Portrait of a Half-Empty Girl
The interrogation room was starting to feel like home. The metal chairs and matching table had become almost comforting and I had begun to find colors and shapes within the crevices of the muted concreted walls and concrete floors. I thought I was numb, but the somberness of the room left a wave of melancholy that wrapped around my frame like a blanket.
Tucked away into one of the corners of the ceiling sat a security camera, red-light flashing angrily at me. The detective was sitting across from me, one leg crossed over the other and her blonde hair pulled back tight into a sleek ponytail. Her pen moved effortlessly, almost mechanically, against the yellow legal pad placed in front of her. She said her name was Detective Karlsson when I was first brought into the police station.
Next to her sat a man, one whose name was something along the lines of Baxter or maybe Dexter —I had stopped paying attention the moment he followed us into the room. He sat slouched next to Detective Karlsson, his face red and wet with beads of sweat. He kept tugging at his collar, which looked to be too tight for his fat neck, running his hands over his thinning hair. His beady, suspecting eyes were trained on me; was he supposed to be the “bad” cop?
“Are you cold?” Detective Karlsson asked, pulling me out of my thoughts.
I realized I was shaking. I looked down at my trembling hands and bouncing knees and then back up to the detective before shaking my head back and forth. I wasn’t cold. Rather, my skin crawled as if millions of tiny spiders and creatures marked my skin as their home. I could feel their tiny legs dance across my flesh, marching up my forearm and over the sharp slope of my elbow onto my biceps. It felt so real that I had to keep looking down to remind myself that it was only my mind playing tricks on me. My dirty, caked nails raked across my skin, hoping to drive away the parade of bugs. It was clear that the LSD we had taken in the early morning, before our arrest, had yet to wear off; the severity of the situation was manifesting into a bad trip, one that was beginning to feel suffocating.
“Okay, Zoey. Before we get started, I’m going to read you your Miranda rights.” Detective Karlsson shuffled through her pages before her eyes found mine once more.
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to talk to a lawyer and have them present with you while you are being questioned. If you cannot afford to hire a lawyer, one will be appointed to represent you before any questioning if you wish. You can decide at any time to exercise these rights and not answer any questions or make any statements.” Her eyes focused in on me as she continued, “Do you understand each of these rights I have explained to you? Having these rights in mind, do you wish to talk to us now?”
I nodded once. “Yes.”
“Why do you think you’re here today, Zoey?” the unnamed detective asked.
“Because we killed Riley,” I told him, my features void of emotions, my movements focused on raking my fingers back and forth across the skin of my arms.
“Riley’s alive, Zoey,” Detective Karlsson said.
That caught my attention, halting all my movements completely. My eyes slowly lifted from arms, brows furrowed in a mix of surprise and doubt. Were they messing with me?
When we had left her body, we were all under the assumption that she was dead. Even once they had found us, cornered in the booth of a truck stop diner in Virginia, the thought of her being alive had never crossed my mind. Maybe it should have. If we had planned on the possibility of getting caught, maybe I would have been better prepared for how to handle this situation.
“Two hunters stumbled across her in the woods buried under sticks and leaves. But I think you already knew that.”
She was right. That was exactly where we had left Riley, shoved in a shallow grave covered with leaves, sticks, and topped with dirt. Skylar and I each grabbed ahold of an arm and pulled her limp body across the rough surface, leaves and sticks catching against her clothing and skin until we had reached the grave that Berith had dug. I remember telling him that I thought the grave was too shallow, that maybe we should dig deeper; but he told me that it didn’t matter, that no one came to this part of the woods anyway.
Apparently, he was wrong.
I looked back down at my bug-infested skin. I imagined them parading across my flesh, weaving through the hairs on my arms with tiny hats and instruments as they played a tune, one that was much too soft to reach my ears.
“How long have you guys been planning this?” The voice of Detective Baxter (or was it Dexter? I’ll just call him Detective B) was as breathless and sweaty as he looked and caused the bugs to scatter in different directions.
“Since June.”
It had been in the works for four whole months. Late nights were spent in Berith’s basement, riding off our LSD high while we talked details over empty pizza boxes and 2-liters as we passed around a bong. His basement was littered with the remnants of these nights, and the air was filled with a dread you couldn’t mask with your strongest air freshener.
It had started as a joke. In fits of giggles, in between bites of pizza, Skylar and I threw out suggestions of Berith’s next sacrifice. A hitchhiker? A homeless person? The girl that worked the counter at our favorite smoke shop? None of these suggestions had seemed to please him. At each of our ideas, his fists would clench until his knuckles turned white and the vein above his eyebrow began to protrude. He wasn’t pleased with us; he was desperate, on edge, in search for the perfect sacrifice, something that would surely get His attention, but Berith couldn’t seem to find the right fit.
Until, with short laughs still escaping our breathless lips, I suggested Riley.
It was as if a lightbulb had switched inside his head, excitement filling his usual darkened eyes. Berith grabbed my face between his cracked palms and planted a kiss on my lips before saying, “You’re a genius, Z.”
“You know, she’s been my best friend since the sixth grade.” It’s as if my mouth had a mind of its own. My words were slipping up my throat and past my tongue before I had the chance to bite them back.
“Who has?” Detective Karlsson asked, pen halting as an eyebrow quirked in my direction.
“Riley.”
I could see the judgement lurking behind the fat man’s eyes.Some friend you are, he’d say if he could.
“If Riley’s your friend, why pick her?” he asked.
“I didn’t,” I replied matter-of-factly. “I mean, I wasn’t serious.” I felt the need to defend myself against their prying eyes. “It was Berith who decided.”
“Berith?” Detective B asked. “Do you mean Samuel?”
“I mean Berith,” I told him. “He doesn’t go by Samuel anymore.”
“Why Berith?” There was a hint of curiosity to Detective Karlsson’s tone as she inched forward
in her seat.
According to Berith, he had been practicing Satanism since he was my own age, before he had become Berith. A few scary movies and his own burning curiosity sent him deep into the depths of the web where he stumbled across a web page. That night, by the swift click of his finger on the mouse, he found his calling on that page. He spent weeks performing rituals and calling out to Berith until one night, Samuel’s pleas were heard, and He had finally come. Ever since then, the vessel has been split between both Samuel and Berith.
If I was being honest, I didn’t believe Berith at first. I thought that maybe, he wasn’t all I thought him to be, that quite possibly, he was off his rocker. I had plans of phasing him out of my life until I saw Him myself. He came to me late one night and appeared in the shadows of my moonlit bedroom. He towered high above my twin-sized bed, sharpened claws reaching to graze the legs of my sheet covered-body. He told me things that only Berith would know and revealed to me his plans.
When I woke the next morning, I had thought I was dreaming until I clambered out of bed and discovered holes in my sheets, left by the tips of his pointed fingers. I kept that part to myself, though. By the skeptical glances I was receiving from both Detective B and Detective Karlsson, I knew that they were no believers.
“Tell me more about your relationship with Berith. How do you know him?” Detective Karlsson asked.
The night that Skylar and I met Berith is engraved in my mind, branded into my memory with hot coals. It was Sophomore year of high school, one year ago, and I had just turned fifteen. At that point in our lives, all three of us girls spent more time obsessing over boys than anything else. Our group-chat was littered with pictures of our celebrity crushes and heart-eye emojis; our sleepovers were filled with long talks of who we had crushes on and who we thought were cute.
Until Riley got her first boyfriend, that was when everything changed. She was the first of us to ever get a boyfriend, and she became so consumed with the honeymoon stage of her relationship that we rarely saw her
While Riley busied herself with her new boyfriend, Skylar and I found comfort in music and the boys who played that music. One night, when the leaves had begun to fall and the wind had picked up, Riley bailed on our girl’s night to hang out with her boyfriend instead. To make up for the loss of our precious girls’ night, Skylar and I thought that to cheer ourselves up we’d sneak out and go to a local metal show our favorite band was playing at.
As if it was fate, as if everything that followed was meant to be, Berith just so happened to be filling in for the bass player that night. I remember finding it difficult to pay attention to the music, my gaze kept gravitating toward him as if my eyes were magnets. I was fifteen, still a virgin, and knew little to nothing about sex. Yet, my hormones and curiosity were at an all-time high; all I seemed to think about in those days were sex, boys, and a little more sex. I spent sleepless nights with my hand creeping under the band of my pajama pants imagining what it would be like — what it would feel like if it were someone else’s hand instead of my own. Who would it be with? When would it be?
Berith was my awakening; he stirred something within me that left me feeling as if maybe he was the one, I had been dreaming of all those late nights. It felt almost too good to be true, as if this was one big joke. I was left in a trance, hanging on to each and every movement he made; I watched in awe as his tattooed fingers strummed against the strings of the bass and his dyed hair flopped over into his vision. I wondered what it would feel like to have those tattooed fingers strum against my prickled flesh or his hair tickle my face. He caught me staring — more than once — but I couldn’t look away, afraid that if I did, he’d disappear into the cloud of cigarette smoke that enveloped the stage.
Berith approached us after the show and invited us to smoke a blunt with him out back. Ever since that night, the moment our fingers brushed as we passed the blunt between us, he’s been our puppet-master, yanking and pulling our strings in whichever direction he pleases.
But instead, all I say is, “He’s our boyfriend. We met him at a concert.”
“And by we, I assume you mean you and Skylar?” Detective B asked.
I nodded in response as Detective Karlsson jotted something down on her notepad, and I couldn’t help but think of Skylar. Where was she? Was she in a room similar to mine? Next to mine? Were the bugs crawling across her skin too much for her to handle? Had she caved under the watchful eyes of her own detective?
She’d always been the weak one.
Detective Karlsson trained her eyes in on me once more. “Why Riley? Why her, Zoey?”
“She never liked Berith.” As if that gave reason for murder. “She said there was something about him that gave her the creeps.” I guess I couldn’t blame Riley for that. Berith was kind of creepy, but in a charming way that Riley wasn’t mature enough to understand.
“We could have all been friends,” I continued. “Berith wanted to like her —he did—but she wouldn’t give him the chance. She’d never say it, but I knew she was always plotting to tear us apart; she’d rat us out to her parents and give us lectures as if she knew what she was talking about. I mean, she was still a virgin! Did she really expect us to take her advice?”
“Anyways, Berith said she was a non-believer. Non-believers aren’t to be trusted. They’re against us. And because of that, Berith said she’d be the perfect sacrifice.”
“Sacrifice?” Detective B asked, a hint to his already wavering voice that I couldn’t quite pick up on. Was he scared? Was he surprised? “What do you mean a sacrifice?”
I had become so numb to the story that was my reality that it fell from my lips with ease, as if I had practiced it like a speech. Maybe it was the drugs, or maybe it was the effect that Berith had on me, but I could no longer find it in myself to care — even when I tried. That side of me was long gone.
I was worried at first. I had spent nights lying awake in bed, tossing and turning beneath my sheets, wondering if I could really go through with murdering my best friend. Sure, she didn’t like my boyfriend. But wasn’t that normal? It’s not like I was her boyfriend’s biggest fan. So was that grounds enough to kill her? She was there for me through all the trials and tribulations of my youth — my parent’s divorce, my first heartbreak, having to put my childhood pet to sleep.
I was desperate to find the piece of me that knew right over wrong, the piece that had begun to slip away. I knew that she would know what to do so I tried to reach out and pull her from the darkness. But it was no use. She was tangled among vines of evil far from my reach, unable to guide me. It was when I realized that she was gone that I knew I had to follow Berith. If I didn’t have her then, at least, I’d have him—and if murdering Riley was what he wanted to do, then it was going to happen.
“Berith wanted to make a good impression. He wanted praise. He wanted eternity. He wanted power. But no ritual or animal sacrifice, no matter how many we completed, seemed to satisfy Him. Berith said that we needed to step it up. That this time, we needed a virgin.” I paused, finding my attention drawn to the loose thread dangling from the seam of my oversized sweatshirt. “He could’ve chosen any virgin, really. He didn’t have to choose Riley. But I think he chose her because he didn’t like her. She was starting to cause problems between the three of us, and He knew that the best way to solve our situation was to simply eliminate the cause of the problem.”
Detective Karlsson nodded. This time, Detective B was scribbling something down onto the notepad. “Take me through that night, Zoey. What happened?”
“We took her out to the woods. Berith didn’t think that Skylar and I could get her out there, but we did; we promised her booze and said there would be boys.” I chuckled. Detective B looked up at me, beady eyes narrowed. He was judging me. “Booze and boys were all it took to get her on board. Kinda sad, isn’t it?” I continued. “When we finally got out there, only Berith was waiting for us. I think Riley knew that something was up and tried to get out. She tried making up some stupid excuse about forgetting something in the car, and that was when Skylar and I grabbed her and Berith started the ritual. He wanted us to be the one to stab her, to prove ourselves to him, but we couldn’t do it.” Memories of the night put a stop to my words, flashing across my mind like a motion picture.
I failed Berith. I had held the large kitchen knife in my hand, my knuckles turning a sickly shade of white as my grip tightened around it. I urged myself to move forward, to plunge the sharp end of the blade into her unsuspecting flesh, but I froze. I so badly wanted to be the one to prove myself to Him, to be the one to deliver the final blow; I craved nothing more than the look of pride in his eyes, flecks of green shimmering above me as he watched the red ooze from her wounds.
But I couldn’t do it. I wanted to be solely and unconditionally committed to Berith and His plan, but She wasn’t as far gone as I thought. She still lingered, writhing beneath the vines, reminding me of who Riley had been to me. I couldn’t look the girl I had once called my best friend in the eyes while I killed her. She had stopped me, and in turn, disappointed Him.
The presence of the bugs became more apparent now as I spoke; they jumped from my arm to my neck and slid down my other arm as if it were a water slide. Their tiny legs tapped against my skin as they made it their home, burrowing their heads deep under my flesh.
My fingernails raked back and forth against my skin, desperate to drive them away. This was not their home. It couldn’t be. As I retracted my hands from my burning skin, a trail of blood was left caked under my nails. I stared at my trembling, blood-stained fingers. It was as red as the blood that had pooled beneath Riley’s body. It was the red that had stained my white converse, even after I had bleached them. It was the red that I saw every time I closed my eyes.
“Zoey?” Detective Karlsson’s voice faded in and out around me. “Zoey?” she repeated, her emphasis breaking past my barrier. “Are you alright?”
I ignored her. “He had no problem with it, though,” I continued. “He just went absolutely crazy.” The words slipped past my lips lazily, a certain numbness to the motions as I trained my gaze on the cup of water in front of me. The water sat untouched, lying still in its plastic home. It was unbothered. It was free. It was peaceful. I envied that. “He wouldn’t stop.” My brows furrowed as the images played back in my head. I shuddered. “He was mumbling things under his breath that sounded like another language. I had never heardanythinglike it before. And he kept stabbing her, over and over and . . . .”
The images that raced across my mind evoked a sense of fear in me I couldn’t quite understand; it was a feeling I was not used to. Seeing Berith in such a state had frightened me,or rather, it frightened Her. It triggered the reality of what we had planned and executed to finally set in and for the first time in all those months, a feeling of doubt filled my gut.
“And then?” Detective Karlsson pressed, inching forward in her seat. Detective B mimicked her actions. Their movements drew my eyes back to them. “What happened next?”
I shrugged. “Well, we finished the ritual, buried her under some leaves and then we went to get burgers.”