Shane (Damage Control 4)

I lock the door and flip the deadbolt. Test it.

Safe. You’re safe here.

Repeating the words in my mind, I drop my backpack in a corner and go to check that the windows are closed. In my bedroom, I drop to my knees and check under the bed. Heat rises to my face as I check my closet, then the shower stall in the bathroom, the cabinets, and move on to the kitchen to do the same there.

Always checking that nobody has broken in and is hiding to attack me. Can’t help this crippling fear.

I’m never safe. Nowhere. Ever.

Goddammit. I turn on the heater and stand in the middle of the tiny living room, still in my jacket and dirty shoes, debating what to do. I’m dead tired—but nowhere near relaxed enough to think I could fall asleep if I crawled into bed.

There’s my drawing board standing by the sofa, propped against the wall, my pens and pencils in a case on the low table. I take a step toward the board, drawn to it, aching to lose myself in art.

Then there’s the TV. Sometimes that works—watching some boring show until I can’t keep my eyes open. I’ve spent way more nights on this ratty sofa than in my bed.

My stomach growls, but I’m not really hungry. Fatigue plagues me, like most of the time nowadays, and a headache pounds behind my eyes.

Art it is.

Shrugging off my jacket, dropping it on a chair, I drag the board to the sofa and grab my pencils. Cross-legged, I set the board on the sofa and look critically at my last effort from a few days ago.

I don’t draw normal stuff. Faces, flowers, landscapes, or even dragons and snakes and skulls, like most tattoo artists I know. Besides, this isn’t about inking. This is about taking my nightmares out, flinging them on the paper. Hoping they stay there.

An exorcism. A ritual of sorts.

If only it fucking worked.

I need it, though, even that brief respite from the gnawing stress and fear, so I tear off the drawing, drop it to the floor, and start another, losing myself in the process. To fight the itch for something else—for drugs that numb the darkness inside of me. It’s an itch I can’t scratch, ever since my mom died in that car accident, leaving me with nothing apart from her paperback copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull and memories.

She had been fun, and loving. She’d been like sunshine, and then she set, just like the sun.

The house was rented, as was the

furniture, and it was all gone. We had debts, as it turned out, and with the funeral costs, there was nothing left in the end. No money in the bank. Just nothing.

Not that I cared by then. I missed her. Her absence was a black hole in my mind. And I tried just about everything back then to get out of hell’s mouth. Oxy and Vicodin, crack and fucking meth, until Seth locked me up in my room and sat with me, bringing me food and water, only letting me out to use the bathroom.

Until I stopped cursing him. Until could live without the drugs.

It was him who dragged me to the light, kicking and screaming—only to find ourselves in prison and another version of hell.

And… enough. Enough already.

Scowling at the paper, I draw harsh, deep lines, sketching something that hasn’t quite formed yet, emerging from the night with teeth and claws and fury. Horns curl over his head, and he holds a knife.

If I was religious, I’d say it’s a devil. The devil, stalking me, hounding me, waiting for me to fall that last inch that will mean there’s no way back. My breathing hitches with memories of blood and pain and fucking despair, the pencil digging so deep into the paper it’s starting to tear—

Loud music rings out. I jerk back, dropping the pencil. The board falls, slamming to the floor as I scramble back on the cushions, lifting my hands for protection. What the hell?

My cell.

Jesus fuck.

Still struggling to breathe, I throw my legs off the sofa and push to my feet. The sound’s coming from my jacket, in a heap on the floor, and with a sigh I bend over and retrieve the phone from the pocket.

Seth.

I think about not answering, but Seth’s my brother. Half-brother. And cousin. And best friend. I punched him a few months back, thinking he’d betrayed me, and somewhere deep in my gut I don’t feel like I’ve made up for it yet.