youngblood // p. hockstetter // 0.1

//twenty-five

•••

Mark Tuedin was reported missing at 9:34pm on the 27th of May, 1990 after failing to return home the previous night with his older brother Louis.

Hoping for the best, his mother telephoned the police only after he'd missed his Sunday night curfew, and it was those eighteen hours of wishful thinking and half-assed searching in which Louis did nothing but panic that really set Rosemary's freedom in stone. Although not said aloud, everyone knew Mark was gone for good.

In those eighteen hours, rain plummeted over the town in a sudden summer storm that flooded the streets of Derry. As Rosemary woke late on Sunday morning (having been given permission from her brother's to miss church), her ears where filled by the rain which hit the roof and ran down Jude's window panes. Despite her lack of knowledge of his whereabouts, Rosemary held little to no desperation to find where he presently resided. Before they'd moved, she could remembers days where she'd sat in the apartment surrounded by the wail of police cars with the plastic smell of smoked cocaine and sex drowning her as she slept on her ripped mattress. She lay in Jude's bed staring at the ceiling as the lucid early afternoon light lit the room through a sliver between Jude's navy curtains. His room distinctly smelt of tobacco and the smallest herbal plume of marijuana. But despite this, the familiarity of his natural odour helped her sleep that night when she found herself reviewing everything that had happened between herself and Patrick in the now flooded valley behind the Bowers residence.

After considering her options, she had placed the cement piece on Mark's deformed face and wrapped them both tightly in his jacket to minimize the amount of blood which would cover the valley floor. Collecting himself, Patrick shakily walked towards her and stood beside her as she tucked the sleeves into the material shell surrounding his skull. "Grab under his arms" Rosemary ordered quietly, moving to his feet.

They carried Mark down the valley, neither speaking as they moved until they reached the river that flowed at the end of the valley. The walk had taken less then five minutes, but Patrick felt as though the time had lasted only a moment. He stared at Rosemary as she begun picking up large stones from the bank and shoving them into Mark's pockets. "Take the laces of his shoes" Rosemary told him harshly, unwrapping the cement piece from around his head. The pair watched in silence as organ matter dribbled from the cement and hit the mess of his face with the consistency of melting slurpy.

"Have you done this before?" Patrick asked, fingering his lighter as he watched her shove the cement piece into his underwear aggressively.

She stopped, staring up at him in silent irritation. In the slivers of moonlight Rosemary looked ghostly, her eyes deep-set pits of ice in a poisoned shell. "Take the laces off his fucking shoes" Emphasizing every word, she slid the pocket knife from her back pocket and in a swift movement, cut through Mark's jacket. Patrick could only watch with a hypnotic attentiveness as she expertly moved the knife, slicing the jacket into strips and using these to bind his limp wrists. After taking the laces off his boots, she twisted them around his ankles.

They threw him into the river and just like that; he was gone to Rosemary, and he no longer existed to Patrick.

In their silence, Rosemary kicked at the plants that lined the bank, her flannel shirt slipping around her elbows. "What now?" Sparking his lighter, he ran his thumb tauntingly close to the flame. The reality of his situation felt unreal and disconnected. He didn't know or understand how he felt around Rosemary, whether he liked the feeling she made him feel or not he couldn't tell. Rosemary said nothing as she dipped her hands into the water, cleaning herself of blood. "Doll, what are you going to do?"

She didn't look back at him once as she went back to collect the torch.

Rosemary found opportunity on the first day of the last week of school. Opportunity for knowledge but even more so, opportunity for revenge. Henry Bowers didn't attend school on the Monday, undoubtably beaten to a pulp by his father whom was told about the party at his house following Turedin's disappearance. Rosemary was not one to forgive, and she hadn't forgiven Henry for what he tried to do on Saturday.