Growing into the Job, Post 626: A Hunt, p1 (Patreon)

“You know what the really fucked-up part was?”

Amelia waited. Patiently at first, then impatiently. She clicked her nails on her phone. They’d grown to three inches long, of their own volition, in the last fifteen minutes, like they knew what the night held in store for them. 

Barry, her cancer-ridden asshole of a stepfather, didn’t answer.

“Yeah,” she said, “That’s what I thought.”

The house was dark except for the lamp beside his hospital bed, turned low enough that most of the living room existed only as darkling shapes. The oxygen concentrator hummed beside the wall. Somewhere in the kitchen, the refrigerator kicked on, adding its little mechanical voice to the conversation. Outside, wind moved through the bare trees and occasionally brushed something dry to scrape against the siding. She should probably call the landscapers soon. She certainly wasn’t going to do fall cleanup herself. She hated raking leaves. 

Amelia sat down into the chair beside Barry’s bed, crossed one leg over the other, and began slowly painting her mouth cranberry-red. She didn’t need a mirror anymore. Or, rather, she didn’t need one for this. She’d gotten pretty good at lipstick.

“Like, okay,” she said - to him? to the empty house? - getting back to the topic at hand: last night’s stream, “the money was insane.”

She pressed her lips together. Once. Twice. <smack>

“Seriously, insane. I think those fucking goblins would’ve emptied their retirement accounts if I’d stayed online another hour,” she spoke, but then she waited. 

Barry breathed.

Hhhh.

Pause.

Hhhh.

“Which, obviously, I did.” Amelia smiled, and the bedside lamp caught her teeth. It had been almost twenty-four hours since Thanksgiving night, and the scratches visible on Barry where his pajama top didn’t cover him looked angry. Most were superficial. Some had already faded to angry pink lines. Others had partially scabbed over. There were many more beneath the blankets and bedclothes, though, deeper ones, across his chest and stomach and legs, because sometime after midnight Amelia had stopped being particularly interested in whether the marks would show.

She had turned the camera back on, for those ones. At first she’d only wanted to see what happened if she scratched him again. Would the same thing happen, each time? Yes. Then she’d wanted to know whether it mattered where. Then whether four nails worked better than one. Then whether deeper worked better than shallow. Then somebody in the chat asked how much of Barry she could cover before she ran out of room.

The goblins had gone fucking feral.

“I mean, you should’ve seen them,” Amelia said to Barry as she leaned forward, elbows on her knees. At six-foot-something now, the position should have made her feel absurdly large beside the hospital bed. Her knees too high, her legs too long. Everything about Barry was smaller than she was. But she remembered the way she felt last night, after midnight…so now six-foot-something didn’t feel so huge. 

Still…had Barry somehow become smaller overnight? Maybe he was, smaller. 

“Nine hundred eighty-seven of them when we started,” she told him. “Remember that? No, probably not. You were pretty out of it.”

Barry’s eyelids fluttered.

Amelia stopped, and for several seconds she watched him. “Barry?”

Nothing. She leaned closer.

“You awake?”

His mouth moved, but there was no word, barely even a sound. Just a faint wet movement behind his lips followed by another shallow breath.

She sat back. She thought. She looked at him. Then she leaned back in, putting the enormous bulge of her cleavage - framed perfectly by the neckline of her tight pink top and the structural battlements of the heroic undergarments underneath - right next to his sallow fucking face. If he had the strength to turn his head toward her he’d have the best view of his entire g-damn life. 

Amelia glanced down at him.

“You know I knew, right?”

Nothing.

“Your phone isn’t exactly Fort Knox, Barry,” she said to him, “I saw my cam page in your history.”

His eyelids moved.

Amelia grinned. “Oh, that woke you up.” She sat back before his eyes could open any farther, pulling her chest away. Why give him the pleasure?

“Couple weeks ago, actually, is when I looked through your phone,” she continued, casually, coolly, “Back when you could still hold the thing.” 

Barry breathed.

Amelia’s mouth curled. “So don’t act all innocent now,” she said, “You knew what I was doing down there.” Meaning the basement. With her goblins. And her nails. And her tits.

She paused, regarded him. She let that sit between them for a second. “I always wondered if you tipped,” she added.

His eyelids moved again. 

“Anyway. Nine hundred eighty-seven of you goblins,” she continued, casually, finally putting the tube of lipstick down on the side table, next to a plastic cup of melting ice chips, “By the time I shut it down for real, there were, like, three thousand people in there. I don’t even know where they all came from. Somebody must’ve clipped it or shared it or whatever. And squirt?”

Her eyebrows lifted. “Holy shit,” she laughed softly, “Best night I’ve ever had for squirt.”

The words hung in the darkened room for a moment. Did he know what she was talking about? Probably not. 

She reached over and adjusted the blanket where it had slipped from his shoulder. The gesture was practiced now. Surprisingly gentle. She had been doing this for months: blankets, pills, water, wipes, hospice aides, medication schedules…all the dull humiliating logistics of waiting for somebody to die.

Her nails looked enormous against the white sheet.

“And then there was the other thing.”

Amelia looked at them, her nails. She’d done them in a pale pink, earlier today. Feminine but deadly. She turned one hand slowly beneath the lamp, examining the long glossy points. Cute enough for work. Sharp enough to open somebody.

“I grew,” she said, plainly, as a smile came back. Not the one she used for the camera; this one was real. “I fucking grew, Barry.”

She stood. Even barefoot, the top of her head disappeared into shadow above him. 

For a moment she simply remained there beside him, letting him see her, or imagining that he could. The pink top she wore strained across a body that had already outgrown it and had absolutely no business still being inside it. Her shorts had become ridiculous. Her legs seemed to occupy half the room.

“Seven feet,” she said, “More than seven, actually. I don’t know. Measuring got kinda complicated toward the end.”

She glanced toward the ceiling. They were eight foot ceilings, right? She’d had to duck, last night…so maybe it was a lot more than seven. Anyway, she looked back down at him. “Every time I hurt you, I got bigger.”

That was the problem, though. Barry was dying. Which, okay, wasn’t exactly new information. There was an oxygen concentrator six feet away and enough morphine on the side table to make the point pretty fucking clear. But if this thing only worked with him, specifically, Amelia was on something of a deadline.

And that would suck. Not the Barry dying part. That she was okay with. The other part. What girl wouldn’t want to be able to grow and grow and grow, just from drawing some blood from some little worm of a male? She’d hate it if it only worked with him.

Amelia looked at him, thinking. Last night had proved something. Sort of. Hurt Barry = Amelia grows. Great. Very scientific. Nobel Prize shit. But it hadn’t proved why. Was it because Barry was Barry? Because he was a man? Because Amelia hated him? Because she hurt somebody and that was just what happened now?

There was really only one way to find out.

She had said it plainly, she had told him what she did. No goblins cheering. No Marisela standing behind her. Nobody telling her to do it. Just Amelia Ekland telling her dying stepfather what she had learned about herself last night on Thanksgiving.

Barry’s eyes opened - not completely, but enough for a sliver of dull, unfocused color to appear between his lids.

Amelia went still. And for once, she didn’t make a joke. Instead, she leaned down until her face entered the little pool of bedside light and his wandering gaze had nowhere else to go. “Hey,” she said.

His eyes moved, maybe toward her, maybe not.

Amelia smiled anyway. “Good,” she whispered, “Because I actually kinda want you awake for this part.”

She reached toward the side table, where beside the morphine, gauze and plastic cup of ice and water sat something that absolutely did not belong in a hospice room: a bright red lollipop, still wrapped. Amelia picked it up by the stick and rolled it slowly between two fingers. “Last time I took a lick of one of these,” she mused, “I got into a girl fight.” Marisela had slipped it to her earlier today, at the office. Amelia looked at the candy. Then at Barry. “Because guess what I’m doing tonight?”

Barry, unsurprisingly, did not guess. The man could barely breathe. 

Amelia looked at him for a moment. “I’m going hunting men,” she said plainly. Almost casually, really, like she’d told him she was going out for drinks, to the movies, or over to somebody’s house - not that she was going out with Marisela Vazquez to kill males, which was apparently a thing she did now. Or was going to do now. Whatever.

Amelia picked at the edge of the wrapper of the red ‘Fierce Fire’ BOOMpop with one nail, then shrugged and tucked the still-wrapped candy down into the formidable engineering project currently passing for her bra. She’d deal with it later.

“Marisela’s taking me. She’s a work friend. She says I’m ready.” She smiled at that…though ready for what, exactly, Marisela had been a little fucking vague about. Which was typical. Marisela could make let’s go get lunch sound like an invitation to join a secret society, and tonight she’d been even worse.

‘Wear something you don’t mind ruining.’ That had been one instruction. ‘And I’m going to do your makeup.’ That had been another…which Amelia had initially found insulting, but now she was kinda looking forward to whatever weird-ass goth shit The Harpy had in mind.

‘Tonight will be fun.’ That had been the last instruction. 

“So, like, I’ve watched her do it before,” Amelia continued, “Hurt people, I mean.”

Barry’s eyes remained partially open.

“Men,” she corrected herself without really knowing why, “I’ve watched her hurt men. She fucking guts them. But so far I’ve just watched. I haven’t, like, hurt anybody myself. Well, Angie would probably have some fuckin opinions about that. Maybe that was the lollipop, though. The point is, I’ve never actually, like…”

Amelia trailed off. She looked toward the dark window. There was the rat, obviously. That counted as killing something, but not somebody. And there had been times with Marisela where Amelia hadn’t exactly hung around afterward to check anybody’s pulse or look for some band-aids, because what was she, a fucking paramedic? But as far as she knew, she had never personally ended a human life. Or wounded a man. Not on purpose.

“So tonight’s probably gonna be my first,” she picked back up, playing with the neckline on her top, “Plus, I kinda need to know if it works with somebody else, not just you - the me-growing-when-I-scratch-somebody thing.”

She glanced down at Barry. “I mean, you’re not exactly gonna be around forever. No offense.” 

Actually, fuck it.

“Some offense.”

Barry breathed, maybe shuddered. 

Amelia winced, then chuckled at herself. “That sounded worse out loud.” Not that it wasn’t true. If hurting Barry made her grow because Barry was Barry, that was one thing. If hurting men made her grow, though? Hurting anybody? If she could do this whenever she wanted, to whoever she wanted…well. That was worth finding out.

“I just need to know if I should keep you around longer than I’d like,” she said. 

She expected something then. She wasn’t sure what. A sudden widening of his eyes? His hand twitching toward the call button? Yeah, I should unplug that. Some last little reserve of Stepdad Barry crawling up through the morphine and cancer and whatever-the-fuck-else was eating him alive so he could tell her no.

Nothing happened.

Amelia stared at him. “You hear me?”

Hhhh. Him breathing. 

Pause.

Hhhh. Still breathing. 

“I’m telling you I’m going out to kill somebody tonight, and see if it makes me fucking bigger.”

There. Still nothing. It was actually kind of annoying.

“Marisela’s gonna teach me how. She’s getting really good at it.” Did he know that already? Had she told him? It wasn’t exactly something you put on LinkedIn, Amelia supposed: Marisela Vazquez. Clinical Applications Specialist. Information Services. Advanced proficiency in Microsoft Office, Epic, and fucking murdering people.

Amelia snorted.

Barry breathed, and she looked at him again. “You know what’s weird?” she asked, not getting an answer, “I’m not really scared.”

That one was true enough that it surprised her. Because she probably should’ve been scared. She was going to get into Marisela’s car tonight, or maybe Marisela would fly them somewhere because apparently that was also just a normal fucking thing now, and they were going to find somebody who deserved it. That part had been important when they’d talked about it. Criminals. Bad guys. Men who hurt women. Marisela knew where to find them and she was going to show Amelia how to hunt one, how to catch one, how to hurt one…and then how to kill one.

Amelia looked down at her nails.

Three inches? More like four. 

“People fucking love these,” she said, holding them up for Barry, “They like when I break stuff, with my hands, or my tits. Phones. Furniture. But when I shred them with these? They lose their minds. That stupid cutting board I sliced up last week. Remember that?”

Probably not.

“I get requests constantly,” she continued, “‘Scratch this, Queen,’ ‘Cut that, Goddess,’ ‘Mommy please rip my fucking car in half.’” She rolled her eyes. “Sorry, but men are so weird.”

A beat. She wasn’t. Sorry, that is. 

“And its not just their cars. They want me to hurt them,” she said, “Like, all the time. You have no idea. They fucking beg me.”

She looked at Barry because, actually, maybe he did have an idea. Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Were you one of those?”

Nothing.

“Did you ever message me?” she asked the motionless, all-but unconscious man, “Like, were you one of those anonymous creeps that wanted me to talk to them about all the things I could do to them?”

His breathing continued. Hhhnh. Hhhnh. 

Amelia watched him for another second before shaking her head. “Whatever. Don’t tell me. I think I like not knowing.”

She regarded her nails, her manicure. 

“But they’d watch…you’d probably watch too,” she continued. Her voice had gotten quieter. “They’d watch me kill somebody.”

She knew it. Not all of them, maybe. Some would freak out. Some would report the stream. Some would tell themselves it wasn’t real. A bunch would probably jerk off to it and then write some big moralizing fucking paragraph afterward about how Amelia had gone too far, which, honestly, would be the most predictable outcome imaginable.

But they’d watch. Every one of them would watch. The viewer count would climb so fast she’d probably crash the stream. And the squirt…J-sus Chr-st. Amelia felt something warm and greedy move through her belly just thinking about it.

Three thousand last night, she remembered. At least half of them had shot their load to her. She’d urged them to do it. What would this do? If there were, like, Ten thousand? Twenty? What would Melissa get?

Amelia caught herself. “But no,” she said aloud, seeing how Barry’s eyes had shifted faintly toward her, “No cameras tonight.” She looked at the phone still resting beside her chair.

That was the rule - not Marisela’s. Hers. Something about saying it made her feel better. Stronger, maybe, like this wasn’t for them. Whatever happened tonight, whatever Marisela showed her, whatever Amelia discovered she could do to some unlucky piece of shit they found out there, she wasn’t going to spend the whole time checking fucking comments. She wasn’t going to wonder whether the angle was good. She wasn’t going to stop because somebody tipped two hundred dollars and wanted her to do it differently. Tonight she wanted to know what it felt like when nobody was watching.

Amelia looked at Barry. And somewhere beneath that thought, underneath all the others, was another one:

And then I’m coming home.

“No cameras,” Amelia repeated. Then she paused. “Not until I get back.” She frowned. A frown-smile, if that’s a thing. Barry would still be here. Oxygen concentrator humming. Ice melted. Pills waiting. The same ugly scratches underneath his pajamas. Waiting for her. Thinking, wondering when and what sh-

Something touched the roof. She stopped. That wasn’t a branch.

Amelia’s head tilted. Her hearing was really good now. 

<Click>

Silence. Then:

<Click-click-click-click>

High heels. Slowly crossing the roof above them. Amelia’s entire face changed. She looked toward the ceiling and grinned. “She’s early.”

Barry’s eyes moved.

Amelia stood quickly and started gathering her things. Phone. Lipstick. She shoved the lipstick into the tiny purse she’d left on the floor and then immediately took it back out because, wait, no. “She said she wanted to do my makeup. Apparently I need ‘furies makeup.’”

She made air quotes with two enormous pink claws.

The clicking had stopped, directly above them.

Amelia looked up, then down at Barry. “Okay. I gotta go,” she said, then took one step away. Stopped. Then she came back, closer. 

Barry lay exactly where she’d left him, swallowed by blankets, scratches peeking from his collar and decorating his face, eyes barely open. For just a moment Amelia stood over him without saying anything. Then she bent down. Her hair fell around them. He probably loved that shit, maybe how it smelled, or made a soft curtain blotting out the rest of the world, because he groaned. 

“Don’t die while I’m gone, okay?” she told him.

Then she kissed him carefully on the forehead. When she straightened, a perfect cranberry-red mouth remained on his pale skin. Amelia admired it. Last night there had been dozens. Tonight, just one.

“Good.” Satisfied, she picked up her purse.

Another sound came from somewhere above the house, lighter this time, followed by what might have been a laugh.

Amelia headed for the back door, to call her friend down off the roof and get into the basement before the neighbors saw. Behind her, the oxygen concentrator kept humming.

Barry breathed.

Hhhh.

Pause.

Hhhh.

Amelia was gone.

And on his forehead, his stepdaughter’s kiss waited for her to come home.

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