Demordere

[Fenris]

Venetia knew, the moment people started talking.

She knew.

Not that you had to be a fucking rocket scientist to put it together. It'd taken about a day for her to get over the denial part of the stages of grief, a day spent in church, praying, every grandma and mom whose kids were grown or in college or middle school or elementary or a different high school or a different grade or just lucky enough to have blown off the trip coming by to give her parents the old don't worry, God will provide. It had only been a day, anyway. People were suspecting already, obviously, wasn't like this was the first time this had happened, but they couldn't be sure yet. Maybe they'd just gotten legitimately lost, somehow. Or maybe a regular maniac had held the bus up and drove it off a cliff and they'd find all the bodies in a pile of scrap metal. That would be pretty sad, right?

Better though, probably. No sin in being driven off a cliff. Scary but quick, also. Definitely better.

By the next morning she'd stopped bothering to pretend. Next came anger. She'd decided to stay with anger. Felt like the right place to be.





God will provide.

If it's in God's will, He will bring him home.

Our prayers will be answered.

Don't worry.

Don't cry.

Va bene.



She was tired of it.

Bea believed, of course. Bea believed every nonsense word that came out of anyone's mouth, let alone her mom's, because she was a stupid child and didn't know any better. Adi believed it, too, because she was a stupid child, too, or maybe just because it was easier to believe it when it was what everyone was saying. Ally stayed quiet because she was smart and she was scared and Vee couldn't really blame her for that. Vee thought about telling her the truth. Vee thought about screaming until her lungs were hoarse every time Mamma went off for the tenth time that day about the healing power of prayer but instead she went for a walk.

The neighborhood only got quieter as days went by. Lot of kids from George Hunter came from around here. Families shut the little ones away. Having fun in public seemed distasteful, somehow. Life went on behind closed doors. She listened to her music too loud. No one noticed.

Her brother was dead. She knew.

People would go on about providence or whatever but that hadn't stopped any of the attacks before now. They'd go on about escapes and rescues as though the last two abductions hadn't gone off totally smoothly. Other people being realists about the whole deal might think their kid or sibling or friend or whatever might be the one, might make it out with whatever scars a murder game would leave on them, and those people were all stupid, but most of them had a tiny chance of being right.

Dante had no chance whatsoever because he was an idiot. He was an idiot, and a pushover, and so kindhearted he'd been overcome with crushing guilt the last time he'd accidentally eaten a slice of pizza Vee'd saved for lunch. He would rather die than hurt anyone, let alone kill them, and she knew she wasn't the only one to think that, she knew plenty of families must have thought the same before the footage came out and they found out daughter dearest had killed eight people or whatever.

But they were wrong and stupid and they didn't know their kids. Parents never did. Parents never paid attention to anything.

Vee knew.



The second week at church was quieter.

The third, quieter still.

Some people didn't come. She understood why. There was a dark cloud hanging over the building, the atmosphere could be cut with a knife, her head felt heavy when she walked inside. Mamma hadn't changed except the way her voice shook now, how empty her smile was starting to get. Her sisters held hands and lined up behind her like a funeral march. Papa wasn't here. He was working, maybe. He always said he was working but he'd come home dead drunk at 2 AM while Vee had been watching a movie in the living room the other night and he'd begged her not to say anything and what was there to say?

The usual parade of well-wishers. Mamma nodded and smiled. Vee glanced at another family across the aisle dealing with the same, parents and three girls, and averted her eyes. She knew the Cortez's, a little. Their son was friends with her brother. He was gone. The older girl, too. Two dead kids in one family. Maybe one, if one if them got lucky. She didn't know them well enough to make a call on that.

She was angry, still. She was supposed to move to another stage by now, probably, but it was comfortable here.

Who was she angry at, though?

Mamma for misleading her sisters, came to mind immediately cause she was right there doing it right now, pray for Dante and we'll see him again soon. If someone set the church on fire, maybe. It was a coping mechanism or whatever, she knew, but it was evil. One day soon they'd still have to have a funeral and Bea would cry and ask why God didn't help and someone was going to have to tell her God didn't always listen because God didn't always care.

The terrorists, she guessed, though that was a vague kind of anger. She didn't know them or why they'd done this or what she was even angry at. It was like being angry at the ocean, or a tornado, or whatever. It wasn't listening.

Dante, probably. She'd be able to cling to some dumb vestige of hope if he wasn't the way he was but he'd given her nothing except pricking in the corners of her eyes every time she thought of his voice. Fuck him.

God?

Yeah, Him too. Wasn't like he was paying much attention.








She prayed that night, before bed, for the first time in a while.

She prayed that whoever murdered her brother would die screaming.

That much, she thought, God might provide.