She ran.
She ran even though her feet were probably bleeding, even though her lungs felt like they were going to pop, even though her hands were covered in blood, not all of which was hers.
That psycho bitch had bitten her hand, taking out a chunk of skin and left behind a gory mess, but the woman was startled and displeased with her choice. Almost as if Evan had tasted bad or something. Not that Evan was complaining about being spared by a fucking cannibal. Plus, the ensuing chaos had allowed her to get the fuck out of that house. The smiling woman’s arrival had lined up too perfectly with Evan’s escape plan, eliminating her possibility of exiting peacefully and quietly. Evan didn’t even fully understand what she had seen back at the house.
First, the woman was strong. Freakishly so. Evan was scrawny but scrappy, and the old man had been keeping her fed and relatively comfortable, so it wasn’t like she had been in that weakened of a state. When Evan had tried to barrel past her, the smiling woman had grabbed and held her back without even budging. The smiling woman was small statured and not without a meek quality, but in that moment, Evan had been terrified. That’s when that bitch bit her.
Second, the old man seemed to think this smiling woman was some sort of savior for him. After the woman had taken her chunk of flesh, releasing Evan’s arm in the process, the old man had dropped to his knees and started begging her to come back to him, that he had changed and was ready for what was next, that he had captured Evan in order to draw the smiling woman back home.
That was the word he used.
Home.
The smiling woman turned to the old man and spat blood and flesh in his face and laughed.
“For what? For you?”
“Yes, for me. For us. I know you left to go chase whatever, but don’t you miss us?”
She laughed again. A terrible, echoed laugh, like a crowded tunnel.
“You don’t miss me?”
“I don’t miss anything anymore,” she said with apathy.
Evan could see the frustration starting to creep into the smiling woman’s voice, but the smile never faded.
“Do you know the amount of power I have now? Power without fear, without neglect?”
This voice was different, agitated. Evan watched her shake it off , and her tone cooled again.
“I get anything I want, whenever I want it.”
“You could have had all of that here! You didn’t have to leave, you just had to tell me,” the Old Man pleaded.
“Tell you?”
“Yes! Tell me! Stop stonewalling me! Stop pushing me out, pushing me away. I just want you to talk to me.
“What do you think I did for years, huh? How about the things I used to tell you about, the dreams I used to have? Nothing from you.”
“But I love you.”
“What a stupid, useless thing that is. You love the idea of me. You love that I took care of you. You love that I slowly faded into the background of your passions and desires, keeping this house going while you got to chase whatever dream you had. You didn’t love me, you owned me. That’s really what you loved.”
“But...I did this for you,” he said as he gestured towards Evan who was crouched against the wall, hand clasped around the wound the smiling woman had given her.
“Did what? Kidnapped a girl?”
“No…well yes, but she’s for you!”
“What would I want with some random girl?”
“To…to eat? You eat them, right? The ones that change? I can make her change.”
“Did you fucking say eat them?!” Evan burst out of her cowered state, the idea incredulous. “Of all the fucking things.”
The smiling woman shifted her gaze between Evan and the old man. She sighed, rolling her eyes at Evan and directing her words back to her husband.
“As always, you don’t fucking pay attention.”
The old man looked hurt when she said this, recoiling from her words as he stood back up. Evan saw that he towered over the smiling woman, but he didn’t look like much of a threat to her. The blood rimming the smiling woman’s mouth gave her a horrifying look, and even though the old man was telling her he loved her, Evan could see something breaking in the old man. His plan hadn’t worked, and the woman standing in front of him wasn’t who had left.
“Why do you think I eat…people?”
“Because of this!” he shouted.
The old man stomped over to a desk littered with newspaper clippings and printed off stories from the desk. Errant post-it notes fluttered down as he shook the disorganized pile at the smiling woman’s face.
“There are stories. Over and over again. They seemed random at first, but I knew it was you.”
“Knew it was me how?”
He seemed befuddled.
“Because I remembered the thing, the... the… the thread lady.”
“Humph,” the smiling woman laughed at the old man.
“I listened!”
Evan saw the slightest break in the smile, the smiling woman’s lips curled like a predator before relaxing back over her teeth.
“Once,” she said, the passion was all gone from her voice. “You listened once, and you only paid attention once I was long gone. Do you know how many years I’ve been out here? How easily you could have found me?”
“I was busy…”
“Doing what?”
“Busy figuring out how to make it happen. How to make them for you. To find you, bring you home.”
“To bring me back? Did you ever think I didn’t want you to come find me?!”
“I didn’t—”
“You didn’t, what? You didn’t know? You didn’t think about anyone further than yourself?” the smiling woman interrupted.
Evan could feel the sharp sting of the words, the coldness in the smiling woman’s voice so divorced from the anger of her speech.
The old man took a few breaths, staring his wife down with broken eyes, hers raging fury back at him. Evan saw the frustration in her, saw the years of invisibility shedding off to show a woman stepping into her independence and power. Under different circumstances, Evan might have even been proud of the woman, cheering her on silently. Right now, she was more preoccupied with stopping the bleeding and getting the fuck out of this hell hole.
“I wanted to have something to give you. It took so long to figure it out, and then you didn’t come back. So, I started letting them go.”
So, she would have gotten to leave at some point, Evan thought to herself. She would have gotten to leave, but as what? The old man’s vague words and gestures left Evan feeling like she was missing an important part of the conversation. The smiling woman wasn’t as lost.
“You? You did this?”
The smiling woman was gesturing to the papers on the floor, her rage softening for a moment before hardening again.
“You had nothing to do with this you fucking idiot,” she spat, dismissively. “It’s not you. You got lucky.”
Evan looked down at the papers closest to her, the stories about missing people and strange occurrences. She didn’t recognize the titles of any of the sources, tabloid crap with gotcha headlines, but the stories repeated over and over. The old man had been searching for his wife in his own way, and Evan realized he thought he could bring her back by having something to offer her.
A meal.
The two were locked in a disconnected stare when Evan decided to make a break for the door, the smiling woman being her biggest threat. She was uninterested in what the rest of their plans were, and while the smiling woman had taken a chunk out of her, Evan didn’t seem to be an appetizing meal.
The smiling woman had left the entryway free, allowing Evan to crash through the screen door as she sprinted down the street. The asphalt was hot under her feet, and though she flinched every time her barefoot hit a rock or some debris in the road, she knew she couldn’t stop running. Evan took stock of the neighborhood around her as she ran, trying to mark locations in her memory so she could lead some sort of authority back here to drag the old man to prison for the rest of his life. For now, she just had to get as far away as she could.
Eventually, the pace of her run started to wane, and Evan took a moment to look behind her, checking for a couple of pursuers close at her heels, but no one was there. She was exhausted, blood streaming down her arm and dripping off her fingertips as she slowed her sprint to a stop. She stepped off the main road and onto a sidewalk, letting her feet cool in the grass, her lungs desperate for oxygen.
“Are you okay?”
The voice startled the already rattled Evan, and when she looked up, a little old woman was watering her flowers, the stream of water drowning a pot while she stared at Evan in shock and concern.
Evan traced the lady’s line of sight to her bleeding arm. Meeting the lady’s gaze, Evan shook her head weakly and collapsed in a pile on herself.
“Jack!” the woman yelled back over her shoulder.
“Jack?!”
“What?!”
“Call an ambulance!”
Evan sat still in shock while the man rushed out on his phone, surprised at the woman collapsed in his yard.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know, but just call.”
Ten minutes later, Evan was in the back of an ambulance being carted away. In the rear window of the wagon, she saw an old woman turn the corner of the street, a mess of blood coating her front. She saw the ambulance retreating.
The smiling woman turned and left.