Slay Bells Ring

Chapter Four – Kane

The only reason I don’t drown myself in alcohol the moment I wake up is because I’m not alone in the cabin anymore. Georgina refuses to leave. The woman wants to share the fucking cabin.

Ugh. Maybe if I’m mean enough she’ll go away.

She can’t be here. I don’t want her here. Georgina being here ruins my plans, and with how badly I want this, I can’t let her fuck it up.

It’s hard to tell time when the sun is hidden behind a thick band of snow-dropping clouds and you don’t have a phone to display it constantly, but I do my best to guess when it’s near lunch. When Georgina goes for some crackers, I crack open a new bottle.

I sit on my recliner in front of the fire. I had to push her sofa bed aside, which she wasn’t too thrilled about. I don’t go for a glass; don’t need one. I sip straight from the bottle, holding back any grimaces that try to surface as the searing liquid burns my taste buds on the way down.

The last thing I want to do is get to know her, but maybe in doing so I can push some of her buttons and get her the fuck out of here, so when she comes to join me near the fire, sitting on the edge of her pull-out bed, I say, “You don’t look like someone who vacations in a cabin like this.”

Her green gaze darts to me, already narrowed. It seems merely existing in her presence pisses her off, so I might be closer to her throwing in the towel than I thought. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

All it takes is a quick glance in her direction to know she’s not the middle-of-nowhere type. Her auburn hair is perfect in the way it falls around her face, styled with a few highlights here and there. Her nails are done. The way she walks, how she holds her nose up a bit when she talks…

Georgina’s not a nobody. She’s someone, someone who thinks she’s important. I can tell she’s not used to someone not giving a shit.

“It means,” I tell her, “your kind doesn’t usually venture out to these parts. You’re a city girl. I can tell.” I take another swig.

“A city girl, huh? What makes you say that?”

“The way you walk, the way you talk—hell, how you expected me to pack up my shit and leave when you got here. It’s obvious this isn’t your scene.”

She grinds her teeth. The way she looks at me, with those bright green eyes, makes it hard for me. It’s like she already hates me. Maybe I won’t have to push her much more to get her to leave. Simply existing in her presence is pissing her off enough.

Georgina mutters, “And what does that make you? You look like a drunk, not someone who likes being surrounded by nothing but cold and snow.”

“Maybe,” I offer, “I hate the holidays.” That’s not a lie. No family, no friends; it isn’t as if I’ve ever enjoyed Christmas—or any other damned holiday throughout the year. Each year, when this time rolls around, I’m reminded of that job and the kid in the closet.

So, no, I fucking hate Christmas.

“I hate the holidays too,” she whispers. “It wasn’t always like that. There used to be a time when Christmas was my favorite part of the year.”

I don’t care to know, but the wistfulness in her voice is such a switch from her derision that I find myself asking, “What changed?” When I look at her again, she’s staring at the fire, not at me. The orange light from the flames dance across her skin, reflected in her eyes.

As much as I hate her for interrupting my plans, I can’t lie and say she’s ugly. She’s beautiful, and I bet she knows it. Young and beautiful, she must be used to having the world at her fingertips.

“I grew up,” she whispers. “The magic that made Christmas great just isn’t the same when you’re older. Things change. You change. You get cynical and mean…” Her gaze shifts away from the fire, landing on me. “Why did you come here to drink yourself to death, Kane?” The way she says my name makes my skin crawl.

It’s like… fuck, it’s like she knows me. Like she knows something she shouldn’t. I don’t like it.

Now it’s my turn to look at the fire burning in the fireplace. My hand tightens around my bottle, and I go for another huge sip. I’m supposed to get under her skin, not the other way around, but that question nags at me. It really is like she knows.

Once my throat isn’t burning from my latest drink, I mutter, “I got older.” My answer mimics hers. “There was never any magic for me, but… I got older and things got worse. I thought things would get easier, simpler, but the opposite happened and I’m—” I sigh. “—tired.”

Georgina actually laughs at that, and I can’t help but glare at her as I seethe. “If you’re not tired, are you even alive?” she asks.

I lean forward and shake my head. “Someone like you… you wouldn’t understand.”

“Someone like me? You sure do think you know all about me. You took one look at me and think you have all the answers.” The smile she gives me then is annoyed. “You don’t know anything about me.”

I lift the bottle in the air, toasting her. “And you don’t know a goddamned thing about me.” I take a huge sip before, to my surprise, Georgina outstretches her hand towards me, as if she wants some.

Hmm. I guess I did eat one of her bars this morning.

A single eyebrow lifts as I ask her, “Are you even old enough to drink?”

She scoffs, “Yes! How young do you think I am?” Before I can respond, she leans over and snatches the bottle from me, puts her lips to the rim and cocks it back. Not more than a second later she’s recoiling and gagging as she shoves the bottle back into my hand, acting like she wants to be sick. “Holy shit. That stuff is strong. How does it not knock you out?”

If things were different, I might’ve chuckled at her reaction. You know, if I wasn’t a man set on killing himself. All I end up doing is shrugging and telling her, “I’m used to it by now.”

A while passes. Georgina doesn’t ask for another turn with the bottle. I think she learned her lesson. We sit there in silence, watching the fire behind the metal grate. I really do wish she’d take the hint and leave. Spending my last days on earth with a stranger is the last thing I want.

As fate would have it, she eventually breaks the silence of the cabin and brings up the one thing I don’t want to talk about: “So, Kane, what do you do for work?”

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

“You get fired or something? Is that why you’re here, drinking like there’s no tomorrow?”

Something in me snaps, and I get to my feet, towering over her sitting position. “I said I don’t want to fucking talk about it, and that means I’m not gonna fucking talk about it, got it? Why don’t you just mind your own goddamned business?”

Georgina angles her head up at me, unimpressed by my aggressive stance. “Hit a sore spot, I see.” The way she says it, so smugly, really grinds my fucking gears.

“You don’t know anything.”

“I might not know a lot, but I do know I struck a nerve. What happened? Maybe talking about it will make you feel better.” As she suggests it, she smiles like she’s glad she got under my skin, and it suddenly occurs to me that maybe she’s using the same playbook as me. Maybe this is all to annoy me so much I decide to throw in the towel and leave, hand over the cabin to her, and let her win.

No. Fuck that.

Fuck her.

Fuck all of this.

Looming over her sitting figure, I growl out, “The things I’ve done would make someone like you have nightmares for the rest of your life.”

Her gaze studies my figure, my closeness, and lastly my face. Georgina is slow to stand, mere inches away from me as she tilts her head back to continue holding my stare. “You don’t have to worry about me having nightmares. Maybe, just maybe, you should be worrying about yourself, because it seems to me you’re trapped in one of those nightmares right now, and you’re trying to avoid it by drowning yourself in alcohol. How’s that working out for you?”

There are a million things I could say to her. Hell, she’s tiny. She said she could take care of herself, but I bet I could throw her outside on her ass no matter what she tries with me.

But I don’t do any of that, nor do I say a single word more to her. My plan of annoying her to the point where she leaves backfired in my face, because the next thing I know I’m grabbing my jacket, pushing my feet into my boots, and taking my bottle with me as I venture outside in the brisk, snow-filled air just to get out of that damned cabin and away from that woman.

Is she my personal tormentor? I must have the shittiest luck in the world for this to happen.

I wander away from the cabin, drinking as I go. The air is cold and biting, but the alcohol keeps me warm enough. The blueness of the sky is completely hidden by thick clouds. Snow falls, adding onto the already-white landscape. The cabin, nestled inside a mountain range, has a small grove of pine trees to its southern end, but everywhere else is a winter wonderland of untouched snow.

It’s a perfect place to die, really. Wander off and never look back.

But if I wander off now and never look back, someone would know. Georgina would know, and even though she’s a stranger to me, this isn’t something I can do with anyone knowing. My death wasn’t supposed to matter. No one was supposed to be aware of it.

Goddamn it. The one time I want to do something for myself I get fucked.

I stay outside for a long time, way past the point where my bottle is emptied, its contents in my stomach. The wind whips at my face, biting at my bare flesh. I don’t know what I’m going to do, how the hell I can salvage this, but I do know one thing.

I still have time. The curtain didn’t fall yet.