The issue wasn’t that I hadn’t known what I was getting myself into; I’d gone in with my eyes open, or so I’d thought. It turned out that conceiving of the whole plan in theory, when the only image I’d had of Rose was the version of her—Tabitha—that Fox had painted in my mind’s eye, and dealing with the reality in practice were two vastly different things.
It had been easy to demonize and vilify the fictionalized version created from the tainted fragments of Fox’s memory and imagination, and revel in reaping revenge against her for everything she’d done wrong.
It wasn’t that I thought she was fictitious. I could see with my own eyes that she existed in the flesh in glorious technicolor. It was more that Fox’s account of her was so heavily warped by the tragedy that had ruined his life, that as someone who was slightly removed from that event, it was easier for me to see that the situation might not have been as black and white as it seemed to Fox’s traumatized mind.
The fact was, in the short time I’d known Rose, she didn’t seem like the vile and vindictive bully Fox has described. Nor did she come across as a remorseless monster. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe Fox’s account. I did, but I also believed that people could and did change.
Nobody was a better example of that fact than Fox himself. His transformation over the time I’d known him was total and dramatic. Everything had changed—his body, mind, and soul.
“It’s story time.” The metallic squawk of Fox’s robot voice brought my mind back into the room. “Actually, it’s movie time, to be exact. Sorry, I didn’t bring along any popcorn, but it’s really not that kind of movie. Nor is it the type with a happy ending, but then you know that already, being that you’re the star of this particular feature.”
He killed the floodlights, leaving Rose squinting into the gloom of the warehouse for a few long moments. Not that it was surprising—the lights had been dazzlingly bright, so our eyes would take a while to adjust.
Finally, Fox stepped out of the shadowy gloom, and I didn’t miss Rose’s gasp as she saw him. I was so used to the mask-and-cloak look that it barely registered as scary to me, but of course, it was to terrifying to the uninitiated. Rose clamped her hand over her mouth, presumably to stifle her scream.
“Because we like to do things a little differently around here, we’re going to start this tale at the end, instead of the beginning, because in some ways, the end was really the beginning. The beginning of the end, and the beginning of the journey that lead the three of us to this exact point. Right here. Right now.”
The projector we’d set up to face the plain white wall at the back of the space whirred to life. For some reason, just like the video he’d created to play during her lecture, Fox had wanted this one to seem like an old-school home movie, all jerky, and crackly, and with weird muted colors, just like we now used on social media filters all the time.
As the disturbing and distressing images flicking across the screen got uglier and gorier, Rose turned away, gagging and crying. I wanted to put my arm around her, comfort her, and reassure her, but Fox showed no emotion. Well, none that I could determine as I listened to the abrupt bark of his metallic robot voice through the mask.
“Look at the fucking screen. Now! You don’t get to turn away from this. You don’t get to close your eyes and pretend it never happened. Pretend you’re not responsible. I don’t get to erase all this and just forget it ever happened, and neither should you. Especially not you.”
She lifted her head reluctantly and angled it back toward the screen. “Good. Now open your fucking eyes, and face what you did. Face who you are. Who you really are, Tabitha.” As I was standing slightly to her side, I couldn’t see her face properly to know whether she’d done as she was told, but I took the fact that he carried on talking as a sign that she had.
“The thing they never tell you or show you about blood spatter in the movies or detective dramas on TV is that blood drips slow, but sprays fast. It is also incredibly dynamic. As soon as it leaves the human body, it begins to cool and coagulate, essentially thickening, while also warping under the combined influence of gravity and drag from the air it’s moving through.” Jesus. For a scientist, he could really paint a picture with words.
“That’s all before blood meets the surface it ultimately lands on—the properties of which can seriously affect the impressions left behind. If the surface it connects with has some bounce, it will affect the way the fluid splashes. If it’s rough or full of holes, it’ll change how the blood distributes itself. And while some stains burst on impact, producing a spray of disconnected droplets, others spread in spines that snake away from the bloody epicenter like skeletal fingers.” His words, combined with the images on screen, turned my stomach.
“But the thing they really don’t tell you about is the smell. When someone is shot in the head, the disgustingly visceral stench of singed hair and skin, fresh gray matter and coagulating blood is overwhelming. That smell took a long time to leave me. I literally smelled it every day for years, as though it was seared into my nostrils, just like these images are burned into my retina so hard, they’ve woven themselves into my DNA.”
This point surprised me. I’d known Fox since the fall after the tragic incident, and despite seeming a slightly odd pairing, we’d hit it off straight away and instantly formed an ultra-close bond. Then in the following years, when Fox had come to live as part of my family, we’d gotten even closer. I knew everything about him, and vice versa, or so I’d thought.
In reality, it was only in the process of planning his revenge on Rose that I’d found out that he had detailed photos of the scene, which he’d somehow managed to sneak from police records. How exactly that was possible for a fourteen-year-old kid, I had no idea.
When I’d asked Fox, he’d been first vague and mildly evasive, then he’d flatly refused to give up the information. I had my suspicions, but figured if he’d wanted to tell me he could have, and would have, in the intervening years. Instead of pushing for an answer, I decided to keep my mouth shut and my eyes open.
When I’d told Rose that if she played along she’d be okay, I’d been trying to reassure her, and I hoped it was a promise I could keep, but I was feeling increasingly unsure. It was the first time I could remember not being able to read Fox, and therefore not knowing what he was thinking or planning. A gnawing voice in the back of my mind told me something was wrong—he was “off”, but I couldn’t pin down exactly what it meant, or why I felt that way.
All I was sure of was that I felt a definite sense of foreboding, like something bad was about to happen, or, worse still, Fox had dragged me into this thing under false pretenses, and had nefarious plans he hadn’t let me in on. I hated thinking that way about my best friend in the entire world, but the reality was that I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever really known the real Fox at all.
“Still, all these years later, and under the right conditions, it comes back to me like it was yesterday, and catapults me back to that place of terror, confusion, revulsion and despair, no matter how hard I try to fight it. I’ll never forget the sight or that smell for as long as I live.”