Next time I’ll run, she thinks fiercely.
Then Daphne’s fist is impacting with Jennifer’s nose, sending the shorter girl sprawling off the sidewalk and down the shallow hill between them and the cemetery fence. Someone shoves Esther, sending her after Jennifer, falling fast enough that they’re together when they slam into the fence. It’s old and rusty, the chain links weathered and improperly maintained; they bite into her skin, scraping chunks of it away, leaving her bleeding. Jennifer makes a sound that is somewhere between a gasp and a moan. Esther looks over, eyes wide, terrified of what she’ll find.
Jennifer hit the fence face-first. Blood is cascading from her nose, drenching her, making her look like the victim of some terrible attack…which, in a way, is exactly what she is. They’re teenagers now, not children, and they should know better than to hurt each other like this.
Daphne is laughing. Esther turns to see her standing at the sidewalk’s edge, flanked by her monstrous cronies, a wide smile on her face.
“Aw, did you slip and hurt yourselves?” asks Daphne, a taunting, jeering note in her voice. “Too bad, so sad. Be more careful next time, why don’t you?”
“Fuck you!” shouts Esther. Daphne looks stunned. For a moment—one bright, beautiful moment—Esther feels triumphant and strong, like she’s actually managed to fight back.
Then she sees the rage blossom in Daphne’s face, and knows how badly she’s messed up.
“Run!” shouts Jennifer, grabbing Esther’s hand and dragging her toward the familiar gap in the fence, the one they know like the back of their hands, the one they’ve never seen Daphne or her friends squeezing through. Esther stumbles to her feet and lets Jennifer lead her, Jennifer who is running for once, motivated by danger as she could never be motivated by a P.E. teacher. The two of them squeeze through the gap, Esther widening it so Jennifer will be better able to fit, and they’re running, they’re running as hard and as fast as they can, all too aware of the pounding of feet behind them, of the high, bright laughter of people who have nothing to lose, not really, not like they do.
Jennifer trips on a tombstone, her hand yanked out of Esther’s by the shock. Suddenly unmoored, Esther flies forward until her momentum is halted by an open grave. She tumbles into it, slamming hard into the dirt at the bottom, feeling the air knocked entirely out of her. Not just the air: her bladder was full when she slammed down, and the combination of fear and momentum has been enough to knock at least some of the urine out of her as well. She sprawls where she fell, struggling to breathe, fighting not to cry.
Somewhere behind her, she hears Jennifer squeal, a thin, pained sound, like a rusted door being forced open. Then, from above:
“Roll over, skank, or we’ll hurt her.”
Esther rolls onto her back, not caring if Daphne and her friends see that she’s wet herself, or how terrified she is. She never expected them to escalate like this. Maybe they didn’t expect it to escalate like this. Sometimes things get out of hand.
Daphne is standing at the edge of the grave, perfectly framed by the slim slice of sky that is all Esther has remaining to her. She smirks, and then she spits, striking Esther squarely in the face.
“See? The more you try to stand up for yourself, the further you have to fall,” says Daphne, like a babysitter explaining to her charges why they have to go to bed even though they’re not tired. She spits again. Her cronies follow suit, gathering around the edge of the grave and clearing their throats until Esther feels like she’s caught in a warm, cruel rain.
Her father has said, more than once, that he’s grateful she’s a girl, because girls aren’t cruel to one another the way boys are. She’s known since long before her mother died that this was just wishful thinking, the sort of lie someone tells themself when they can’t think of anything better to say. Cruelty has no gender. The expressions of it can be trained one way or another, but even that isn’t innate: it’s all in what people are told will be possible, and not at all in who they actually are.
The girls surrounding the grave (her grave) seem to be losing interest in the game. Daphne kicks one last clod of dirt down on her.
“Stay out of our way,” she instructs, before turning and stalking toward the fence, taking her flunkies with her.
There is no sign of Jennifer, no sound. Esther sits up, pressing her back into the corner of the grave, and weeps like her heart is breaking.
Maybe it is.
___4. Closing.
THE DEAD man had stopped moving once he’d finished bleeding out. It was a bit of a pity, really. The technology in this place was fascinating, and she would have enjoyed having someone to discuss it with.
For every development coveted by her employers there were three or four more, intended only to support it, which were revolutionary in their own right. The woman picked at the spot of blood on her sleeve again, unable to take her eyes off the screen. She’d fed this scenario in, modifying the pieces that were already extant as it began escalating a tale of childhood bullies and friendly, vaguely-threatening spirits to something that would be far more entertaining. The exact shape wasn’t her doing, or that of the man who’d hired her. That was the work of Jennifer Webb and Esther Hoffman, their minds acting in concert without any communication between them as they influenced the scenario’s guidelines, making them plausible, even believable. And then, because this form of therapy was designed by people who wanted it to be seen, the situations they created were broadcast in clear, clean images on the screen, as available for viewing as any film.
She was watching dreams. She knew that, and it amazed her. After a lifetime spent schooling herself to be as unimpressed as possible, it was almost refreshing to spend a little time gaping like a yokel catching their first glimpse of a city.
The people who hired her wanted this technology for the reprogramming advances it offered: brainwashing, rather than therapy. Deviants could be remade into productive members of society. Criminals could be transformed into model citizens. Most of all, enemies of the state could be given a new place and a new purpose as spies for the people who paid for their good behavior. This would change everything, and Dr. Webb had been frittering it away on bed-wetters and people with daddy issues. Really, the surprise wasn’t that she was sitting here, watching the destruction of a dream. The surprise was that it had taken this long.
When word got out about what had happened here, what was about to happen here, the destruction of minds and personalities in the crucible of a therapy session gone wrong, it would be the end of Dr. Webb’s dream…and her reputation, both professional and personal. No one would raise a flag in a martyr’s name for her, the Frankenstein who got what she deserved.
The woman settled deeper into her chair, wishing for popcorn, and smirked. This was going to be fun.
THE SUN has slipped below the horizon with incredible, almost malicious speed, leaving Esther to crawl her way out of the grave in the darkness, spit drying on her face and urine drying on her legs. She doesn’t like horror movies—those are Jennifer’s darlings, short, sharp, controlled bursts of fear to lighten up a dark night—but she feels like she’s living in one now, like she’s some unspeakable creature rising from the unhallowed ground.
“Jennifer?” she whispers, her voice a hiss, bouncing off the headstones, returning nothing.
Her mouth tastes like blood and the heels of her hands are skinned from her fall, leaving them easy prey for every piece of gravel and clot of dirt. Still, she keeps pulling herself forward. Nothing feels like it’s broken. She could probably stand, if she had to. Could probably run, if she had to. She doesn’t test either thought. It’s easier, in the here and now, to crawl, no matter how painful it is. This is all she deserves.
Someone is crying, and somehow Esther finds it in herself to stand. Once she’s on her feet, it’s a simple thing to turn toward the sound. Without even thinking about it, she’s running, quickly reaching the sort of speeds that her gym teachers have always known she’s capable of.
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Jennifer is huddled in the shadow of a crypt, her face almost unrecognizable under the mask of mud and blood and bruises. Esther drops to her knees, reaching for her friend, and Jennifer reaches back, and they cling to each other, both of them weeping. Once the tears come, it’s difficult to make them stop. They escape in great, shuddering gasps, Jennifer clinging to Esther, Esther clinging to Jennifer, and it feels like the world must split open and swallow them whole. What else can there be left for them?
Not homework. Their backpacks are gone, lost in their headlong flight across the cemetery. Even if Esther thought they’d still be out there to be found, she wouldn’t go looking. They were unattended for too long. Daphne and her gang had too many opportunities for mischief. They can’t be trusted anymore.
Not curfews. She and Jennifer were supposed to be home hours ago, judging by the moon, by the absence of the sun. Her father will be scared, and as soon as he sees her, all that fear will transform into anger—first at her, and then at the bullies who created this situation. He’ll go into a towering rage. Nothing she says will be able to stop him, and on some level, she knows she won’t really try, that she’ll want to see him rain down fire and brimstone on the people who hurt her. But it won’t help. It won’t change anything for the better. It may change things for the worse. Daphne and her gang have dealt a devastating blow to people they see as outside the social structure and hence out of their control. If Esther and Jennifer keep their heads down and keep out of the way, this could be where it ends.
But her father isn’t going to let that happen. As soon as he knows, things will escalate.
She could hide it. The thought is a lightning bolt across the storm clouds of her mind, brightening and dispersing them for a single heartbeat. Yes, she has scratches. Yes, she’ll have bruises. But no one hit her. Unlike Jennifer, she won’t have a single injury she can’t explain away with an easy and believable lie. She could walk away from this.
Jennifer can’t. Jennifer’s nose looks like it might be broken, and the skin around both her eyes is dark and puffy, already well on its way to swelling them shut. For her to get away without a lecture, she would have to leave her friend to face it alone.
(In a pod, in another world, another time, another tense, the adult body of Esther Hoffman frowned in discontent and sour memory. There had been a few situations like this in her real teen years—situations the scenario no doubt pillaged to make this one more believable. That Esther, the Esther with two dead parents and no close friends, had been more than happy to walk away, to save herself at the expense of everyone around her. That Esther still existed in her safe, secure pod…but she was dying a little more with every second that passed, and she was defenseless to save herself. Another Esther was taking her place. An Esther who made different choices.)
“Can you stand?” Esther asks, offering Jennifer her hands.
Jennifer sniffles. Even the sound is painful. Then she clears her throat and spits, and even in the darkness, it’s clear that her spit is thick with blood. “They didn’t break my legs,” she says, and takes Esther’s hands, pulling herself to her feet. They stand that way for several seconds, both of them wobbling, drawing strength and stability from each other even when they have nothing to spare for themselves.
“Did they hurt you?” Jennifer asks.
It’s a complicated question. In the end, all Esther can do is nod, unable to really put the size of her pain into words. Jennifer nods in understanding. They slip their arms around each other, still holding each other up, and begin to walk—Esther shuffling, Jennifer limping, both of them broken—across the cemetery toward the waiting lights of their homes.
They have bled on this ground. They have wept on this ground. They have been bathed in spit and urine, and while those fluids might carry less reverence than blood or tears, they still have their uses. As they walk, the shadows gather thick and deep behind them, twining into terrible tangles that have no business here, in this suburban graveyard, under this previously innocuous autumn moon. The girls don’t look back. They are focused on what’s ahead, and unwilling to look at what’s behind.
They don’t see the dirt begin to throb, pulsing as steadily as an undying heart. They don’t hear the creak of the hinges within the standing crypts, or see the moss on the headstones begin to blacken and die.
When the first bony hand thrusts upward from the ground, they are long gone, and that may be the only thing that saves them.
AS ESTHER expects, her father is livid. More than livid: her father is incandescent with rage, so infuriated that he would burn the whole town to ashes if he thought he could get away with it. She stands in the living room, muddy and weeping, as he grabs his coat from the rack and yanks it on.
“No more,” he says. “Do you hear me, Esther? No more. These girls have made you miserable for long enough. I didn’t intervene before, because you asked me not to, but this changes things. Do you understand me? I want you to say that you understand me.”
Esther’s answer is another cascade of tears, her right hand flexing, like she thinks she can summon Jennifer back to her side if she wishes hard enough. Jennifer is at home right now, being fussed over by her parents, having the blood wiped from her lips and the tears wiped from her cheeks. She’s hurt worse, and so while her parents may be angrier in the end, they’ll wait until they’re sure that she’s okay. She’ll have a stay of execution. Esther almost envies her for that.
Only almost, because they’ll be heading for the same chopping block once Daphne’s parents get involved. The thought gives her the strength to speak. “Please, Daddy,” she says. “I just want it to be over. Please, can’t we let it be over?”
“These girls deserve to be punished for what they’ve done.”
They do, they do, there’s no question that they do. Esther wants to agree with him, to agree that it’s time to rain down fire and brimstone, and yet… “They’ll take it out on us when nobody’s looking. You know they will.”
“I didn’t raise you to run away from a fight.”
She wants to tell him that he did exactly that. That when he chose to run rather than stand and deal with the aftermath of her mother’s death, he taught her that anything can be escaped, if you’re just willing to run far enough. She doesn’t. Instead, she swallows, and asks, “Can’t we wait until morning? Then we can talk to Jennifer’s parents. See what they want to do.”
Her father stands and frowns at her for a long moment, taking in the redness of her eyes, the holes in the knees of her jeans. He wants to fight this. She can see it in every inch of him. He wants to ride out like a pillar of fire and burn everything that has dared to touch his daughter, his baby, his precious little girl. But he also wants her to love him as much as he loves her, and he is smart enough in the ways of parenthood to know that if he disregards her wishes in this matter, she will trust him a little less, come to him a little less often, and that the erosion of her childhood hero worship—inevitable as it is—will progress a little further. He would rather be her hero than her savior.
“I don’t like this,” he says, but his voice is soft, some of the fire leeching out of it. She’s won. It’s a hollow victory, filled with terrible teeth and unkindnesses, but she’s won it all the same.
“I know, Daddy,” she says. She goes to him then, and he takes that girl, and he holds her, while outside the night grows deeper and darker and wilder all the time.
Next door, in a house that might as well be identical (might as well have been designed by the same props department, in fact, because why would they waste processor power on decorating the houses anything other than alike?), Jennifer is eating a bowl of vanilla ice cream, wincing every time the cold hits one of her back molars, which she’s fairly sure has cracked. She’s praying it hasn’t really; that this is some strange new form of bruising that will pass by morning. If there’s no damage severe enough to require medical intervention, she might be able to keep her head down and keep her parents from seeking r
etribution. Once the dentist gets involved, it’s all over.
She wants Daphne and her friends to pay, of course. Has always wanted them to pay, ever since she was a chubby, gawky preschooler watching other people walk through the world with ease and grace, while she was still trying to find her own feet on a consistent basis. It wasn’t just that they were pretty: Jennifer has given plenty of thought to the idea of prettiness, and has long since come to the conclusion that anyone can be pretty, if they’re willing to spend the time, effort, and money. It’s that they were willing to play every game for keeps, even back then, turning little social strategies into a step toward mutually assured destruction. Jennifer has better things to worry about, has always had better things to worry about. But still, they hurt her, and sometimes she wishes they understood what that felt like. Sometimes, in a small, guilty corner of her heart, she wishes someone would hurt them.
Had Esther and Jennifer been ordinary girls, living in an ordinary world, that might have been where things ended: with anger, and resentment, and a tooth that would need repair. With slinking back to school, tails between their legs, spirits dimmed, finally put into their places…at least until enough time had passed, at least until they started to remember who they were. It was a drama that had played out hundreds of times, all across the world, written in a thousand different languages and performed with a million different players. If there had been nothing special about them, the rest could not have happened.
But they were not, are not, ordinary girls. They are the regressed hearts and minds and experiences of two adult women, locked into a virtual recreation of their own teenage skins, living through a situation designed to stimulate an impossibly intense emotional response, intended to break them. The real Esther grew up an orphan, daughter of a murdered man, with skin as thick as a rhino’s hide and hands that ached from going unheld. The real Jennifer grew up too smart and too stubborn and too sharp for her own good, with no one to hold her up, only to hold her back. They are better together, here, in this make-believe adolescence, than they ever were alone…but they are also not ordinary, and their wishes have consequences. Their story has no chains to hold it down.