay put since otherwise he would have to ask his cousin for a favor again, which he was not in the mood for. He was shirtless again, the fading, soft-gold sunlight shining on the light cloak of sweat on his strong arms, perfectly arched back, and the small trench above his belt, at his hips. The sunset gave his dark hair a reddish glow, and he stuffed a white rag under his belt, with which he sometimes wiped his face.

Maud had never seen anyone work with such determination and stamina. Whatever Johnny grabbed was sure to move; he refilled and cleaned the generator with skilled hands, the necks of the black sacks jerked painfully as he quickly twisted and tied them.

"So, where did I leave off…" Johnny straightened up and walked over to her, sloppily pulling his rag out and wiping his hairy armpit. Maud stared at him with drooping eyes, unable to shake the thought that if Grant had done the same, it would’ve been unbearably cringey. "… you're gonna have to explain why you didn’t even try to fight for your life."

"That woulda made it easier, wouldn't it?"

"True, though I never mind a good chase. But what you did, darlin ', you know, that's not normal."

They both knew what Maud wanted to say to that. Johnny preempted this by telling her not to even try to be cynical again. This wasn't easy, as her waking up that day was one of the most crazed experiences of her life so far.

She found herself on the floor in the Sawyers' living room, across from her was Grandpa's empty rocking chair. Light chicken feathers were lying on the rug assembled from animal fur, the wall clock tick-tocked loudly. The white curtains fluttered in the sultry summer wind blowing through the windowsills, which revealed that it wasn't morning, but more like noon.

Maud's back was propped up by the sofa, as it had been at night, when she had spent hours with Nubbins, soothing him and listening to him mumble about things she no longer remembered. Behind her head, though, was something much softer, smelling from familiarly scented cologne. Looking behind her, she realized that she had been sleeping with her head on Johnny's thigh until now. The man himself was snoozing as peacefully as before up in the room, in a black polo shirt and jeans, but he undid his belt and zipper to lie more comfortably.

Maud looked away shyly. That's when she noticed a pile of white, pearl-like things rattling in her lap. She reached among them and pinched one between her fingers, observing the yellowish furrows and blackened root of it. She grimaced when she understood that she was holding a human tooth in her hand.

"Oh, how cute." A voice rough from a fresh awakening rose from behind her. It occurred to her that Johnny must be a very bad sleeper if he woke up at the slightest sound. "Nubbins left you a present."

A leather-gloved hand stroked her hair, pulling it back from her shoulders to touch her neck. The question of where he had been and the strangeness of his absence almost slipped out of her, but her mind was faster than her mouth.

"He was kinda unwell in the evening. We... fed Grandpa, but then he had this seizure." She enveloped the teeth in the blood-stained handkerchief she'd received from Nubbins and pocketed it. "I told him the story I tell my sister when this happens. She has something similar."

"You really don't have to worry about him, Blondie. He's probably playing with his cows in the slaughterhouse. He loves his job."

"He cut his hand pretty badly."

Johnny just hummed, which reassured her that he wasn't angry. Actually, it felt like he didn't really care what she and his cousin were doing here when he found them. He was just stroking her, tracing her chin with his thumb, his hot breath warming Maud's scalp as he leaned closer. He buried his nose in her hair and inhaled her scent deeply. His hand wandered down, under her dungarees, and heat flooded Maud's face, for she was wearing nothing but her cotton bra under the denim.

"I know you don’t want it yet. Don’t worry, I won’t touch your adorable tits, even if this mornin’ wood is drivin’ me crazy."

Did she hear that right? She couldn't speak, she just shuddered at his words and at the thoughts that sprang to her mind, uncontrollably.

Johnny soon pulled his hand away and acted as if nothing in the world had happened.

That's how that warm August day started.

"I didn't want to fight because my life is a heap of shit," she replied with a sigh. "I was just tired, and I knew what I’d done. There was no goin’ back, I guess."

"Was that enough for you to just give up?"

"I stabbed my cheating asshole boyfriend to death. But even if I hadn’t... if none of it had happened and I went home, a slow death’s all that’d be waiting for me. I got three sisters—I’ve been raisin’ them since they were born—and I work in my mom’s crappy little discount store. That’s all I am."

Johnny's mouth twitched, and he shoved the rag back behind his belt in irritation.

"So you stood up for your slut friend, but not for yourself. Just listening to this makes me bored with my life. It's maddening that someone like you would just… go to shit."

"I don't really understand what you mean by someone like me."

"Well," he stepped closer, his palms resting on the rusty edges of the blue barrel, and as he leaned to Maud, his thighs pushed her legs apart. "When I left yesterday, I was sure you’d be dead by the time I got back. Didn’t even want to, if I’m honest, but I had to know. The temptation was too strong. And then? I come back and find you there with that sumbitch, alive and well."

Maud blinked up at him as if she were an innocent virgin, and she didn't understand her own reactions. Or her thoughts in front of the couch after waking up. Her heart was pounding, and not from fear, she felt that much less often than she should have. It was due to Johnny's purring voice, Johnny between her legs - it was too much. It's not like she was a prude, she simply became indifferent to sex in her relationship, a hobby that other people do and others are good at. Or, she was indifferent until now, but Johnny's charm could even melt a stone.

"And is that good?" she asked, instinctively pulling back a little. "That I am alive?"

"It shouldn't be good only for me."

"Okay, I get the hint. But… Why did you think I was going to kick the bucket right then?"

Johnny's smile faltered at this, the muscles and tendons in his arms tensing as he pushed himself away from the barrel, and away from her as well. He lifted the bag full of garbage onto his shoulder and walked with it towards one of the family's vans, which already had eight bags lined up in the trunk.

"My mother doesn't like intruders. Even less than my uncle." He wasn’t as chatty about it as he was when pulling Maud's leg, asking about Grant, or bragging about his own greatness.

Maud thought of the dragonfly dress and the girl, the first slip-up, and she felt like she understood something. Something awful.

However, if it was the truth that's just clicked for her, then it was indeed questionable why she was still alive.

They walked back through the back garden side by side, their backs warmed by the last rays of sunlight. The man adapted to her limping pace and naturally shorter steps. The previous day's rain had already dried up, the sunflowers were nodding drowsily in the rising wind. Small spiders and woodlice were frolicking at the crossing of the house and the ground. Arriving at the familiar door, Maud stopped, in her mind seeing Daisy's bare feet, a screwdriver clattering on the floor, and blood splattering in the air.

why didn't you listen to me why didn't you listen to me stupid bitch

"It seemed like your mother adored you so much," she broke the silence, trying to divert her own attention.

"She's a good mom. Even a bit too eager. The kind who tucked me in every night, made my favorite cookies, buys me shirts to this day, blah, blah, blah."

That answer didn't sound overwhelmingly enthusiastic, but Maud didn't comment anything on it, just went up the stairs, looking right at the freezer she'd smashed her best friend's head against.

"Cookies," she repeated, trying to imagine this man doing something as mundane and innocent as snacking. It wasn't easy. " Brownie?" She could only associate from Johnny to something thick, creamy and excessive.

"Ah, right. With walnuts," Johnny grinned.

"Sounds good. My mother is quite different."

"'She hurt you?"

"She never hit me," Maud clarified. The meat cleaver lay on the floor, half stuck under the freezer, where it had drifted when they were grappling; the memory made her scar twitch. "But she couldn't take care of me. She's my ma, but... she was never a mother. She was a child too when I was born, and then my sisters… uh, they're triplets. She had been with their father for a month when they decided to have a child. She was maybe in the seventh month when the guy left, and…" She spread her arms, which she deemed as a proper explanation. "So the girls were there, and there were plenty of ‘em—loud, stubborn. My mother completely lost control, couldn’t handle any of it. She hated her life so much she started drinkin’ even more than before and sleepin’ with strangers."

She had never told anyone his story like this before, no one knew so much about her who didn't live in her immediate vicinity, and for her part, she doubted Johnny would really care.

But when she turned to face him, she met his dark eyes; it could mean he’d been listening to her the whole time, quietly gazing at her all along.

"I rarely think about it," she continued, putting her hands in the pockets of her pants. "More for the girls. I had a picture of them that I carried with me."

The photo that Laney had taken of them, when the girls were running around the store for lack of anything better to do, and "helping" her at the cash register. It was a rare, calm late spring day. She was certain that it had been destroyed, that she had lost her backpack and everything in it, and Johnny didn't deny that.

"Not all women are made to be mothers." He picked up the cleaver from the ground and twirled it in his hand. The orange light glinted across the blade that needed sharpening. "Why are you looking at this so much, Blondie? Are you planning something?"

It wouldn't have been so surprising if the answer was yes.

"No. I just worked a lot with a cleaver in my mother's shop." Johnny walked towards her, and she couldn't read his eyes or his face, except that he was a deadly threat without any metal, not with two blades close at hand. "Fresh meat came every day. Often halved pigs."

"And you carved them up." Johnny finished the thought, and Maud, looking into his eyes, nodded slowly. The edge of the cleaver brushed the sensitive skin below her earlobe and scratched the little peach fuzz on her neck. She glanced down at Johnny's fingers around the hilt out of the corner of her eye. She was shivering again, and for some reason just the same as she had been outside on the barrel. "A familiar situation, yeah? If I wanted to kill you right now, would you fight? Or have you really lost all self-respect?"

That smoldering, sadistic delight in his eyes— it was both unfathomable and shockingly beautiful to Maud because it was finally all about her. About her life and death, blood and soul.

Johnny was provoking her.

"You'll have to try to find out, I guess."

For an endlessly long minute, Johnny didn't move, just stared at her towering over her, with the cleaver resting on her pulse. His bare skin emanated a heady mixture of sweat and cologne.

He removed the blade from her neck and chuckled, with that deep and silky voice that gave away his pleasure. He then stepped away from her as shuffling footsteps approached them from the kitchen, and Drayton announced that he was back from the gas station and dinner was in an hour.

He was even grumpier than usual.

Nubbins tied her up again, but this time with much more care, as he told her all about what had happened in the slaughterhouse. He raved about gushing blood and pig intestines and beef brains, and she listened with a Mona Lisa smile, thanking herself she had kept the rag with the teeth because Nubbins asked about it.

Drayton personally locked her in her "room" (for lack of a better word). She still wasn't afraid of being killed on the sly, in her sleep, it just wouldn't have fit in the picture, and that wasn't the reason why she kept rolling for a long time, even though every change of position was painful due to the cuts and bruises covering her body.

Maud thought of what she had said to Johnny in the yard; that her life in the outside world wasn't worth fighting for. She hadn't assumed the situation was so serious, that deep in her heart she was cursing the world so much for not becoming a doctor. For her mother switching their roles. For falling in love with the first boy who smiled at her, and staying by his side even when she felt only boredom and bitterness next to him.

"Blondie, wake up."

She hiccupped a little as she suddenly snapped out of her restless dreams. Johnny didn't turn on the light, he was leaning over her like a ghost in his top torn around the neck and cut-off sleeves. He was wearing work gloves and didn't look like he'd slept a minute.

Maud didn't ask anything, she knew it would soon become clear what he wanted from her anyway. She crawled out of bed with Nancy's green and white striped terrycloth robe around her body and slipped into her socks and shoes. She combed her bangs covering her forehead with her fingers, then stopped in front of the man, who raised a finger to his lips to tell that she shouldn’t make a sound.

Maud was truly amazed at how quietly Johnny could move despite his size. Lack of practice made it more difficult for her, especially injured, and it took her a while to maneuver past Nubbins' bone chimes. The house was asleep: Grandpa in his room where Bubba carried him every night, Bubba himself in his nest in the basement, and Nubbins in his own… chaos. Drayton forgot himself in front of the black and white flickering TV, snoring with his mouth open.

Sissy was away since Nancy's visit. It was hard for her to get used to the idea that she was the only woman in the house right now. Raised among girls and only knowing Grant closely, this made her feel particularly vulnerable.

Johnny directed her towards the back garden. They went around the barbed wire fence and he turned on the light at the tool shed. He picked up a rolled-up, transparent foil from the ground, slapped it under his arm, then nudged her towards the ladder that was stained with dried blood.

"Let's find your friend."

Maud wanted to say no at first, just as she did that night with a knife under her chin, but after some thinking, she understood that Johnny would hardly do this with her under the cover of night if he wanted to hand over Daisy's body to the family.

"What are you up to?" she asked almost in a whisper, careful not to sound demanding. Her hair was ruffled by the night breeze, and the ladder creaked under her shoes as she slowly began to climb down.

"Trust me."

Johnny had to know that this request was somewhat absurd, but now there was no irony in his voice. He was serious, collected, and calm. Maud made another mental note of the thousand different faces of the intricate phenomenon called Johnny.

This time, they walked behind each other in silence, without fuss. Maud knew that if Johnny had wanted to, he could have found Daisy himself, but he wanted to involve her for some reason, perhaps to torment her, or to remind her of her irremediable actions.

He turned on one by one the bare light bulbs attached to the ceiling of the confusing labyrinth. They were covered with cobwebs and the desiccated corpses of insects, making their light even dimmer. Because of the rain, all smells intensified, and the incomparable stench of rot became more pronounced. It reminded Maud of the first time she had smelled the slaughterhouse while sitting in the car, and neither of them had suspected anything. When Daisy was playing with Grant's hair, completely oblivious to that she only had a little more than a day left of her life.

Maud opened her mouth to speak, but Johnny waved her off.

Daisy was lying in there exactly as she had placed her, her face towards the back of the closet, her hand on her side, which had already caved in morbidly. The tag was still sticking out of her red blouse, her bare soles and toes were blue. Her skin was mottled with purple lividities, though the flies spared her now. They were asleep.

Maud's chest ached, but the tears didn't come, and she didn't understand why, why she worked like that, but she never worked well, and neither did the world around her. Straining her healthy leg, she knelt down next to the closet. She tucked the tag on Daisy's blouse in with a motherly gesture, then hesitantly, she looked up at the man, who was busy smoothing out the plastic roll.

"I'm not asking you to give me your knife... But would you cut a strand of her hair?"

Johnny raised half an eyebrow. He shrugged and pulled out the skinning knife, saying that he wouldn't give his weapon to anyone because it was special. A gift from Grandpa.

It wasn't just him that Maud had heard from about the old man's once-legendary horrors, and for the time being she didn't have enough imagination to be able to fathom what it could mean in this hell on earth.

Johnny cut a strand from Daisy's matted hair with a quick motion and Maud wrapped it in the white tissue that Nancy had given her. She watched in silence as the man covered the girl in the foil roll, as she did with that tiny piece of her. The man hoisted Daisy onto his shoulder with evident practice, and at his command, they started back to the ladder.

They cut across the house and walked through the front gate into the sunflower field that bathed in moonlight shining through the frumpish clouds. Johnny had already turned off the generator and left a small package next to the driveway, including a spade and a flashlight. Maud brought it after him into the masses of flowers, that were hanging their heads indifferently.

She understood then but was unable to speak. She understood that Johnny, as much as he didn't support her ambivalent attachment to Daisy, now wanted to help Maud save her from an utterly disgraceful end.

"I'm breaking one of the most important rules with this," he said after setting the body down and grabbing the spade. "Feeding and protecting the family is the most important thing, but you've already messed that up by letting her expire, so have it as you wish."

"Why?"

"Listen more carefully. As I know, you ain’t a dimwit, right, darlin’? I just told you. Now, shine a light over here."

Maybe that was really all behind it, a passing fancy and the fact that Maud's plan had worked. Daisy was no longer in a condition where the family could use her. Maud nodded and, like a short, crumbling lighthouse, provided light for the nighttime gravedigging in the complicitous hide of massive sunflowers. Johnny knocked over quite a few as he worked, grunting and jabbing the edge of the spade into the still slightly damp dirt, turning roots and clods over from under it, but the sound of all these was almost completely drowned out by the singing of cicadas and crickets.

Even with Johnny's strength and practice, it took time to dig a pit six feet deep. His hair was disheveled and fell over his forehead, his shirt clung to his body, his face flushed as he finally threw the spade out of the grave and climbed up to lay Daisy's body in it with their combined effort. He immediately climbed out, quick and springy, but Maud crouched down next to the corpse. The excavated earth had a metallic, rich smell, but it was permeated with the honeyed dew of sunflowers and the promise of the next sunrise.

"Goodbye, Daisycake."

She didn't understand where her tears were. She was only tormented by the narrowness of her throat, that throbbing pain in her chest; the haunting emptiness. She sniffed her nose, then turned away and scrambled trying to climb out.

"I told you I wasn't asking for any more favors from Nubbins," she heard Johnny's voice from the darkness.

She saw the man in the light of the flashlight which lay on the ground: he was holding out his hand. Both Johnny's gloves and Maud's palms were slippery from the mud, yet with natural ease, her fingers clasped around Johnny's, who grabbed her elbow and lifted her out of the pit. "One more thing," he continued when Maud was on her own two feet. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded photograph.

Oh.

Shiloh, Tina, and Iris looked into the camera with huge smiles under her mother-hen-wings as she squatted with them in front of the cash register. They were identical to perfection, all three of them had their long, blond hair undone, only their clothes were different. Thin little girls who could fit in anywhere next to their sister who fit the "missing person" poster the best.

Maud then realized something, something that filled her with internalized shame and yet a kind of grotesque relief.

She felt nothing. She didn't miss her sisters, not really. She couldn't cry for them.

"Thank you," she whispered to Johnny, then folded the picture in half and dropped it into the grave.

She helped with her bare hands to fill up the pit. She also lit the way back, while Johnny carried the spade on his shoulder. When Maud reached the driveway, she adjusted the loose, falling-apart knot of her robe around her waist, and Johnny, who had been as silent as the grave he had made, started to speak.

"I've already broken this rule once. Because of someone else."

She directed the flashlight towards him, careful not to blind him.

"Was it her dress?" Her question sounded gentle, allowing the possibility that it remained unanswered.

"Let's move, Blondie. The sun is about to rise," Johnny replied, taking her hand again.

They walked back to the house together, dirty and wondering.

Chapter Text

It was time to get rid of the head of the Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt kid.

Sissy'd come two hours before, tactically waiting for Drayton to leave. She hadn't said a word about where she had gone, however Johnny tried to ask her about it, in light of how broken and miserable she'd returned home after her most recent and longest runaway.

"I thought it was gonna happen again. I can’t stand watchin’ you lose it like that."

That was all her explanation to it. With surprising discretion on her part, Sissy didn't mention that she couldn't stand Nancy anyway. Even at idle, they could hardly get along. Johnny's mother constantly commented on Sissy's behavior and clothes, and during their teenage years, if Sissy witnessed Johnny being punished, she lashed out at Nancy like a feral cat ruffling its fur. Growing up, they agreed without words that she would no longer interfere in Johnny’s and Nancy's affairs.

While Maud was in the bathroom with Sissy, Johnny went into her room. The pillowcase was removed from the severed head, and next to the basket lay a pair of scissors and a lock of auburn hair. Johnny furrowed his brows, wondering what the blondie might want to do with the little souvenirs she'd collected from her friend and ex. He wanted to ask her right away, but he held back—Sissy would’ve sent him straight to hell again if he dared to interrupt their bathing ritual.

He let his mind wander a bit as he carried the stinking basket out of the house. He imagined what it would be like to be in his cousin's shoes now, sprinkling scented water on Maud's thick locks while her small but surprisingly strong hands wash her mole-stained neck, her perky breasts, and…

He had to cool his thoughts. Not out of some fake sense of restraint, but because his mother was already waiting for him, and he couldn't arrive home with a brutal boner.

After dealing with the last remaining bits of the boy - Grant, or whatever your name was, you pathetic little cunt -, he looked up at the window of the upstairs room. Maud stood there watching him, with Nancy's white handkerchief tied in her hair, framing her face charmingly. Slowly, she lifted her hand and waved to him.

Johnny's mouth coiled into a smug smirk, then he turned his back to the window and tossed his grungy gloves aside.

"When will you finally bring the little thing home?"

This was Nancy's first question after saying hello when he got home and entered his mother's neat house. He came through the front door since the generator was on. In the garden, which was kept in exemplary order, the colourful rows of flowers smelled gorgeous, and the kitchen was filled with the scent of coffee and pot roast. Nancy poured some coffee for him into a blue-rimmed cup, plain and black, as he liked it. Her checkered apron was spotless, she smeared it once in a blue moon while cooking.

"Should I?"

"What a question, son," giggled Nancy, wiping her paring knife. All the doors in the house were closed except for the kitchen, including the one where the mummified body of the woman's last husband lay. "This is your home, this is your place. It's disgusting, the state Grandpa's house is in, but that's Drayton's problem." Johnny didn't answer, just stared glumly at his coffee, nervously rubbing his biceps with his free hand. "Oh, my angel. You still think I want to kill her."

"I think, Ma, that you don't trust me and want to make decisions for me, which I fucking hate."

Nancy slammed the knife down on the counter.

"Watch your mouth, young man! We’ve already gone over this. And don’t talk to me about trust if you won’t believe what I’m straight up tellin’ you. I said you could keep the girl, and on top of that, I gave you some damn good advice."

Johnny's fingers tightened around his own upper arm, but finally, he looked away.

"Sorry," he grumbled. "I'll bring her home. It really doesn't seem like she's going to try to escape again."

"What makes you think that?"

"Talking to her. And there was a photo of her with her sisters. I gave it back, figured she’d cry or somethin’, but she just tossed it away."

"Mm." His mother poured some coffee for herself, added sugar from a small, pink pot, and then sat down across from him. "Be careful. That doesn't mean much yet. What she did could also be a sign of a lack of hope, not necessarily a lack of will." She clicked her tongue as she sipped her drink, then smiled warmly at him. "But it's good for you, and I'm glad to see that. Just tell me… has it happened already?"

He grimaced, and if anyone else had asked the same question, his response would’ve been something unprintable. Not that his mother didn't have a habit of asking strange questions, but she never dwelled on who he was screwing. Mainly because it hadn't really happened with the same girl more than once, except for a super hot, chubby, slutty barmaid in Rocksprings who nearly ripped him apart , and Her.

"See ya later, Ma," he said, pushing the cup aside and retreating to his own nest that Nancy had once converted for him from a goat pen.

After cleaning the courtyard of the farm, he felt no desire to tidy up his shack as well, even though there were glasses, unwashed plates, crumpled newspapers, and napkins lying everywhere. His clean clothes were piled on top of each other on his bed, the ashtray was overflowing, and he promised himself long ago that he would fix the dangling door handle of the refrigerator and oil the hinges of the cupboards, but he had too much to do.

"Our latest news: a thirty-two-year-old woman has been found dead in a wooded area near Sweetwater, Texas. According to the information provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the hospice nurse was victim of murder. Special Agent Holden Ford links the case to the killer known as Pretty Boy, although the evidence has not been confirmed, according to a statement from the captain. Kendra Liston, who was identified based on her documents, did not return home on August 14th, and was last seen in a gift shop—"

The radio crackled and hissed out the radio operator's calm, nonchalant words. Johnny was on the border of Wilson County, getting closer to Maud's and her little company's hometown of Floresville, which really could have had a different name. Life always had a way of blending the past with the present.

Encouraged by his mother's words and what he'd seen during the gravedigging, he set off to see that particular shitty shop where the blondie had been toiling before running into their arms. To see her family, which Maud buried with her dead friend. He knew the address from her papers, which he kept in his shack among his other treasures.

It was a hot and dusty day. The residents of Floresville tried to get from one place to another quickly in flowing skirts and sweaty, loose shirts so that they would have to spend as little time basking in the searing sun as possible. A local bus pulled up slowly, belching exhaust as it came to a stop in front of the shop with the blue-and-yellow sunshade, before trudging along again. Johnny parked along the house next to the store. The lawn was vibrant green in the yard, clearly well-watered, and the porch pillars had recently been repainted. A middle-aged woman was busy cleaning the windows. Johnny wiped the sweat from his temple with his wrist and stole a quick glance at the mailbox of the family residence: ANDERBERG.

In contrast, Hometown Groceries looked tired and dusty, just like that summer day. A chalkboard out front advertised the sales: “Hamburger Helper -10%, selection of spices -10%, Snugglers diapers -25%!” Protected from the sun, vegetables and fruits were piled in flat plastic bins. The two-story building had windows on the top floor, covered with thin, colorful curtains that swayed gently in the breeze.

At the cash register, with her back to him, a blonde woman in a loose strap-top and shorts sorted through a large stack of printed papers. A tall, robust man leaned against the counter, his palms resting on it as he spoke to her. He had a thick black beard and receding hair, and despite the oppressive heat, he wore a trapezoid vest over his beige shirt.

"My team and I will be putting up posters in the southern part of the city. The Finches are coming over tonight."

"Good, good."

"I told my daughter to stay away from such places. God… Daisy never did that. She would never do that to her mother."

“Neither would my daughter," the woman replied, but she didn’t look at the tall man. When she turned to Johnny, it was like he saw a reflection of Maud, if she were twenty years older and thoroughly soaked in a hundred liters of wine. "Hello, may I help you?"

"I just popped in for some refreshments," Johnny said with a friendly smile as he walked over to the coolers. He grabbed two Cokes but kept an ear on their conversation. Posters of three young "missing persons" were plastered around the store: on the heated glass of the window, on the tile behind the meat counter, and on the concrete column that supported the ceiling, greasy with handprints. The girl who he had buried with Maud looked back at him from the refrigerator, the neon light of the machine shining through the paper, making the black-and-white face quite ghostly.

"Son, did you happen to see one of them?"

It wasn’t Maud’s mother but the big man who approached him. Feigning surprise, Johnny set the Cokes aside and took the posters while shaking the man’s right hand. The man’s grip was strong, and his blue eyes held a resolute, fatherly light.

"Johnny."

"Harold. See, that’s my daughter, little Daisy. She went to the Harmony Highway festival with her friends. She should’ve been home ages ago, but nobody’s heard a word from any of them."

Johnny scanned all three photos as if he’d never seen them before. As if he hadn’t crushed the head of the brat kid to pieces himself, thrown wet dirt on Daisy’s lividity-stained face, or buried his nose in Maud’s lily-of-the-valley-scented hair.

"I'm sorry, I haven’t seen 'em," he said, folding the posters and slipping them into his pocket. "But I'll keep my eyes open."

"Thank you, my friend," sighed Harold Anderberg. He gestured behind him, towards the woman fiddling with change. "This is Laney, the blonde girl's, Mathilda's mother..."

"Maud."

"Excuse me?"

It shouldn’t have bothered him so much, but the contempt from Mr. Well-Situated toward Maud’s family was almost palpable, casting a sour light on his name-miss.

"I read in the paper that her name is Maud," he said, maintaining an unbroken calmness, perfectly embodying the good-natured, kind young man who might be visiting family in a nearby town.

I could stab you in the eye, and take you home for her cut in half like her pigs, you self-righteous old fag.

He paid for the drinks to the tosspot goose, while checking out shabby shelves stacked with canned food, packaged goods and bottles. The radio on the wall croaked “Una Paloma Blanca.” So lame, so banal and slow like a dying fly. There was something amusing about the thought of how many bored, spoiled bums had lined up at the cash register, yapping about their dull lives while waiting to be served by the blondie who was now his.

She, Maud, who was in the upstairs room of the Sawyers' house making short braids out of Daisy's and Grant's locks. Johnny found her sitting on the bed, leafing through a familiar book. A jet-black and an auburn braid lay on the nightstand next to her, along with the wilted sunflower he had given her.

"Sissy gave it to me," said Maud, showing the Cary Grant biography. "She said she found it in your car yesterday morning."

He snorted and looked annoyed towards his cousin's room, from where that edgy cult music was blaring again.

"She’s gonna regret it once I catch her. You know who this guy is?"

"Cary Grant? Well, now I do. But I prefer Béla Lugosi."

"Something European?"

"He came from there. Maybe from Hungary."

johnny nodded without much interest, rubbing his chin with a leather-gloved hand. There was a little silence between them, broken only by Sissy's music. Johnny was too tired from the long drive and too engrossed in the sight of the blondie to speak. Maud put the book aside and then straightened the handkerchief in her hair, muttering that it was strange for her to spend so much time doing nothing.

"Come here" Johnny growled, cutting her off.

She got up from the bed with wide doe-eyes, now much more confidently carrying her injured leg, and crossed the distance between them. She looked up at him, and Johnny knew she wanted to figure him out. She was playing her usual game again, which was as exciting as his own games.

He didn't give her the ease of saying something. He watched her every twitch like a silent wolf and all the while he was thinking about what he already knew about her, and everything he didn't yet, but he desperately hungered for having all of her. Then, however, the same tormented voice in the well of his mind spoke, this time whispering: she could never love you, Johnny.

"Why do you always wear gloves?"

The innocent-sounding question jolted him out of his thoughts, pulling him back before he could lash out at his own repulsive memories like a snarling dog.

"Feeling brave now? Just asking me questions?" he cooed, leaning closer and noticing her toes tighten in her sneakers. She didn’t answer; she just bit her lip in thought. "I'm sensitive about my hands," he continued. "I don’t just touch anything and anyone with my bare hands." Her eyelashes fluttered, and he guessed she might be looking for an instance of when he did touch her, like that night at the chili dinner when he brushed the hair out of her eyes.

"Can I take it off?" she asked, prompting Johnny to frown. He rested his hand against the door frame with a self-assured calmness, inviting her to untie the glove.

Maud gently unfastened it and pulled the glove off Johnny's hand. She cradled it between her palms, touching it fondly as if she could learn something from it, as if the fabric could absorb the stories of everyone Johnny had ever touched or killed.

Johnny grasped her face, running his index finger along the enticing curve of her upper lip and his thumb over the other.

"You see," he hummed with satisfaction. "Now you can feel special, darlin'."

He was teasing her again, provoking her, eagerly anticipating her sweet, surprised reactions. He had several ideas in mind, but nothing could prepare him for what actually happened. Maud looked into his eyes, then down at his hand, and opened her soft mouth. Her hot little tongue traced over Johnny's finger, sending a shiver down his spine like an electric shock.

He growled from deep in his throat, grabbing Maud’s waist with his left hand, and she just looked at him—innocent, warm, maddening.

Chapter Text

This wasn’t the first time Johnny touched her face or lips, and Maud knew what he wanted to see from her, what gave him so much pleasure. He saw himself as invulnerable, untouchable, his control over her completely unbreakable.

When his rough finger rested on her mouth, her lips parted almost instinctively. She tasted the bitter, earthy tang of the leather glove. Her face and neck flushed because there was something thrilling about seeing Johnny’s reaction. It was meant only for her, for her boldness and hot tongue.

A heavy silence fell over the room, the kind that comes before a storm. Johnny's ragged breathing and the tight grip he kept on her waist were both warnings that she might have just crossed a dangerous line, like dousing water on a sparking electrical cabinet.

Then, suddenly, Johnny yanked his hand away and grabbed her by the neck.

"What the hell are you doing, huh?" His voice was thick, rough with desire, his words strained through gritted teeth.

It was hard to answer with his saliva-slick fingers clutching her throat, not to mention the fact that so much depended on her answer. She knew that if she pulled the strings even a little more, something would happen. Still, it would have been hard to tell what exactly was on Johnny's mind: to squeeze the life out of her, or to throw her on the bed and fuck her mercilessly.

Which she wasn't ready for, no matter how daring she was or how beautiful she found him (it was a goddamn fact, and he weaponized it perfectly). If at all… jeez. How did you end up in this situation?

"Just what you're doing, Johnny," she replied, her voice husky but firm. "You think no one can touch you. The real you."

Johnny’s dark, brooding eyes burned with an intense, barely controlled passion—and not just of one kind. He looked at her as if he wanted to devour her, not just her body, but her soul as well, drinking up every last drop of blood of whatever lay within her.

"I can’t wait for you to unchain that beast in you, Blondie," he grunted. "I don’t understand why you still keep it on a leash or how you haven’t lost your mind with it—I know I couldn’t handle that. Have you ever thought that the only reason you didn’t kill your boyfriend was fear of the consequences? This is who you really are, and if I’d known you existed, I would have turned everything upside down to find you."

Maud’s eyes fluttered, her lips parting slightly as if she were about to say something, but then she hesitated. Johnny’s pulse quickened as he noticed.

Nimble footsteps pounded up the stairs, heading straight for the room, along with Nubbins' shouts.

"A-are you here, g-girlie? I brought you something, it's d-done!" When he caught sight of his cousin's tall, powerful figure squeezing Maud's throat, he hissed viciously and shoved Johnny's shoulder. "L-leave her alone, you p-pervert! She's not j-just yours!"

Johnny’s hand dropped from Maud’s neck, and she took a step back, gulping.

"Are you calling me a pervert? Seriously?" he retorted, his voice low and dangerous. "Best stay away from her, or your next trinket just might be made outta your own teeth."

The thin man bared said teeth in a mocking grin, and lunged, aiming to shove Johnny again. But Johnny grabbed his arm and swung him hard against the doorframe. As wiry as Nubbins was, he was just as tenacious, his madness blurring any sense of boundaries. In his torn brown T-shirt, shoelaces hanging loose, he clawed furiously at Johnny’s face with filthy nails.

“Dirty little mama’s f-favorite! You don’t belong here!”

Johnny’s expression hardened, and it was as if the room itself suddenly held no air, thick and charged with something unspoken. Maud, as before, instinctively felt that the tension was reaching its peak and that if she didn't intervene, serious trouble could happen.

It didn't even occur to her that she could gain any advantage from the members of the Sawyer family turning against each other. All her life, she worked on smoothing out the conflicts so that no one would get hurt: her mother would go to bed, Shiloh wouldn't harm herself, and Grant wouldn't get upset over any little thing.

"Everything is fine!" She raised her voice, drawing the attention of both men. "I'm here. What… what did you bring me?" She looked at Johnny, who was still gripping Nubbins' pale arm, pinning him against the wall. "Please let him go. I would like to see it."

Rather than just letting go of his cousin, Johnny pushed him away like he was a dead frog. He watched with sullen eyes as Nubbins scurried to her after one last hiss of warning. He pressed a figure carved from bone into Maud's hand, namely a rat. Its ears, its tail, its stubby little body were fashioned with a skillful hand. The smooth, polished material - as Nubbins told her -, was the piece of bone that had pierced into Maud's back at the bottom of the well.

Which she didn't even know was human or animal.

"Go on, sort through those t-teeth I gave ya. The ones you pick, I’ll s-string into a bracelet for ya—and I’ll add this little r-rat, too” he said, showing his wrist, where a bracelet of jagged bone fragments rattled. “And you’ll w-wear it. Always.”

Maud’s eyes drifted to his wrist, noticing the ugly cut across his palm, slowly healing yet rimmed with white and yellow spots of infection.

"You are very talented. Thank you, Nubbins." She smiled faintly at him. His gift was … kind, and he himself was like a wayward little boy giving a dead earthworm to his mother in joy.

Above all, though, she was grateful that thanks to him, she didn't have to answer Johnny, giving her time to mull over his words.

"This is who you really are."

It had already flashed through her mind that perhaps it was not only in the crimson-red light of the hell room where the murderous impulse towards Grant was born in her. Maybe it had been simmering inside her for years, and if all this hadn't happened, it would have just quietly cooked her, without anything changing. She remembered the moment she'd come back from the wild, deafening trance she'd been in while stabbing Grant over and over again, and then standing there covered in blood, like in some Satanic baptism the bigoted townspeople had been whispering about.

There is worse than that, buggers, she thought.

Later, she asked Johnny to take her down to the basement, to Bubba's lair, where it all happened. Nubbins went with them because he refused to leave her side since he'd handed the bone rat over. The meat hook was now free, and although there was a foul silence in the room, Maud could almost hear her ex screaming ("damn bitch, you deserve it, it's all because of you, we're going to die because of you!"), and she wondered if she would do it again.

She was no longer the birdbrain Maud from Hometown Groceries. She was rechristened in redness and blood when she murdered the boy and perhaps with him her helpless, apathetic self. Which, perhaps, she despised even more than all the disrespect and rudeness of Grant. So she kept a braid of Grant's hair, as well as Daisy's, hidden in the book that clearly wasn't Johnny's, but she didn't ask him about it. She pressed the sunflower between the freshly printed pages too, which treasured her kiss among its crumpled petals.

Day by day, the family and all the relics of its madness (the bones, carrion, and the aftertaste of the food they served), became more normal. Her stitches were removed, and her very first scar on the back of her head healed. The myriad of bruises she had acquired in the fall still tormented her though. And Johnny... Maud knew what he was, though she was still in the dark about many questions. He was affecting her in a way she didn't think she could function.

And when she took his finger in her mouth, she knew exactly what it would invoke in him and what it was suggesting. It was something that the good old Maud would never have risked.

Even if she desired to.

New Maud, on the other hand, wanted Johnny to feel her.

Sissy showed her where they used to get blood for Grandpa if there were no new victims. They filtered pig and cow entrails through shredded pieces of cloth and collected the blood in basins at various points in the yard and in the basement. Both of Maud's elbows and quite a few of her fingers were scarred, as Nubbins and Drayton always used her as a donor, and she was smart enough not to object. Serving Grandpa was a kind of sacred duty for everyone in the family, but they could not give him their own blood, it would be "sick and unnatural", as Drayton put it.

"When fresh meat comes to the house, you can rest your arms a little, Sugar" Sissy smiled at her radiantly. They were hanging out in the shed near the car graveyard, and Maud watched her sprinkle freshly harvested, dried herbs into a gray mortar, then carefully grind them down.

"I'm completely blind when it comes to plants. What are these?"

"Oh, just a little touch. It makes hunting easier." She wiped her bare sole on her own calf, leaving a black stain on her milky skin. "Plus, you know how the world is, and the nasty boys. We've already talked about them. It's never a problem if you can give them a kiss of hemlock, juniper and foxglove."

Maud watched with interest as the powder of poisonous flowers slowly homogenized in the mortar,l. It was now clear to her why Johnny hadn't wanted her to drink Sissy's tea in that morning. In her hands, nature became as deadly a weapon as bones and wires were in Nubbins'. In addition to polishing the teeth Maud'd picked, the man also found time to show her a trap similar to the one she found at the battery. He also demonstrated what the structure does to flesh and bones on a pig's knuckle.

It was somehow impressive that all the members of the family possessed an ability with which, according to their perception, they could feed and protect themselves. They were united, everyone had their own job, and unlike the Raines household, everything wasn’t left to just one person. Bubba was at the gas station to help Drayton, Nubbins was at the slaughterhouse, and the recently arrived Nancy and Johnny were running errands around Grandpa. They made sure that under no circumstances was Maud left in the house with a sole family member, or if she was, she was strictly bound or confined. Although they made some allowances for her, they weren't stupid and didn't trust her.

"But I told you," continued Sissy. " Johnny's not like that." Maud nodded, widening the smile on Sissy’s freckled face. Sissy playfully tapped Maud’s nose, then used a teaspoon to scoop the herb mixture that could cause troubled breathing and bloodshot eyes into small paper bags. "There was a time I was gone a lot. Family can be real tough... oh, I know, always and everywhere, but here? It’s a madhouse! And you know, there was one time I was gone for a whole year."

"I should have done the same with my own family, I think."

"It was illuminating." Sissy pulled out a stool from under the work table, stepped on it, and began rummaging through the shelves mounted on the wall, her long, almost shorts-like underwear peeking out from under her short skirt. "I was in a special company and our leader was a genius, really, who also made fantastic music. We experienced incredible things together. Would you like me to sing you one of his songs?"

"Of course." Maud smiled back at her, even though she was sure she had already heard that song. Sissy could sing day and night, but Maud was getting used to that too, and although she found it bizarre and creepy at first, it had merged together with the scent of flowers and the arrival of morning tea and clean clothes.

Sissy changed her mind.

"I got off topic," she clapped his hands together. "I didn't even want to sing to you right now."

"May I ask… what happened with that nasty boy?"

Sissy’s shoulders tensed, and her full-mouthed grin faded into a small half-smile. For a moment, Maud felt a surge of worry, but it quickly became clear that Sissy, as Maud had suspected, wanted to delve into this from the beginning, but it was difficult. Painful.

And it was nothing new to Maud that monsters could feel pain.

"I haven't told anyone yet," said Sissy. She put the ready-made bags into the pocket of her dress, then wiped her fingers and reached for Maud's hand. They walked out of the shed together, hand in hand, along the fence lined with tall grass bursting with wildflowers. Small lizards scurried around their feet, while flies sought refuge from the scorching sun in the grass. "To no one."

"Not even to Johnny?"

"We're very close, but no, he's a boy, and I don't think boys understand that, not in the way I want them to understand. And I hate Nancy, but keep that between us, Sugar, okay...? Well, she hates me too. She would say I deserved it."

"No!" Maud stopped and looked into Sissy's otherwise mischievous blue eyes. "No one deserves this, never, under any circumstances." She squeezed her hand in the same way she had squeezed Daisy's at that dreadful night.

Sissy looked down at their hands with raised eyebrows, then chuckled.

"Girls gotta stick together, right, Sugar? Bummers you weren’t around when the boy who was my brother in Charlie’s family got high and lured me into the pantry. I called him my brother, and family here, where we are now, means somethin’. A whole lot. That’s why I trusted him."

They walked on into the sunny afternoon as Sissy told her what had happened with her brother in that pantry, how he had taken her down, stuffed her own panties in her mouth, and left her on the cold concrete floor among the knocked over food cans after he finished. Maud wanted to know immediately if there had been any consequences, and every inch of her wanted to hear 'yes'. All of this was countless times more stomach-churning to her than almost anything she had witnessed on the ranch, every dismembered carcass or buckets of beef intestines and pig brains.

Sissy laughed, like a tinkling bell, and took Maud's face between her hands. "Oh, sure, Sugar. It was a spectacle! I was in a wedding dress and I sang to him, for long hours, after paralyzing him with a stronger touch, and I cut up his... well, everything. Then I came home." She pressed a kiss to her cheek, then let her go and picked a strand of autumn crocus. She tucked it behind her ear in her hair, which was tied in a bun. "I still have the dress."

They were halfway back to the house when Johnny stepped out onto the porch. Arms crossed and smirking, he stared at the girls walking hand in hand, and Sissy waved to him, as cool and light as if she hadn't just talked about the most horrible experience of her life. Maud understood, she entrusted her with a seven-seal secret, even if not fully consciously. This wasn't the first pact they had made with each other, and since she had decided then that he would trust Sissy, she wanted to make it clear that she could trust her too.

She squeezed her hand once more before letting go.

"Hi" she greeted Johnny, and her heart began to beat faster at the sight of him. She couldn't help it, she found the contented little smile on his face, which he watched them with, charming.

"Hi," he nodded, then reached into his pocket for his cigarettes and popped open the box. "I was lookin’ for you. In your room, you’ll find some clean stuff. Go on and change your clothes. I’m takin’ you out."

Maud frowned in confusion. She didn't think she got it right.

"Out? Like where?"

Johnny, with the cigarette between his lips, stifled a chuckle, his eyes, in which a couple of baby hairs were hanging again, shone with a playful light.

"Shopping. The bloody stuff is fine on you, but it's a bit like you're missing the things a girl needs."

Maud gaped at him with parted lips, expecting the punchline of the joke. Would Johnny have become so smug that he would really find it safe to take her out? No, that was out of question, he had to have some kind of leverage at his hand.

"Bah!" Sissy snapped them both out of their enthralled stares before they both turned their heads towards her. Dramatically, she raised her hand to her forehead and tilted her head back; she was a perfect stage phenomenon. "I'm the third wheel again!"

"I felt like that first, seeing you strolling around," countered Johnny.

"Don't push me Sugar, you know tall redhead girls are my thing." Sissy, as usual, planted a long kiss on her cousin's cheek, stole a cigarette, and then disappeared behind the door.

Maud sat in the passenger seat of one of the family's battered vans, waiting for that particular joke to land, dressed in one of her own white T-shirts and red dungarees that she had packed for herself in Floresville. Johnny hopped behind the wheel and slammed the door shut, bringing with him a faint smell of tobacco.

Maud's face was calm, but her thoughts were racing; is this a test? Test of loyalty? Or does Johnny just want to toy with her again, but this time in a completely new way?

Her eyes fell on something on the dashboard, under the windshield: a few crumpled sheets of paper folded into each other. Johnny didn't say anything, so she reached for them and opened them to see first Daisy's face, and then herself in black and white.

Her 'missing person' poster looked almost exactly as she had imagined. Fucking depressing.

"They're looking for ya back home," said Johnny, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Especially your friend's dad. I had the pleasure to meet him."

"Yeah, Harold."

She didn't doubt for a minute that Harold would do anything for his little girl. Daisy was the apple of his eye, but he only tolerated Maud's presence around her. Being a religious, hard-working model citizen, Harold never voiced his reasons for deeming Maud an unsuitable friend for Daisy. He packed all his dismay into a single gesture: his refusal to learn her name properly. Instead, he called her either Mathilda or, worse, Maureen, and like so many things, she just let it go.

"What an annoying jerk. Okay, Blondie, let's get past the obvious: if you try anything, make one wrong move, or say one word to anyone but me, I'm going back to Floresville. Was that clear enough?"

Maud nodded. Johnny, the bastard, gave with one hand and took with the other, but nothing was surprising about that. He saw through her, understood that as much as she hated her life back home, she would never let any of the girls get hurt—not even her useless mother.

"Say that you understood." Johnny grabbed her chin, forcing her to look into his eyes. He hadn't touched her like that since the incident at the door of her room. Maud creased the paper among her fingers.

"Understood."

"I hope so." He started the car, the engine snorted into motion, causing the entire structure to shake. Before putting it into gear, he looked at her once more, resting his gaze on her face for a long time. "I really don't want to hurt you."

Maud knew Bonham from somewhere. Wasn’t this the place Sissy had mentioned as one of the sources of Johnny’s one-night stands? She pondered this more than she thought was reasonable, sizing up the young women on the main street and in the local thrift store, wondering if they…

This stupid thing, somehow reminiscent of jealousy, was probably some kind of diversionary operation on the part of her psyche. It had to be. It was a normal feeling—and jealousy was so familiar to her—rather than having to confront the reality of being around people again, seeing buildings around her other than the Sawyer house and the windmill.

Johnny didn't leave her side for a moment and held her hand, gloveless, tightly. He got out of the car first and opened the door for her, he decided at what pace they were going and where they could enter. Despite everything, Maud knew well that he was taking a huge risk by doing this, and that somehow this was happening for her. He let her out here, allowing her to her pick new socks, underwear and hair clips. Also, things that she would never have thought of looking at before, in her previous life. Stuff she saw lined up on Daisy's dressing table: bobby pins, mascara, bijou earrings. Maud's ears were not even pierced.

What she put into their basket with the greatest and also the strangest excitement was a long, red-handled nail file. Daisy's pretty, almond-shaped nails floated before her eyes. If you survive one more day, you might be able to do it for yourself just once in your life.

The middle-aged sales lady was typing in their items tiredly, a table fan behind her was stirring the boiling hot air. Outside, beyond the propped-up door, the traffic was picking up at the end of working hours, people chatting, hurrying to get flour and cream for that evening's dinner, and children cycling home from school swarmed the main street.

She considered her options. She could try to give a sign to the bored lady or start screaming outside. She could attempt to yank herself out of Johnny's grip, or maybe get him to ramble around until a stray police car shows up.

Finally, however, forgetting everything, she reached into the paper bag in which the shop assistant had packed her things, and took out her nail file. She slipped it into the front pocket of her dungarees and they walked back to the van.

Johnny praised her for her behavior and wanted to know the story behind the nail file. They drove home in the slowly descending dusk, passing quiet ranches and farmlands. Johnny immediately put his work gloves back on as they got back into the car, one hand on the steering wheel with practiced confidence. Sometimes he glanced at her or just smiled for himself. Maud had only seen him so calm in his sleep. He seemed satisfied, but this time not in his characteristic, pompous, sarcastic way, it was more real and human, which he didn't want to brag about, not even put it into words.

Could it be that she didn't try to play him? That she didn't try to run away from him? To leave him?

They stopped at a gas station. After filling up, they went inside together, and while Johnny paid, Maud looked through the glass at the gas tanks, the streetlight towering over the gas station. Knowing that she probably won't see things like that for a long time elevated even the most mundane. Ordinary things, like the brown Ford LTD that pulled into the gas station, and also its owner, who entered the building, digging in his pocket. In his free hand, he held a large stack of printed papers, the same ones that were lying crumpled up on the dashboard of the family's van.

Maud's feet were rooted to the ground, and shock froze on her face. Her hand trembled in the grip of Johnny, who also recognized Harold Anderberg, and she felt the tension that replaced his temporary peace resonate in her own guts.

"You… you're the man from Laney's shop," said the man, who was as astonished as Maud. When their eyes met, she immediately turned her head away. "You? What are you doing here with this man? What's going on here?!"

Mr. Anderberg walked towards them with heavy steps, his round belly shaking under his sweat-stained blue shirt. Johnny gripped Maud's hand so tightly it almost hurt, and he cut through the shelves of crackers and sodas, avoiding the man.

"I'm sorry, but you're confusing us with someone, sir," he said primly. "Goodbye."

Mr. Anderberg wasn’t scared off by this; he hurried after them without caring about the payment, ignoring the indignant, teenage gas station attendant.

"What's going on here, Mathilda? This man showed up in your mother's shop and claimed he never saw you or Daisy... where is my daughter? What do you know about her?!" His voice was harsh, laced with despair and fury.

Johnny tore open the door of the van and Maud climbed in without question. Her hands were shaking and she was unable to look at Harold as he made his way to the car, the panic louding any sane thoughts of hers.

Johnny hopped in next to her and swerved onto the road with screeching tires. They drove two miles down the dark driveway until he finally pulled into a grassy and bushy section, turning off the lights.

"Give me your hands” he turned to Maud, murderous rage emanating from his voice, but it wasn't for her. She wanted to say something but was paralyzed by her memories of Daisy and the chainsaw, muting her like the duct Johnny looped around her wrists; black and tight. "This fucking old fag. I'll go back and take care of this. Don't move!"

He locked the car, and Maud saw the flash of the knife in his hand, which he had pulled from the cover of his shirt. Maud found herself cocooned in the stark solitude of the moment, the only sounds accompanying her were the soft click of the engine cooling and the frantic rhythm of her own breath. Turning back, she tried to get something out of the shadows, listening like a frightened little rodent, but she heard neither cursing male voices nor screams of pain. Only silence and the stench of worn seat covers lingered, mingling with the frantic beat of her heart.

Then, a body thudded against the car door. It was alive, it was whole. Maud let out a startled squeal, hastily covering her mouth with her bound hands.

It wasn’t Johnny. Mr. Anderberg was looking down at her from the other side of the window. That man was no fool. He outwitted Johnny; he might have stashed the car somewhere, slipping through the shadows to reach her.

"Hey listen!" he said. "Is he here somewhere?" Maud shook her head. "Can you open the door? No?"

"Mr. Anderberg, get out of here!" She finally found her voice, which, although thin, sounded almost commanding. "Get out!"

"What are you talking about? You need to calm down, Mathilda. You have to tell me where my daughter is, you have to tell me what happened to her, for God’s sake!"

"Just leave, damn it!"

Mr. Anderberg’s expression softened momentarily, concern replacing some of his anger. “What has he done to you? Are you hurt?”

Maud shook her head again, her voice rising to a frantic pitch as she repeated her words like a mantra of a lunatic.

"GO, GO, LEAVE ME AND GO!"

"Mathi..."

"FUCK OFF!"

Mr. Anderberg's upset, sweaty, bearded face suddenly disappeared from the other side of the window. But moments later, the window shattered as his fist, encased in his shirt, broke through, and he reached for her.

Chapter Text

A storm of glass shards rained down on Maud, and she instinctively pulled back, her hands raised in front of her defensively. The sharp pieces of the window crashed into her lap and onto the van's floor, which was dirty with leaves and dried mud. Mr. Anderberg reached through the hole and searched for the doorknob, but no matter how hard he tugged and strained, the door wouldn't budge.

"What's wrong with you?!" snapped Maud.​ "You can't do anything, don't you see?"

There was nowhere for her to escape from the man's huge paws, which grabbed her wherever they could. He dragged her by the arm and clothes through the broken car window, with the careless violence of a desperate man. Her forehead slammed into the metal, her foot caught in the seatbelt as she squirmed in opposition. Little pebbles crunched under her trainers as Mr. Anderberg finally put her down, but he didn't let go of her arm, and Maud detested his sweaty, trembling grip on her. She thought about Johnny's steel-trap-like fingers and that he would be here in seconds.

Mr. Anderberg slipped back into his shirt but didn't bother with the buttons. He took a Stanley knife out from his trouser pocket, and at first, Maud thought he was going to threaten her with it. It would have been hard for her to believe otherwise after the events of recent times.

Yet, he only cut the duct tape around her wrists in haste. Maybe he hoped it would calm her down, or perhaps he just couldn't stand the sight, which confirmed that the girls were in terrible trouble.

“You need to snap out of it! We’re getting out of here, calling the police, and you’re going to tell them where Daisy is. That’s the only way this can go, got it?”

Daisy's father was a completely real, tangible possibility, a chance to escape, to return home. It could even be seen as divine luck, and Maud had seconds to grasp it as a grateful child of the Lord.

However, she buried the idea of returning home with Daisy, resting under the sunflower field where Mr. Anderberg could never find it.

She pushed the man with all her strength, the strips of duct tape hanging from her wrists like tacky, pitch-colored bracelets.

"Don't talk to me like that!"

Mr. Anderberg stared at her open-mouthed, and by this time the red mist had descended on his brain too. Without thinking, he grabbed her arm again and jolted her, like a stuck drawer, as if he hoped that would fix her. He misjudged his own strength and didn’t expect Maud to stumble back, collapsing against the van, into the cool grass damp from the cool evening dew.

"What in the Devil’s gotten into you, Mathilda?! Maybe that’s how you talk at your house, but you ain’t gonna talk to me like that! I’m just trying to help after you and your boy clearly dragged yourselves and Daisy into something!"

Maud knelt up, her jaw clenched, her pulse beating louder and louder in her ears. Boom, boom, boom. It felt as if something was besieging her from the inside, liquid, gasoline flames flooded her veins. Her skin ached with a rage familiar from the infernal room, as if her body couldn't hold it inside any longer and wanted to burn off its own frames.

She reached into the front pocket of her dungarees, and her fingers locked on the bright red handle of the nail file.

"That's not my name," she hissed to the chilled pebbles and wet blades of grass.

"What are you saying?"

"You had almost fifteen goddamn years to learn my name!" Rising to her feet, she spun, swift and merciless like a rattlesnake, driving the nail file into Mr. Anderberg's left eye up to the hilt. "THAT'S NOT MY FUCKING NAME!"

The man let out a gut-wrenching roar, filled with agony and disbelief. Maud immediately yanked the nail file out of his eye socket and jumped out of the way of his uncoordinated swinging, tree trunk-like arm. Blood, looking black in the darkness poured onto Mr. Anderberg's beard, along with what had become of his eye.

Maud ducked away from another blow and hurriedly glanced around to see if anyone was approaching. Daisy's father threw all his decent humanity aside and rushed forward. Even though she jumped aside, he caught the strap of her dungarees and threw her with animalistic force against the side of the van.

Shit!

Mr. Anderberg tried to speak but was unable to form words. Sobbing, he pressed his stout fingers to the gaping hole where his eye had been, which showed a grotesque reflection of the broken window. Maud had one hand on the nail file sticky with blood, the other on the handle of the car, and though she should have felt disgust in her throat and regret in her chest, all she thought was that Mr. Anderberg should be happy if she won't stuff a sunflower in his mouth at the end.

Johnny arrived, running. He was not at all in the taunting-hunter mood now, especially when he saw the destroyed car window and Maud kneeling on the ground.

"How dare you to lay a finger on her, you bloody piece of shit?" he growled.

Maud wanted to warn him about the Stanley blade but there was no need to. Johnny immediately sliced Mr. Anderberg's arm as he reached for his pocket, where he'd foolishly put the blade back. He bellowed in a wheezing voice and, stumbling forward, punched in the direction of Johnny.

"What did you do to my daughter?!"

He couldn't compete with his practice, but his huge size and strength forced Johnny to dodge his half-blind swings. He huffed angrily as Daisy's father successfully landed a punch in the ribs.

"It just makes it worse, you know? I'm gonna see your insides before the night's through!"

Maud stood up during the two men's fight, and it was the second time that day that she was faced with a decision. She could have started running back toward the gas station, hoping that dealing with Mr. Anderberg would hold Johnny up long enough. There would still have been a way back, and no one but her would have known what she had done.

She noticed a discarded beer bottle in the grass, the label of which had already come off. She picked it up and slammed it against the van, breaking the bottom off.

Bleeding from multiple wounds, Mr. Anderberg instinctively glanced back. Johnny, without a moment's hesitation, plunged the skinning knife into the man's back, and Maud thrust the broken bottle into his neck, with as much force in her angry howl as in her relentless move.

"Daisy is fine."

The man fell to his knees, gasping for air. Johnny stabbed him in the back one last time, then let him sprawl on the stony ground, shaking the freshly spilled blood from his blade. Maud threw the beer bottle away and tried to wipe the blood from her right nostril, but it only smeared her face even more.

She looked for Johnny's eyes, a thousand thoughts rushing through her mind, and she saw that he was not the only one. However, they had no time to speak. Apart from the briefest of instructions, they didn't say a word to each other as they lifted the body onto the platform with their combined strength and then covered it with a dirty tarp.

Maud checked to see if she still had her nail file and was relieved to find it resting in her pocket, ready for use.

The light was on on the porch. The family was still awake: the figure of Drayton could be seen behind the window, moving from one chair to another with a newspaper in his hand. Nancy's Chevrolet was gone. Johnny pulled the van into place and they were sitting side by side in silence for a few seconds.

Maud opened the van door with a loud click and Johnny followed suit. She hugged herself and let reality wash over her: the familiar porch swing, the well, the sunflower fields, the green glow of the inactive generator in the distance, and the body of Daisy's butchered father in the van.

Only one person was responsible for this, and it was her. If she'd decided otherwise when Mr. Anderberg pulled her out of the broken window, the house would now be empty, the Sawyers on the run, while she'd be waiting at the police station, sipping bland coffee from a plastic cup. Or on the platform, spread out and frozen in blood.

Whichever one had come true, one thing is certain: she would never have seen any of them again.

Johnny walked around the car with heavy footsteps and stepped in front of her, but not impatiently or threateningly. He didn't have a knife in his hand, nor was he wearing gloves. His tight jeans were stained with blood, as was his scarred face, the tension he was struggling to retain was almost palpable.

"Come here, please," breathed Maud, and for the first time, it was her who approached him, grabbing the fabric of her black shirt. She buried her face in the man's chest, who wrapped his arms around her. "Don't let me go now!"

"Never" Johnny stressed the word from the depths of his being, pressing his lips to her temple and hugging her so tightly that it was only a hair's breadth away from being too much. "You can't imagine how proud I am of you, darlin'."

Maud let out an awkward little laugh as she rested her head on Johnny's broad, warm chest, listening to his heartbeat, which was slightly faster than usual.

"Don't laugh," he growled, sweeping aside her bangs with his thumb so he could kiss her on the forehead. "I'm not kidding."

"No… that's not why I'm laughing."

Maud was not used to putting her own honest thoughts into words. She was feeling ditsy, but not in a bad way; her face was flushed, and her body was light, as if she was mega high on adrenaline and on what had happened. On the horror, which in itself was an answer to the question she had asked himself in Bubba's lair not so long ago.

Yes, you would do it again, Mommy Maud.

You couldn't stop it. You didn't even want to.

Her emotions were too heightened to think. To brood, to moralize. No. All she wanted to do now was smile, let her muscles relax under Johnny's grip, savor his luscious praise, and shiver at the softness of his lips on her skin.

She looked up at him and Johnny grinned.

"Midget." He released her, but only to reach for her hand, small compared to his own, and peel off the remnants of the black tape with surprising tenderness.

"You were this small once."

"Yes. When I was ten.”

"But you were."

Drayton came out of the house. He immediately started cursing and hitting his nephew with the rolled-up newspaper, questioning what the hell Johnny was thinking and how irresponsible it was to take "his pet" out of there. Johnny quickly revealed that the body of a 250-pound man was lying in the van.

Johnny told the others everything while she washed his face and combed her hair with the comb Nancy had given her. She also washed her nail file, and when Drayton finally opened the door, she was sitting on the lowered toilet seat trying to file her nails into almond shapes.

The aged man looked at her with undisguised surprise and suspicion, like she was a child who is sure to have secretly done something funny. Maud showed him what she was up to, to which Drayton just waved disinterestedly.

"Did you use that thing to poke the guy's eye out?"

"Yeah..." she answered, with the memory of her maddened cry in her ears. "What I had."

"Ain't nothing should be put in your hands," he snorted, and Maud almost chuckled.

Drayton couldn't deal with her any better than she could with the old man. It was clear that Drayton had no taste for sadistic teasing, as he put it, "playing with food" and that his main concern was the safety of his family. At the same time, Maud could not guess exactly how much power he had within the family, and whether he posed a greater threat to her than the others.

Nubbins, on the other hand, almost went berserk.

"She brought fresh meat to the house, the rat-girl did! Plenty of blood in it from what I saw, haha. Grandpa’s gonna be real happy when he hears about this!"

They fed the old man, and this time, as Sissy had promised, she was left alone. Bubba dripped Mr. Anderberg's blood into Grandpa's mouth from a red vial, and Maud could almost feel the small cuts on her arms and fingertips sighing in relief.

She was sitting on the sofa, while Nubbins was resting at her feet, and he was yapping without pause.

"... I didn’t like you at first ’cause you were feisty, and I hate that. Just bein’ honest. You like headcheese? We’re gonna be able to make plenty outta this fat fella."

"I haven't tried it yet, I think..."

"Then you will" Nubbins decided for her, carving into the bone with his pocketknife, scattering white shavings across the carpet. "Your bracelet will be ready soon, rat-girl, you know, I have so much to do!"

Maud wasn't upset about her new nickname. Mainly because in Nubbins' world, this was considered a compliment, not an insult, or a complete disregard of her existence, in contrast to "Mathilda".

Johnny entered the room with an opened bottle of beer in his hand, and threw himself down on the sofa next to her. Nubbins blew raspberries at him, and Johnny gave him a kick to put him in place. The thin man hissed and lunged at his leg like an annoyed cat. Johnny cursed and now really swung his leg, which caused his cousin to fall on his bottom. He had one of his boots though. Grinning, he jumped up, stuck out his tongue again, and ran away wobbling the boot in his hand.

"Fuck." Johnny stared in exasperation at his own socked foot and bent down to remove his other boot to make the sight less ridiculous. Maud covered her lips with her clumsily manicured hand. "Stop it."

She tried. Using all her strength, she controlled her facial muscles and slowly lifted her hand from her mouth, returning to her usual calm, gentle expression. But as soon as she looked at Johnny's white socks and upside-down boot, her experienced glaze cracked and she chuckled.

"I'm sorry, but…" Maybe her brain was still fried from the events, or she was just plain crazy, but she couldn't stop laughing.

Johnny grunted and sipped his beer.

"You two are fixin’ to get married soon, huh?"

"Well… I don't think your uncle would give us his blessing."

"You won't need his blessing, because he'll have a heart attack when he finds out Nubbins had got some."

After another sip, he offered her the beer. She took the brown glass from the man, which was exactly like the one she'd broken on the side of the van. She stroked the smooth, round mouth of the bottle, then took a few gulps. The beer was cold, the taste earthily bitter and pleasantly normal. Johnny shifted closer on the couch, taking the drink she handed him as he examined her freshly filed nails.

"Pretty." He put the beer bottle aside without letting go of Maud's hand; he played with her thin fingers fondly, rubbing her fingertips, paying particular attention to the cut ones. "So what's the story? I heard you yelling something about your name before you stabbed the fella."

The smile disappeared from Maud's face. Johnny knew without a doubt that he was on to something, but he just watched her with those dark brown fox eyes. She wasn't sure she should answer honestly; from the outside, her anger might have seemed petty, undeserved, and she hated the thought of Johnny finding her ridiculous.

It was a crazy thing, but after the man noticed her for some reason, called her special, was proud of her, she was terrified that he would judge her.

"Similar to Grant. Daisy and I have been friends since we were little. We lived next to each other. But you already know this because you've been there... The way our family worked was not really for the Anderbergs' liking. He would have wanted a friend from a better place next to Daisy, but Daisy hung out with me. Those snarky little comments... that we certainly don't have a set table, warm food, and all that sort of thing. And he kept calling me fucking Mathilda."

"And he did it again," Johnny concluded. Maud nodded, and his lips broke into a wide smile. "Holy shit, from now on I'd better watch out whenever I call you Blondie?"

"N-no." They took turns pulling on the beer bottle. Johnny didn't play with her anymore, he just rested both of their hands on his knees, their fingers entwined, but neither exerted force. "It was just very strange at first, 'cause I'm not a blondie type. But… it's okay."

She didn't think that if she said otherwise, Johnny would suddenly change his habit, letting her dictate to him, but she wasn't lying. She wondered what Johnny's original name might be—just John, or Jonathan?

Drayton's newspaper lay on the couch next to her, half rolled up as he dropped it after beating them both up with it. She lifted it into her lap and opened it randomly, with a sudden curiosity of what could be happening in the wide world while her world was about to turn on itself.

Maud was greeted by a familiar sign on the sixth page of the newspaper: MISSING PERSON, printed in thick, black letters, but she didn't see the faces of any of them underneath. It was probably the mention of an earlier disappearance, which could be the reason why it has been relegated to the less interesting news. A young woman's face looked back at her, with a soft but intelligent look and smile. Her dark hair fell like a velvety stream over her right shoulder, her white blouse was both modest and tasteful.

"The search continues in Muerto County for a missing University of Texas student. The sheriff's department says Maria Flores, a native of Uvalde, was last seen near the town of Newt. Her vehicle was recently discovered abandoned with officials reporting no signs of foul play. Authorities are hopeful that the expanded search into the nearby communities of Harlow and Chinatown will unearth new leads. Family and friends are urging anyone with information regarding her disappearance lake please come forward."

Chapter Text

An inexplicable, uncomfortable feeling gripped her guts.

This face was familiar to her. Maybe she'd seen this poster for a fleeting moment in town or at the gas station, among the yellowed classifieds posted around it. It is also possible that she felt this way only because she recently saw her own photo in a similar setting, a girl also with the letter "M", whose existence was simplified to bleak numbers: age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, last clothes worn.

Maria Flores was taller than her, but they weighed almost the same. She was only twenty-one years old and, according to the poster, a university student whom loving friends and family wanted to find at all costs. She seemed like someone easy to care for, almost effortlessly loved.

It was also easy to imagine her in a pretty, puffy-sleeved dragonfly dress. Sitting by the window and gazing out at the backyard with sad, dark eyes, lost in thoughts of her hometown in Uvalde, of the family and friends searching for her, moving heaven and earth to bring her back. It wasn’t hard to believe that she was worth a slip-up.

The distressing feeling grew into nausea in Maud. The last time she felt such strong sickness was when she threw up onto Johnny with Grant's sawed-off head in her hands.

People disappear all the time, don’t they? Why assume the Sawyers are behind every horror story that unfolds in this whole damned state of Texas? It’s not like they have a hand in every shadow. Why should she immediately assume that Johnny would have anything to do with Maria Flores - he, who was staring at her with hardened features, all the sparkles in his eyes gone, only an aloof void remaining.

Maud opened her mouth to ask, but no sound came out of her throat. Not particularly because she was afraid of what Johnny would do to her if he didn't like what she had to say, but rather because she was afraid of his possible response, or lack thereof.

Johnny didn't leave her time to consider it, because he suddenly pulled his hand away from hers. His gleeful mood disappeared in a heartbeat, even the light of the lamps felt more faded. The energy that this flyer unleashed ripped out a piece of everything warm and bright. Johnny lost even his cockiness; he became as cold as the meat hooks in the storage, and Maud involuntarily clenched her lonely fingers into fists.

"Gotta go," he said curtly.

"Do you have to?"

He drank the rest of his beer and pulled on his discarded boot.

"Yeah, I do. Nubbins! You have one minute to give it back, you bastard!"

He stood with his back to her, practically ignoring her presence. Maud's giddy feelings vanished as if she had been sobered up with icy water. Johnny might as well have stamped "guilty" across his forehead. Maud half-expected him to snatch the newspaper right out of her hands, but he didn’t even bother turning back her way.

He left her alone with the empty beer bottle and crumpled newspaper. Maud listened motionlessly as the van's engine started outside, the wheels revved on the dusty ground, and Johnny simply left her, again. Perhaps she shouldn't have thought of it that way. Just because she'd made a crazy decision, let her instincts guide her, and maybe ran straight into a bottomless pit, Johnny owed her nothing.

"Fuck you, Pretty Boy" she muttered to herself, swallowing back the lump in her throat, and tore the poster of Maria Flores from the newspaper.

No one else would have done it, but Drayton locked the door of her small room that night as well. She didn't care, she didn't care about the old man or the outside world, because she had nowhere to go after what had happened anyway. Maud just walked up and down until late at night in the cholera-yellow light of Nubbins' bone-capped lamp, and every so often, she’d pull the crumpled poster from her pocket.

Was that you, homegirl?

Maria's gentle smile on the poster seemed to whisper, "Everything will be all right." But Maud knew better. The real Maria Flores would never do that. Maud doubted Maria was such a seasoned liar, unlike her, to say something so obviously false—especially since things weren't exactly going well for Maud.

Besides, a girl this okay would never have smiled at a murderer like that.

Did you smile at Johnny?

She put the poster aside, undressed, turned off the light, and crawled into bed. She pulled the blanket over her head like Iris did when she had recurring nightmares about brain-eating bats. The bed completely took over the scent of soap and Sissy's flowers, so the penetrating stench that hit her nose caught her off-guard. It wasn't just the smell of rot, it was that wretched aftershave, the disgusting unnaturalness of it all made her gag.

"Well, I told ya." The bed sagged behind her, but Grant didn't put his arms around her because he no longer had arms. "Did you really need that to realize how this is all gonna end? To see the girl he killed before?"

"He didn't..."

She bit her own tongue and buried her face in her hands. Now she didn't start fighting Grant, who couldn't be there, he was dead, in pieces, cooked, nothing more than a pile of bones.

"He didn't? Is he not a murderous freak? At least you haven’t tried to lie to yourself about that, baby."

"You got no idea. You never saw a thing past your own needs."

Grant let out a hiccup-like sound, his voice thinned to almost a whimper.

"And that's why I deserved that?"

Maud rolled over to her other side to finally face him, or what was left of him, only to find Daisy there instead of her ex. The girl pulled her blued, bare legs to her chest so that her abdomen, mangled into sharpener-flakes wasn't visible. Her nails had already fallen off, leaving only blackened spots in their place.

"Just like old times," she whispered, her words accompanied by a strange buzzing sound, as if flies and maggots were residing in her airways. "You and me under the covers. At home in Floresville." For a second, Maud felt a strange sense of relief, thinking back to the two little hedgehog-girls they had once been, innocent and safe. But reality soon crept in between them: her friend was being chewed by worms six feet deep, and she…

Daisy started to sob.

"There's no going back now, Mommy Maud. I'm so sorry. And you should too…"

Maud kicked off the covers and shuddered to the far end of the bed, climbing onto the pillows. It didn't look like anything was lurking under the knot in which the white sheet was tangled, but she couldn't be sure; nothing felt real in the dim light of the moon seeping in through the yellowed curtains. Neither did she.

"There was a girl here before." She wasn't asking, but stating it, since she had already been shown the ropes by several of the family. In front of Bubba, pretending to be a simpleton would have been pointless anyway. "Her name was… Maria?"

They were down in the basement where Drayton had originally sent Maud to clean. She was scrubbing blood and organ remains from the workshop tables and sweeping dust from the boiler room floor. She had plenty of time, no one was urging her, so she had a chance to think over a hundred times whether he should really try her questions on Johnny's youngest cousin. She had already realized during her time with the family that Bubba understands most of what is said to him, except for the more abstract topics. She also saw that it was very easy to make him sad or anxious. Big Boy was the most predictable and the most genuine of them, creating a very strong contrast with Johnny Scumbag Sawyer, who hadn't even looked at her since the night of Harold Anderberg's death. For a full three days, he couldn't be seen on the ranch. She heard from Drayton that he hung out at the gas station every day, helping him out in a more traditional sense. He cashiered and repaired cars, but he apparently didn't give a shit about her or his own rambling about how proud he was of her.

They were in Bubba's bedroom. He sat at his table surrounded by torn-off human faces, rummaging through his battered treasure chest, which must have once been someone's suitcase. He glanced back over his broad shoulder, making a humming sound that sounded like an echo of the name Maria. He nodded, but quickly moved on, testing the color of a mostly spent, dark red lipstick on his stout, hairy arm.

Maud didn't look at the faces. Even though she was more or less used to the boundless monstrosity that inhabited this place, these lifeless, stretched flaps of skin someone had once caressed, kissed and washed in clear water in the morning, stung her stomach. If Bubba wore one, it was a little easier for her to overlook it, as they became one with the man and his infinite duality.

"And how was it?" she asked. She was sitting on one of the bunk beds, on a hideous yellow blanket, with her hands clasped in her lap.

Bubba looked like he was frowning under his mask, but Maud couldn't be sure. He pointed to his own chest with his shovel-sized hands, then reached up to his head and grabbed at his thick, curly hair in an exaggerated imitation of a terrified person.

"Oh… was she scared of you?" That was pretty understandable. "And you…oh, I see. You always brought her food."

Bubba approved with a big nod that Maud understood his language, and pulled his chair over to her. Its legs creaked sharply on the concrete floor, and in the corner, a handful of cockroaches circled with cocky courage.

"Mhh!"

She handed Maud the lipstick. As ridiculous as that thought was, Bubba had probably done more make-up than she had. Big Boy usually chose a self that suited his mood. As she observed, he wore the "pretty lady" face most when he was happy.

She spread the lipstick around the outline of Bubba's thick lips with inexperienced but light movements.

"And can you tell me… what happened to Maria?"

Bubba just stared in front of himself in silence for a few seconds. Suddenly, he started waving around, trying to show a thousand different events and emotions, both his own and those of others, his chair wobbling and squeaking dangerously beneath him. In his violent, wild gestures Maud read affection, anger, terror, and pity. The latter, she guessed, was more for his own family members than for Maria Flores.

Bubba then began nagging her—muttering and patting her head—that she should try the boldly colored, rancid lipstick. Most of its remains were smashed and smeared on its own tube. It was a cheap brand, typically used by poorer girls trying to stand out.

Maud put a dab of it on her finger and worked it over her lips like a schoolgirl.

"Uh-hmm." Bubba liked the result.

"Is it nice?" she smiled faintly and pressed her lips together, getting to know the unusual feeling. Bubba nodded affirmatively, flashing his potrouting teeth. "Thanks. But… can you tell… that John-"

Maud bit her sentence in half as footsteps sounded from the corridor and Drayton's hunched form appeared behind the gaps in the wall. The man entered the room with a broom in hand and grimaced at the sight of the two of them messing about with makeup.

"I can't believe this, you lazy sluggards! You good-for-nothin' idiot, don’t you got somethin’ better to do?!" Indignantly, he hit his gigantic nephew, who jumped up and pulled away from the old man like a startled dog. "And you!" he shouted at Maud. "You’re botherin’ Bubba with all them questions! Ain’t you ashamed, takin’ advantage of the poor devil?! Now move and help Sissy feed Grandpa!"

Maud obediently stood up, but gritted her teeth since she couldn't ask Bubba her question. The very question she most wanted an answer to. Drayton obviously interjected on purpose. She wondered if the old man would really have a stroke if she told him she had sex with Nubbins.

It wasn't worth it, though.

She was not under orders, she was looking for something to do on her own. Although she liked doing nothing for a while, aimless loitering only left her too much time to think, and in twenty-three years she simply got used to always having a task to do. Some things were the same as in the store or at home: washing, ironing, dusting, everyday movements, everyday things. The smell of laundry soap and the wind blowing through the freshly washed clothes. Some were a little different, like swabbing the blood buckets under the garden tap.

Her blue overalls were soaked, and her hair stuck to her sweat-damp neck. She entered the house through the back porch, passing the familiar freezers. She stayed there for a few minutes, then walked over to the dining room where Drayton was serving some afternoon dessert. It wasn't regular, he felt like it on a completely ad hoc basis, but Maud had to admit, the old man had a sprinkling of sweet dishes as well.

Wiping her hands as she walked in, she returned Sissy's full-mouthed smile, but hers quickly faded when she saw Johnny at the table. He was eating with his cousins, smothering Drayton's hot raisin bread pudding in an impossible amount of custard. Brownie, and now this, ran through Maud's mind. Of course, he has a sweet tooth. Insatiable.

When Johnny finally raised his gaze between two bites, she bit her lip to keep from grimacing, and felt the bitter taste of expired lipstick on her tongue instead of vanilla. Maud had barely known this tension before—it was completely different from being angry at Grant, which she always tried to nip in the bud anyway. As for Johnny, it was hard for her to admit, but she was disappointed that he had once again abandoned her, wandering in and out of her life, but when he was present, he claimed her whole being for himself.

She wanted to rip the spoon out of his hand, which Johnny pulled out from his soft mouth slowly, and shout her questions in his face, not giving him a chance to just brush them aside. But she couldn't move, nor could she take her eyes off the lips he pressed so warmly to her forehead. He smoothed his hair back again, all the alder-colored strands standing perfectly. He absent-mindedly scratched one particularly ugly cut on his bicep with his free hand. He was sitting with his legs spread wide next to Sissy, the legs his jeans were clinging tightly to—and those that pried her thighs apart on the barrel.

"Uh" rose his honey-smoky voice. "You’re lookin’ real ugly at me, Blondie."

Maud wanted to scream just one word, MARIA, but she just turned her back on him, like Johnny'd done to her that night. She left the room and quickened her pace as she heard the creaking of chair legs on the worn floorboards. Of course, she expected Johnny to follow. What else would a hunter do with rowdy prey?

Sissy said something, but Maud no longer understood what. She hurried out of the wire-mesh gate leading to the car cemetery in a half-running step, the first drops of the rain falling on her nose and the top of her head.

"Hey, stop!" Johnny called after her. "Where are you going anyway?"

Maud looked back and did something she had never done before: she scrunched her nose and hissed loudly like an aggravated animal. Perhaps she spent too much time with Nubbins. Johnny's puzzled expression was worth it anyway. At one point, she deliberately ducked out of sight, sneaking behind the bushes and tall grass towards the shed where the family kept the spare parts of the cars that had been brought here.

"Okay, let’s play then. I don’t mind. It’s a bit of a novelty seein’ you act like such a bloody little gremlin, you know? You could at least tell me what’s wrong with you when I’m the only reason why… Mmm. There you are." His voice deepened into a purring growl. Maud knew she had found his footprints, and then she stopped hiding, straightened up, and started running without stopping until she reached the shed, the door of which she immediately latched.

"You and the annoying silent treatment. I expected a warmer welcome after our little adventure..."

He rattled the door, but only with his knuckles, teasing. Meanwhile, the rain intensified, it clattered loudly on the roof of the wooden shed, trickled in thin streams through the cracks, collecting in small dirty puddles in the corners.

"Come out," Johnny barked, slamming the door with his palm. When there was no answer, a vexed sound escaped his throat as if he didn't want to believe that this was happening. "Blondie, if I have to break down this door because of you, I'll sure as hell punish you."

Maud shuddered at his words, but it wasn't cold and paralyzing, rather shockingly hot, and the shudder centered between her thighs. She had felt it before around Johnny, but only palely, like a withered sunflower just raising its petals in the brilliant sunlight. This was different. Overwhelming.

"Right now, when you'd most like to punch him square in the face with all your might?"

And she felt this because of him, who kidnapped her, threatened her, held a knife to her, inflicted a permanent wound on her thigh... the eternal imprint of himself on her body.

With a red face, she unlatched the door, finding herself face-to-face with him. Rainwater was dripping from Johnny's jawline, his black top was soaked, his breath smelled of vanilla and cigarette as he leaned over to her.

"Final-"

Maud's palm struck his clean-shaven face with a sharp snap, first on one side and then on the other. She was only able to give him a second slap because Johnny was stunned by shock, his nostrils flared, his eyes narrowed.

"So what?​ Finally, you here again? How come you're finally taking notice of me again, Johnny?"

"I got my own business."

"Great," Maud shot back, taking a step back as Johnny crossed the threshold of the shed. It was a low-ceilinged room, his locks almost brushed against the rain-soaked boards, and he completely blocked the only escape route out of it. "You always do what you want. I know this. If I haven't heard it a thousand times, not once. You can fucking do anything."

"I can" Johnny said dangerously calmly, his skin turning to an angry red shade in the shape of five thin fingers.

"Fuck you! You can't!"

"Oh, who's talking?"

Johnny snickered and that only made Maud angrier. Strangely and perversely, it was liberating to feel this unbridled rage, this indignation in herself, and no longer trying to swallow it back, only to gag over it in some corner. Self-respect, Johnny said something like that.

"You can ask me any question, threaten me, have all the fun with me you want, but if, for even a minute... if for just a dull second you start feelin' uncomfortable about somethin', you’re gonna walk out? Like a… a…" Her hands clenched into fists, just like when Johnny yanked his fingers out of hers with such hurtful suddenness. It was this memory that made her finish the sentence. "Like a pussy!"

Johnny's teeth flashed from behind his downward-curving lips, and he seized her hand, which was again swinging for a slap, and Maud's shoulder snapped painfully as he twisted it aside. Johnny snorted as he let go, and she crashed into a shelf full of screws, batteries, cables, and engine parts scavenged from dismantled cars.

"Oh yeah? Do you think I'm a pussy, darlin'?"

Maud kept her eyes on him as she slid her hands under the dungarees to her waist, where she cinched the fabric with a male belt she'd found on the farm. Her breathing became frantic as Johnny took another step towards her. But as he reached for her, Maud pulled the cleaver from under her clothes, which she had picked up on the back porch after cleaning the buckets, and pressed the dull edge against Johnny's damp neck.

"Yes, I do."

Chapter Text

Three days and two hours earlier

It was all very strange.

It was unusual for him to just dance around the honeypot, to control himself when all his instincts were screaming for him to act. Be it any kind of urge. If the Bad Man was on the scene, he'd put on his black gloves and head out to have his fill of a carefully selected and ensnared game like Kendra Liston, that newspaper delivery girl in Sealy, or any other. If some strangers stumbled upon their property or one of their victims tried to escape, he hunted them down for the family, using his sharp senses and almost unstoppable strength. If he wanted sex, he sought company to deal with the problem. Nothing could be simpler than that.

He never mixed these three things. The idea felt disgusting, like eating from a potty.

Maud didn't become dinner because of him. What seemed to be just a hobby, observing a strange little animal with a magnifying glass, turned into a maddening desire, and he couldn't find any relief. He had no intention of forcing himself on her—he had nothing but contempt for men so pathetic they had to stoop that low just to get their hands on someone.

Getting the girls to beg to be his added a special spice to the pleasure. It was just a different kind of hunting.

He was sure that soon the blondie would be begging for him too.

When Maud asked him to take her in his arms, buried her blonde head in his chest and then smiled at him, he felt something he had only felt once before in his life. That unusually warm feeling in his chest that his heart pumped throughout his body. It was like a big gulp of alcohol, only much balmier, more natural and also still new to him. Fondness.

Everything was familiar from before: admiring only her smile, not other parts of her body. Holding her so tightly as if his life depended on it, wanting to chain her to him and keep every threat away from her at the same time. He didn't kill that annoying bastard from Floresville for fun or necessity, it became personal the moment he heard Maud's screams and saw her clinging to the car door with a bleeding nose. If he had the time, he wouldn't have let him get away with it so easily.

All this was an uplifting feeling at the time, and he was surprisingly optimistic about it. However, noticing what she was staring at on the couch next to him, and seeing that devastating realization in her eyes, this optimism suddenly felt like disgusting, humiliating naivety. Something he had sworn to never allow himself.

Maria’s beautiful face—though he rarely even thought of her by name—was around him all the time, even in his shack. He hasn't taken her posters off the wall yet, although he has already added the new object of his interest to the collection. He was just as attached to them as to the many little things he'd carefully gathered and treasured about Maria. The white-and-yellow blouse she wore when he took her home, the brittle flower wreath she wove wandering in the garden, the spoon she used and the cross from her golden necklace.

The dress he brought to Maud was one of them. It seemed like a good idea, almost an amusing one. However, he soon realized that no, he didn't want to draw parallels between the two girls. It happened on the very night when Bubba slashed the girl in the red blouse, and Maud voluntarily returned to them. He tore off the dragonfly-patterned fabric from Maud's unconscious body without caring, because nope, she and Maria had nothing in common. Nothing.

Except for him.

As Maud was looking at Maria's photo, that cursed whisper rose again in Johnny's head, but this time only in bits and pieces. Never, she, love you, Johnny, could. Nancy's index finger appeared in his mind, and a dull pain pierced his forehead as if his mother wanted to poke his eye out with that talc-powder smelling finger.

He was hellbent that he wasn't seeing something, that something wasn't right.

He stormed home, leaving behind Maud and all the memories of the evening, both the bloody and the sweet (the two weren't always separate for him). Fortunately, the generator at his mother's house wasn't working this time, so he could enter his quarters without having to meet her. He wouldn't have had the patience for her touches, and for her to ask him about the blondie again, with a strange kindness she'd never shown Maria.

His home looked like a rundown dope house again, but he didn't care. He swept all the dirty dishes into the sink, cursing and grimacing, kicking aside boxes and discarded clothes in his way to reach into his loose-handled fridge and pull out a six-pack of beer. He opened the first one with the edge of his skinning knife and threw himself down on the couch. There were piles of newspapers next to him, some with only a page torn out, all about crimes and gruesome news that filled him with interest. A half-eaten sandwich and two cigarette butts, put out on the soles of his boots, were lying on top of the mess, leaving black stains on the paper.

He drank his first beer almost in one gulp and already opened the next one. When his mind was sufficiently dulled, he got up from the sofa, knocking down the empty bottles, and crouched down in front of one of the packed shelves. On the lowest rung, an empty rabbit cage was gathering dust. A small piece of paper clung to one corner, held fast with a strip of insulating tape. The delicate, feminine handwriting on it read simply: Pea.

Johnny took a big gulp of his beer. Only you could name a bunny like that, he thought, and his lips twitched into a half-smile. It was a broken, empty smile, like a wound.

He got Pea for Maria. He was sure that she would be high as a kite, as she found her greatest joy in photographing flowers, foxes and stuff like that. He wasn't wrong. The bunny and Maria were inseparable, and he could have watched forever as she sat amidst the frills of her dress, gently feeding the little creature fresh lettuce leaves. His alcohol-steamed head flashed memories of those mornings when he couldn't find her by his side, but he knew where to look for her: under the big aspen tree, her back against the white trunk, with the passionate traces of his mouth on her amber skin and her bunny in her lap.

He kicked the cage over. He lay back on the couch and drank until the alcohol completely washed away the infuriating doubts, haunting memories and foolish dreams.

He woke up early in the morning, way too early, to his mother's yelling.

"There are no words for how disappointed I am, Johnny! I told you, I won't tolerate drunkenness in my house!"

He grimaced and turned onto his side, his shirt reeking of spilled, stale-smelling beer. The whole shack was flooded with this smell, along with spoiled food and his obvious lack of a shower. He wanted nothing in the world less than his mother's tirade. He expressed all this with another annoyed grunt, which only added fuel to the fire.

"Like a pig! He grunts, wallowing in the filth. In the end, he'll even shit himself." Nancy threw her hands in the air as she stepped inside, her remaining eye narrowed angrily at the horrible mess. She was wearing slippers and a plaid black-and-brown house dress, and her hair had curlers looking like fat beetle larvae. "How many times have I told ya to tidy up around here? My son... Did ya learn that from me? Get up!"

She grabbed his shoulder, right by the scar, and pulled him hard, nails digging into his skin. Johnny wrenched himself free, sitting up abruptly and gripping the back of the couch for support. The sudden change churned his stomach, and a foul taste surged into his mouth. He spat onto the floor, only for Nancy to smack him sharply on the back of the head.

"Pig! You’re a drunken pig, son, even after swearin’ a dozen times you’d quit drinkin’. This isn't worthy of you or the family! I’m glad you didn't bring Maud home yet—this mess ain’t no place for a woman! Pull yourself together and clean this place up, Johnny, or you’ll remember this day, I swear it!"

"Fine."

Nancy obviously didn't like his tone, but didn't say anything because she noticed Maria's posters above the couch, as well as around his bed and by the sink. She reached over the head of Johnny, who was rubbing his eyes, and without question began to rip the posters off, tearing her pale face and smile to shreds.

"This…"

“Ma, stop it" Johnny grumbled.

"We already discussed this! You still don't understand that that girl had no place here? That she didn't love you, not a tiny bit? That she just enjoyed making a fool out of you?" The paper tore under her hands with a painful sound, and she didn't care about Johnny's objections, she looked in the closets and went through his clothes and his drawers to make sure she got rid of all the posters. "Don’t you ever let me see that harlot’s face in my house again—or you actin’ like some repulsive, drunken fool. You hear me clear, Johnny? Never again!"

Johnny stood up, but even on his slightly unsteady legs, he towered over his mother completely. It has occurred to him many times, of course, to step up, to do something irreparable. A blow. A brutish toss. His hand on Nancy's throat and her evil head slamming against the wall. As a teenager, he fantasized about killing his mother almost as much as other boys fantasized about what's between girls' legs. But there was never any fear in Nancy's healthy eye when she looked at him, even when he was about to explode with obvious anger. She was his mother, after all—untouchable. No rules applied to her.

"Leave me alone, for fuck's sake."

He turned his back on his mother and, shielding his eyes with his hand, stepped out into the cloudy, but still irritatingly bright outside world. In the kitchen, he poured himself some cold milk and stuffed two freshly baked pancakes into his mouth with his bare hands. Still nauseous and bleary-eyed, he got into her car and headed over to the gas station, for lack of a better idea, where Drayton immediately shooed him back to fix the clicking clunker of some hippies, saying he'd only scare the customers off with that face.

As he worked under the flapped hood of the engine, sometimes taking a sip of a bottle full of lukewarm water, he couldn't help but notice that the gas station was much more orderly than before. Drayton had recently gotten into the habit of spending the night here every so often, but now it seemed like cleaning became a distraction for him. He carried all the rubbish and debris back to the dunghill by the containers, the tanks were full, the broken buckets and wipers were replaced, and the shelves were refilled. Johnny even saw fresh paint somewhere, which meant that the walls were getting some care for the first time in a millennium.

With the water bottle in hand, he sat down in the garden chair under the window, wiping his sweaty forehead with the palm of his hand. Not far away, a hen clucked in her cage, the generator humming along with crickets roosting in the grass and chirping birds resting in the thirsty canopies of the surrounding trees and on the fence slats. Leaning back, he let his rock-heavy head hit the wall. He could hear the hippies inside laughing and fiddling with the vending machine, which Drayton had also miraculously fixed. What could have hit the old man? Something must have weighed on his soul in a dirty way if he was willing to devote energy and especially money to all this.

He didn't think it was Maria. Drayton shared his mother's opinion of the matter from the beginning.

"Hey, Johnny boy," said the old man, closing the white door leading to the store behind him. "How’s the car comin' along? These damn drugged-up idiots are really startin' to get on my nerves."

"Half an hour. I'm on it."

"Amazing. Uh, you hungry? The barbecue's 'bout ready... Come on in and get it, I'm not runnin' a damn restaurant." He hooked his thumbs into the belt of his gray pants, and sniffed his nose. He looked almost as worn out as Johnny did, except that his uncle hardly ever drank. How he managed it is a mystery, especially as he raised Nubbins, Bubba and Sissy.

"Just say your piece, uncle," said Johnny, splashing the remaining piss-warm water on his face. "I know something is buggin' ya, it can be seen from a thousand miles away."

Drayton didn't try to deny it and was perhaps even glad that he brought it up. In any case, he had a hard time getting started. He was scratching his neck, and the flaccid skin on his face turned red. He was embarrassed and the realization made Johnny chuckle cheekily. Well, I've lived long enough to see this as well.

"Don't just put it in."

"What?"

"I said don't just put it in!" Drayton's entire balding head was scarlet-red, and now not from rage. He looked at him out of the corner of his eye, reproachfully, his shouting disturbed the chicken. "Use an, um, rubber."

Johnny twisted his mouth perpexedly. Now he was totally in the dark about what had caused the old man to have a cleaning fit and then to want to lecture him as if he were sixteen years old.

"What the fuck? Did you and my mother go nuts?"

"Johnny..."

"Why the hell are you both poking your noses at what I'm doing? And how…" He snorted and clutched the bottle, tossing it aside. "... How I fuck the blondie?" Not yet, but the elders didn't need to know that.

"Don't talk to me like that, kid! I'm only concerned 'bout the well-being of the family, nothin' else!"

Maybe it was a total mistake to come here, though at least Drayton left him alone after that. He deliberately messed around with the car for longer than necessary, making sure the hippies snapping photos of every pebble, laughing and chattering about free love would get on Drayton's nerves as much as possible. It was meager retribution, but better than nothing.

Tammie moaned loudly and relieved as she rode out the last waves of her orgasm on him. She smiled, her head falling forward exhausted. Johnny rolled her under himself with an impatient growl. He pulled out of her, only to cum on Tammie's spread out, full breasts after a few quick strokes and stifled grunts. Other times he would have gotten an eyeful of the sight, but now he needed a cigarette more than anything else. He climbed off her creaking, metal-framed bed and rummaged through the pockets of his jeans, which he had thrown onto the faded, water-lily-patterned carpet.

There were several reasons why he was back in Rocksprings for a fourth round with Tammie, the barmaid. She was very good in bed, sexy, available at any time, and above all: blonde. For some reason, that was the main reason he came straight here to blow off steam.

Tammie sat up, resting her back against the fluffy pillows, and lazily tied her hair in a bun. She wasn't a natural, soft blonde like Maud, she had a cooler, silvery shade, but Johnny couldn't care less. She lived in a tiny attic room with damp-streaked walls that seemed to weep, a space so cramped it felt like a rat's burrow. Yet, Tammie never once complained. She devoured life with a big spoon, including him, when she got the chance.

"Damn, you are still fuckin' good," she said and began fishing around in the drawer of her nightstand. A small crack pipe emerged from it, which she heated with practiced movements. She took a big sniff of it and blew sharp-smelling smoke into the thick air of the room. "I thought you ain't comin' back. I coulda gotten hitched by now, and we'd be sneakin' around some motel to do it."

Johnny smirked as he lit a match and burned the end of his cigarette. He could feel her eyes on him, and he was waiting for her to try to ask him about his scars again. Tammie certainly knew he was dangerous, just not how much. She could hardly suspect that he had recently massacred that hospice nurse not so far away. She might rather see him as a street troublemaker, perhaps some kind of dealer who does business with dark figures and negotiates on dark terms. He never saw fear in her, but actually, he didn't want to hurt her. Not only because of respect for order - he simply liked her.

"So, who were ya thinkin' 'bout? I could tell your mind was wanderin'. Ain't no offense, just damn curious."

He straightened up, pulling up his jeans.

"Why would I think of anyone else while I'm bangin' you?" he grinned at her.

Tammie waved and put the crack pipe aside to use a washcloth to wipe off the traces of Johnny's pleasure.

"I know I'm a fat little sex bomb. But I saw what I saw, didn’t I? You wanted to go off an’ do this with somebody else, but hell, I don’t know... Is that gal blind, or is she some kinda paralyzed from the waist down? Why in tarnation don’t she take it? Or maybe she’s one o’ them good ol’ religious girls, all high an’ mighty ‘bout it?"

He walked around the bed and patted Tammie's head.

"You have nothing to do with this, hottie. And that's enough of the personal questions."

Then, there in the rain in the car graveyard

He said it himself: Maud was full of surprises, mainly because she wasn't always aware of what was going on in her head either. To navigate by the little comments she muttered to herself, her wide-open eyes, her mock-doofus expression, which could turn into a mad scream in a single moment. Johnny, on the other hand, loved the challenge. He loved it all.

The blade of the cleaver was cold on his skin, sensitive and heated by intense emotions. His face was stung by the fiery aftershocks of Maud's slaps. He kept his hands stiff by his side, even though it would have taken only one move to pull out his skinning knife.

She called him a fucking pussy.

"Well, holding it like that won't do much," he purred, tilting his neck provocatively. "A cleaver must be swung to be deadly."

"I know that very well, you don't need to be smart about it."

"There you are. That's exactly what I was talking about. You have finally unleashed the beast."

Maud gripped the hilt of the cleaver stubbornly, not moving it from Johnny's throat. He was totally unaccustomed to being on this side of things. Although she was a dangerous little brat, he could still disarm her if he wanted to, and take over control, but his instincts now dictated that he wait out what her next move would be.

"No, I didn't let anything out. It's just that you're…" She grimaced, her full lips were painted with some crimson lipstick. Her overalls clung to her thighs wetly. From all this and from her doe-eyes glowing with rage, she seemed even more unbridled, a creation of nature that cannot be restrained by the habits of the outside world, at least not forever.

Johnny couldn't take his eyes off her lips, but he didn't hesitate to answer.

"What am I, hm? Are you trying to call me a pussy again, or oh, maybe that's not what you're really trying to say? You're really trying to tell me I'm a monster, aren't you? A terrible, bad man. But you can stop me. Just swing it." He straightened his back and yanked his knife from his belt, but only to drop it on the table among the screws and cut pieces of old upholstery. He turned both palms towards Maud, his skin straining against the edge of the cleaver, but he wasn't really paying attention to anything else but that red mouth that was ajar in astonishment. "Come on! You would surely make the world a better place."

Maud exhaled the air she had been holding in against her will.

"Oh my god, just... just shut up. Even weeks ago… You knew well that I didn't want to hurt you. That I can't do it. But you're damn careless, Johnny, too arrogant to notice how much opportunity you're leaving to attack."

She hissed like a defeated bull in an arena, her hand and cleaver falling to her side. Johnny stroked the place where the blade had just been. Without a word, he reached for her hand and took the blade from it, throwing it next to his own knife, and closing in until Maud had nowhere to back away again. Her eyes were full of anticipation; perhaps she was trying to prepare herself for the consequences. To that he would punish her, faithfully to his promise, if not for the door, which in the end he didn't have to destroy, then for her wild stunt.

Johnny touched her shoulders, slowly stroking them up to her neck. He squeezed it a bit, eliciting a small tingle from her. His fingers dipped into the soft blonde locks damp with rainwater and sweat as his hands moved higher and higher. He ran his thumb over her lips, smearing the lipstick a little.

"Open it."

Maud's lips quivered under his touch, but then obediently gave way. Johnny immediately pressed his thumb into her soft, warm little mouth, and moaned from his throat, his other hand hitting the wall next to Maud's head. Her body tensed against his and he felt his pants getting tighter and tighter. He pulled back, then slid his finger down Maud's throat again. Unable to restrain himself, his left suddenly reached between her revealingly clenched thighs, spreading them slightly apart to touch her through the denim.

"Oh… Someone got damn hot down there…"

He pulled his finger out of her mouth and Maud coughed, lipstick mixed with drool dripping from the corner of her mouth. Johnny thought that he had never seen anything so arousing in his life, and he knew it was because of his… fondness. Sex had been completely different with Maria too than with the faceless, nameless girls.

"Johnny- " Maud whispered and almost frantically reached for his shoulders and shirt to grab onto something as he lightly squeezed her core. "Nn-no."

Shit. He choked back a small grunt of frustration, though he expected her to back down sooner or later. He had no idea why Maud was so afraid of this when she was brave enough to push a cleaver to his neck, and even more so. Reluctantly, he pulled his hand out from between her legs and stepped back so that his very obvious erection wouldn't press against her stomach. This claimed his attention so much that it was only with a little delay that he noticed the huge tears running down Maud's face.

"Hey, calm down, Blondie," he said with a frown. "That was it. I won't hurt you."

Maud nodded, indicating that she knew, but more tears followed the previous ones, no matter how hard she tried to swallow them back. She buried her face in her hands and turned away from him, now not to express her disdain, but because she was ashamed of these tears. He was a little surprised, really, because Maud wasn't much of a crybaby—none of the times he'd expected her did she burst into tears. Neither in fear nor in grief.

"What is it?"

Maud sobbed along with the rain pounding the shed. Johnny rested his hips against the table, his arms folded across his chest, somewhat confused as to what had hit her.

“You could do it, right? You could hurt me if… if things turned out that way." She wiped her face with her palm and glanced furtively at him over her shoulder. Johnny didn't answer. "I couldn't. It's not fair, it's not fair that even now I'm weak and it's only my fault..."

"What are you talking about?"

Maud muttered something, again to herself, almost unintelligibly. "Onesd."

One-side.

One-sided.

He understood then, but couldn't say anything. Mainly because he didn't know what was true and what wasn't, in the shadow of the memories of the recent past and his mother's words. He pushed open the shed door and motioned for her to follow. He wanted to avoid his family members, which of course he couldn't, but Maud ran upstairs almost as soon as they got near the stairs. Nubbins followed, climbing the steps in twos to finally give her the thing he had created for her, and this time Johnny didn't mind it.

""Just as long as you've got love in your heart, you'll never be alone, you'll never be alone" … Oh, hi, Sugar." Sissy stopped beside him, soapy water dribbling from her hands. She gave him a wide smile, flashing the gap between her front teeth. "So, did she forgive you?"

"Hmm." Johnny scratched his chin with his thumb, which was lightly stained with lipstick, and Sissy noticed. "Get her stuff ready when you have time. I'll take her home."

Chapter Text

Two large paper bags on the porch: these were all her belongings. Most of it was what she got from Nancy and what she and Johnny had bought in Bonham: a pair of jeans, some shirts, her favorite lily-of-the-valley soap wrapped in paper, and her nail file. At the bottom of the pile lay the Cary Grant biography heavily, with the bloody-stemmed sunflower and hair braids among its pages.

Maud was speechless when Sissy knocked on the door of the bathroom to tell her that Johnny wanted to take her home to Nancy's.

"After all, it's about time, isn't it?" Sissy tweeted from the other side of the door, while she was drying her hair with one of the towels embroidered with sunflowers. "I promise, Sugar, you'll love the house. Nancy's garden is real stunnin', even if she is a vicious bitch herself."

If this had come a little earlier, not right after what happened at the car graveyard, Maud might have had a chance to brood about how much she didn't want to be under the same roof with Johnny's mother. It could seem absurd that it was the nice mom from the family that she wanted to keep her distance from, but if anyone, she knew very well that mommies could be damn dangerous. Besides, there were already enough signs that Nancy played a major role in the fate of Maria Flores. A fate after Johnny had to go against his family's rules to save her body from being devoured.

Provided he hadn't lied in her face.

"This bastard Pretty Boy" Nubbins cussed. "Who the crap does he think he is... just strolls in here, takin’ you away like he owns the place... And they let him! They forgive him every damn thing, while I..."

Maud was sitting on the platform of the van with a broken window, dangling her legs forlornly over the wet, puddled ground. Nubbins was walking circles around it, sometimes kicking a pebble or a snail. The helpless, slimy little creatures crashed against the wall with a loud crack.

"Yer different from that other one, even though Grandpa took a likin’ to her too... But if it were up to me, she’d’a been sent straight to hell. No one was allowed to lay a hand on her. So useless, so damn whiny... But you already belong here, you're a killer!"

This was not an accusation, but an acknowledgment from his mouth. Nubbins was very resentful of anyone not taking his share of the hunt, especially his uncle, to whom he liked to rub it under his nose. Maud sighed heavily and stared at the bracelet on her wrist that the uninitiated eye would never have guessed was made of human bones. The teeth, polished to perfect pearls didn't give it away, nor did the rat charm hanging between them. Nubbins would have been a great artist in another life.

She listened if Johnny was joining them, but she heard neither the pounding of his footsteps nor his voice —one she had recognized from the very first moment in the red room as being just as infuriatingly bewitching as his smug face.

Maud hated being humiliated, but this one was only on her. She allowed herself to be completely carried away by her anxiety, which she had barely grasped yet.

It wasn't that she wanted Johnny - she had wanted Grant in the beginning, although sex itself had never been a big deal to her. It was slowly becoming just some kind of a chore. Almost like doing the dishes. Thanks to Daisy, however, not so much has happened between them in the past year. Her body and soul slowly closed down, like pulling down the shaders, ready to cast aside the function of "femininity" as a whole, like an unnecessary sixth toe that evolution also wears off the feet.

She couldn't give in to her desire for Johnny. If he had let them go further, she would have had to face that she had become irrevocably vulnerable. She could deal with death's constant closeness, but not with having feelings for Johnny Sawyer. That could take away her remaining dignity. For him, everything - all the touches, all the compliments, all the stolen moments - must have been about possessing her completely. Why else would he want her, a morose sewer rat who can't even wear a skirt normally?

She didn't know what Johnny might think of her now, and it vexed her that she cared. She could see his bewilderment at her outburst, and he didn't even bother answering her question if he would hurt her if things went wrong. Just as wrong, perhaps, as they did with Maria, which ended in the terrible, painful chaos that Bubba recalled by tearing in his hair and throwing his arms about.

"At least Drayton is happy, I guess."

"Who cares about that old cook! He’s always runnin’ his damn mouth, ain’t he?" Nubbins stopped in front of the platform, then jumped up beside her shiftily, pulling his legs under him. He wrapped both arms around her and nuzzled his head in her neck like a needy cat, his hair smelling like grease and slaughterhouses. "So if you’re fixin’ to leave, at least spin that yarn ‘bout the rat and the tunnel one more time."

The house was, as Sissy had said, breathtakingly beautiful—and almost confusingly ordinary.

Standing by the white picket fence, Maud wondered if she could get used to this rural idyll after all the madness of the Sawyer house. It was honest at least, a clear reflection of its dwellers, whom she had grown grotesquely fond of since that incident at that gas station. There was no way to deny that she loved talking to Sissy and learning new tricks from her about wearing her hair. She liked watching Bubba feed the chickens, and she always smiled when she heard the happy little grunts that Big Boy made when one of his family members came across him. Nubbins was a slightly more difficult case, but his obvious affection and that she was the only one on the ranch who could calm him down in his most unmanageable moments, gave her a kind of broken confidence.

In the windows of Nancy's house, red and violet flowers were blooming in neat pots. Behind the blindingly white-painted fence boards, healthy, golden sunflowers swayed in the wind, rainwater dripping from their leaves. Above the gate through which they drove in, hung a buck skull attached to a frame of stout wooden posts, just like the one at the ranch. Next to the driveway, in the tall grass, there was a locked shed for storing garden tools, and on the way to the back garden, an electric cattle grid sparkled. The windmill was still, and seemed to look back at Maud from above like an uninterested, tired monster.

"Wait here. I have some things to do," Johnny said dryly and disappeared behind the front door, leaving Maud cooling her heels by the sunflowers.

She didn't really mind. The short drive up to the house had passed in sulky silence anyway. She couldn't even guess what thoughts could be behind Johnny's emotionless, stony features. He didn't even tease her, he was just gripping the steering wheel with his right hand, clad in mustard-colored work gloves, while Summer wine whizzed on the radio.

"Strawberries, cherries and an angel's kiss in spring
My summer wine is really made from all these things
Take off your silver spurs and help me pass the time
And I will give you summer wine
Oh, oh summer wine "

Maud hummed the catchy tune to herself, and it reminded her again of Sissy, who had promised to visit her soon. She noticed a snail struggling up the fence; she carefully grasped the fragile snail shell and separated it from the wet wood. Nubbins did your mates dirty, she thought, watching as the snail settled into her palm and began to crawl, trailing a filmy streak toward her elbow littered with fading cuts.

"Just once I'd catch you doing something less weird." She turned his head towards the house: in the wide open door stood Johnny, who had taken off his shirt in the meantime, his lips curled upwards.

"If you say so," she replied, and although her expression didn't change, she was actually very happy that he was smiling at her again. It made her feel less like a loser. She walked over to him, trying not to stare at his broad chest and muscular shoulders, but it wasn't easy, especially after what had happened. "Look..."

"Nah." Johnny didn't let her finish, instead he grabbed her chin, forcing her to look into his eyes. It took that long, perhaps, for his thoughts to flow through him, clearing his head and illuminating what he was thinking, and Maud would have killed to find out what it was. "Let's stop the bullshitting, Blondie, I ain't got time for that. And neither do you. It's time for some straight talking now that you're here, in my mother's garden with this nasty piece of crap on your wrist, not in the basement. So: what the hell do you think is one-sided?"

There was no trace of a smile on his face, it was as cold and stern as he was in the car, but there was a fire in his eyes that softened it whether he wanted to or not. He was full of masculine edge, and at the same time, there was a little boyish softness hidden in him.

"Answer me!" He yanked her by the chin. Maud nearly fell, the snail flipping off her arm and rolling into the grass. Johnny waited for her reply as if the fate of the world depended on it, and Maud knew he wasn't going to let him go with an evasive answer. "Blondie, I don't care if you start crying or try to attack me again, I'm still going to get that out of you. If I have to, I'll put that cute little head of yours underwater, and I won't let you up until I finally hear the truth. Again: what do you think is one-sided?"

"That I'm in love with you, you bloody, sadistic piece of shit!"

This was no Summer wine, nor anything that Maud could have imagined saying at any time in her life. Her breath hitched and she turned pale as the winter moon, wishing she'd never let the Genie out of the bottle. Then she would have been able to drive all such thoughts back into the abyss.

Johnny's face looked like it was carved out of marble, but his eyes flashed with a lot of emotion, like midnight lightning. Shock. Disbelief. Some strange fragility. Anger.

"You think that's what I want to hear?!" he yelled grabbing her white T-shirt. He dragged her into the house, slamming the door with a kick. "You really think I’m gonna swallow that load’a bull? That you’re in love with me? Do you think this will help?"

He let her go, and Maud stumbled down a short corridor, trying to find her balance, almost bumping into a lovely chest of drawers cluttered with potted flowers and porcelain figurines. This time she didn't let her traitorous tears burst out, she just wrapped her arm around herself as if Bubba's chainsaw had torn into her just as it had ripped Daisy apart.

"Do you know me as someone who'd embarrass herself with such a lie?"

"Do you know me as a fucking moron?!"

Johnny howled back at her like a wounded animal, a vein bulging on his forehead, but he still didn't look like he wanted to hurt her. He didn't come closer, didn't try to grab her again, but Maud wouldn't have cared at that moment if his next move had splashed her brain on the green wallpapered wall. She approached him, scanning the dark fox eyes as if searching for the end of a thread to begin unraveling.

"Many people tried to lie that to you? Did they try to survive by pretending to be in love with you?"

"Shut up!"

"Or just one," she breathed, feeling a barrage of conflicting feelings split open her skull; the quiet sympathy for Maria and the agonizing will that Johnny doesn't think she is a liar.

"I told you," he growled, leaning over her, so close that Maud could have counted all the cuts, large and small, that covered his upper body. "... to shut up."

"If I wanted to escape, I woulda try to cut off your head with that cleaver or burn down your house, but I certainly won't say that..."

She couldn't bear to admit it again, not this way. At the same time, Johnny couldn't respond with anything other than an irritated "fuck". He couldn't or didn't want to make more accusations against her, he just stood in front of her, there in body, but perhaps at a completely different time in his mind. Maud looked down at his hand, then took it in hers and pulled the work gloves off. She didn't have to lift, he moved with her as she brought his rough palm to her face and nestled her face in it, letting him feel her pulse, the warmth of her skin, her ragged breath.

That was all she could say.

Nancy wasn't home yet, and Johnny wanted to arrange Maud's move-in before she arrived. At first, she was surprised when Johnny told her that he didn't live in the big house, and nor would she. They went down a long flight of stairs, then through a modern garage and a huge garden, over which a massive, majestic aspen tree towered, providing a cooling shade. The back part, where - unsurprisingly for her - there were rows of car wrecks and all sorts of junk, was separated from the rest of the garden by a wire fence, through which a padlocked gate led.

The shack they finally entered was by all accounts a… man-cave. Of the worst kind, but it hasn't been able to hit Maud's threshold. It was much more that the two of them would share such a tiny space. She stood idly while Johnny showed her the closet he had emptied for her stuff, the bed, or where the dishes, the broom, and the toolbox were, adding that she could only shower upstairs in the house. There was a stuffed garbage bag in the corner, revealing that Johnny had been doing a flash clean while she was waiting in the garden. It was hard for her to imagine that there could have been any more of a mess here.

He didn't elaborate on the details of her new home any longer than was necessary, instead, he opened the toolbox, turned on the radio on the shelf, and went to the refrigerator. He crouched in front of it and clucked a couple of turns on the handle screws, while Maud was checking animal skins nailed to the wall, the trophies, family photos, hastily washed plates dripping with water, and a stove full of burnt spots.

She has never lived with a man before. She has never lived with a man to whom she professed her love and was left without an answer.

She wanted to ask Johnny why he suddenly decided to bring her home, but she just left him to fiddle with the refrigerator instead. She sank onto the couch by the door, its worn springs groaning beneath her. The fabric carried a faint tang of beer and the lingering familiarity of men’s cologne. She began to unpack her bags, piling everything next to her or on her lap for the time being, and listened to the news on the radio, where they were talking about an ongoing investigation into the murder of a woman named Kendra.

"You know," Johnny said. "When I thought you were killed, taken away from me… I was so fucking angry that someone had to die."

Maud glanced back over her shoulder, but she couldn't see him from the cabinet that divided the room. She knew he was telling the truth. Not only because everything Johnny said sounded deadly serious, but because she was holding the Cary Grant book in her lap that Sissy had found in Johnny's car the day after that night.

"I'm a tough bite," she answered finally, eliciting a hiccup-like little laugh from Johnny.

They say that the first night together is extremely important.

Strictly speaking, this was their third. The first time, she was passed out with a freshly stitched wound on her leg, and Johnny fell asleep in an armchair. For the second time, even Nubbins was part of their company for a time unknown to her. This time, however, was different, even though they didn't share a bed; Johnny settled on the couch while she got his bed. He had freshly washed, blue-and-white striped bedclothes and crisply ironed, fragrant sheets, which surprised her quite a bit in light of the general quality of the shack, but she still didn't manage to fall asleep.

Her stomach rumbled so loudly that it could be heard even in the neighboring county. She rolled back and forth, pressed her palm against it, and tried everything to stifle both the wet snores of her insides and her hunger. Maud knew her period was coming, and usually she could have eaten a horse at that time.

"You said you weren't hungry."

Johnny grumbled, and got up from the couch, smoothing his hair back. As he pulled his jeans up, he told her to put on his shoes, because if she continued like this, neither of them would sleep a wink at night. It really wasn't the smartest thing for her to deny her hunger, however, the fact that Johnny, no matter how moody, still wanted to help in the middle of the night, put a small smile on her face.

"I want some cookies," she admitted, clutching the robe Nancy had given her. Her white sneakers were speckled with blood stains faded to rust, and she didn't know whose they were, Grant's, Daisy's, Harold's, or her own. "I could make something..."

Johnny muttered something about how they would have to raid his mother's kitchen. He washed his face at the sink, then slipped into his boots and turned on the outdoor light of the shack. Accompanied by the hum of the generator, they walked back to the garage, then up the stairs, inside very quietly and carefully. Maud didn't know which closed door might belong to Nancy's room, but she was sure that neither she nor Johnny wanted to wake her.

They only turned on the light in the kitchen. It was the most charming kitchen Maud had ever seen, nothing compared to the small, greasy-walled alcove in her mother's apartment. Accompanied by the ticking of the grandfather clock, she opened the cupboards, looking for flour, granulated sugar and baking powder, and looked around in the refrigerator wrinkling her nose. Her stomach grumbled again, krrrrrr, which made her face turn red.

"You better prep this cookie quickly. In the end, you'll try to bite off a piece outta me, you starveling…"

Johnny leaned against the counter and grinned, watching her every move as if she were doing the science experiment of the millennium, not cracking a dozen eggs. She began to melt the butter and dark chocolate, of which Nancy kept five or six bars beside the pots of honey and jam; the same brand that she once sold a lot of.

Maud heard Johnny walk over to see what she was working on over her head. He showered before they unsuccessfully went to sleep, and his scent made her head spin.

"What's that gonna be?"

Maud blushed. She turned off the gas under the steam bath and self-consciously wiped her damp palms with the soft, heart-patterned tea towel hanging on the oven.

"Brownie" she blurted out, looking up into Johnny's eyes for just a moment. "Mm, with walnuts." She pointed to the walnut kernels on the cutting board, mentally prepared for Johnny to tease her about how she decided to make this exact cookie.

Thick. Creamy. Insatiable.

Johnny's strong hand closed on her upper arm and turned her towards him with an irresistible force. Maud didn't have time to look at his face, the following seconds were mere flashes: a grunt from deep within, his eyes blazing beneath his scar, his hand reaching for her cheek, the smell of melted chocolate and desire as Johnny kissed her.

Maud's lips melted under Johnny's like butter over the steaming pot, and there wasn't an ounce of uncertainty in her as she kissed him back, immediately tossing the tea towel aside to embrace him where she could reach him; she hugged his waist, then stroked his bare back up to his shoulders. She clung to them as Johnny grabbed her and set her on the counter, sweeping aside the salt and pepper shaker and the tomato-shaped timer. Maud's thighs flashed out from under her robes as she spread her legs so he could move closer to kiss her harder and sweeter. Johnny ran his hand through her hair and nibbled a little on her lower lip before his tongue slid into her mouth again. Maud returned it trembling, but with no less fervor, moaning softly into his mouth.

"You were fucking made for me, Blondie" he whispered into her ear before kissing her neck and brushing aside the green and white robe from Maud's thigh, looking for the scar his blade had caused. He licked his bottom lip as his thumb brushed over the damaged skin, then leaned down to do the same with his hot mouth, making Maud's sneaker-clad legs shake.

She took Johnny's face between her hands and pulled him up to her, throwing herself on his lips as if she really wanted to get his fill of him and only him. All her muffled sighs, the sound of palms running along jeans and Johnny's groans were extra loud in the silent house, but none of them could think about that.

There was no way for her to mull over anything when her hand was wandering over Johnny's perfect, round ass.

The lens of a pair of glasses flashed next to the grandfather clock, just for a fraction of a second. Johnny was kissing her neck again, but she froze like a mannequin as she slowly managed to make out Nancy's figure in the half-light of the corridor, wrapped in a salmon pink dressing gown, as she watched them, with an expression on her face that was difficult to interpret, in which an almost lustful satisfaction mixed with some kind of deep irritation.

Chapter Text

"Johnny, your mom…"

She gently pushed him away from her. He immediately straightened up at the mention of his mother. He glanced back over his shoulder, his lips pressed into a thin, irritated line. Maud's face was burning red, but even that couldn't make her move away from Johnny; her hand still rested at his side, fingers splayed, like a lizard warming itself on a hot stone.

"Ma, what are you…"

"Tush, tush!" A cheerful smile spread across Nancy's face,m. Adjusting her hair, she stepped out of the shadows, her padded slippers were softly crunching on the floorboards. "I just peeked in, not knowing what this whooshing was in the house. We can never be too careful."

She addressed her last sentence mainly to Maud, laden with suggestion. Humming to herself, she scrutinized the ingredients laid out on the counter: the sugar and flour, and the steaming butter and chocolate.

"Fucking hell." Johnny swore under his breath. He held Maud tightly and lifted her off the counter. He was hard as a brick in his pants, and Maud would have shuddered feeling him against her stomach if Nancy hadn't been staring at them from around twenty inches. She knew Johnny felt the same way, who made no attempt to hide his annoyance. He grimaced and rolled his eyes like a mopey teenager.

Maud wondered how he would react if he knew that Nancy had just lied without batting an eye.

She had no idea how long she’d been watching them, but it was clear she hadn’t just arrived when she finally noticed—and who knew how much longer she would have lingered. If Maud hadn't noticed, and they hadn't stopped, would she have watched Johnny claiming her on the kitchen counter? Would she spy on her own son during sex?

She didn't even notice how fixedly she was staring at the woman, caught up in disturbing thoughts. Nancy caressed her face, and her fingers were surprisingly soft. She smelled like something familiar from babies’ room. Perhaps wound salve or talc powder?

"Don't be embarrassed, dear. You two were so sweet. What is bein' made here?"

It wasn't exactly embarrassment that she felt, but she just kept quiet and smiled sheepishly, as if she really cared that Nancy saw them like that. She pulled the robe tighter around her chest, noting that one of her breasts in her cotton bra was peeking out.

"She got hungry, so we came over," Johnny said instead of her.

Nancy laughed and stroked her cheek again, but her eyes didn't reflect the warmth of the gesture. Just like when Maud noticed her by the grandfather clock, it was as if she both liked what she saw and wanted to end it immediately.

"And brownies? With walnuts? Johnny's favorite?" She stirred the melted, buttery chocolate with the spatula and smoothed it into the beaten eggs and sugar with practiced movements. "You are lovely, Maud dear. How thoughtful. Johnny is a very lucky boy. Just come here to me." Nancy gestured for her to come closer, lightly tapping the spatula against the rim of the bowl, sending the last remnants of brownie batter dripping back into the mix. "A boy always loves his mama’s cookies best. I’ll show ya how to make 'em just right."

"Do you mind me being here?"

It was a more pressing question than the brownie. Of course, Nancy would've had a chance to hurt her, but she hadn't lived here before. More importantly: Nancy hadn't seen her making out with Johnny.

It quickly became clear to her how accustomed she was to the presence of Sissy, Nubbins and Bubba, and that she found some sense of security in her relationship with them. Not that there was any guarantee they'd go against Nancy over her, even if Sissy openly hated Johnny's mother.

"Mind you bein' here? What a dumb question. I been beggin’ my angel to bring ya home to us, ‘cause you’re his. You belong right here."

She handed her the spatula, but before she did, her fingers tightened around the handle as if she wanted to slap her. She doesn't like strangers, and she especially doesn't like strangers in her kitchen - and around Johnny.

"Thank you, Nancy." She pulled the bowl in front of her without flinching.

She couldn't think anymore about the dangers that lay ahead. Not when Johnny's kiss was still burning on her lips, also the mark of his touch on her thigh, and his voice whispering in her ear that she was made for him.

She was lying in the comfortable bed with a belly full of walnut brownies, balancing between staying awake and falling asleep. She was gravely exhausted, but she wanted to stay awake so that when Johnny finally got back to the shack, they could pick up where they left off.

He wanted to talk to his mother, without her presence, which she could accept. It annoyed her, though, that it was taking so long. She wanted him, almost desperately. If Johnny had been able to read her mind, he would've been greatly amused by this. He would surely have remarked with that crooked, shit-eating smile on his face that she was "a shedload of surprise", and that their strangely successful emotional altercation had broken through her walls quite nicely.

"Mmmm."

A sweet, deep voice purred in her ear. He may have said something, but she was so deep in the foaming fog of dreams that she was unable to decipher the meaning behind the sounds.

Johnny lay down behind her, his chest against her back, caressing and grasping the softest parts of her body through her clothes, eliciting small, sleepy sighs of her. The dream foam in her head became even warmer and more fragrant, like a hot bath, and Maud instinctively drew closer to him.

"Ah, I've made you wait for too long. And now I'm paying for it…" Johnny chuckled.

He chained her tightly to himself with his strong arms before he fell asleep himself, lest she could be taken away, and that night the shadows stayed away.

About the shadows: although they left Maud alone that night, they returned, appearing in the corners of the rooms, in the doorways, or behind the leaves of the bushes trembling in the hot wind. Daisy curled up next to the generator. Grant, headless and armless, wearing his raggedy Lynyrd Skynyrd t-shirt, in the nooks and crannies of the garage driveway. Mr. Anderberg with a jagged wound around his neck and half an eye by the well.

Maud watched him through the window of the shack as she watered the potted flowers on the ledge. They were just tiny seedlings. They could have gotten there fresh, and she suspected it was Sissy's doing. It would've been in character for her to force-present flowers to Johnny, who wouldn't have put up with them for anyone else's sake. With one of Nancy's old watering pots, she sprinkled fresh water at the base of the green flowers, occasionally glancing at the dead man. He didn't speak. He never did, he just wept quietly.

She rinsed the watering pot and stepped out into the bright sunshine. She wore her burgundy red dungarees, with the white handkerchief in her hair and the bracelet on her wrist; relics of her old and new life at the same time. Shielding her eyes with her hand, she looked towards the driveway, where Johnny was helping his mother to unpack the shopping. It was a surprisingly normal and harmless scene, one that the average person would never imagine the life of their kind to be like. At that moment, none of them looked like monsters: neither Johnny, nor Nancy, nor her.

Only the shadows knew the truth, one of which Maud just spotted as she walked under the rose arbor. The girl was standing next to the huge aspen tree, her baggy jeans and violet blouse discoloured from spilled blood. Her wavy hair framed her gentle face like a soft curtain, and now her skin was not the pale white of the poster, but a soft amber color. Blood streaked her face, likely seeping from a deep gash hidden beneath her thick hair; it had to be the one that killed her too.

"Lo siento mucho." Her voice was like the chirping of a thrush, the unsuspecting kind that in good faith eats from the palm held out to it.

Maud stepped closer, a sticky weed leaf hanging from her trousers.

"Maria?"

"Yes. I'm here... You spoke to me. But I couldn't answer until now. You were too far away. Homegirl."

"I'm hallucinating."

Maria didn't say anything to that, she just lowered her eyes, sadly. She honed her palm on the trunk of the aspen tree, and her blood-stained lips opened to speak again.

"I'm so sorry, Maud. I'm afraid there's no hope left."

It was inconceivable that she could see her, even though the apparitions of the others hadn't stirred her much. She knew that she would be accompanied by them for a long time, just like by her memories, small and large scars. Maria, however, wasn't to be compared to them; that long-nameless, faceless girl, to whom she spoke through a dress and a pale blood stain, and whom she regarded as her unknown companion. Whom she related to.

"It was different for you," Maud answered. "You… were innocent. I'm sure of it. Bet you felt like you’d gone to hell. You had a family, folks you loved out there. I get it—you hated 'em for what they did, and you were just trying to survive."

"It's a shame," Maria hiccupped. "Shame on what I did. It's a shame that I lied to him, and that I also wanted him. I asked him to do it." She glanced toward the driveway, where Nancy was slamming the door of the yellow Chevrolet behind her. She started the engine and rumbled through the switched-off cattle grid to pull into the garage. "But that's wrong. He's bad, homegirl, they all are."

Maria was gone, becoming one with the wind, before Maud could say anything.

"Your mom is gonna kill us for this."

"Why would she? We do what we want. You belong to me now, darlin'. This also means you are family, so if you wanna go grab a drink, no one can be there standing in our way."

Johnny leaned against the bar with a grin. Maud perched on the round bar stool, its worn red leather cracked from years of use, her legs swinging idly as she propped her chin on her palm beside the damp ring left by her beer glass. Johnny sipped his straight from the bottle as he towered over her both protectively and possessively, making it clear to everyone that she was with him. It's not like anyone was busy with her when two strikingly pretty pairs of girlfriends twirled around in the smoky bar in boldly cut summer tops, Daisy dukes and cowboy boots.

"So…this is a place where you come to get girls," Maud commented.

The jukebox in the corner was wheezing out a slow country ballad, the kind that usually drove her to the wall, but now she was happy to listen to it. It went well with the smell of beer, cigarette smoke, sweaty bodies, all blending together with the faint stench of dirty plumbing wafting from the bathrooms, cleaned with little care. All this was sweetly relaxed by Johnny's cologne, who smiled into his beer before taking a swig. Rakishly, he pushed the bottle over the counter and waved the bartender for another.

"Every now and then."

"Wow. I'm already waitin' for the first bombshell who wants to gouge out my eyes because of you. Thank you very much."

'I'm with my girl now," he added, and Maud stifled a smile. She didn't mention that he was being blatantly possessive. With the two of them, this was by far not the biggest crux. "I got a soft spot for that natural charm of yours, but damn, you’re downright smokin’ like this."

Johnny ran his fingers, cool from the glass, under her eyes framed with eyeliner and above her ruby-red lips. She didn't look like herself, but that was the goal when she painted herself with the make-up supplies that came from Johnny's shelves. She was decked out in dead girls' lipstick and eyeshadow, and she knew that would only turn Johnny on more. It radiated from his hungry pupils, from his tongue flashing behind his lips, from the movement with which he almost forcibly pulled her up from her seat to kiss her. Maud had to hold on to the scratched counter to keep her balance.

"I needed this," she whispered as they parted. "I needed to know what it felt like to be… around people again."

They simultaneously turned to the others present. Some of the heavily intoxicated regulars were arguing with each other around the pool table, or complaining about their income and expenses in the boxes. A group of local boys were flirting with the frivolous girls; they were all simple with simple features and much-worn shirts tucked into their jeans. One of them gave them a stray look, but when he saw Johnny, he snapped his head as if something had bitten him.

A match ignited between Johnny's fingers and he lit a Chesterfield.

"Well, how’s it feel? Lookin’ at ‘em like that, knowin’ they’re so damn weak compared to you, the two of us?"

Maud took a big gulp of her drink, and as she wiped the foam from her mouth she smeared her lipstick a little again. Johnny stared at her like he was going to eat her on the spot.

"Different. It's good."

"That's it."

He rubbed the lipstick from the corner of her lips with his thumb, and Maud wanted to take it in her mouth again.

Later, as they were walking to the car in the dim lights of the parking lot, Johnny bragged to her that he had beaten up the lad several times, the one who barely dared to look at him inside. Maud didn't expect anything else. One didn't need to know about the murders or the family to see that Johnny was just walking trouble. His gaze, his gait, his gloves, his scars and his wolfish smile all made instincts scream warning, warning, warning, and yet he was fatally magnetic. The flickering neon sign outside cast flashes of red across his face, painting Johnny’s grin like something out of a crime scene photograph.

Maud closed the car door behind her and without hesitation threw her arms around Johnny's neck and straddled his hips. She ran her fingers through his hair, slicked back with pomade, her kiss fierce and now clear of any doubt. Johnny immediately kissed back, returning the gentle teasing of her tongue, but when Maud's hips shifted in his lap, his breath hitched in his throat.

This time it was her who ran her fingertips over his lips as she rose and sank back into his lap. She closed her eyes, feeling Johnny harden rapidly beneath her, which only made her lower body rub even tighter against his. Heat built between her thighs, but when she moved her hips again, Johnny's iron grips closed on her.

"Oh-huh, slow down, Blondie. Keep on with this only if…"

"I want to" Maud interrupted him. Johnny's eyes glowed with a light so hungry and uncontrollable that she almost felt dizzy from it. "Take me home and fuck me hard, Johnny."

When she'd wondered before whether Johnny wanted to devour her or sleep with her, she'd forgotten to consider the possibility that in his case the two would go together. He rushed home with her, not caring about anything, and then almost dragged her through the quiet house and through the garden, all the way to the shack. He was only willing to let her go until he turned on the light.

Growling, he buried his head into her neck and bit down, hard, leaving a mark. Maud jolted against him and pulled the black shirt from under his pants with hasty movements. Johnny tossed his shirt aside, not caring where it fell, only interested in unfastening the buckles of her red overalls impatiently. Maud ducked out of it as it clattered to the floor, and out of her sneakers as well.

She pulled her T-shirt over her head. Johnny immediately reached for her, but she took a step back.

Johnny frowned, but the curiosity was soon washed away by raw desire as Maud reached back with flushed cheeks and unhooked her bra. She wanted to take it off herself, to reveal her breasts to him. By then, Johnny had already stared at them so much that she was able to believe that they were really turning him on. They were small, a bit side set, and almost melted under Johnny's rough palm after he pulled her close with a raspy "fuck, yes." He was grabbing and kissing her breasts at the same time, and took her pink nipples, that already hardened into nubs in his mouth, with such fervor that Maud's feet almost left the ground.

"You're so hot," she muttered, running both hands through his hair. Tiptoeing, she planted kisses on him wherever she could, on his face, his neck, his shoulders.

"Yeah? You've always thought that, haven't you, bad girl?"

Maud didn't answer, for which she was rewarded with another bite, this time on her breast. Johnny's hands slid over her bottom, cupping her soft buns with both hands. "Finally, dammit… every time I passed by you, I wanted to grab this big ass…"

Maud despised the proportions of her body all her life; she generally felt like a screwed-up pear, with a narrow top and hulking, fleshy thighs and buttocks. Johnny, on the other hand, clearly didn't see her as a spoiled pear.

Pressing her fist against his hairy chest, she pushed him away from her a little. She sprinkled long kisses on his chest, stomach, and the line of his happy trail leading to his pants. Her knees tapped on the thin rug thrown in front of the bed, and she looked up at him, reaching for his belt buckle.

Johnny shooed her hand away, to unbuckle his belt and unzip his fly himself. Maud was a little scared, but only as much as anyone who hadn't been touched in a long time, had only one forgettable partner in her life, and who was having sex with such a beast of a man as Johnny Sawyer—who, to put it mildly, was not Grant's weight class.

Johnny chuckled in satisfaction at Maud's wide eyes. She touched one of the bite marks on her own chest before reaching for his cock, looming over her face hard. And for God's sake, what a cock it was! She didn't think she could find a cock beautiful, but damn, Johnny's was; thick, throbbing with demanding desire.

She slowly wrapped her fingers around it and gave the tip some probing kitten licks. Her lipstick smeared his skin as she kissed his entire length, and took him into her mouth before he could even ask it. Or rather command. Johnny's quest for dominance was evident now, but she didn't mind it one bit. Her heart pounded as Johnny gripped her hair behind her handkerchief, grunting in a chilling deep voice, and she tried to swallow more and more of it.

"That's it," Johnny hissed again. "What a sight, the way you look now, with your mouth full of my cock..."

Maud would have moaned if she could, her free hand gripping his thigh. She moved her head slowly, eliciting contented sighs. In a moment, Johnny's strong fingers tightened in her hair, pulling her head even more onto his cock. She never let Grant do this, but now she wanted it. She enjoyed the way Johnny moved in and out of her mouth, powerfully, but not roughly. Tears washed away her eyeshadow, and everything down there was soaking wet too, so much so that she was already embarrassed about the moment Johnny would pull down her panties.

Johnny's pace became faster and more frantic. His head fell back and he grunted.

"No, I'm not gonna cum in your mouth now." He pushed her head away and got her to her feet. "I've wanted this for too long. On the bed, darlin'."

He didn't have to say it twice. Maud threw off her socks, and biting her lip, she lay down on the striped blanket. Johnny crawled up to her like a predator—which he was—and kissed her. He grinned at how badly his assault on her mouth had ruined her makeup.

"You're awful, you know that?"

"I do" he purred, grabbing her black, high-waisted panties. Rashly, he pulled it off her and pushed her legs apart at the knees. The sudden, complete exposure covered Maud's face in a deep red blush. "Oh, how many times I've imagined what it might be like..."

"My..." Maud gasped for words. "My pussy?"

"Yeah."

He didn't hesitate for a second with the answer. Those calloused fingers were now groping for her clit, while Johnny watched her face and the sounds he was coaxing out of her with an almost completely blackened gaze. He penetrated her with one, then two fingers, and Maud's hips jerked.

"God..."

"You're so tight… my fingers barely fit. But it's nice, isn't it?"

"Ye-ah," Maud trembled, slowly relaxing around his fingers. He finger-fucked her faster and faster, his thumb tracing arousing circles on her clit. The obscene, wet sounds that accompanied his movements only added to Maud's excitement. "Joh-Johnny!"

Her legs were shaking and her back arched, moaning at the weight of the pleasure. Johnny showed her no mercy, thrusting hard with his fingers until she came with a long, thin "aaa". Every part of her was quivering and she could almost see stars from the amazing sensations coursing through her body. The stars exploded into universes and galaxies when Johnny, without waiting a minute, rubbed his rock-hard cock against her folds.

"I want you just the way you are. I don't want to put on a rubber," he said with firm clarity.

She hesitated for just a moment. She had practically no idea what it was like without a condom. With Grant, they always used it, but after everything she had been through, Maud couldn't think about that anymore.

"Okay."

Johnny nodded, and that was it. After that, she could feel him straining against her, and his thick length filled her. It both hurt a little and was the most incredible pleasure she'd ever felt. Instinctively, she wanted to clasp her legs around his hips, but he firmly gripped her thighs, opening her up fully before himself.

"Yeah!" he grunted, and letting go of any further caution, he began to thrust inside her. He closed one hand around her throat and squeezed it a little. Maud buried her head in the pillow with desperate pleasure and wrapped her arms around Johnny's waist. "That's it, baby, take it. Take me! Take my cock!"

He picked up the pace with every word, and the initial discomfort was slowly absorbed, leaving only the maddening pleasure and sweet fullness, and the slight lack of air as Johnny, clutching her throat, fucked her exactly as she had asked: hard.

"Shit, baby!" she exclaimed. "Yes!"

This only made Johnny even wilder. Now he was squeezing her neck with both hands, his hips were crashing against hers more and more erratically, and his growls thinned out into hasty sighs. Maud knew what that meant, and the thought made her body burn and her muscles clench around the cock pulsating inside her.

"Shit… I'm gonna cum…"

"Inside me," Maud moaned, touching the fingers gripping her throat. "I want to feel you inside me."

Johnny was not the type to ask extra questions. He stared at her for a long second, then like a demented beast, he buried himself even harder inside her again and again. His whole body tensed like a bowstring and he grunted loudly as his warm cum poured into her in thick ropes.

Maud huffed under his weight when he collapsed on top of her, his grip loosening around her throat. It didn't matter, she was barely able to breathe anyway. She let out a shuddering sigh as Johnny pulled out, and she felt herself leaking. Johnny took a flat, satisfied look between the two of them, and ran his fingers down, between her legs to stroke his seed back into her.

"I hope you see what you've gotten yourself into. I will fuck you every day from now on. Maybe several times a day if I feel like it."

Johnny kissed her one more time, then stood up in his proud nudity to open a beer. Maud wiped her face and her nether regions with a tissue, and when Johnny handed her the bottle, she took a grateful sip of the cool drink. Her mouth was completely dry from all the screaming.

"Oh no!" she peered up at him from under her eyelashes.

Johnny laughed again the way she liked to see him; from the heart, which made his boyish features more pronounced and his eyes flashing along with his teeth.

Chapter Text

In one way, Johnny was like Grant, and probably almost every other man in the world: he fell asleep after sex at record speed. Maud, wrapped in her robe, looked at him for a long time, caressing his hair, jawline and the scar that ran along his left eye.

In the morning, Johnny, still in a deep, contented sleep, snored softly into the pillow while Maud rummaged through the refrigerator. She made them a hearty breakfast of eggs and homemade sausages, most of which they kept downstairs in the cold room. They had a strong smell, with aromatic spices that showed off Drayton's skills, and Maud inevitably started to wonder whom she was serving up.

She covered the steaming fried eggs and sausage with a clean plate. She changed clothes, and as she combed her hair, her eyes fell on her own missing person flyers. She could see herself looking back at her from above the dirty couch and by the fuse box. The dull traces of duct tape around it revealed that someone else had been in her place before. Although it was still creepy to see herself like this, it felt strangely nice to think that Johnny had kept her around before actually moving her here.

Part of her knew this wasn't right, that this was wrong, as Maria had said. What's more, it was sick, and if anyone from outside saw this—even her mother, or the now-widowed Mrs. Anderberg—they would be horrified. If this ever came to light, policemen and detectives would lock down their home, fence off the shack, and label all the relics of Johnny's fondness as evidence. Whether it was her water bottle, her wallet, or one of her white panties she'd found on the shelves.

She looked at the red lipstick and eyeliner that she had hastily shoved back onto the shelf the night before. They once belonged to other girls, women who had adorned themselves in the rearview of their cars and in front of their mirrors framed with Polaroids, unaware of their futures. One of the cosmetics might have belonged to Kendra Liston, the Sweetwater victim she's just heard about. She suspected similar things in the many cardboard boxes lining the shelves, and she was sure that Johnny had kept mementos of Maria too, even though she was dead and gone.

Yet all she could feel as she listened to his breathing was a tingling warmth. Every part of her body was blossoming; her senses were sharp, her breasts and the bay of her thighs pleasantly sensitive. She hadn't known this feeling in years, and there was something else about it, a kind of twisted triumph. Not so long ago, she thought Johnny only wanted her as part of an infernal power struggle. However, for the first time in her life, she felt like she was standing with someone as an equal.

She resisted the temptation to snoop around the boxes and went for a walk around the property. She checked out the parts she hadn't been to yet, and petted an old hen scratching behind the shed. Sitting on a woodpile she admired the flock of birds crossing the sky, heralding the first days of autumn. As she was walking along the fence, something got tangled in her jeans. It was a barbed wire spike that someone had strung up to replace some fallen fence posts, low, as if it were meant to cause injury.

Keep your eyes open, Mommy Maud, while you still have both.

The sliding door to the back of Nancy's property was unlocked, and Maud cautiously opened it, curious to see what might be there. She found overgrown vegetation, piles of tires, a chest full of broken tools and a familiar yellow cable leading to a car battery, similar to the one she couldn’t turn off the night Daisy died.

"Maud," Maria's familiar, thrush-like voice called out. "You have to try. Please. You have to get out of here."

She flinched and spun around, searching for the girl. Maria was sitting in the grass behind one of the gutted vans, with her bloodied face and her dark brown, heartsore eyes. She had pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.

"I can't."

Maud slowly walked over to her and sat down opposite her. She'd never wanted to touch the shadows before, preferring to keep her distance from them, but now she felt an urge to take Maria's hand, to see if it was as soft and warm as it seemed.

"When I used to be here, they locked up every door tight. Now they trust you. Johnny sure does… and he's out cold. Do you think Nancy could stop you all by herself?"

"That's not the only problem," she replied, tearing off a dry blade of grass. She twisted it around her fingers, musing. "I killed two people, Maria. And I don't feel anything. Nothing. I tried so hard to cry, to hate myself for it, but I've never been happier in my fucking life than I am right now."

"Johnny hurts girls, Maud."

"Did he hurt you too?"

Maria stroked the dried blood streak on her cheek.

"Yes. Maybe not like all those poor girls whose stuff he collects in the shack, but he kidnapped me. He brought me to the ranch, kept me in the basement, and then moved me here. I got tired of my own begging after a while."

Maud twirled the blade of grass between her fingers, not knowing what to say. Johnny had chosen Maria. She wasn't just thrown into his way by life, as she had been. He wanted Maria, not to torment her, and not out of mere lust. She was the first slip-up, the first deviation from the norm—perhaps Johnny's first attempt to love.

But Maria didn't want to be a lab bunny.

"He doesn't talk about you," she said finally. "Hardly anyone in the family does. You're some kinda taboo, I think. That dragonfly dress… was it yours?"

Maria nodded and sighed, both sadly and with a kind of crestfallen nostalgia.

"He bought it for me. He was always bringing me presents, but he was never kind when he gave them to me. And he got furious when I refused, so after a while, I learned to be grateful for them. The dress was bloody when you got it, wasn't it? Couldn't wash it out of it." Maud said yes, and Maria continued before she could ask the obvious. "No, it's not my blood. It's the blood of a poor woman who turned up at the ranch one day. I think she was looking for her son. She found me in the basement, and we tried to get out together… but it didn't end well. They cut her throat by the stairs, and dragged me back to my place."

Maud thought back to her own pursuit, as she and Daisy were hiding in the shadows, holding their breath. Stumbling through the sunflower field in Maria's blood-soaked dress, Johnny on her tail. The moment she had been certain Bubba would saw her face in half.

"Did Johnny do it?"

"No, not him. Nubbins."

Maud had never seen Johnny's cousins killing with her own eyes, but she knew they were no less feral. She thanked God for spotting Nubbins' trap at the car battery in time, saving herself from having her ankles shattered and a hand-size part of her flesh torn out.

Shortly after Maria had said Nubbins' name, Maud heard his voice.

"Hey, rat girl!"

She turned towards the gate, and when she looked back, Maria was gone. Only the electricity and the flies buzzed around her in strange harmony. One of the latter perched on her fingertip, and rubbed its front legs together.

She stood up and strode across the dense grass to the back gate, where Nubbins and Sissy were waiting with big smiles on their faces. Sissy was wearing a sleeveless, ivy-print dress, with a pair of thin-soled sandals, her dirty-blond hair in two loose braids that brushed her shoulders. Nubbins was impatiently pacing behind the cattle grid, swinging a tattered brown sack in his hand.

"We brung ya some headcheese! Now, I’ll tell ya how to cut off that battery. Don’t you worry none, we’ll handle the rest—we got keys to every door."

Maud smiled back at them, despite everything she had just heard from Maria. Sissy asked who they had heard her talking to, but she only shook her head, making a cynical remark about her own sanity. Since neither Nubbins nor Sissy were far from talking to themselves, they didn't pursue the question further. The thin man was more interested in the headcheese ("every bit of skin, every bit of bone and sinew goes into the pot, nothing, nothing is wasted!"), and Sissy in examining the bite marks on Maud's neck and cleavage with a mischievous fae-smile.

"How’s Grandpa?"

"He’s strugglin’ with all this dang humidity. The rain and heat ain’t doin’ him no good. Maybe we oughta move him out a bit."

"Did Drayton give ya a lift?"

"We were hitchhiking," Sissy said, stepping closer and placing her hands on Maud's shoulders. She poked one of the purple spots on her skin, playfully. "I see you two ain't been sittin' ‘round bored."

Sissy's grin proved to be contagious. Maud hid hers behind her fist and nodded. It was crazy to compare Sissy to Daisy, but she felt like a teenager again, being hyped up by her friend. At least she knew that Sissy wouldn't mess around with her current man.

"Okay, then I don't have to kick his ass. He can be a total nitwit when he thinks with his dick." She stared behind Maud, hands on her hips. "Speak of the devil... Why is your girlfriend hangin' around all alone?"

Booted footsteps made their way through the grass, and Maud felt a strong arm close around her waist. Her back pressed against Johnny's bare, warm chest, his skin smelling of sweat and the clean scent of bed linen. Their night together.

"Because she can't sit still on her round ass," he grinned, and slapped Maud's butt. It was a crude gesture, especially in front of family members, yet Maud couldn't help but blush and smile. She felt wanted, accepted, something Johnny was proud of.

"Still got my traps out? Better go check ‘em. Ain’t tryin’ to sit ‘round here all day. And that headcheese needs to get in the fridge!"

Nubbins made no comment on the news about the two of them. He either didn't understand it or wasn't interested in such things until he felt his own fun was in danger. He rubbed the red birthmark on his cheek, and, with his bag in hand, rushed towards the open sliding door. He was as nimble as if his body couldn't contain its endless energy, and moving in as many directions as its limbs.

Maud's eyes met Johnny's, and she felt that they were thinking the same thing. She could have tried to escape, again. All she had to do was pick a lock and turn off the battery. Sure, she would probably have run right into Nubbins and Sissy, but that didn't matter, because she didn't even go near the gate.

Perhaps it was an insult to the memory of the woman whose blood had soaked into the dragonfly dress, and an even greater insult to Maria Flores. But to feel that unusual softness in Johnny's ever-firm and ever-demanding touch was something she wouldn't have traded for anything.

"Did you eat? Though the food is probably frozen by now..."

"Hah. I see why you got that stupid nickname," Johnny chuckled, and kissed the top of her head.

Maria stood by the locked gate, shaking her head sadly, like a sunflower.

The cold room under the shack was icy cold, so much so that Maud could see her breath down there. Johnny gave her one of his denim jackets from his teenage years before they went downstairs, while he wore a long-sleeved, black turtleneck sweater. She couldn't take her eyes off him as he climbed down the ladder after her. He was impossibly beautiful, and exactly the type of guy even a cautious college girl would want to talk to, anywhere, anytime. He could turn from a farm guy working in the shade of straw bales to a charming frat boy effortlessly, and it was terrifyingly impressive.

The cold room had two entrances and exits. One was next to the shack, and the other led through a familiar blue sliding door into the labyrinth of the basement. There were several freezers and a nailed down metal table in the room. Knives of different sizes, pliers and a meat cleaver were hanging from the white-tiled walls. A thick layer of dirt and some tiny bone scraps crunched under her shoes as she walked around the place, knowing exactly what it feels like to be trapped in a place like that as a victim. That was her start.

Johnny opened one of the freezers and lifted a human body out. His mustard-yellow gloves were almost gleaming against the bluish-white, frozen skin as he handcuffed its one remaining arm to the wall, suspending the corpse of a middle-aged woman. Her short, straw-blond hair covered her face as her head fell forward unsteadily, her chest scarred by five or six now-shrunken wounds beneath her tangerine-patterned blouse, but her death had been caused by a cut to her jugular vein. Her high-waisted black pants looked empty from the thighs down.

Johnny decided it was time for her to learn how to use a meat cleaver effectively. Maud had been tired of working in the store, yet the metallic smell of the cold storage, its colors, and above all, the weight of the cleaver in her hand had always been strangely comforting. Maud didn't resent this one thing from her past life, maybe because the cleaver and the spread-out pig carcasses allowed her to make some damage, to show her wrath.

"I know you can deal with pigs and chickens. Humans are different. Then run, they fight. Your problem is that you still use the cleaver as a tool, not a weapon. When you hunt, it's part of your body, just like your legs, or your head, that decided what's gonna happen to them."

Johnny's gloved fingers curled around the back of her hand as he passed her the handle. He showed her how to swing it from her shoulder instead from her elbow, as it was the custom with pigs, but as Johnny said - they were already dead when she chopped them up.

"Imagine what you can do with this after you've already made a big show with a piece of bone and a broken bottle," he purred in her ear, the heat from his voice and body warming her even through their clothes. "Try it, Blondie."

The light from the bare light bulb hanging over them pooled around her feet like a spotlight on a stage. Maud plunged the blade into the tangerines. The frozen flesh split open and the ribs cracked sickeningly. It was only on the second try that she managed to tear the blade out. She almost asked if this was the woman who had come upon Maria, but Johnny didn't know about the shadows.

"When did this all start?" she asked instead. "I mean, when did your family start living like this?"

"Dunno. Grandpa started it. I guess during the crisis. He was serious about takin' care of the family, just like we are."

Like everyone else, Maud had heard and learned a lot about the crisis. The chaos and hunger that prevailed at the time. Some of the small towns in Texas were consumed by unemployment and decline; there was no money, no factories, and no meat to put on the table.

"Were Bubba and the others all raised by Drayton? He seems more like their father than their uncle."

Johnny leaned back against the table with his arms crossed. He didn't seem bothered by her questions, nor did he want to silence her. He seemed even a little pleased by them.

"To his chagrin, yes. But when we were little, Grandpa was still able. We hung out with him a lot at the slaughterhouse. Nubbins has been telling you a lot about how Grandpa always had a favorite, and how he showed him how to make those weird-ass traps… And of course…" He pulled the skinning knife from his belt and ran his thumb almost sensually along the steel. "He gave me this when I was twelve. He said it was the only thing that fits a hunter."

Maud looked up from the blade to his face. His face, which she had first seen in a red light and thought belonged to a freak, while Johnny'd admittedly believed her an idiot at first glance. Perhaps one was true, perhaps both.

"It suits you." She pressed a cold kiss on his scar, then turned back to the body hanging from the chain. This time she swung the blade not from the side, but from the front. "Um, the sternum. It's hard cuttin’ through it right off the bat."

Johnny stepped behind her, remarking that she knew an unusual amount about anatomy. Maud explained that she had always wanted to be a doctor and had borrowed all the books on the subject from the local library when she was nine or ten. Meanwhile, the cuts kept multiplying and multiplying on the blonde woman's upper body.

"I'd kinda forgotten about this one. Who woulda thought she'd be so useful one day?" Johnny laughed, but his laughter turned to a deep growl as he inhaled the scent of her hair and wrapped his arms around her. "I could watch you do this forever. I'd bring you as many bodies as you want and watch you do your thing. Although there's nothing more arousing than when you really let loose."

The scent of shampoo and cologne enveloped him, his soft lips brushed Maud's earlobe. Maud remembered how she used to act like a startled possum when Johnny had touched her in a similar way before. Now she sighed with weak knees when those lips moved to her neck, spreading slow, deliberate kisses on it.

"You've turned me on again." More kisses and bites reached her neck and gloved hands pulled her hips back so she could feel the hard bulge in Johnny's pants. "Wanna taste how much?"

Instead of answering, Maud rubbed her bottom against his hardness, which drew another low growl from him. She spun around, and was not surprised when Johnny immediately slammed his lips against hers, gnawing and biting like a beast. She backed him against the table, which made a loud thud as Johnny's thigh hit it. Johnny unbuckled his belt, but this time it was her who undone the button and zipper of his jeans.

She took a sharp breath as Johnny's cock sprung out from his briefs' confinement. She had to give herself a little credit. Was that really what she was fucked with the other day? It was a wonder she stayed in one piece.

"What's on your mind?" She didn't need to look up, she knew that a big grin was plastered on his face. She would have rather plunged the cleaver in her own leg than tell what she was thinking. "Mmm, we'll get back to that later. Now warm me up quickly with your pretty little mouth."

She knelt down in front of him and brushed her increasingly long bangs out of her eyes. She warmed her palms with her breath before clasping both hands around him. Whatever hardness the sudden cold had taken from Johnny's cock returned within seconds under her caressing fingers, and she obediently closed her hot lips around the tip.

"Fuck…" Johnny's gloved hand latched on the edge of the table.

Maud gave him little sucks, closing her eyes. She had never thought she could like it so much, but the sounds coming from Johnny almost drove her wild - and it was all because of her. She took one hand off him, and let his cock slide deeper into her mouth.

"You love to suck me off, don't you, darlin'?" With his hand that wasn't gripping the table in pleasure he tugged at her hair. "Deeper."

Maud tried, but it wasn't easy. Her eyes were filled with tears, however, she was still enjoying every moment of it. And it was obvious how much Johnny loved the sight and sounds of her struggle.

"I could fill your mouth with cum right now. But I'm not gonna let you go so easily..."

Maud let him out of her mouth for a moment to kiss him. Then she hissed at him, as she'd done in the rain, which only made Johnny push her back to the ground, snickering. She took him again on her throat deep, and the cold room was filled with wet, slurping, lecherous sounds.

"Come on, choke on it!" he grumbled.

His fingers tightened in her hair, and while he didn't force her head down, he didn't let go either. He held her in place rock-solid while she gagged, her nose running. Maud was so turned on by it all that she was certain there was something wrong with her. There was little point in wondering about that, tough, when she was sucking Johnny off near a mangled corpse.

When Johnny finally let go, she looked up at him, gasping for air, and wiped the saliva from the corner of her mouth.

"Jesus..."

"There's no Jesus here," Johnny chuckled, yanking her head back into his lap.

Maud obeyed and sucked on his cock eagerly, shivering at the sound of Johnny's deep, growing moans. He was so close, and he didn't want to hold back any longer.

"Fuuuuck!" he roared as he nearly exploded in her mouth. His pleasure was hot and salty, and Maud swallowed, unable to hold it all in.

Johnny sighed as he refastened his belt. His cheeks got a pink flush, his dark eyes a lustful haze. His gloved thumb wiped the cum from Maud's chin with the same gentle motion with which he caressed his blade, and pressed a kiss to one of the bite marks on her neck.

They decided to join Nancy and Sissy, who was still staying with them, for dinner. They met Sissy at the shed, where she was painting small, colorful flowers on the wall above a craft table. There was also a mortar and pestle and some cleaned garden tools, showing how flexible the concept of home was for the Sawyers.

Johnny was the first to notice the bloodstains in the garage. Sissy moved her nose back and forth as if she could smell it from afar. The traces led from above into the basement. Sissy went down, while the two of them rushed up.

"Ma!" Johnny shouted, pulling out his knife.

The blood formed footprints: a woman's and a man's larger ones. A bloody rolling pin had been thrown onto the kitchen table, with two full teacups beside it. One of the chairs had been overturned, its legs sticking up like a dead bug.

"Yes, my angel?"

Nancy came out from the bathroom, wiping her hands on her black apron. The toes of her shoes were bloody, but Maud saw no sign of injury. Johnny glanced quickly around the corridor, ready to strike at any moment, but Nancy just patted him on the shoulder.

"What happened here?"

"We have a guest, but I've already shown him down to the basement," she answered. She stepped back into the bathroom and ran searing hot water in a basin. "He'll be quiet for a while. I've tied him up in the south cell." She dipped a frayed old towel into the steaming water and tossed it to Maud. "Come on, Maud, help me clean up this mess that Latina's boyfriend made. Think his name’s Danny."

Chapter Text

The guy’d carelessly parked his dented gray Kingswood on the grass outside Nancy’s gate, clearly intending to leave shortly after waving around Maria’s poster and asking a few questions. Johnny drove the the coughing rattletrap to the farmhouse, to use its parts to fix the family's oldest van.

Danny.

He knew his name very well. He'd wanted to know everything about Maria, good and bad, and especially if there had been anyone in her life before him. At first, all Maria could say was "Danny, Danny, Danny," and that she hoped he wouldn't come looking for her, so he wouldn't face Johnny's and his family's depravity. The most annoying thing was when Maria started mentioning her boyfriend and having a guilty conscience when only half a thought separated her from enjoying his touches. To rest her head on his shoulder, or to kiss him. To take off her panties.

In the end, she did it anyway, because Danny Who-Cares-What didn't show up. But the main reason she gave in to her feelings was - as Johnny saw it -, that she realized who she belonged to. She understood who truly loved her.

The one who wanted to know everything about her and would kill for her, or the one who hadn't shown up looking for her for weeks?

The answer was as clear as day.

There was no need for Danny Who-Cares-Who to come here and stir up his life, which was quite pleasant for a change. No orders were barked at him from his mother or Drayton, he was no longer alone in his grungy shack at the end of the garden, and he no longer had to restrain himself in any way around Maud.

"Don't let me go now!"

Thanks to Danny, Maud had to scrub blood off the floor instead of stuffing Nancy's spaghetti into her mouth while him fondling her thighs under the table. She didn't say a word, but her eyes said it all.

She’d known about Maria since the newspaper article. She’d also gathered that Maria was gone, for Maud was no fool. Johnny couldn't estimate how much his family had already told her, but they had certainly scattered crumbs. Nevertheless, she was not afraid, and hadn't yet tried to hold him accountable. Johnny thought it was because Maud knew how complicated things could be with exes. Especially for their kind.

Even unseen, he hated that fucking Danny more than he hated Maud's wimpy ex. That kid was already dead, and Blondie had killed him with fifteen goddamn stabs. With those stabs, she had sealed her past and the kid's useless life, who had been stupid enough to cheat on her.

Danny was still very much alive, and Maria, may she rest in peace, had a hard time forgetting him. If at all.

He went down to the basement in the early hours of the morning, heading straight for the south cell. He was careful not to wake Maud, who was slumbering beside him, one small hand resting on his belly. She was far too precious a sight to be disturbed by anyone, and above all, he couldn’t bear the thought of Danny coming within a hundred yards of her.

He pulled on his gloves and strode down the hallway. The walls were dripping with water, the air was cold in the early autumn dawn, and the basement was particularly unkind. Tiny rat feet scuttled through the shadows, and Johnny could see their tracks in the dust and soggy dirt, as well as the prints of his mother's flat shoes and Sissy's bare feet.

He pushed open the rickety door of the cell, and the man immediately looked up. Johnny had seen him before, in one of the Polaroids Maria carried in her bag. But in the photo, his face was almost glowing, as he looked at the camera, hands in his pockets, almost shyly, next to a cheerfully crackling campfire. Now there was no smile, no campfire, no Maria, just the two of them in the ominous silence, and the concrete stake to which Danny was tied.

Danny's long hair was disheveled, and one side of his face was covered in blood; even from a distance, he could see where Nancy had hit him the hardest. His rounded features and clear blue eyes were darkened by bushy black eyebrows and thick stubble that covered his face. He wore steel-blue woven pants, a beige shirt with rolled-up sleeves, and a necklace made of orange pearls. He might have looked like a tough guy, but in Johnny's eyes, he had already proven himself to be soft.

"Oh, thank God," Danny groaned, his back tensing against the stake as he tugged at his bonds, to no avail. "Please help me! That woman just… bashed my head with some..."

"Maybe she did it for a reason," Johnny interjected nonchalantly, not moving from the door.

"No, mate, I swear. I didn't do anything, I just wanted to ask if she saw my girlfriend who disappeared nearby-"

His voice trailed off as his tortured mind pieced together the picture. Johnny loved watching the despair contort his features, understanding that he wouldn't get help. That the man grinning in the doorway was simply toying with him.

"Your girlfriend, huh?"

He stepped closer, casting a shadow across Danny's face. He didn't answer right away, just stared at him, still in shock from the realization.

"Please," he said, wetting his dry mouth. "Do you know anything about her?"

"Mmmm. This will be good, Danny. Beg."

Anger flared in the man's eyes, but he managed to suppress it for now so as not to hurt his chances. Johnny began circling him like Danny was a bull taken to market, examining him carefully from every angle.

Did Maria want this? Is this the man she could love?

"You did it. You did something to her."

"To be honest, I've done quite a bit to her, mate."

"Asshole!" Danny shouted, yanking with all his might at the ropes around his wrists, his shoes squeaking on the rough concrete. "Where is she? Where is Maria?"

Johnny just chuckled, circling the pole again before stopping over Danny. He pulled his cigarette box from his back pocket and leisurely lit one, the faint light flickering for just as long as Danny's momentary hope.

Did Maria really think this loser was better than him?

"Listen, it's better to know: she's over you. It'll be a lot easier for you if you accept that."

"What-"

"And I 'm over her," he continued, blowing the smoke out through his nose, slowly, with an enraging disinterest. He wasn't lying, he didn't think so. He would never forget Maria, that was certain, but she was no longer unique, she was no longer irreplaceable. "Did the cat take your tongue?"

"No, no, no. This can't be. What did you do to her, what did that..."

"If you're going to talk about my mother, you'd better choose your words."

"Please..."

"That's better." He put the cig back into his mouth and stroked the other man's bowed head as if he were a tied-up dog. He smelled of sweat and blood, and the faint scent of orange juice he'd probably spilled on his shirt in the car. Johnny found the crushed box on the ground. "Maria lived with me and my family. Spotted her in town, I did. She was all sweet-like, smilin’, totin’ that camera around in her hand. She had a good eye for it. She could make moments last forever."

The sheer pain that spread across Danny's face gave him goosebumps, forcing the man to admit to himself that Johnny was indeed talking about his Maria and that this was all real.

With a crooked smirk on his lips, he took the blazing cigarette between his two fingers and offered it to Danny.

"Want a puff?"

The man accepted. He inhaled and exhaled the smoke with practice, which meant he was just as much of a smoker as he was. Need made him do it, and maybe he was trying to hold on to that one puff to keep from crying.

"Please tell me she's still alive," he pleaded, watching Johnny stub out the cigarette on the wall.

He turned his back on him so she wouldn't see his face, especially how grim it was. Not out of pity - out of pride.

He walked out the door, leaving him in the smoke.

"And where have you been now?"

Nancy was folding laundry in her room when he entered the house, carrying a brown paper bag. Nancy couldn't see him come in, but she knew from his footsteps that it was him, not Maud or Sissy, who was in the front yard weeding the flowerbeds, whistling.

Nancy walked out of her room, wiping her glasses, and when she put them back on her nose, she just watched him for a few seconds, ogling him up and down. This scene would haunt Johnny all his life; his mother would be waiting for him at the front door every time he came home from school with a bad grade, when he killed the first gal, or when a night at the pub ended in broken pool cues and broken noses.

Nancy always knew what was going on, as if she had a sixth sense that was focused on him. She said it was her maternal instinct, which helped her protect him from all harm. Johnny felt more like she was getting under his skin.

Sometimes he imagined flaying Nancy's skin so that the roles would be reversed.

"I brought some stuff for Blondie."

"Like…?" Johnny didn't bother answering, instead he handed the paper bag to his mother. Nancy opened it and frowned at the clothes and pads inside.

"She's having her visit from Auntie Flo. Yeah."

"And you bought these for her yourself?"

"Only a miserable pussy wouldn't buy shit like that for his chick."

"Great," Nancy nodded, then laughed as she gave the bag back. "Oh, you lying bastard." She returned to her room, next to the white basket full of clean clothes, and slid a hanger under a ruffled blouse.

Johnny dropped the bag on the ground.

"What do you mean?"

He knew Nancy's barbed wire traps well. Now she was just waiting for him to ask the obvious, for her to express her opinion. She always had an opinion about everything, especially when it concerned him, and he was unlucky enough to care about it on a visceral level. If he could, he would have cut out these treacherous pieces of himself with his own hands.

"Remember when you told me that this girl was just a toy for you? Ah, I remember your face, insisting that she was nothing and that you would get rid of her if you wanted to. The best part is that you didn't say that about the Latina. And I was right about both of them."

"Because if I had told you otherwise, you'd have been even more likely to fuck me up again," Johnny snorted, his arms crossed over his chest. Nancy's head snapped in his direction, along with her index finger. Johnny stared at her unflinchingly, but the air in his lungs became heavy. "In fact, maybe you still want to fuck me up."

"You best be thankin' me proper! The mess from your foolhardiness is sittin' right down in the basement as we speak. Drayton would smack you on the head if he knew about this, and if I let him! Don't test my patience, my son!"

Don't test my patience. It was something he had said often, before those barroom brawls and while he had his gloved hands around the neck of a lost traveler. Maud had heard it too a few times, once with a knife to her throat.

"Then swear you never gonna lay a hand on her."

Nancy lowered her finger, and hung her blouse in the closet. She stroked his cheek, and he looked away, but let his mother hug him.

"I would never hurt the woman who belongs to you and loves you. I would never hurt family."

Johnny scowled and suddenly pushed Nancy away. He rubbed the scar on his cheek tellingly, draining all the softness from his mother's features.

"Oh, no. We never."

Behind the low hills, in a sea of sunflowers, was a particularly beautiful place. They had been four or five when they discovered it with Nubbins and Sissy, and they would run there whenever they were really fed up with adults, work, or even each other. As a teenager, Johnny spent hours and nights sitting in the grass, downing beer after beer, having endless, imaginary arguments with the world, the stars, and himself. For a long time, it was the only place he allowed himself to cry.

Here he'd sobbed through the night, clutching a rag to his bleeding face.

But he could no longer be alone here. Whenever he sat down at the base of the hill, it was also a visit to Maria, who lay six feet below him. He had surrounded the grave he had dug himself with stones of various sizes and colors, some of which were just a rough piece of concrete that he had turned out of the ground while digging, but they were better than nothing. In the meantime, colorful, fragile little wildflowers had grown among the stones, encompassing them tenderly.

"Well, what you've been waiting for has happened." He opened his beer with his knife. The cap fell among the stones, but he didn't reach for it. "Your Danny has arrived. He's still alive. You know… if you've been lying all this time, you've done it pretty damn well."

Only the rustle of sunflowers falling asleep in the twilight answered. Somewhere in the distance, a car passed. Familiar sounds, familiar nothing. Suddenly, a warm palm touched his jaw, and the wind blew blonde lily-in-the-valley-scented locks into his field of vision.

"Got'cha. Give up, you ain't got a snowball's chance in hell."

"Do you think it's smart to sneak up behind me when I have a knife in my hand? Or anytime?"

"Well, you thought I was a dumbhead when we met..."

Maud settled down next to him on the grass. Underneath her open robe, she wore the baby blue halter nightgown that he had bought her, not without ulterior motives, and damn, she looked irresistible in it. There was that rat bracelet jingling on her wrist, and Johnny was sure he would never understand how she and Nubbins had gotten along so well.

She looked at the stones and the wildflowers, silently, her hair gently ruffled by the wind.

"Maria is here, right?" she asked with her characteristic, almost apathetic calm.

"Yeah." Johnny pulled on the beer bottle, one knee raised. "How did you know?"

"I've already dug a grave with you. I recognize one. Or... the spirits whispered it to me."

Johnny laughed, and Maud did the same, but it wasn't genuine joy, just some kind of adaptation, as if she had not really been joking.

"Tell me something, darlin'. What the hell did you do for five years with such an excuse for a man?"

Maud didn't want to talk about her past, just like him, even though she was the one of the two of them who had actually finished off her ex. Johnny only held himself partly responsible for Maria's fate, and maybe that was why he always felt more anger than grief. Perhaps that was all he was capable of.

Finally, Maud delivered a short monologue about how much she wanted to escape the treadwheel of looking after her alcoholic mother and her sisters, and how she saw no other way to do so than to get married one day. To the kid who - if only because of his parents' pressure -, would have proposed sooner or later, even though he was sticking his dick somewhere else.

"This is fucking depressing," he said, and finished the bottle. He tossed it among the others, into the sea of flowers, another reminder of the long hours spent here.

When he looked into her brown eyes, he caught a cynical glint in them, and he could almost hear Maud's unspoken words: We're chatting by the grave of your ex-lover. He ran his hand over the back of her neck and pulled her close, but he didn't kiss her right away, he let her wait, his lips over hers and his breath in her nose.

Maria was the reason he had thoughts of pinning her to the ground, of holding a knife to her, of hissing in her face questions he knew Maud would never be able to answer in a way he would believe. Are you lying to me, Blondie? Are you just hopeless, just broken, just weak? Do you really want me? What if you meet the Bad Man one day?

He didn't, because it didn't make sense. Her lips tasted of coffee, and she let his tongue in without hesitation. Johnny's other hand closed around her waist under the robe, and pulled her into his lap, while Maud stroked the muscles on his arms as if she couldn't believe he was real.

"You're not a dumbhead, you're a nutcase, baby."

His kiss grew more and more passionate, and Maud returned it with small sighs. An arousing gasp escaped her throat as Johnny pressed his groin to her core. Her lips parted, but he wouldn't let her speak. He bit her lip and turned her over in the grass.

She blinked up at him, her cheeks flushed, as Johnny took his shirt off. She wanted to say something again, but at the first sound, he pressed his hand to her mouth, and closed his lips around her hardened nipple through the silky fabric of her nightgown. He sucked hard, making the muffled words melt into needy moans under his hand.

"That's it, that's all I wanna hear," he murmured into her ear. He kissed her neck, then returned to her breasts, leaving wet trails behind him.

It took both of his hands to shove the nightgown up her thighs and yank down her panties. Maud's cunt was drenched in both her own excitement and blood. It wasn't the latter, though, that she was bothered by, even if Johnny would have bet Grant never touched her like that.

"Johnny, I don't think we should do it here..."

"Nah, I want it right here."

He kissed her again, and Maud thawed into it obediently. She tugged at his locks and buried her fingers into the black hair that grew on his chest. Johnny knelt up and quickly unbuckled his belt. His cock was painfully hard by now, and Maud was so hot and slick that he had lost all patience. He rubbed the tip between her folds a few times, enjoying the way she quivered and pulsed around him, then immediately slammed into her balls deep.

"Shit!" Maud groaned, digging her nails into his back.

"Shhh."

He gripped her hips with such force that he was sure to leave a mark. He was moving inside her hard and wild, building both of their pleasures fast. This was what he needed, this was what he needed to see, her eyes burning black with lust as she let him in and his past too.

"You're moaning like some little whore," he chuckled and kissed her on the cheek.

Maud was whimpering and writhing under him as she came, desperately trying to stifle her screams. She grew even hotter and tighter around him, and Johnny couldn't take more than half a dozen erratic thrusts. He came inside her, again, and he rode out his own orgasm, smearing blood and cum on their thighs.

"Tell me, did your ghosts see this too?" he asked teasingly. Maud gave him a small slap, and he let her.

It wasn't that he felt sorry for the loverboy in their basement.

His spirits had simply returned. And it was real fun to mess with Danny Who-Cares-What. This time he wasn't walking empty-handed to the south cell: he brought him a pile of pancakes smothered in melted butter on a paper plate and a bottle of beer.

All of this hit the wall of the cell with a loud clatter as he entered, finding it empty. The ropes that had previously held Danny's hands back lay torn on the floor, but the room still smelled of sweat and oranges. Johnny pulled out his skinning knife and stepped over the ruins of Danny's breakfast.

"Oh, you can run all you want… it ain't gonna matter!"

Chapter Text

It was an eerily familiar situation.

Johnny shouted to her from the cold room ("The bastard is runnin' around somewhere! Keep yer eyes peeled! He can't get out!") while she kneeled by the ladder, suddenly unable to move. It seemed like a hundred years ago when she'd done the same thing in the red room, behind barrels full of chopped-off body parts. That time Grant was bellowing to her on the meat hook to do something immediately.

It was like stepping through a magic mirror, turning everything upside down. She wasn’t the hunted animal anymore, nor was she the savior rushing to protect anyone. This time, she had to stop someone from slipping away. She had to protect their secret, her family and Johnny. It's not like this was all new. She’d gouged out Daisy's father's eyes in a fit of rage, but when she pierced the broken beer bottle in his neck, it was nothing about her anger anymore. Maud remembered how clear her mind had been, and how she pondered the consequences, for herself and those with whom her life had become ever more intertwined.

She stood up, took her cleaver from the shack, and hid it under her old denim dungarees, stained with Grant's blood. She was calm, almost mechanical; the composure that had saved her life didn’t fail her this time either. She counted the exits to the basement, where she might expect the guy, Maria's boyfriend to show up if Johnny didn't manage to take care of him down there.

"Please, no! ¡Por el amor de Dios, por favor, ayúdenlo!"

Maria appeared out of nowhere in her path, not far from the steps leading to the house. She was on her knees, her fingers clasped in prayer, looking up at her. Maud almost froze at the sight of her. It was no secret to her that things in her mind had also fallen through that certain magic mirror, or were breaking into pieces like fragile glass, but this had still caught her by surprise.

"Please don't let them!" Maria pleaded, her lips curling into a tearful grimace, but she couldn't bring herself to cry anymore. "Don't let them hurt Danny!"

Don't let them? She couldn't even grasp the idea that she wouldn't let Johnny do something, or... She scrutinized the area around the garage, and knew she should tell Nancy.

Against Johnny and his mother, Danny would have had little chance even without her.

"What can I do?"

"Help him. Please, homegirl." Maria crawled closer to her on her knees, but there was no trace of her in the dust. "You know how to get out of here. Please, they can't kill him… He's the sweetest, kindest man I've ever…"

Before Maud could answer, Johnny screamed from below, beneath her feet. She heard it from the well, and the cry of pain and the ensuing barrage of curses sent Maria, homegirl and everything back behind it, beyond any understanding.

She leaned into the well, her hair falling forward.

"Johnny, what the hell happened?"

"FUCK, FUCK! The damn little cunt... he's fiddled with one of the lamps... my damn eyes..."

She said nothing, but her lips were pressed together so tightly that her jaw nearly snapped. She had to remain silent, to be quiet and composed like Mommy Maud had been all her life.

She looked back for a second at Maria, who was whispering something in Spanish, then crept through the fence's slats. Hunched over, she walked toward the generator. Its familiar rumble sounded like mimicking the relentless thrum of blood pounding in her ears.

The heavy, hurried, yet shaky footsteps of an injured man pounded on the bridge not far ahead, and she soon saw Danny himself.

"I think I lost him..."

He muttered to himself, half his face covered in a mask of dried blood. He stumbled over Maud, hugging himself, blood dripping onto his fingers from his badly cut wrist. He was a handsome man who looked like both a hippie and a street urchin, yet his voice was soft and gentle.

"Hey!" Danny's bright blue eyes flickered in terror at Maud, who beckoned him over. He stopped involuntarily, and Maud pressed a finger to her lips, signaling for silence. "Here!"

"What the? You too... you too..."

Danny hesitated, but when he heard the door of the house slam open, he ducked under the grass, the thick-leaved prickly cacti, and the wire fence. He was so close that Maud could smell him and see the sticky sweat glistening on his neck. There were purple, almost black circles under his eyes. He was stinking, tortured, and shocked, just like she had been once.

"I almost got caught… Oh god…"

"You're Danny," Maud whispered. "Maria's boyfriend, right?"

"Yes, yes… do you know Maria? Do you know what happened to her? And why..."

"I'm sorry."

She flinched when Danny put his hand on her shoulder, but he didn't want to hurt her. He was scared, but not by her, even though Nancy hadn't seemed like a threat at first glance either. Maria was right, Danny was really sweet and kind—too kind.

"That freak said terrible things. Also that he'd already replaced her. Is that you? The other girl he kidnapped and..."

Maud pressed her index finger to her lips again, leaving Danny without a response. Danny didn't force it. He filled the gaps with his own pain, with everything he assumed had happened with his girlfriend, and that only made him care about Maud even more.

He began to creep slowly towards the shack, and Maud followed him, glancing over her shoulder. All she could see was Johnny's back, as he furiously pulled open the freezers, checking to see if Danny was hiding there. Nancy was climbing down the ladder from the balcony, a garden hoe in her hand.

"Just be patient, Johnny darling… You know we'll catch him anyway."

"They're crazy," Danny hiccupped. He rested at the base of the fence and wiped his sweaty face with the hem of his shirt. "Don't worry, sweetie, I have a plan. I think I saw a steel tank around here somewhere… I found a valve in the basement, and if I'm right, I can tamper it."

Maud had no idea what he was talking about, but it sounded like a plan. Not like the one she and Daisy had, and probably not at all like anything the Sawyer family had ever expected.

"Pressure controls that door, sweetie." Danny pointed to the double-leaf, huge, blue gate that, judging by its rust, had hardly ever been used. "If I can pull this off, they won't be able to close it. We can do it."

How many lifetimes would Grant need to live, to be reborn again and again, just to involve himself in something like this for the chance to find her? Of course, it wasn't very fair to compare him to Danny, because then she would have had to compare herself to Maria.

"Okay, now."

Danny hurried to the tank on the side of the shack, Maud following close behind. It wasn't easy with her menstrual cramps, but that could only have been her biggest worry in her dreams. She watched with a blank, somewhat astonished face as the man, with trembling hands but intense concentration in his eyes, attached the tap to the valve and carefully began to turn it to the right. Each movement was accompanied by a dull squeak that made more beads of sweat roll down his forehead.

"Don't get your hopes up... NOBODY LEAVES UNTIL I SAY SO!"

Johnny's voice thundered from the other side of the wall. Maud, going back to her senses, grabbed Danny's arm with both hands. She began to pull him along, but she didn't have to push him much. He followed her of his own accord, giving himself and all his trust into her hands.

"This way," Maud pointed to a gap in the fence overgrown with grass and weeds. "Quick!"

Danny straightened up, but as soon as he tried to squeeze through the narrow gap, he cried out in agony and grabbed his leg. Razor-sharp barbed wire was biting into his calf, coiling around him and trapping him, like the thorns of a rose in that children's story where the prince tried to save the princess from a hundred-year sleep.

But it had a happy ending.

Maud stood up, sighing slightly. The barbed wire slashed Danny's hand open as he tried desperately to pry it off her leg. Maud closed her grip on the cleaver handle and swung it, not from her elbow but from her shoulder. It split Danny's ribs in exactly the same place and in the same way as it had with the nameless woman in the cold room, and when she tore the steel out, dark red blood flowed onto the weed-flowers and the dry dirt.

Danny was screaming and sobbing at the same time, but he still managed to struggle to his feet, clutching his injured side with both bleeding hands. He turned to her in betrayal, but couldn't say more than a "why" before Johnny grabbed him from behind by the neck.

"Hello again, mate," he hissed in his face and slammed him with all his strength into the wreckage of a green car.

Green, beige, red, boom. Danny lay on the ground, gasping. Maud climbed carefully over the fence and approached Johnny, whose face was smeared with blood, and this time it was his own. If Danny had meddled with the lamp, as he'd intended with the valve, the bulb probably exploded in Johnny's face. Maud's stomach twisted with the thought of him losing his eyesight.

She had fallen in love with this man disgustingly. She had also turned into a disgusting monster, yet all she felt was the stark, unshakable awareness of what she had done.

She examined the small cuts on Johnny's face and around his eyes; some of them had glass inside them.

"It's just a scratch, Blondie. Leave it to me from now on," Johnny said, twirling the knife in his hand. "See, I told you there was no point in running. It would have been much easier if you had just sat still."

Danny, his back against the car, his hands clasped over the gash in his side, tried to catch his breath. His biggest mistake was thinking Maud was like Maria. He didn't waste his energy on her, though, his tearful, pain-filled eyes fixed on Johnny.

"You asshole… You killed the love of my life. You're going to pay for it someday, believe me. You killed her, my sweet Maria, and I'm sure…" He took a deep, choking breath, blood bubbling at the corners of his mouth. "You raped her, you scum!"

Johnny's hand swung before the other man could even finish his sentence. He brought the handle of the skinning knife down on his left eye, sending Danny crouching. He sprawled in the grass as Johnny's booted foot hit his stomach hard.

"What did you say?"

"Y-you tortured her... you raped her..."

"You fucking little bitch!" Johnny kicked him again, senseless and merciless, causing Danny to roll onto his back like a helpless rag doll. Blood and saliva covered his face, and he couldn't even scream, only grunting and whimpering under Johnny's rib-crushing boot. "You dare say that again, you—"

Maud didn't know whether she should intervene. Danny was barely alive, that much was clear, but Johnny had lost his mind. He didn't play, he didn't fool around, he didn't enjoy his own violence this time, his moves were driven by a frenzy that was as destructive as bushfire. In the end, it wasn't Maud who ended the scene, but Nancy, who came towards them with a finger raised and yelled at her son, "Enough!". He gritted his teeth and backed away from Danny, who was curled up in a fetal position. Johnny beat his own chest in uncontrollable rage like an aggravated animal.

Maud stepped behind him, put one arm around him, and stood on tiptoe to kiss his neck. Johnny's skin was on fire, and fresh blood'd splattered on his boots and the hem of his jeans. Nancy plunged the edge of the hoe into Danny's back, then tore it out with brutal force, and did it again and again until Danny collapsed on the ground, his sky-blue eyes closed forever.

"Baby, for God's sake, stay put."

Giving Johnny first aid was the biggest pain in the bum Maud Raines had ever had to deal with. He clearly hated being tended to, and was constantly fidgeting with something like a restless child. At that moment, he considered uncorking a beer a pressing task.

“Soundin' like a croaking old lady,” he retorted, popping the cap off the beer bottle. Maud grabbed his perfectly shaped chin, and Johnny raised one eyebrow in surprise. “Pipe down, will ya?”

“Yes, I’m a croaking old lady who you like to have sex with. By the way, that was because of what I said. Because you were careless and arrogant again.”

Johnny could have easily tossed her hand away, but he just let her grip his chin, creasing his skin a little. He sat on the couch, Maud leaning over him. The bloody cleaver rested on the windowsill next to the freshly watered potted plants.

She soaked a cotton ball in rubbing alcohol, which she found in the kitchen cupboard next to a makeshift first aid kit. She had already picked the glass shards from the cuts on his cheek and around his eyes. Johnny didn't make a sound as she dabbed the swab over the wounds, even though she expected him to complain. He seemed used to worse pain.

"My soft-hearted little girl..."

Maud made no comment. She put aside the dirty cotton ball, and softly blew over the wounds, easing the sting where the alcohol had met the raw skin. She knelt on the couch and settled herself in Johnny's lap.

"You have a lot of scars." She let go of his chin and ran her thumb along one of the puffy, dark pink scars that ran down Johnny's bicep. "From what I've seen, some of them only needed a few inches to fucking kill you." She pointed to his chest, which was now covered by his black, holey-necked shirt. "That one, for sure. What happened?"

"Which one I oughta start with?" Johnny sat back in his seat and sipped his beer, with the kind of smug confidence that Maud was both attracted to and wanted to slap him across the face for. "This bad boy here, well… I misjudged the situation a bit once. I was expecting one girl, but there were three, and one of them stabbed me." He shrugged. "This here, in a bar, when we got all riled up in an argument. I’ll own up—that wasn’t too nice. And this…" Reaching between them, he pulled up his top, revealing the scar on his stomach, above his belt. "Once Nubbins was getting too much of a dick in the graveyard, as he always does, and I helped him out. The guy had knives, and he was kinda good at aiming."

"And?"

"Mmm, and what? And I cut his throat."

Maud shook her head and sighed as Johnny's broad, warm hands moved to her hips. He didn't try to rub himself against her this time, he just stroked her, gripping the soft flesh, then reached for her hand. The marks on her wrists from her previous bondage had completely healed.

"What happened to your face?"

Johnny inhaled deeply the scent of her skin, then suddenly bit her wrist, hard enough to draw blood. Maud hissed and instinctively tried to pull her hand away, but Johnny wouldn't let her. He ran his hot tongue over the wound, drinking up every tiny drop.

"You're still delicious." He looked into her eyes. "I got it when I was real young, 'bout sixteen."

He didn't want to brag about this as much as he did about the others, and she noticed it immediately. The mention of Nubbins brought to mind a few things that she had deemed insignificant when they were mentioned, but now they made things clearer. The day when she'd met Nancy and Johnny'd rushed away to murder someone. The broken lamp in the cramped little room in the family's house, and Nubbins fixing it, while mumbling something about Johnny getting into a fight with Nancy, and how ugly it had been. Poof, poof.

Like twelve years ago. Yes, that's what he said.

She stared so intently ahead of her, and for so long, that Johnny remarked that she was making that particular face again. The doofus one. He didn't say it with disdain, but more with the kind of twisted affection that came along with sipping her blood and washing it down with beer.

Maud wondered if Nancy might have done this to Johnny, and at first, she wanted to tell herself no, but then...

The finger.

The sudden silence and the fear in Johnny's eyes. Then and never again.

"I'll offer you a deal," she finally said, wiping her hand on her already bloody dungarees. Johnny tilted his head to the side, listening with interest. "I'll make ya a promise if you're willin' to answer my questions from now on."

"What do you have on ya, darlin', that's such a strong bargaining chip? It's making me horny..."

"Even though you kissed me, even though we paraded 'round in front of your kin, even though we fuck every day... you still think I’m lyin'. So here’s my promise, right here, right now: I ain’t gonna lie about how I feel. I love you."

Johnny's face darkened, and for a long moment, they just stared at each other, silent. Maud could have counted their breaths and the fluttering of the fly's wings on the meat cleaver. Johnny leaned forward and kissed her, cupping her face in his hands. Maud put her arms around his neck and placed soft little kisses on his lips before letting his tongue in, but Johnny was in no hurry now, and he didn't want any more. Maybe he was tired, or worn out by all that Danny's presence had brought to the surface.

"Then go ahead," he said as they parted, and Maud rose from his lap to pack the first-aid kit. "Ask."

Warm golden light poured into the courtyard from the window of Nancy's room.

The chirping of crickets and the hooting of an owl, ready to hunt, filled the cool night air. Maud closed the door behind her, latched it, and walked up the steps to the house. There was no one else home but her and Nancy; Johnny had gone somewhere and would not tell her where.

There was fear on his face when I first saw him with his mother.

Who isn't even his mother because she killed his real mom

Maria was right, they trusted her. So much so that the day after Danny died, Johnny gave her keys to most of the doors, although she was sure Nancy wasn't so thrilled about it. That sweet, soft-handed lady, sitting on her wide, made-up bed in her salmon-colored nightgown, darning one of her stockings.

Unwavering, she struck down onto Danny as many times as she needed.

Did you cut Johnny's face the same way to finally shut him up?

The story Johnny told her blared in her head like the old radio on the ranch. She almost wanted to go back there, to Nubbins and Bubba and Sissy, and take Johnny with her. Her mouth was full of bile again, but it didn't show on her face as she knocked on the doorframe to get Nancy's attention.

She was wearing her new nightgown and the robe she had given her, her bangs hanging in her face.

"Maud! My dear!" Nancy put her stockings aside and smiled at her.

Maud had always been angry at the world for giving her a mother like Laney Raines. When she had imagined an ideal mother, she'd pictured something like Nancy, and therein lay the ultimate irony.

She had to face it sooner or later. Even without the story of the scar, she knew that Nancy's presence loomed over her like a storm cloud, but the reasons were incomprehensible to her. Nancy could have gotten rid of her at any time, as she had done with Maria. At least, so far. Perhaps she could still have finished her off, since she was more experienced, with decades of madness and cruelty behind her. Still, Maud wouldn't have made it easy for her.

"Can we talk?"

Chapter Text

A flash of surprise glimmered in Nancy's only eye, but she quickly shook the feeling off, as if it were just a fallen leaf.

"Of course. There's my hairbrush on the dressing table, give it to me. I'll comb your hair while we speak."

Maud crossed the threshold of the lioness's den. All the green-painted wooden furniture radiated a quiet stillness, so deep it bordered on unsettling. The antique vanity table held a candle-shaped lamp, its soft light reflecting off half-open jewelry boxes. From these boxes spilled glimpses of Nancy’s treasures: pearl collars, floral hairpins, and faux-gold earrings. Resting delicately on the table's edge was a bone-white hairbrush, its surface adorned with intricate, lace-like patterns. Maud felt compelled to sniff it; it smelled of the same talcum powder as the woman herself.

"May I…?"

Nancy couldn't hide her surprise so quickly this time. She probably wanted to say no, but in the end, she nodded, because that was what the game required. She had no choice.

Maud sat down on the bed behind her, and raked Nancy's walnut-brown hair back with her fingers. It was entwined by grey strands and most of the curls were gone from it. Every inch of Nancy was stiff, like the furniture when Maud ran the brush through her hair.

"It was Grandma who last combed my hair," she said, her voice thoughtful and reserved. She reminded Maud of an old, cunning mama cat, luring mice to her and then gutting them. "Good old days."

Of course, Grandpa had once a Grandma. Maud didn't think Grandpa remembered her, or even had any coherent thoughts. She continued to comb Nancy's hair delicately, and for a second she saw little Tina waiting for her to do her hair, as she did every morning.

"Your hair is so soft. Like Johnny's," he said. Nancy laughed dryly, her fingers aimlessly tapping the fabric of the bedspread. "So the guy we finished off… He made me think about this, even though I wanted to talk about her for a long time. About Maria Flores."

"Oh, there's nothing to talk about, dear. She was just one of many."

"Not for Johnny."

Nancy waved, implying that that was enough, and took the hairbrush from Maud.

"Yes, perhaps he liked that girl, but…" She led her by the hand to the vanity table. She sat her down, or rather pushed her down on the little round chair, and began to arrange her hair into a ponytail. Maud could see her every wince in the mirror: Nancy studied her head and the curve of her neck, as if searching for her most vulnerable spot. "… Ain’t no point in comparin’ her to you. That was just a little flare-up, nothin’ more. I raised my Johnny to be a good boy, and it’s plain as day he started longin’ for a real companion. But that mewlin’ lil’ rag? She was far from it. As you can see, even in death she is nothing but trouble. You would never give either of us grief, would you?"

Maud smiled at her in the mirror, with her here-is-your-change-madam smile.

"Never."

"I know. You helped protect the family, more than once. My son made the right choice this time." She put the hairbrush back in its place and took a pair of scissors from the vanity table drawer. The lamplight glinted blindingly off the metal, and it was icy cold against Maud's skin as Nancy worked her way through her bangs, strand by strand. "I've always been a family girl. Did I mention I've been pregnant six times? Life didn't make it easy for me I can tell ya… But then it gave me Johnny."

Maud swallowed back the bitter taste that had lingered in her mouth since she had seen the light in Nancy's window.

"How old was he?" Nancy frowned, so she added: "Johnny, when you adopted him."

The tip of the scissors rested on her temple, sharp and cold.

"Two and a half. But blood doesn't count in this. You know that best with that good-for-nothing mother of yours."

"Yes, I know. I've always imagined a good mom like you."

Johnny was probably right when he said that lying had become as natural to Maud as breathing. In this, she and Nancy were apparently very similar, so much so that they readily believed each other's lies.

Nancy giggled, this time without the forced froth, and dropped the scissors back into the drawer.

"The woman who brought him into this world couldn’t keep him safe, just like she couldn’t protect herself from his father. As soon as I saw that angelic little boy, I knew the Lord had him for me. And anyone who would try to take him from me, whether Judith or this Danny, would end up in the same place: as fertilizer in my flowerbed."

Johnny hadn't told her anything about his biological mother, except that she wasn't Nancy and that he had been taken from her by force. It seemed better for him to think of her not as something real, but more like some mythical creature that might have existed once or might not. Like the chupacabra.

Maud stood up and walked to Nancy's dresser. On top of it framed family photos were lined up among freshly dusted china.

"He would never let me down," she continued, letting Maud look around. "Well, you know him. He's cross and headstrong at times, but loyal as a bloodhound. When I ordered him to carry the Latina down to the basement and make her quiet for me, he did. I finished the job and we got back our peace."

She had every right to believe that Johnny's mother was lying again, but she felt in her bones that she wasn't. Maud tried to block out from her mind the sound of Maria's begging, her pleas to run away and protect Danny. She bet that Maria wouldn't call her homegirl again.

In the black-and-white photo opposite her, a five-year-old boy in a plaid shirt looked up at the camera. He was sitting next to a bed, squeezing his brown stuffed dog to his chest. The toy covered his mouth, but not his innocent, shiny fox eyes. A smaller photo, snapped when Johnny was a teenager, was tucked into the corner of the frame. In it, he stared straight ahead, his hair semi-long, wearing that familiar denim jacket. His face was already scarred, and his hands were shoved into his pockets. The shot seemed to be taken in the ranch yard, with Grandpa sitting in a wheelchair and someone else partially hidden by the frame. From the hem of a skirt and a glimpse of white leggings, Maud guessed it must be Sissy.

"I don't care about his past," she said, adjusting the thin strap of her nightgown over her mole-marked shoulder. "He did what he had to do."

"As we all." Nancy suddenly opened her arms for a hug. "Come on now, darlin'. Looks like I’ve got me a daughter as well."

One day you will be under the flowerbed too, Maud thought as she snuggled up to her.

She woke up at an unknown hour of the old night by Johnny's fussing.

She sat up in bed and squinted as he casually tossed his car keys and black leather gloves onto the top of the freezer. Soon his polo shirt landed next to them. He kicked off his boots and washed his face and armpits at the kitchen faucet.

Maud just asked, "Is everything okay?", although that wasn't necessarily all she was interested in.

Johnny didn't take her curiosity well, nor did he like that she was awake. He pulled a container of spaghetti from the fridge and started eating straight out of it, shoveling it in like he hadn’t eaten in a week.

"Don't wait for me at this time. And especially, don't start questionin' me like my mother."

"I wasn't laying in wait, but you woke me up."

She leaned back on her pillow like a felled tree and pulled the blanket up to her neck, but she kept watching Johnny from the corner of her eye. He just grumbled something between bites, then shoved the empty box into the sink and opened his bag. Maud couldn't see what came out of it, but she heard Johnny rummaging around the shelf.

The lipsticks. The Cary Grant biography. The license plates nailed to the wall. The rabbit cage with the word "Pea" on it.

She knew.

Johnny soon climbed in beside her and got straight to the point. He tangled his fingers in her hair and kissed her first on the forehead and then on the mouth, with the same hunger with which he had devoured the food. Maud returned it, gently running her tongue over his, which drew a passionate sigh from him.

Her body was ready to surrender again, to give in to his strong hands caressing her ass, his insatiable mouth tasting her neck, and his hardening cock rubbing against her thighs. But something was wrong, something was bothering her. The different kind of excitement that was radiating from Johnny now. The thought of who she might be, how old she might be, what she might look like, and why.

After a brief kiss, she pulled away and jumped out of bed. Johnny stared after her, shocked. "The hell are you going?"

Maud marched to the shelf, her socked footsteps thumping softly on the floorboards. Although she had stopped herself from touching the boxes last time, she now, with all her determination, grabbed the one Johnny was also fiddling with.

"Hey, Blondie, you don't want me to slap you on your hand, do you?" Johnny grabbed her shoulder from behind, hard but not yet painful. She thought he was still in their bed, again underestimating how silently he could move if he wanted to.

"I'd definitely cry if you slapped me on the hand. I've already fallen into a well, you cut my thigh, a mountain troll slammed me against the side of the car, and who knows what else the hell happened to me, but a slap on the hand because I'm too curious..."

"Stop it."

Maud looked inside the box. What appeared to be new inside was an unopened packet of tissues, a plastic-wrapped, lipstick-stained cigarette butt and a business card. Whitney O'Dea, cosmetics sales agent.

"You said I didn't have to hold anything back anymore," she reminded him. "Then tell me what this is."

She didn't shout, but her voice now mirrored what she really felt: insecurity. As crazy as it was, she understood the violence that surrounded their home and therefore their lives. She saw its necessity, and perhaps even embraced its madness. But she couldn't understand why Johnny preyed on unsuspecting women from time to time, all over the country.

"Did I poke my nose into what you're collecting in that book?" Johnny gritted his teeth and roughly pushed the box back into place. The shelf shook behind Maud. "You cut off Danny boy's hair too, braided it and put it away, I know. Piece the picture together, baby."

"I don't care about the tissues and lipsticks, Johnny. I wanna know why you're doing this. Is this Whitney... dead already?"

"Not yet. It doesn't usually work that way, but you would never understand this."

Maud took a deep breath through her nose and clenched her fists. She was angry not only at Johnny but at herself, for the confusion and the goddamned jealousy that had risen within her. She had never felt it when it came to Maria, but with these strangers, it almost burned her from the inside.

"Is this about sex?"

"Fuck, no," Johnny made a face as if he'd just swallowed spoiled milk. "Are you done? If you won't fuck, then go back to sleep and leave me alone!"

Maud hissed and pushed him with all her strength. It didn't do much, her palms felt like they were hitting a rock wall. Johnny barely flinched, but it managed to whip up his anger. He pushed her back, and Maud slammed into the shelf. The rabbit cage fell to the floor with a loud thud, and Johnny simply kicked it aside, only to step closer and push her again, this time straight into the freezer.

"Look at you, you're still trying to question me," he spat out the words. "You fucking little gremlin."

Maud managed to grab the edge of the freezer to keep from falling to the floor. She wanted to tell him he could fuck himself, but before she could speak, Johnny grabbed her by the arm. He turned her around and pulled her nightgown over her head, almost completely stripping her off. Maud instinctively put her hands in front of her breasts, but the next moment Johnny tossed her away again, and she fell face-first onto the couch.

"You brute," she muttered, and her reward was a slap on the butt.

"Stay. Still."

Johnny grabbed her hair, just as aggressively as he had taken off her nightgown, and yanked her back for a kiss. He bit again, but this time Maud did too, and she didn't know whose blood she could taste in her mouth. Johnny caught her wounded wrist and moved her hand to his groin. His cock was straining hard against his underwear, and without thinking, Maud began to stroke the large, warm bulge.

"Go on," Johnny commanded. "Yes, just like that... And now rub your ass to it like you always do."

Maud wanted to fight back, but desire tied a knot in her tongue. Kneeling on the couch, she spread her legs wider and rubbed her lower body to Johnny. She stifled a moan as his hardness touched her clit through their clothes, and she couldn't hold herself back. Stripping away all her pride, she arched her back and ground herself against him again and again.

"This is good… very good…"

"Is it?"

Johnny pulled down her panties but didn't bother to take them off properly, letting them dangle on her ankles. He grabbed her neck with one hand, and with the other he reached between her thighs, finding her sensitive little nub. He traced long circles with his fingers, praising her, her body and how she made him feel with sinful, lewd words. Maud couldn't hold her voice any longer, she moaned in ecstasy under his touch, her knuckles whitening as she was gripping the back of the couch.

"Be grateful I even care," Johnny growled, enjoying the sounds she made. "I could just put it inside you and satisfy myself with your cunt like you deserve."

He spoke his dirty words paired with a demanding, fast pace that made Maud's legs tremble, almost collapse under her. Johnny teased her clit and her entrance, devilishly skilled and merciless, and Maud knew, knew very well what he wanted to hear.

"Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me..."

Johnny's grip tightened on her neck.

"What? I can't hear you."

"Fuck me, damn it!"

Johnny groaned and pulled her up with brutal force, completely cutting off her air. But as he kissed her, he relaxed his grip. He stroked her breasts, rising in relief, then suddenly released her, letting her fall back onto the couch. He quickly removed his briefs and knelt behind her with one leg. A moment later he was buried inside her, stretching and filling her entirely.

That was enough. Maud's eyes widened, and she came, came hard, moaning his name and all her limbs shaking.

Did he seriously get her so aroused that she would orgasm just by him putting his cock inside her?

"You're a real little whore," Johnny chuckled, but his smug voice soon trailed off. He'd been frustrated by the time he got home, and their argument had only made it worse. He did exactly as he told her, chasing his release like a horny dog. With his head thrown back, he moved inside her, using her hips as handles, disturbing the silence of the night with the obscene sound of skin slapping against skin. His thrusts were quick and shallow, his voice growing deeper and more hoarse with pleasure.

"You'll be leaking for hours after this..."

Maud arched her back even more, offering herself completely to him and his desires. Johnny groaned (fuck, yes, YES), and came inside her with such force that Maud could almost feel him in her womb, his exploding heat filling her up to the brim. She saw white and blue behind her closed eyelids and just gasped, letting Johnny admire his work. The fingerprints on her neck, her shoulders and her hips, the palm-sized red spots on her buttocks, the cum running down her thighs.

She couldn't pursue the subject further after they'd fallen into bed even if she wanted to. They both could use a shower, but they didn't want to go up to Nancy's. Johnny, as usual, quickly fell asleep, satisfied and relieved that Maud would leave him alone.

Maud was thinking about Whitney O'Dea, and wondered how many days, or weeks, she might have left.

She cut the sirloin into regular, appetizing slices. She had already mixed the marinade, adding BBQ sauce, honey, garlic, pepper, salt, mustard seeds and bay leaves.

Snap, snap, snap. These swings started from the elbow, the prey was already dead. Now it was just beef, from the slaughterhouse, a gift from Nubbins. The kitchen window was open, letting fresh, brisk smells into the kitchen. A strong wind was blowing, making the leaves of the trees dance and the rusty windmill creak.

Nancy had asked her to cook dinner for that day. Not just for the three of them, Nancy had invited the whole family over for the evening, so even Grandpa could be counted on. Although Maud would have preferred to use her cleaver to treat her mother-in-law's head instead of a hairbrush, she was undeniably pleased with her request. It felt nice how she hugged her before she went to water her potted flowers, and complimented her on the white T-shirt she wore with the baggy jeans she had bought in Bonham.

For the first time in a long time, she was looking forward to being with her family.

No one screamed or ran around her feet while she worked. She was undisturbed and listened to the radio, muttering the lyrics she knew so well. How long had it been since she had a chance to really enjoy music? Grant shared this one thing with her. They showed each other lots of songs and bands. Partially, this was what led them to their end, the festival they had been waiting for for months. Poetic.

She dipped the slices in the marinade, covered the bowl with foil, and put the whole thing in the refrigerator. She started making the dessert right away; though she was tempted to make Johnny's favorite again, she decided on a lighter blackberry pie. The blackberries grew along the path behind the blue gate, and Johnny "helped" her pick them (which means he was standing over her, watching her work).

She was kneading the dough for the pie when she felt a small but sharp pain in her belly. She didn't want to smear herself with butter and flour, so she didn't touch the spot, just grimaced confusedly.

"How could you do that?"

Maria was standing somewhere behind her, at the table, but she forced herself not to look. Particularly because her voice was no longer that of a gentle thrush; it was bitter and betrayed.

"You protect the one you love. You tried that too, Maria," she replied, ignoring her bellyache and continuing to prepare the pie. She wrapped the smooth ball of dough that formed under her hand in foil and wiped her fingers with the heart-patterned tea towel. "I…"

"You enjoy this! You want to protect them, yes, but you also love power, not just them, right? You enjoy it, tricking and torturing those who fall for you!"

She spun around, and for a moment she forgot how to speak. Maria was now wearing the dragonfly dress that hung in tatters, with ugly blood stains on her side and belly. The red streaks on her face, like morbid tears, testified to her suffering, and at the same time the only possible way to get her revenge.

"I… I told you. I didn't lie to you, I told you to your face what I was like, and that I was finally myself now. Or you just brushed it aside? Maybe you wouldn't have ended up like this if you hadn't ignored every damn warning sign."

"You're a monster," Maria retorted. "All of you are, and you should know that if Nancy wants it, Johnny will beat you up and drag you down to that damn basement."

"He is not some puppet."

"Yes, sadly, he is."

Maud dropped the tea towel to the floor, her pulse racing, and her skin tightening again, trying to contain her exploding rage. She glared at Maria, who was leaning forward slightly, hugging her own bloody belly.

"Shut up," she said, her voice muffled, so that Nancy, who was in the room above her, wouldn't hear it.

Maria shook her head.

"Believe me, if the family decides, Johnny will kill you with his own hands."

The cleaver was in her hand faster than she could have realized it, and she swung it at Maria with full force.

"Fuck you!"

The blade cut into the table, ripping it open in a long, finger-length slash. Maria vanished, the only thing left there was the raging anger. Maud backed away from the table, leaving the cleaver inside it, and she heard Nancy approaching, but she didn't understand what she was saying. She buried her face in her hands as if that would shut out Maria's words, the doubt, and the image of Johnny cutting her open from navel to throat. And Nancy smiling.

She wanted to kill a rabbit.