“Rings of Atonement”

The car screeched to the halt, those without their seatbelts were thrust forward. My seat jerked as my friend slammed into it face first, a dull groan leaving them. It almost made me laugh, but the thought of a chuckle died on my throat as the adrenaline in my veins ran cold. The ringing in my ears quickly turned deafening without the sound of air rushing by the open window, I quickly began feeling nauseous. I went to unfasten my seatbelt, not wanting to vomit in my friend’s car, but my hands wouldn’t respond to my commands. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t think or maybe I was thinking too fast for my brain to regulate. Was I paralyzed? I blinked rapidly as I tried to rid myself of my blurry vision, looking down at myself to make sure I still had all my limbs. Shattered glass was scattered across my lap, some stabbing into my leg though I couldn’t more than a slight sting. “My jeans are ruined,” I thought, looking down at the gashes that flow and stain my new jeans, “My mom is going to kill me.” Where is she, my mother? Where am I? Questions flood my brain as the ringing quiets down. I sit up, pushing away the deflated airbag as I cover my hand with the sleeve of my hoodie, picking glass carefully from my lap. I work slowly, trying to distract myself from the carnage that surrounds us. I, against my better judgment, begin to pull the glass from my legs. Luckily there were only a couple in me, can’t say the same for my friends. I go to look back at them to make sure they’re alive, but look up and take a pause. A hole in the windshield like a mouth with jagged teeth, dripping with blood that beat a rhythm on the dashboard. My stomach drops as it dawns on me. That isn’t our blood. We hit someone.

It was like the calm before the storm, and I could see the thunderclouds. Fear lit a fire under my feet like I’ve never felt before. Who did we hit? How far away did we drive? We’re the cops tracking us down, were we wanted criminals? There was no way the person we struck survived, I knew that much. Driving off after something like that… We’re going to be in so much trouble. But we’re only kids, none of us could dream of passing as over 18, so maybe we would get lighter charges. If we got caught that is. We wouldn’t get caught. None of us could even be tied back to this car. I look over to my right, looking at the driver. She no longer lay slumped, instead she was upright. She began looking around in panic and confusion at her mother’s car. I thought she was dead, the ear splitting screech she let out told me I was wrong, she was very much alive. Her screams seemed to wake up the rest of the car, who all joined her in their panic. Without any thought or care, many rushed out the wreck onto the empty, dark road. I stepped out with them after struggling with the door. We all took a second to look at the car we were happily drinking in only a moment before. We all collectively, as if a hive mind, turn to look at our driver. 

“What did you do, Lust?” I ask, looking her up and down to check her for serious injury. She’s bleeding but not badly, none of us are close to death it seems. I walk towards the trunk, opening it to look for a first aid kit. I step in a liquid quickly pooling under the car. Gasoline?

“ME?!” She screams, “How is this MY fault?!” She crosses her arms, scowling at all of us. 

“You drove the car.” Gluttony answered, taking off his jacket to examine the damages to himself, finding a small piece of glass in her shoulder. 

“And you were the one drinking the most.” Greed chimed in, helping his brother remove the glass.

“And it’s your mother’s car… which you stole.” Anger finished in her usual annoyed tone, helping me by grabbing bandages to stop any serious bleeding, disinfecting wounds with our limited supplies. 

“Okay okay!! You don’t have to pile on me for no reason!” Lust huffs and we all roll our eyes

“Who did we hit?” Heresy wonders aloud, walking around the car to assess the damage. The blood on the windshield trails up and along the top, but there was also major damage to the bottom of the car. Heresy looks back at us with a worried look, I return it. It looks like we hit a motorcyclist, they must have hit the windshield and flew up and over the car, but their bike went under. 

“Did we…” Heresy trails off, being unable to bring herself to say it.

“Did we kill them? Probably.” Violence answered, checking Heresy for bad cuts, “The way Lust was speeding? It would be a miracle if they survived.”

“It’ll be a miracle if we survive prison.” Fraud huffed, glaring daggers at Lust for getting us into this mess. He sighed as she began complaining about everyone ganging up on her. 

“W-Well I’m not entirely responsible! If anything, all of us are getting jail time!!” She attempted to divert the blame, and the sad part is it somewhat worked. Lust paused her pitty party upon seeing our faces and it seemed to set in for her. None of us wanted to go to jail. 

“What are we going to do…?” Heresy asks, biting anxiously as her nails.

“This car can’t be tied back to any of us, right? We could just… walk away.” I theorized.

“Leave it to you to walk away from your problems…” Lust muttered under her breath. 

“And leave it to you to kill a motorcyclist.” I snapped, “Don’t play your stupid little princess act, this is entirely your fault.” 

She turned red, taking a step towards me but Gluttony grabbed her waist to stop her. 

“Come on guys, let’s just walk back home, we couldn’t have gone too far.” He attempts to deescalate, looking up at the sky. Those clouds don’t look too forgiving. I turn in a huff, following the crowd as they pick a direction and start walking. 

We looked around the car before we left, most of our phones were missing, not that we would have been able to use them. Greed had a small flashlight that he found in the glove compartment. We weren’t even walking ten minutes before Lust began complaining of her feet hurting. 

“Sorry the color of all the dirt and dead leaves doesn’t compliment your hot pink stilettos.” Violence replied, her attitude dripping with sarcasm. The winds around us sent cold chills down our spines, was there a storm approaching? 

“Okay, what is your problem?!” Lust shouted, stamping her feet into like a toddler. I can’t believe we let her drive. 

“My problem? My problem?! Right now, it’s your obnoxious, entitled attitude! That’s my problem! It’s the fact—“ She took a step towards Lust, getting inches from her face. Lust was too proud to step back, “—that you killed that guy. And you dragged all of us into it.” 

Lust shoved her hard, but Violence was too stubborn to back down. Greed attempted to intervene but Violence was quicker than words. We heard a crunch as her fist connected to Lust’s nose, blood quickly began pouring. Violence laughed, “Now you can get the nose job you always wanted, princess.” 

Thunder rumbled in the distance as Lust stood cupping her face, Gluttony attempted to make sure she was okay, but she shoved him off, pulling out a long, narrow piece of glass from the crash with a hand hold made of cloth from her shirt. She brandished it at Violence, who seemed genuinely surprised. Greed started shouting at Lust but she didn’t seem to hear him. The wind howled in our ears as we attempted to break up the two, but Lust dodged Greed and began charging at Violence. Lust did not have grace in the way she wielded her makeshift knife, waving it around blindly in her anger. The wind continued pushing her hair about, it stuck to the blood that covered her face and made it hard for her to see the target of her rage filled attacks. Her attempts were laughably easy for Violence to avoid, and the more she tried the angrier she got. Violence got cocky, taunting her to come and hit her. Lust rose to the challenge and lunged into her direction, managing to slice into her target’s thigh. Violence howled in pain as she recoiled away but she didn’t have to worry about a second swing. Or anything from Lust for that matter. Once Lust had cut Violence the momentum in her lunge sent her forward as if pushed by the wind. She landed hard, face first on the muddy ground. And directly onto her “knife”.

 Greed and Gluttony rushed to her side while Heresy rushed to Violence. They flipped Lust over to examine her injuries, she gargled on her own blood as the glass had stabbed into her throat. None of us knew what to do , we knew not to rip the glass out but that was the limit on our medical expertise. Lust looked up at the two brothers who stared down at her with almost identical worried looks. She grabbed one of their hands, attempting to gargle out her last words to him. Her words were hard to understand but he were certain she said “I love you.” Eventually, she stopped choking and moving all together, her eyes now closed as silence fell on the group. We all stared not at Lust’s body, but the boy who held her hand and said her final words to. Gluttony stared dumbfounded at his brother, who still held Lust’s limp hand. Wrong brother.

Greed didn’t have a moment to react before Gluttony was on top of him, punching him over and over. Greed covered his face, trying to protect himself from his brother's assaults raining down on him like hail. Fraud attempted to break the two up, pushing Gluttony back. 

“What are you doing?!” Greed screamed, holding his jaw in pain. He looked around for comfort from us but none of us moved. 

“Really…? My own brother with my girlfriend? Do you have no conscience?!” Gluttony let his tears fall freely, overwhelmed with the truth that he was not only betrayed but by his own blood. 

Greed stood to his feet, obviously feeling confident with Fraud standing between them, “It’s not my fault, she came onto me! Who was I to deny her what you obviously couldn’t deliver?” He said smugly, looking around as if we were his yes men. We looked at him in disgust. Thunder rumbled as rain began to fall, we all waited to see what would happen with this stalemate. Gluttony shoved Fraud, answering our question quickly. Greed, the smaller and relatively weaker brother, crumbled almost instantly as Gluttony jumped him. We let it happen, the rest of us turned away to help Violence with the cut Lust left. Eventually, we realized it had gotten much quieter than expected, causing us to turn to the brothers. We stood in horror as instead of a well deserved beating, Gluttony’s hands were around Greed’s throat, slamming him into the wet, muddy ground repeatedly, covering the two of them in dirt. Greed patted the ground near him before trying to push him off, his brother didn’t budge. We rushed over, about to separate them but Greed found what he was looking for. He freed the glass from Lust’s body and swung it up towards his brother. We all gasp as Gluttony gagged, blood beginning to pour out of the gash in his throat. Despite this, he continued to slam his brother into the ground but each slam had much less effort behind it. Eventually, he slumped on top of his brother and stopped fighting. We stood, frozen in place as we watched the brothers fight, unable to believe what we were witnessing. We expected Greed to push the body off of him and stand, but after a few minutes he still hadn’t moved. We eventually found our voices and began to call for him, working together to pull Gluttony off of him. 

“No… No no no!!” Heresy screamed, stepping back. She began sobbing as we stared at the bodies. When Gluttony fell on top of him, Greed was too weak to push him off in his damaged state. It was as if he was pushing a boulder uphill. He must have suffocated, and now we had three bodies on our hands. And before we knew it, Heresy started running.

She began sprinting into the forest, trying to run from her problems. I assumed she was running towards the car, but she seemed to be going in the opposite direction. I tried to tell her this, get her to slow down or just do anything but run away, she didn’t listen. Anger is much more athletic than the rest of us, easily catching up to Heresy as she sprinted blindly into the unknown. Luckily it wasn’t raining as heavily, but the ground was still slick. Anger screamed at her as they ran, Heresy didn’t respond, she was too busy bawling her eyes out. She swiftly grabbed her shirt and pulled her backwards. Having been thrown off her balance, she fell on her hands in the mud, tears streaming down her face. Before we could even slow down to begin tending to Heresy, we heard a loud splash as Anger couldn’t stop her momentum in time and tumbled into a river. We screamed for her, rushing beside the water and trying to find her in the current. We had left the flashlight with Greed’s body, it was too dark to see anything but rushing water. We could hear nothing but the rushing water and Heresy’s pathetic sobbing.

What is going on? We just suddenly began dropping like flies, half of our friends have died in the last two hours. My hands were shaking and I didn’t know what to do, it felt like the universe was making us suffer. I guess we deserved it after what we did. I grabbed Heresy, yanking her up off the ground as Violence and Fraud followed behind me. I dragged her back in the direction we ran, eventually finding the road and the car we abandoned. Fraud and I sat in the empty road, taking deep breaths and trying to calm ourselves . Heresy and Violence searched the car, checking again for useful items. Violence managed to find their cigarettes and lighter in the pouch behind the passenger seat. She let out a triumphant yell as she hopped out of the car, leaving Heresy to search on her own. I rolled my eyes as she popped one of the cigarettes into her mouth, “Don’t smoke right now, Violence.” 

“Why wouldn’t I?” She asked, turning to me and Fraud, placing the lighter near the cancer-stick. I hated watching her smoke. Before we could have our usual argument, she struggled to light the slightest damaged lighter. When she finally got it to light, a spark flew past her, landing in the gasoline that had been pooling under the car. 

I grabbed Fraud and dove into the forest, moments before the car went up in flames. Heresy, who was unfortunately still searching in the car, blew up with it. She has no time to comprehend what was happening, let alone escape as the spark quickly turned to a flame and caused the gas’s tank to explode. Violence did not have time to run away either, the explosion sending her to the ground and the molten debris rained down on her. She had barely taken a puff. That’s what solidified my inkling that the universe was trying to punish us, most cars don’t blow up that easily, let alone that quickly. I glanced over at Fraud who stared at me with this terrified expression. He slowly began stepping away from me, “Y-You killed them!” He stuttered, pointing an accusatory finger at me. 

“What the heck are you talking about?” I ask, stepping towards him, understanding his fear but not understanding why it was directed at me. 

“You pulled me away from the- You knew it was going to blow and you didn’t warn them!”

“There was no time to! I didn’t have time to think, I just acted!!” 

“You killed them!” He said, feeling around on the ground, before picking up a heavy stick and wielding it like a bat. “You killed Heresy and Violence and now you’re going to kill me!!” He swung it at me, a crazed look in his eyes. He was going to kill me. I dodged the first swing, the second I caught his weapon, yanking it from his grip. He lunged at me like a mad man, I had no choice to raise the “bat” above my head and bring it down with all my strength.

“That’s when you killed him?” 

“Out of self defense, yes.”

The officer drummed his fingers on the table between us, “You can’t expect me to believe this, right?” 

“I can’t expect you to believe the truth?”

He sighed in annoyance, “You have yet to give us actual information. Just this story of all your friends’ atonement.”

“You mock my words as if you don’t believe me?” I say, fiddling with the cuffs around my wrists.

“I don’t. You haven’t even given us any names!” He raised his voice, throwing his notepad down

“I have sir, all the information I have.” 

“Oh yeah? Then what would your name be?” I sighed, crossing his arms.

I smiled at him, leaning towards him as if whispering a secret. 

“Treachery.”