Page 9 of Monstrous Serpent

Motherfucking fuck.

And that guy? Does she know him or is he a stranger? Jesus Christ, is anyone using condoms?

I push my fingers into my hair under my hood and tug at the roots.

The girl in the glitter mask reaches out. “Hey, are you okay? You look like you're about to—”

I jerk back. “I'm fine.”

“You don’t look fine.”

A guy appears behind her. No shirt, masked, already sweating. He looks at me, then at her, then back at me. “Bro, if you're not gonna hit that, move. I've been chasing her for ten minutes.”

She whirls around. “You were not. I would've heard you.”

“You did hear me. You just didn't run fast enough.” He picks her up and she wraps her legs around him. They're against a tree before I've taken two steps.

Wonder who she's got waiting at home. Boyfriend on the couch, maybe. Watching TV, thinking she's out with friends. No idea she's in the Pine Barrens getting railed by a stranger after some other guy she just met turned her down first.

My teeth clench so hard they ache.

Was it just this once or has Cindy been—the whole time we were together—has she been—

My stomach drops. All those nights she canceled. The texts that went unanswered for hours. The slow fade I kept blaming on busy schedules and hockey and the tutoring center eating my time.

Was I really that fucking blind?

I'm the guy who notices everything. But I didn't catch this.

Any other night, I'd be halfway back to my car, breaking up with her over text, and talking to someone new by next weekend.

But Cindy lied to me. Used her strained relationship with her father as a cover. Even made me feel like it was my life causing our problem.

Well, fuck that.

I refuse to be the idiot in this story, so I run deeper into the woods.

It’s darker, harder to see. A low branch catches my cheek, the sting sharp enough to make my eyes water. I hop over another log, lifting my feet higher so I don’t trip over the vines on the ground.

She never asked me to come with her. That's the part that keeps hitting. Not the lying. Not the event. It’s that she never once looked at me and thought, Maybe he'd be into this too.

Because why would she when I'm the dumbass who takes her to the same Italian restaurant twice a month and thinks he's killing it.

Moaning cuts through the trees ahead. I ease up, moving quieter through the brush.

I swallow hard, my heart rate picking up.

It’s the asshole in the white mask. He’s maybe forty feet away, half his body hidden behind the trunk of a thick pine. His pants are around his ankles, hips snapping forward at a brutal pace.

I inch closer, the pine needles on the ground muffling my footsteps. I circle wider to catch a glimpse of who he has pinned against the tree, my heart thumping so hard I feel it in my throat.

The girl reaches up, trying to steady herself. The guy in the white mask wraps his hand around her throat. “Your cunt is so fucking sloppy.”

She moans.

Cindy.

I keep moving until my girlfriend comes into view. Her mask is gone, shirt ripped open, the fabric hanging off one shoulder as he manhandles her tits, smacking them. She wraps her legs around his waist as he continues fucking her.