Come To Me (Owned 3)

“Nothing man, nothing!” I glared at his response. He’d followed me for thirty minutes; his weaselly routine wasn’t fooling me.

I angled my arm against his windpipe. “Shut the fuck up.”

“Well which is it?” He coughed. “Do you want me to tell you what I know or do you want me to shut the fuck up?” I tightened my hold on his throat and shoved him harder against the red car. Maybe it was the past months of shit, but I really wasn’t in the mood for a smart-assed douche.

“Who sent you?” I demanded, loosening my hold just enough so he could respond. The guy smiled unctuously, revealing a set of yellowing canines.

“I think you know.” I wasn’t about to guess the answer. Guessing the answer gave him the upper hand.

“I think you’d better tell me if you want to live through tomorrow,” I said instead. The guy made a movement and I shoved him harder against the car.

“You’ll find out soon enough.” He laughed. I tightened my grip on his neck until his face purpled. I watched the light in him dim until it was almost out, then I let go and stepped back.

“Fuck,” I whispered to myself. I squeezed and then released my fingers, feeling like the world was slipping through my hands. It would have been really easy to kill that asshole, and that was the problem. When I finally got my breath back, the guy was getting into his car. I gripped my keys, feeling an urge to follow.

I think there’s a point in your life, sort of how there’s a point right before an avalanche. I could have followed him. I could have strung him up by the neck and forced him to tell me what he knew. None of that would have stopped what was about to come, though, just like suddenly holding still isn’t going to stop a deluge of ice from flattening you.

Maybe deep down I knew that.

It wasn’t fate.

What happened next didn’t have to happen.

What happened next was just going to happen, and I couldn’t stop it.

I watched smoke tumble into the dark sky as the fire burned down the building in the distance. Gray tendrils curled into the blackening indigo clouds, and it was impossible to tell what was smoke and what was cloud. It probably didn’t matter. I drew the curtains and turned back to the apartment. Lenny was sleeping off the drugs downstairs and tomorrow we’d head back up to the cabin.

At least, that’s what I thought.

I was starting to feel like a real fucking idiot.

As I descended the stairs to check inside the spare bedroom I’d put her in, I heard the sound of the kitchen oven. I didn’t know what I expected, like she would be making an omelet or some shit as if we were a regular fucking family.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I yelled, running to turn off the oven.

“Sticking my head in the oven.” Lenny shrugged and pulled her head out. Sitting against the cupboards, she continued, “Or trying to. It’s electric, so all I succeeded in doing was getting my head hot.”

I ran a palm over my face. “Jesus Christ Lenny.” I didn’t know what to do with her. I felt like I was swimming with us both through the ocean and she was desperately trying to break free so she could drown. “Is this what you want? Do you want to end your life?”

“I don’t have a life,” Lenny said blandly. “I have a life adjacent. I’m adjacent to the therapist. I’m adjacent to the psychiatrist. And I’m adjacent to you.” I leaned against the kitchen island and stared down at her. Her eyes were dead. The spark I’d grown to love was burned out. Gripping the island for life, I didn’t know how to respond. It was like the Lennox Moore I knew had already died and the one I was looking at was a zombie searching for the grave.

“Is that how you really feel, Lenny?” I asked after a few moments.

“What do you want me to say?” she said, wringing her hands out in front of herself. “I don’t exist on my own. The Lenny without pills and your say-so isn’t the Lenny you want.”

I exhaled. “That’s bullshit, Lennox.” I tried to be calm, for Lenny, but that was utter bullshit. I knew her mind played tricks on her sometimes. I knew sometimes the world she saw wasn’t the world that was out there. I knew all that, but I wasn’t going to fucking sit by and let her think that I didn’t want her.

“I want you Lennox. I don’t care how you come. Bruised or totally fucked up, I’ll want you, but that doesn’t mean I want that for you. You’ve been hurting for awhile and you were the one that wanted to see the doc. Now, if it helps to point the finger when you aren’t feeling well, then fine, but you know I’ll take you no matter what condition you’re in.”

“Yeah, right. Do you even know why I was at that hotel tonight? I think sometimes you just think I do things. Like…I don’t think things through. I just do shit to be edgy or something.”

I almost laughed when she said that. Of course I thought that. Lenny didn’t think a damn thing through. She had a thought and she just did it. She wanted to make pancakes? Fucking blueberry pancake batter everywhere at two in the morning. She wanted to go to the hotel where she was abducted? Fucking goes to the hotel.

I was still scratching my head as to how she’d gotten there.

But…maybe it hadn’t been the best idea for me to fuck her in the hotel. No, it had probably been the worst idea. If someone was going to list all the things I could have done in that situation, fucking her was probably the absolute last one. If I were to tell that story, I would not come off in the best light. I would probably sound a bit insane. Probably, the people would wonder, “What the ever-loving fuck, Vic Wall, were you thinking?”

Still, that was how it was with Lennox Moore. It was a rollercoaster. You don’t get on a rollercoaster and wonder why it went upside down. Sometime ago I’d stopped questioning it.