Dead Screams
part elevenIn the middle of a forgotten scene in the pantomime of the Jezebel, Jax knelt beside his friend, shaking Dib’s shoulders hard, trying to get the golden eyes to open.
“Come on, Dib. Wake up. Wake up for me.”
“Bring him in back.”
Jax looked up, catching Nye leaning over the bar with a serious gleam in his mischievous eyes. “What the fuck are you waiting for?”
Nothing. Jax wrapped his arms around his unconscious friend and walked around to the employee entrance Nye helped open it for them, careful not to ram Dib’s head or legs into the frame or counter. Nye shut the door behind them quickly with a cautious glance around.
“I don’t understand what happened,” Jax stated, finding all the tables covered in glasses and liquor and deciding to lay Dib on the floor once again. “I was sitting right there. How could someone have put something in his drink without either of us seeing it?”
“Are you as gullible as he is?” The employee entrance locked with a slight click as Nye turned the chrome dial and began untying his apron. “You’d think anyone who got alcohol from a drug dealer would be just a little wary.”
“Fuck! What did you give him?”
“Just a light sedative, so we can get him in the jeep. I suggest you get his clothes off now, ‘cause there’s not much room in the jeep to do it.” Nye hung his apron from the hanger beside the door and grabbed for his jacket, slipping his arms through the sleeves that hung a tad too low and needed to be pushed up to his wrists. On the right sleeve was a patch with the Greek letters pi, alpha, and phi stitched across it.
Jax looked from Nye to Dib, his gut twisting uncomfortably as his throat constricted. “The trial’s tonight? Does it have to be Dib?”
“You know the rules. You wanna show your devotion to Pi Alpha Phi, you gotta betray friendship. And Dib’s perfect. We’ve already gotten Zim out of the way.” Nye knelt down beside him, heaving Dib’s torso off the ground and wrenching his tight T-shirt up over his head. “It’s tonight or never.”
Jax’s fingers began to untie the shoe laces on the sleeping teen’s feet. “We? You almost killed Zim. If that’s what you call getting someone out of the way, what’s going to happen to Dib?”
“You even think of chickening out now and you’ll be taking his place.” Nye’s acid stare penetrated him, showing proof of his threat with every syllable.
Jax took off the shoes as Nye’s impatience drove the older student to simply cut the skintight leather pants from Dib’s body. A thin trickle of blood flowed from his hip to his ankle on both legs. With shirt, pants, and boxers in hand, Nye stood, pocketing his knife. “Get him in the jeep. I need to hide these until we can burn them.”
Hesitantly, Jax wrapped his arms around Dib, heading out the back door to the club. The neon lights were a distant memory in the dimly lit back parking lot of potholes and shadows. Nye’s forest green Jeep was parked close to the door, the top canopy pulled off in light of the warm weather. It was non-discript, the same as any number of Jeeps parked in the darkness, except for the crimson dice hanging from the rearview mirror. Seven dots faced him as he opened the door and pushed the front seat up, making room to reach behind and deposit Dib in the empty back on the cigarette burnt seat. Whether a play of the street lamps or a sign of awareness, Dib’s eyelids fluttered, his mouth perking into a frown. Hope rose, if only for a moment. Jax looked behind him, checking to see if Nye had exited the Jezebel as well.
/If he wakes up, he can make a run for it and it won’t be my fault. There has to be a way out of this./ Jax gently slapped Dib’s face, trying to shock him into consciousness. /Come on, Dib. There’s only so much I can do. You’ve gotta get up..../ he could hear the back door of the Jezebel open, the rusty hinges singing their off key song. His hopes fell, finding solitude in the void of dilemma. There was no more room or time to change course. Fate had chosen his path and it lay in Nye’s malicious hands.
Speak of the Devil and in he walks. Jax could almost feel Nye’s presence at his side, a cool static pull that sent shivers up and down the back of his neck. He turned his head, his eyes watching the older student and his movements. He held out a syringe full of a clear liquid, tapping it to get the bubbles out.
“What is that?”
“Expensive.” Nye pushed him out of the way, reaching through the narrow doorway and grabbing Dib’s arm, pushing the needle through the thin skin at the inside of his elbow. He emptied he syringe into the unconscious body, Dib’s eyes fluttering again at the intrusion.
“Why do you have to give him anything?” Jax was facing away from the Jeep, having never been very strong around needles. He could hear Nye pushing the driver’s seat back. The click of metal falling into place echoed.
“You gonna play stupid all night long? You drug him up so that he doesn’t remember who did it. Even if he does, no cops are gonna take a stoner’s word over someone perfectly clean. It’s insurance.” Nye slid into his seat, slamming the car door and pulling his seat belt over his chest. “Get in.”
His tennis shoe’s made a slight squeak on the foot rail, but otherwise carried him silently into the forest green Jeep with the body in the back. Nye didn’t even wait for Jax to put his seatbelt on. The car peeled out, shooting into traffic around two corners and into the stretch of stars, stoplights and street lamps. Orion looked down from his heavenly post, silent and observant, but unable to intervene as the green Jeep sped off like a comet with dust in its trail and empty streets to shoot endlessly across. The yellow stripes almost seemed solid down the center of the asphalt roads. It was like sailing over a black river, with yellow fish skipping beside the boat. Jax let his arm dangle out the side of the car, his fingers tracing the wind as his mind wandered to the surroundings rather than the present activities and those that would transpire later. The moon looked like a ghostly galleon, floating on the backs of mortality, laughing at what must have been only a second in its lifetime, watching the feeble mistakes of people who would pass in the blink of an eye. For a moment, Jax could believe whatever happened would make little difference in the broader scope of life. In the end, what was one person? But in every moment afterwards, the same thoughts haunted his mind. What was one person to the people who loved them? And what was one person to themselves? Everything. Even the means to an end.
His head began to ache, whether from the cold wind blasting against his temples or the deep sinking feeling in his chest. “Where are we going?”
Nye’s cocky grin was almost unbearable. “Alpha Omega.”
“The sorority?”
“The yin to our yang.” Nye flipped off an early morning jogger in a yellow jumpsuit. “Bunch of bible pushing prudes living in their homemade convent. They could use the excitement.”
Jax’s questions were detoured by a rustling behind him, both his and Nye’s attention going to the back seat.
Dib had curled up on himself, his lips moving with a barely audible whimper. It was hard to tell if he was aware or just dreaming, if he was squinting from lack of glasses or if his eyes were squeezed shut to block out the nightmares.
“Well, well, well. Sleeping Beauty decided to join us.” Nye’s foot pressed harder on the gas, shooting across the intersection as the light went yellow. “How’s he doin’?”
Jax swallowed the lump in his throat as he leaned between the front seats, putting himself halfway between the stick shift and the small area allowed for back seat passenger’s legs. He could see tremors racing over Dib’s naked flesh as he shivered in the cool breeze, his lips a pale shade ranging between purple and mauve. They moved in the same sequence as he muttered his mantra of security. Jax leaned back as far as he dared, trying to make out what he was whispering.
“NothingcanhurtmeZim’llsavemenothingcanhurtmeZim’llsaveme....”
“What’s he saying?”
Jax shook his head. “It’s...not important...” He lifted a hand, pressing it to Dib’s taut brow. “I’m so sorry, Dib,” he whispered.
“DON’ TOUCH ME!! YOU AREN’T ZIM!!”
“FUCK!” The car swerved at Dib’s outburst, Nye driving into the opposite lane of traffic and swaying back into the correct flow with only a few more expletives and honking white headlights. “What the fuck was that?”
“LEAVE ME ALONE!”
“I’m sorry! I didn’t do anything! I swear!” Jax felt Nye’s hand grip the back of his shirt and pull him back to his seat.
“Shut him up!” Nye barked. “He’s gonna get us caught!”
/Good./ Jax nodded, despite his internal glee, turning back around. “Dib, it’s okay! Be quiet! Shh!”
“Not like that!” Nye reached blindly over to the passenger side of the Jeep, his hand fumbling with the glove compartment. It opened, spilling an assortment plastic wrapped substances and cigarette cartons. A few pairs of gloves and a roll of duct tape were stashed in the back. “Get those. Put the gloves on first then shut his trap.”
Jax complied automatically, snapping the latex over his cool flesh and biting into the strip of duct tape he pulled free from the roll. Dib’s hollering became futile muffles under the silver colored adhesive strip, lost in the screaming wind over the Jeep.
They drove on for endless moments, uninterrupted, the night eternal and annoyingly still. Past the city and into residential areas the traffic became nonexistent, the stars their only companion on their twilight ride. Cars were parked in the streets while driveways remained clear to make room for play under the basketball hoops. The lawns glowed blue in the moonlight, each car standing guard over their owner’s property like glowing-eyed dogs. The real pets slept indoors, their shadows seen in the wisping curtains, curled up near the windowpanes.
It was quite possible to say Jax had never seen this part of the college town; his exploits only reached as far from campus to the local club scene. He knew Alpha Omega despite this, just by the look of it: three wooden crosses erected before a tall two-story building. The car came to a full stop across the street from it, the engine kicking out and leaving only the song of the crickets to play in their ears as well as the muffled cries in the backseat.
“What now?” Jax asked, even though he was pretty sure what he was supposed to do just looking at the house.
Nye took his ignorance with a grain of salt, reaching under his seat and pulling a very long line of coiled rope, looping it over his shoulder and putting the car keys in his pocket.
“Grab Dib and follow me,” he instructed.
The doors of the Jeep opened with a slight squeal, bouncing with the lost weight as they both exited the vehicle. Jax pushed back his own seat and pulled his wriggling friend out, while Nye trekked up the sorority’s yard to scope out the scene.
It seemed like so little time had passed, even though time slowed to a waltz. Or perhaps it was the other way around. Before he knew it, Jax stood looking at the wooden crosses, his eyes stuck on the form tied to the one of the right. It had seemed to take forever to get him up there; the wooden stakes were almost eleven feet tall to where the horizontal bar connected. First a rope around Dib’s waist to hoist him up, then many ties passing the rope back and forth under his arms and around the crossbar until his arms were nestled against the harsh wood. Then around and around, his body coiled in the rope to keep his trashing legs at bay. Dib looked like a meal trapped in a snake’s grasp, or perhaps a sacrifice to some Greek god. Nye’s god. Pi Alpha Phi. And, Jax thought with a shudder, his own god now.
Nye lit a cigarette, the reddish orange glow burning the night’s darkness. “How does it feel to hang an angel?”
Jax’s cold stare was no match for the smoke-blowing demon’s characteristic cool. Perhaps in the most intelligent move he’d made all night, Jax retreated to the Jeep.
Nye’s eyes never left the golden gaze that looked down at him from the cross, glaring with tears and screaming with a voice unheard. He took a drag from his cigarette, a pale smile alight in the moon’s glow.
“Friendship doesn’t amount to anything in a world run by greed and self gratification. Remember that, Dib. Everyone has a pretext.” Nye’s cigarette hit the soft dew crested grass, rubbed and extinguished by his booted foot.
In the remnants of smoke, in the dust of the Jeep’s retreat, and under the careful watch of Orion, Dib stopped screaming.