Fiction Works

During the hot dry summer, the boy’s mother told him he was only to drink water from the tap or out of the bottle. On no account was he ever be tempted to drink water from the roadside ditches that irrigated the fields. It could well be poisonous”, she told him, and filled with tiny snakes; if you take even a sip you could swallow a snake. One morning, she said “you might not even know whether you had swallowed the snake – not at first, not until it started to grow bigger and bigger in your inside. Then you would know, but by then it would be too late”.
The weather was hot and dry as the boy walked home from school with his friends that afternoon. They had been running so fast that when they stopped and looked at the sky, it was enough to make them thirsty...
"Come on, Sullivan," One of the boy's friends said from where he was crouched down in a ditch over a murky pool of water, "Don't be such a girl. The water is fine!"
Sullivan swallowed against his dry tongue, shooting a wayward glance at the road ahead. There were still three blocks until he made it home, and the shopkeepers lining the road weren’t the friendliest of people offering free handouts. He looked back to where his two friends were scooping puddle water into their hands, and shakily wiped the sweat off his brow. What harm could a tiny sip really do?
The boy hopped down into the ditch, relishing in the coolness it offered and watched as the two other boys shovelled handfuls of water into their mouths. The boy's fingers twitched, his heels digging into the dirt of the ditch as he contemplated joining them. The same friend from before looked up at him with glazed eyes, swallowing the mouthful of water, "Come on, Sully! Don't be such a gir-"
He blanched; the words seemingly caught in his throat. His skin started to bead with sweat. He couldn’t breathe. "Aw shit, open your mouth!" The other friend hastily said, grabbing the larger boy by his jaw to try and loosen it. A bit of murky green tinged his lips. 
The friend began frantically delivering hard fists to the choking boy's back, whining and mewling as nothing happened. Eventually, Sullivan decided in a snap to level his mud-caked boot to his friend's distended belly and kick. 
He sputtered and gaped for air once his stomach bottomed out onto the floor of the ditch, remnants of his ham sandwich from lunch floating around. Sullivan grimaced and shook the vomit from his hands, but something was wriggling in the vomit that caused him to stop in his tracks. The boy who puked had his eyes screwed open, shakily pointing at the wriggling thing on the ground. "I-is that a... a snake?" He manages out in a squeak.
The boy shrugs, climbing out of the ditch and calling over his shoulder, “Nothing wrong with acting like a girl.."

And I’ve given you my heart and I don’t want it back, but you must know it comes with many scars and scratches and bruises and wounds that reopen more than they stay shut. 

“I love you more than I could ever love anyone.” You say to me as we sit in my car parked upon a hill awaiting our friend. 

“I don’t believe you do.” I respond monotonously, eyes glued to the flickering streetlamp ahead. You say nothing; take a hit of your cigarette and you have dirty jeans on with rips and paint stains- stains from when you painted my bedroom walls- and I wonder if I do love you. 

We have broken up before, it tore you apart and I felt nothing. But I came back every time the sour $12 whiskey I acquired on my 19th touched my tongue. Drunkenly slurring professions and confessions of words I could never quite think of sober. 

With all these doubts I still allow you to have it, my heart. To hold it and keep it even if I am unsure of your intentions. I lay in my bed in a t shirt now instead of your sweatshirt despite how cold it is because I am afraid. 

You send me a text a quarter to 11. “I love you as you are.” But you are afraid of my condition. Afraid I will snap and leave again. But that was not me. Simply my mirror self recycling the trauma done upon me onto you because perhaps then you will understand why I can never stay. 

But you text me a picture of a dog every day when one comes into your work and maybe- just maybe- you will not serrate new slots of existential dread in my chest along with a sloppy carving of your initials similar to the ones left before you that you have kissed a million and one times.

The team and I scour the apartment as we have twice before. Once with a S.W.A.T unit, and paramedics on standby, the second with the FBI, and now with just us. Brian is bent over a cardboard box on the ground, gripping the scraps of paper with gloved and tense hands. "Christ..." he mumbles, which has me wondering whether the way he is kneeling is a prayer in itself, 
"What is it?" Chris asks from behind the dining table, eyes lazily raking over a bank statement. Sneakers, belt, jeans. The same items several branches have tirelessly examined over and over...
Brian looks up, eyes wide and splattered with colors of ailment like the child's drawing above the stairway. "This... It uh," He clears his throat and blinks a few times. "It's a letter. Guess whoever this fucking creep is didn't want anything traceable back to him but, its a response from someone with the salutation of a cross. Leaving a drop off address where the bag will be..."
Adam who stands in the bedroom hall clicks his tongue, "Does this prolific tell us what’s in the bag?"
"Yeah... materials from Bridgepass."
"The hunting shop? Why would he need shit from there?"
Chris laughs dryly, "Why do you think? Back half of this statement is a bunch of ropes and gutting gear..."
I glance down at the discolored carpet; shaded in the motion of a fawn unstably being dragged across it, with indents of fingers across buckled carpet feathered unknown like a single drop of blood in the ocean...
I shake my head, returning my view to the telescope ambled at the mountains.
I wonder briefly when they will find the dismembered girl in the fridge.