Sociopaths In Love by Andersen Prunty Read Free Book Online

middle of nowhere along
with a bunch of other naked and rotting corpses. And, Erica
thought, maybe that was where the despair came from. It was like,
since there wasn't a single dead body, they were further purged of
identity. Like a psychopath or a serial killer would most probably
use a single body for some sick or disturbing purpose, but these
were just piled there, useless, something to be gotten rid of.
Which possibly begged the question: Why did they die in the first
place?
    Another thought struck her.
    Nothing was keeping her here. She didn't
know how long Walt and the Boys would be gone but her car was right
out there and, even if Walt hadn't left the keys in the ignition,
she was sure she could become sufficiently lost in the woods in a
short period of time. So lost they would never be able to find her.
And, after all, this was Missouri, and they were near St. Louis,
not exactly the Canadian tundra or something. She wouldn't have to
wander that far before she found some sign of civilization.
    But she knew she wasn't going to leave.
    You're here because you want to be here.
    She didn't know how comfortable she was
about accepting that thought. Accepting that thought was to somehow
accept a shred of responsibility for everything that had happened
up to this exact point in time: the death of Granny, the dead dog
burned to blackened bone and sinew, the pile of nameless rotting
corpses lying in a black puddle of ooze, and . . . and
whatever was going to happen.
    What's going to happen?
    Something terrible. Or
something fabulous. Or both. Did everything have to be either/or?
What if something was beautiful to her but terrible to the person
it happened to or somebody else? Was that good or bad? Was it
good and bad? Did
it just, in the grand scheme of things, even out? Was there even a
grand scheme of things? She doubted it. It was impossible to know
what another person felt. She could speculate and hypothesize, but
why waste the brain space? She was left with nothing to arrange her
perceptions of the world except the gauge of her own wants and
desires. This would make her happy. This would make her sad. But that only applied to
things happening to her. Another person's happiness would not make
her happy. Another person's sadness would not make her sad. She
opened the cooler and took out a couple of beers, swimming in icy
cold water. Something still held her back from buying into Walt's
philosophy completely. What was it? Compassion? Empathy? Were those
the same things? In order to take everything she wanted and do
everything she wanted to be happy, she felt like she would have to
lack compassion for the feelings and lives of others. It seemed an
impossible notion.
    She tried to shake the thought away, at
least for now. In its current agitated and alcohol-muddled state,
it would be impossible to draw any kind of resolution from the
random thoughts she had. As if to prove her point, she reminded
herself what she had come into the barn for and that her mind had
led her into some kind of half-witted ethics class. A deep breath.
Beer. Dry paper. Get back to Dawn. Push everything else to the
black space of the cave. That was where thoughts like that were
supposed to hide. Nothing could hide under this fluorescent glare.
It shined the thoughts away. It had purpose. Like it dissected
everything and put it on display so you could see how useless it
was. It turned everything into a joke or a commodity or something.
A naked corpse and a BMW (probably stolen) became equal.
    Deep breath.
    She stared at one of the lights, let it
scrub her brain, listened to the buzz humming through her
bones.
    Cradling both beers in her left arm, she
grabbed a thick newspaper and headed back outside. She walked in
the general direction she remembered until she heard Dawn moving
around and smelled the lighter fluid fumes.
    As Erica approached the other girl, Dawn was
just finishing her cigarette. She took the last drag and tossed it
onto the glistening