I swung at the Eye For An Eye's torso, hoping to make contact-- and I did, whack after whack after wretched whack. It wasn't focusing on me, at all. It had already killed me. Twice. It had better things to worry about, like Blanche, now. I thought it would have been Ethan, but apparently it was Blanche who had the stink of insecurity on her. 

Or maybe it was that the girl still inside the monster wanted her revenge. I don't know. Don't ask me. I couldn't tell you anything about its intentions, especially when I was so blinded by my own. 

Every blow was like a sob. Each splash of blood was like oil popping out of a pan. It was chunky. It was warm. I didn't expect it to be warm.

With one of its four arms, it lashed out, completely out of nowhere, and grabbed me by the wrist. Bony fingers bit into my flesh. They twisted until I physically couldn't keep my axe without breaking something or some part of me. I was forced to drop it. There was no other choice. 

While I stepped back to pick the weapon back up or move to using the gun or doing something useful, things got worse. The Eye For An Eye slammed its hands, all four of them, into Blanche's head. Something cracked. I think it was bone; almost immediately, Blanche went down. Her head was shaped oddly now, almost flat on one side. The wound that caused her death was exposed and as bloody as ever. She was still alive, though (or undead), and there was a particular anger in her eyes and on her rage-curled lips. 

And then there wasn't. The anger was gone. Her eyes were glazed over. There was no light behind them at all. I thought I knew what was happening: like it had stopped me in my tracks so many times before, it seemed to be able to control Blanche's body. It must have been trapping her, then. I assumed wrong. This time was worse than before, since it wasn't like she was just frozen to the spot.

No, she wasn't.

Blanche got up.

With her firsts balled and her machete sticking out of her thigh like a skewer in a kebab, Blanche stood. Her movements were jerky. Her movements were unnatural. Blanche turned deliberately toward Willa, tearing the blade from her undead flesh as she did, shoulders hunched like a slasher killer.

The problem was, Willa was in the middle of hastily removing the more restrictive parts of her hockey-based armor. She didn't see what was coming for her. How was she supposed to? 

And I could have protected her. I could have kept Blanche's hands from wrapping around her neck. I could have stopped her in her tracks. I could have taken the beating. 

But, then, I couldn't have. The Eye For An Eye was coming after me, and I was preoccupied by trying not to die. In the back of my mind, I found it odd that the Eye For An Eye wasn't going after Ethan at all. That thought was quickly banished from my already-clouded mind by a hand sticking itself into my middle. It grabbed hold of the exposed bone there and, in a way that lifted the bottom of my shirt, the Eye For An Eye lifted me into the air. Once, twice, three times it shook me-- then slammed me on the ground like a child trying to break a dollar store babydoll.

It didn't hurt my body as much as I thought it would. Some of my bones broke in a way that made it harder to stand, but it meant as much to me as getting scratched by my own fingers. I landed flat on my back, with errant pieces of hay bale breaking my fall. It was like the anger overshadowing my mind was protecting me. Or maybe it was the whole undead thing working its magic.

And why shouldn't it have? It was the least my body could do for me, after betraying me so many times. It was the least the Eye For An Eye could have done, given how many times it sent me to the great big DMV in the sky.

I was distracted by what was happening to me, but I could see out of the corner of my eye that all of Willa's attempts to get away from Blanche were futile. Blanche was unrelenting. Her fingers creaked under the effort, but she didn't seem to care, even as Willa tried desperately to claw her off. Since Willa was still alive, I knew that she could still be killed. And that was bad.

I was caught between a rock and a hard place. The Eye For An Eye was about to turn on Ethan. It was a split-second decision, but I chose Willa in the end. I think I always knew I would.

I grabbed Blanche's shoulders and tried to pull her back. It was like some obscure, undead strength was allowing her to keep her vise grip on Willa's throat. I could see the fear in Willa's eyes and the imminent passing out as I pulled again. 

Pulling didn't seem to be doing the trick. As much as I hated to do it (and I did; my stomach would have turned if it could), I raised the ax and took it to Blanche's arm. The sound of bone cracking at the wrist was hard to bear. The splintering was worse, when the bone chipped and snapped through unbleeding skin.

It worked, though. I got what I wanted.

Recognition came back to Blanche's eyes. She let go of Willa.

And there was shame there, in realizing what she had done. In realizing what she had been on the brink of doing. In hearing Willa, hunched over, gasping and sputtering and trying to get air back into her lungs. Blanche knew what she had done, and I knew she knew I knew it, too.

Back to the fight. There was no time to look at Blanche, staring at her hands and broken wrist. There was no time to comfort Willa. The Eye For An Eye was still around; in a snap judgment, I turned on my heel to jump back into it.

I didn't have to go far. It was right up on me. I could feel its breath on my neck. Whirling to face it, I drove my ax into its arm. I wasn't able to make it glow. That took intention. This was pure panic, pure rage, pure I-am-going-to-drive-this-ax-into-your-arm. When the black blood spilled out onto me, I saw red.

There was nothing holy about what I did. There was nothing Christ-like about that rage, nothing transcendent about me losing my head and going insane on a monster that was also as I knew in the back of my mind was just a girl. I wasn't going to count every blow between us, every time it picked me up and held me over its head, every time it disintegrated into the ground and tried to leave.

Well, I stopped it. I stopped it. By fists, by ax, by my foot in its chest and a hand on a bony limb, I hacked it apart. Though the spiral of girl flesh. Through the intestines-- my intestines-- wrapped around its neck like a popcorn garland or Mardi Gras beads. Through the pink nightgown and the ribs. I cracked it open like a crab (I had never actually eaten crab, but I assumed that's how you would crack one open) and I kept going until the shrieking of other people's voices caught up to me.

"Eve. Eve. Stop." Willa's hands tugged at my shoulders, trying to still me. That, of all things, made me snap out of my rage and realize where I was and what I was doing.

Oh. Oh. Oh, shit. I dropped the ax and fell back on my legs-- only something it felt like something in there was broken. When did it break? And what did I do?

"Why did you stop me? It's not dead. The Eye For An Eye isn't dead yet, why did you stop me--"

"Look." Willa's arm came over my shoulder to point at the space in front of us, and there it was.

A fleshy pink arm.

A fleshy pink arm coming out of the chest cavity I had just opened up. 

A fleshy pink arm covered in black goo, scrambling for purchase, trying to pull itself out.

Blanche was next to me. When did she get there? Had I really missed so much when I blacked out with rage? She reached out a single hand to help whatever it was out. That was the kindest I had seen her be. Maybe something about being taken over had knocked something loose in her, just like what I had done knocked loose a sense of guilt, remorse, and the loss of control that made my whole head and body numb. Blanche grasped that hand all the same, and pulled.

Out of the chest cavity, like a baby being born, like a corpse dredged from a lake, came a girl. She was a little overweight, with frizzy blonde hair kept down by black blood, acne mottling her cheeks, and eyes all bleary at the sudden light-- wounds on her wrists, how could I ignore them-- and there she was. Cassie Wilder. Dead and undead.

And the Eye For An Eye was gone. It was dead. It was just a husk of flesh on the ground that filled me with immeasurable disgust, dread, and an odd sense of curiosity that broke through the rage comedown. As soon as Cassie was out of the shell, born as a baby chick in late October, she looked around, and I saw. I saw her. And I saw what she had done.

And I felt the anti-climax and felt nothing at all. But Cassie was clearly seeing, blinking, looking around with wide eyes. She asked no questions. She expected no answers. 

Blood, black and chunky, was all over my hands and my axe. I fell to my knees in front of the felled body of the Eye For An Eye.

If this was the end, then why didn't it feel like it? Why did I feel the same as I did before? Why had nothing about me changed at all, in any way? Why had I not changed?

There was something happening in front of me that I couldn't quite see through the hair hanging in front of my face. It had broken free of the braid Rosie put it in during some of my downtime earlier. I could tell, though, that someone was groaning and something was coming out of the carcass on the hay-covered ground in front of me.

I lifted my head to watch Blanche approach with grass-stained knees and blood-soaked hands. She looked down for one second. Shock covered her like a blanket the next. It was odd enough to see, but it was even more odd when she opened her mouth and asked, "Cassie? Is that you? What the hell is going on here?"

Ethan popped up off the ground where he was knocked over and splayed out and, blood and mucus oozing from his flaring nostrils, scampered over. "Oh! It looks like she was in the monster's body! That's so interesting! I wonder how that works. Is it, like--"

Blanche smacked him between the chin and the neck. "Shut up." Then she turned back to the corpse and held out a hand as if to help whoever (or whatever) was in there to stand on their own two feet.

A hand, shaking, pulled through the gristle, grime, blood, and thin skin and took Blanche's. When Blanche pulled her up, there she was, covered in black blood and with two deep cuts on her undead wrists. Cassie wasn't what I expected her to be. She was plump, with a face that could have been pleasant and watery blue eyes.

"I-- I'm sorry, Blanche," she said. Her voice was warning and thin, like watered-down syrup or a small, fragile bird with a broken wing.

"No-- don't be. It was my fault. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Or, as sorry as I can be-- I'm not-- I don't feel remorse, but I recognize on some higher cognitive level that what I did to you was, like, wrong? I'm good at bullying people and I like being a bitch, but-- I know I took it too far with you. I always have. Listen, Cassie-- you, like, don't have to forgive me. I wouldn't. I just... I needed to tell you, I guess." Blood, thick and dark, dripped from her hands and transfered to her jeans when she wiped them on the soft blue denim. "It's stupid. Forget it. Or don't. I'm sorry." 

Was this real? Was she actually apologizing, or was this some sudden third-act change of heart that didn't make any sense? Did it matter? I mean, we were both horrible, bitchy teenage girls. Don't we fluctuate between remorselessness and hand-shaking regret enough as-is, without examining our deeper motives? 

I'm not saying it's good behavior, or remotely acceptable, just that it is. And it's easy to excuse any change in behavior when there is blood on your hands and you have been faced with the worst form of the consequences of our own actions. 

As she wimbled on, I could see the little token built into Blanche's bracelet change. It went from its normal vibrant blue skull to a yellow sun design I had only ever seen on one of the posters in Belladonna's office. I knew what it meant, though: she was ready to move on.

"I don't forgive you," Cassie said, through a choked voice, "but I accept your apology."

I'm not sure how to describe it but, as soon as Cassie said that, something else happened. It was like somebody cut a hole in the fabric of reality. It was a portal, glowing, almost like a swirling circular dog in front of the two of them.

And, when they were ready, the two of them looked at each other and stepped through into the afterlife. Blanche didn't even look back. I'm not sure I wanted her to. 

The yellow lights swirled, fizzled out, and consumed them. The portal stayed open, and the rest of us were left in the goo and gore at the base of the pyramid at Punkin's.