It’s him.

If you’d asked me to try and remember the face off the top of my head, I’d have a lot going against me. It was just for a few hours. He was keeping his face covered. He didn’t talk much. And, frankly, I had a lot more kicking around my head at the time to really care about a guest.

But now, as he’s kneeling before me in the moonlight, it’s all coming back to me.

It’s him.

The pointy nose. The unnaturally large eyes. The malnourished cheeks. The wrinkled forehead. The graying tips of his hair.

It’s him.

It’s pr0c.

“Well?” I ask Dee. She hasn’t spoken a word since we left the restaurant.

She merely stares.

We’re standing out in a field. Me. Her. The murderer. Death itself. I hear the rustling of trees and the shuffling of grass. I can just about make out distant whistles. Nature’s eulogy. As I look back up, I see clouds gathering in the distance. The night will be anything but calm.

“Dee.” Come on. This was your play. Three months. He’s here. You know he’s here. You recognize him, too. Do something.

“This is a mistake.” the man says. Yet, the only effort he puts into the plea is just about the minimum needed to keep his mouth open. There’s no real resistance. I don’t think he’s even tried wiggling against the restraints. I’m not sure if the banging against the trunk was anything but half-hearted at best. He’s simply not surprised, is he?

Nah.

Nah, he’s been waiting for this for a long time.

How many bodies? How many sleepless nights? How many fucking text adventures?

Dee’s just staring at him.

Fine, then.

“You killed those women.” I tell the murderer. “Why?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His voice is shaky, but he’s not scared.

“The Barbie dolls you took apart. Why?”

“I—”

“Look. We’re not going to the police. This is the end of it, no matter what you say. You might as well make these last moments count.” I say it with no particular thoughts of murder running through my head. I just want to get a reaction out of Dee. What’s going on through her head?

If she’s offering me an answer, I’m not seeing it.

She just keeps staring at him.

And I realize, he’s doing the same to her.

“You’re surprised, aren’t you?” Might as well keep talking. This silence is killing me. “You took her apart. But she’s here, standing right in front of you.”

“I don’t know.” he murmurs.

“Don’t know what? What I’m talking about?”

“I don’t know.” he chuckles. “I don’t know. But it’s here before me. I must’ve finally lost it, somewhere down the line. I’m the haze again, aren’t I? None of this is real.”

“Hmm.” Dee slides her hands into her pockets, marching off to the camper.

“…Dee? Where are you—?”

No point. Don’t bother. She wasn’t ready for this. Just keeping talk to him. You’ve come this far. Might as well make it worth it.

“I assure you,” I tell him, “this is all very real.”

“But you have no face, sir.” he laughs.

“Funny thing is, regardless of what you see, I’d still say that, between the two of us, you’re the bigger monster.”

“Whatever, man.”

“You killed them.”

“Yeah.” he spits on the ground. “Yeah, I did.”

“Why?”

He shrugs.

You’ve gotta be kidding me.

“Why the text adventure?” I ask.

“To hide a secret.”

"What secret?"

"Defeats the point if I tell you, doesn't it?"

…That’s it.

I’ve run out of questions.

I never actually thought this moment would come.

I was fine with it never coming.

Because I knew, just like I know now, that I don’t care for his reasons. Or him. Or the woman he’d killed. The only reason we’ve come this far is because of—

“Dee?”

She passes by me without a word. There’s something her hand. From the camper? What did she—?

“Dee!”

She pulls his head back. The blade of the knife glistens for just a moment.

When the moment’s over, so is everything else.

He plops to the ground. Gargles. Twitches. But nothing more.

The knife falls to the ground.

“Dee.” I reach out to her.

She pushes me away.

“It’s over.” she whispers. “It’s over. We’re done.”

I look at the corpse. The knife. Her. “I mean. Yeah. It—It’s done.”

“Not just that. This. We. We’re done, Juice.” She looks at Death. Then back at my shoes. “I’ll be going now.” She glances over my shoulder. “Don’t worry. You can keep the camper. Not that it was mine, but. I think I’ll just walk now. Thank you for your help. For—For everything.”

The wind’s whistle turns into a howl.

“What?” I don’t understand. “What are you talking about? Going where? We’re out in the middle of nowhere!”

“I’ll figure it out.”

“What the hell’s gotten into you?”

“It was always going to end like this, Juice.”

“You’re acting weird.”

At long last, she stares me in the eye. “Weird? No, Juice.” she smiles. “No. This is me. This is who I’ve always been. And this is what I was always going to do. I kept arguing about it with myself, sure. I kept trying to figure out what I’d do in this moment. But I always knew, deep down. Because this is what bad people do. Bad, bad, reckless people.”

“You’re not a bad person for killing a—a—”

“Oh, Juice.” she shakes her head. “Oh, Juice. That’s not the point. The fact that we’ve come this far? Pretty much sealed it for me. Bobby was right.”

“No, no, come on—"

“Deep down, what I hoped, above all, is that we never find him. That way, I could at least tell myself to give up. That it wasn’t my fault. That I tried and failed to—to avenge Abigail. I could at least lie to myself and say that this—this body was now my responsibility. That I’d stay in it, for her, until we catch him. Like a plot thread in a TV show that doesn’t get to be resolved. Conveniently forgotten. But now I’m just a selfish thief. And,” she back at the corpse, “a murder, too. A murderer who might’ve just woken up in some morgue and will sneak out in an hour or two. And just do it all again, this time leaving no trace behind. I knew that was a risk. I knew it. And I still took it. For absolutely no reason. What does that make me, if not a bad person?”

“Abigail was dead either way. It was either letting the body rot or—”

“—Or having it be taken by some stranger.”

“Look, you’ve punished yourself enough.”

“Nothing is enough for what I’ve done!” she screams. “I don’t deserve any of this, don’t you fucking get it?! This—This body. You. Even existing beyond that jump.” She points at Death. “Weren’t you listening to him? Weren’t you fucking listening?! Don’t you know what I’m really like? Don’t you know the people I’ve hurt?! Don’t you wanna know why I was never reported missing?! Why I’m drawing a fucking blank whenever I Google my name?! Huh?! Why I gotta keep hoping that not only is someone in my body, but that they’re doing a better job?!”

“Dee, listen to me—”

“Stop calling me Dee! I’m not Dee! I’m Selene! Shitty fucking Selene! The big, bad, terrible Selene! The one who whines about everything! The one who—who takes people and drags them to the bottom of the fucking sea, just to see if they can go and drown with her!”

I can only stare at her.

“My boyfriend. The man I cheated him with. And you don’t even know about my parents.” she laughs. “Abigail. The people who will go on to see her in the background of photos for years and years and years, wondering if it’s really her. But it won’t be here. It’ll be me. The thief. The monster.” She clenches her fist, pacing around the body. “And then, there’s my newest victim: you.”

“You didn’t hurt me.”

“I literally dragged you to the bottom of a lake, you fucking idiot. That’s what the metaphor was even FOR. I—You are dead now because—”

“I don’t know if you’ve picked up on it, but I wasn’t going to live forever. And something tells me this ‘state’ I’m in was waiting for me.”

She shakes her head. And shakes. And shakes. And shakes.

Her gaze finally stops on the distant clouds. “You came out all this way. But you don’t even know me. You know nothing about me. And I know nothing about you.”

“Don’t do this.” I beg.

“Why?”

“I—I’ll be hurt. If you leave.”

“Is this really about wanting me as a person? Or do you just not want to feel lonely?”

“You’re my friend!”

“But you’re not mine, is the thing.” She bites her lip. “The truth is, you were just a means to an end. Just like a hamster needs someone to feed it. In the end, all the hamster wants is to keep running on its wheel. Squeak. Squeak.”

“You're just saying that to hurt me. To make yourself into something you’re not.”

“Squeak.”

“You’re not a bad person. You’re upset right now, and—and—”

“Like I was upset in the tub? Juice. I’m always upset. I always feel the maggots. I always feel like I’m a bad person. That’s the worst part about me. That’s the part that really sucks. On one hand, I tell myself this body is a gift I don’t deserve. On the other, I hate this body. I hate that it’s rotting. I hate that it’s not mine. I hate that nobody will ever fuck me. I hate that it’s punishment I probably deserve. I’m happy I’ve received some punishment. But the punishment reminds me I’m a bad person. And that the bad person still exists. It’s like a game of ping-pong. Whichever way you pick, I always lose. And it’s always like that. Always. Shit, to shit, to shit, to shit. Ping-pong-ping-pong. The only thing that changes is how well I take it. And you know what? I’m not taking any of this well anymore. And that means I’ll keep hurting everyone. Just like back then. Give me a bit. I’ll be right back on that bridge. I promise.”

“Don’t do this.”

She glances over in Death’s direction. “Because it’s written all over me. No matter how hard I try to run. No matter how hard I try to change. Isn’t that right?”

“That’s not what they meant.” Goddammit. No. No! “That’s not what they meant!”

“I don’t give a shit what they meant, because the way I heard it is true enough, anyway! And this—this just proved it.”

“Don’t do this, Dee. Don’t leave me.”

“My name is Selene. And this isn’t about what you want. Or need.” She looks at me. For what I know, deep down, is going to be the last time. “And no. There’s no right thing to say, no matter how hard you try.”

“We can fix it. We can make it better.”

“Ah. But then I ask you – when will you make it better? And you can’t answer that, because you don’t know. Even if you have the best ideas in the world, it may never be enough to fix this. To change what’s completely broken. So you stand there, dumbfounded. Because you want to be honest. Because you honestly believe in something that can never be. And I listen to your silence. And I feel worse. And I hate myself for asking. And you hate yourself for asking, because you feel like that's made it worse, even though you had no bad intentions. And just like that, I’ve done it again. Even though, you’d think there’s nothing wrong with asking the question – I’ve done it again. I’ve fucked up.”

I fall to my knees. “I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

She walks up to me, placing her hand on my cheek. My skin clings to her. “You’ll be okay. And—And, you know, I’ll be okay, too. I have to be. There’s nowhere else to go anymore, right?”

“Don’t.”

“You’ll see. It’s better this way.”

“This hurts.”

“I know.” Her lips tremble. “I know.”

Cling as I might try, though, her hand lifts. I can’t move.

Dee nods, smiling. She walks past me. Past the dead body. Past the camper. Past the field. Past the road. Past the reaches unknown to me.

Thunder roars in the distance.

Death watches it all. Can a being so far beyond my understanding feel what I feel? Can it muster the words I want to scream right now? Can it sense the need to help? The uncertainty of the words that it may say to comfort me? Can it figure them out? Does it want to figure them out?

It doesn’t matter.

They’ll just keep standing there.

While I weep with the Earth.

Alone.