Rivals

A response to Suzanne Young's "Friday Funkday" in Flashy Fiction.

"Oh, come on," she says, smiling wickedly. "What's the worst thing you've ever done?"

But I can't meet her eyes. If I tell her, she'll never be here with me again. "Doesn't matter."

"Of course it does, let's do this. You'll tell me in three... two... one--"

I meet her green eyes, they've always bewitched me the way that lines of color explode out from her pupil in shades of brown and green and remind me of a forest, and I try to avoid thinking about the polygraph connected to my arm. "I loosened the bolts on the front wheel of Kevin's bike and bent the end of the forks where the bolt connected so that the wheel would stay on initially, but when Kevin rode over a bump the bolts would pop off freeing the wheel and the forks would hit the ground and buck Kevin off the bike." She smiles and leans forward and my eyes drop from hers to look at the cleavage that peeks out of her leather blouse.

"Mmmm... it looks like you tell the truth. Did it work?"

I remind myself to look her in the eyes. "Yes. I didn't see the crash, but he had some nasty scrapes and bandages on at school."

"Why'd you do it?"

"He was a bully and I was young and hadn't discovered that escalation wasn't the best response." I pray that she'll let it pass. The game had seemed fun at the start, almost innocent. Sweat drips down my forehead and my arms cramp as the rope around my wrists pulls my back straight.

"So that's it, the most wicked thing you've ever done?"

"Yes." I look at her eyes and think of green meadows beneath a cool spring sky with the grass shoots soft like silk against my bare feet.

"No, the polygraph seems to disagree. Let's try this again, what's the most wicked thing you've ever done, three... two... one..."

I am quiet, and hope she tires of this game.

She reaches behind me and as she brings her hand slowly back past my eyes I see a razor blade. I squirm and try to pull my hands out of the rope but it's tighter than I thought it was. "I have ways of making you talk."

I tell her about the pipe bomb in the school toilet. I tell her about the lies I used to get my first girlfriend to sleep with me. I tell her about the time I cost my best friend his job. And still she asks for more.

I hope she tires. I feel like Scheherazade. I spin wicked acts to avoid telling her the one thing I cannot tell her. My wickedness that led me to travel back in time so that her first husband would never be born, my rival.