Delicious - Page 23

But when my eyes finally adjust to the darkness and my brain accepts what I’m looking at, I wish instantly that I hadn’t come here.

My stomach twists before any thoughts really register in my brain. Unfortunately, by that time I’ve somehow taken three steps forward until I’m inside the shed, standing just past the doorstep as the door swings shut behind me.

I never should’ve done this.

The scent of both old and new blood slams into me, nearly making me stagger back with the weight. My hand is on theinside of the door now, holding onto the handle desperately, like it’s going to stop me from keeling over at any moment.

“Oh fuck,” I whisper, my eyes wide and roving over every inch of the shed. “Jesusfuck.”

This is where he chops up the bodies of the people he and his friends have killed. That’s obvious when my eyes land on the arm just sitting on the far counter built into the small shed. I don’t need to look at anything else. At any of the other pieces stacked or thrown on other surfaces, some of them half wrapped up in tarps like they’re going to be shipped out of here.

And I certainly don’t need to look at the chainsaw to my left.

But I do.

I step inside and turn toward it, my hands shaking as I lift them, fingers stretched out like I’m going to touch it to see if it’s real. And maybe something inside meneedsjust that. But I don’t try to pick it up. I don’t try to pull the cord to rev it, to make sure Jed was telling the truth in his chainsaw safety lesson. I just rest my hands on the guard, the metal cool under my fingers and slightly sticky feeling from the dried blood.

I expect to feel traumatized. Terrified. Something.

But instead I just feel…empty. I’m strangely closed off from the emotional part of my brain as my fingers trail along the surface of the chainsaw, over where the motor resides and back to the handle, where Jed grips it when he cuts people to pieces whether they’re dead or alive.

God, now I can’t help but wonder if he’s ever cut anyone to pieces while they’re still living.Thisis why I can’t kiss him. Why I can’t allow myself to enjoy his attention, or trust him.

This is exactly what I always knew I’d find.

The smell that’s been pounding against my skull really hits when I turn to the pile of parts. It’s easier that none of them are a face or a head. I’m able to imagine they’re doll parts, instead of what they are. But thesmell?

I don’t know how anyone can handle this. My hands clench at my sides, in my borrowed shirt that’s probably seen this blood so many times before. How many times has this shirt been covered in it? How many times has Jed used this shirt to wipe away blood splatter from his face or hands?

How many times has Jed done this in his life?

I can’t help the gagging that starts in my chest. I can’t help as fingers seem to dig at the insides of my esophagus, climbing up with nails digging into my throat as I clap a hand over my mouth to prevent the creeping nausea. My eyes water and I stagger back, hitting the side of the shed with the chainsaw that rattles on its altar behind me.

I gag, but somehow nothing comes up. I lock it behind my teeth, behind my palm and pressed-shut lips, and whirl toward the door. Slamming open the closed door and admitting sunlight into the shed that makes everything ten times worse.

And not just because Jed is outside the shed, leaning against one wall as he gazes casually up at the sun coming between the trees in shifting, filtering patterns.

He doesn’t react as I stumble out and fall to my knees to suck in breaths of cleaner air that doesn’t stink of old blood and bodies.

He doesn’t say a word when Igag, finally spitting up into the leaves and grass under my clenched fingers. It’s a good thing I haven’t eaten today, but the bile burns more than it ever has before as I wretch and cough andheaveout the smell that’s gotten clogged into every pore of my body.

“It’s the smell, isn’t it?” he asks at last, casually closing the door and pushing until the latch clicks. “Everyone thinks that it’s seeing the bodies that gets you. And the blood. But I know it’s not. It’s that smell you never really get used to.”

“How—” I shudder and wretch once more, back arched as I screw my eyes shut. “How do you stand it?”

“I’ve been cutting up bodies, or helping, since I was five,” Jed answers honestly. “I just don’t notice it as much anymore.”

Since he was five? The horror sinks in along with the words, and I find I have a lot of questions that I’m pretty sure I do not want answered. A five-year-old wouldn’t be cutting up bodies on his own. Especially if he was onlyhelping.

“Five?” I whisper, still hoarse. “But…why?” There are a million better things to ask or say or fuck, toscreaminto the woods and hope someone, even a poacher, hears me. But instead I’m asking why he was a childhood butcher.

Jed sighs and kneels down beside me, moving slowly as he pulls my long, tangled hair back from my face. I can feel him braid it gently, while kneeling in the grass beside me like he’s not at all worried I might puke on him. “Because my family are a bunch of monsters,” he informs me plaintively, gently tugging on the separated sections to braid them. “Because they’ve been butchering people for longer than I’ve been alive. Because we can’t choose the family we’re born into.”

There are so many implications in his words, but I can’t bring myself to face them. Not now. Not yet.

“Are you mad at me for going in there? You were trying to hide it from me, right?” I assume hoarsely, finally sitting back on my knees and finding that he’s right there, still holding my hair, one hand splayed against my back to hold me up.

“If I were trying to hide it from you, I would’ve locked it,” Jed points out after a few seconds of silence. “I’m not mad at you. Or even shocked you’re puking in the grass. I wondered if you’d come back and find it. Part of me thought you’d just go back inside, back to bed, but…” I turn to see him smiling wryly. “Having known you for a few days now, I figured you might end up this way.”