Futile Efforts Read Online Free PDF

own, don't you?"
    "Yes."
    "Let's see it."
    He me that infected grin.   It was abhorrent and gruesome, and how he must've hated seeing it scraped on his face every time he dared look into a mirror.   I realized then that his knuckles weren't scarred from football or from hard work, but because he'd driven his fists into a hundred mirrors over the years.   I looked into Wes' eyes and saw that he'd rested all his final hopes on me.
    He roared and drew his knife, a butterfly blade that he liked to snap open and shut but had never really become proficient with.    I burst out laughing and it felt damn good.   Freddy's belt held power.   The property of dead men is holy.   I held the ends of the leather belt and snapped it together.   The sound of a whip-crack burst across the darkness.
    Wes halfheartedly jabbed with the blade twice but he didn't actually want to save himself.   He'd been imploring someone to kill him for years.   So I strangled him.
    He'd been far stronger than me once, but he'd given up his strength for pettiness and self-pity.   I got behind him, looped the belt over his head, and let out all the rest of what I had howling inside me—seeing through only the bloody tint of rage —and pulling tighter.   He barely fought back for a moment and then relaxed, mewling, reaching back to place his hands on my wrists.   He patted me with a kind reassurance, urging me onward.   I yanked harder and he dropped to his knees in a mockery of prayer before the dead girl. Wes wheezed and gurgled while she watched me with an affectionate gaze.
    My hands turned blue from the exertion but it felt so good, this relief, and we both grunted in time together.   I felt his windpipe collapse and he let loose with a thankful hiss, patting me one last time.
    He fell forward onto his face between Ophelia's legs.
    We took death and made it into life, somehow.   I held on to her as if my very heartbeat depended upon it, because it did.   She would save me from the long bleakness of the world.
    I had at last fallen in love.
    "Ophelia," I said.   I carried her up to a dune.   She watched me closely as I curled up beside her and went to sleep.
    In the morning, as the sun seeped over the horizon, Betty was still on top of Sol and she was dead.   She'd bled out across his corpse and hadn't cared enough about her own life to clamber off him.   The sand around them had grown a deep red.
    Dan's body lay crumpled and broken on the rocks.   He hadn't died immediately.   From the looks of it his spine had shattered after he fell, and he lay there forced to look back towards shore.   He couldn't get away from the sight even then.   The tide was tugging at him and I decided to let him go.
    Jude had found Wes in the dark and decided to die beside him.   But not before she evened the score a little.   She'd bitten his lips off and chewed away a fair amount of his face.   I left him where he was.
    It took hours to move the rest of them, but I was safe.   I had never felt so protected and secure in my life.    Usually the point was filled with beachcombers and tourists by this time of the morning, but today the beach would reject everyone but us.
    The Chevy's trunk easily held the two housefraus and Freddy, and I only had to break one of their ladies' legs to get them all in.   I laid the old man with the crushed head in the back across the foot wells and sat Sol up in the seat between Betty and Jude.   The three of them relaxed against each other, drowsy and cuddling, murmuring endearments.   I envied their devotion and the tenderness they showed one another.
    They too had their dreams, and I realized that hope and longing and hunger don't die as easily as delicate flesh.   I could see their faith and passions that continued to burn inside their peaceful faces.
    I checked the rearview mirror and saw that my own eyes were finally as alive as theirs.
    All you really had to do was open yourself up to love, and it would