• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

I start limping toward him, intending to rip him the fuck apart with whatever strength I can muster. But the drug overpowers me and I sit down on the floor.

Rufus stands over me now, grinning and shaking his head.

"Hope you killed her, cause Maxine’s gonna want a little payback after that sucker punch, and I’m not sure I can blame her."

Rufus blurs.

The back of my head smacks the hardwood floor and I stare at the ceiling.

It’s sleeting again.

There’s no greater horror than knowing your mind is softening back into clay, and the potter is a psychopath.

# # #

Several weeks later, at sunset, the Kites take their class on a fishing fieldtrip to the ocean. It’s the first time Andy, Beth, or Vi have seen daylight in more than five months, and they emerge from the stone house as frail and sun-shy as astronauts returning to Earth after months in space.

Everyone except Maxine and Rufus piles into the back of the old pickup truck.

The class is giddy, and as the teacher cranks the engine and they roll down the driveway through the thicket of live oaks, Luther passes around the mask and gives everyone a hit of gas from the silver tank between his legs.

Through gaunt, sunken eyes, Beth looks over the edge at the path speeding beneath the tires. Vi leans her head against Luther’s shoulder, and Andy lies on the rusted bed, staring up through spindly, leafing branches at pieces of a cobalt sky.

He wears a silly grin on his face. They all do.

At the end of Old Beach Road, Rufus turns north onto Highway 12, and they cruise the strip, passing realties and B&Bs and motels and gift shops. The tourists are back, out in force on this cool spring evening.

Just beyond Howard’s, Rufus makes a right turn onto the dirt road called Ramp 72. For three miles, over tidewater creeks and marshland, it winds toward the ocean. When the dirt road turns to soft white sand, Rufus stomps the gas pedal, and the truck hauls through a gap in the dunes straight for the sea. Upon reaching the harder, tidesmoothed sand, Rufus turns south, the old pickup truck now hurtling to the end of the island.

The sky is endless out here, the ocean stretching east into approaching darkness, the sand reaching south and west into the horizon, where the falling daystar, now halfway below the dunes, deepens from red into oxblood.

The incoming tide runs up under the truck, and the tires spray cold saltwater on everyone. Laughter abounds. Gleeful shrieks. Even Luther smiles.

Headlights of other Jeeps and trucks are visible far in the distance, cutting their own trajectories across the beach. Rufus veers up into the softer sand to avoid a fisherman marching in waders out into the surf.

At the end of the island, Rufus parks the truck beyond the reach of the tide and kills the engine. With the vegetation of Ocracoke hidden beyond distant dunes, there is nothing to see but acres upon acres of white beach, the inlet and sand spits to the south, and the sea, now shimmering and crimson as it catches the parting rays of sunlight.

Rufus and Maxine step down into the sand.

"Off with the shoes!" Maxine declares. Though the bruise on her jaw is fading, she still speaks predominantly from the right side of her mouth.

The class climbs out of the truck and the barefooted party lumbers off together toward the sea, like a flock of psyche patients.

"Gas ’em up!" Rufus says, and Luther, toting the heavy tank, calls Andy, Beth, and Vi over and hits them again with a ridiculous dose of nitrous oxide.

"Let’s run into the ocean!" Vi screams, and she sprints toward the sea, followed by Beth and then Andy, limping on his bad leg.

Not until he’s knee-deep in saltwater does Andy register the stinging. Though it’s been more than a week, the wounds on his back and legs are still fresh and raw from his hour-long whipping session with Maxine. But they’re friends again. Because they’re even.

After a cold frolic in the ocean, Andy and Beth stagger down the beach toward the rest of their party. In the distance, Rufus and