He disconnects before I can think of a reply.
Better that way. I’m vibrating with anger, anger I can’t direct anywhere but at Seth right now, and he means well. Seth always means well, always has my back, but even he doesn’t know it all—about the past, about the present, and about just how fucked-up I am.
Nobody ever should.
***
The show playing on the TV seems to be about movie stars and their diets, or some shit like that. I’m trying to draw, but my lids are so heavy my vision keeps blurring. My hand holding the pencil against the drawing pad keeps slipping, leaving random lines and smudges.
Shit.
I blink, rub at my eyes with the back of my hand, lean closer to the drawing board. Can’t quite make out what I drew. It’s basically a dark swirl, like the heart of a hurricane, broken faces and limbs peeking out of the black.
A shiver wracks me, and I push the board back, let it drop on the sofa cushions. I turn, stare at the dark corners of the room.
Calm the fuck down, I tell myself. Nobody’s here. Nobody can hurt you now.
Tell that to my brain, to my racing heart. It’s three in the morning, and my body is trying to shut down. If I was spaced out all day, now my mind’s twisted like a pretzel.
I lean back, watching the show. A guy is explaining that an actress I’ve never heard of is trying to lose weight by only eating blueberries.
Fascinating.
Maybe I should change the channel, but the remote’s on the table. I see it, a dark outline in the flickering light from the TV. If I reach for it, I might just grab it without getting up.
A scent of stale sweat and cinnamon hits me as I lift my hand, frighteningly familiar, and the remote moves. It slithers on the table, growing long and shiny, turning into a black snake.
Fuck. I pull my hand back, but not fast enough. The snake jumps on my arm and wraps around it, moving up, its fangs glinting as its head lifts.
Jerking to my feet, I shake my arm to dislodge the snake, and it bites into my arm, the pain shocking me. I stumble backward, and my back hits the iron bars of my cell.
When I look down at my arm again, there’s no snake—but there’s a bleeding cut, a slice from a blade, trickling crimson down to my hand. I lift my other hand to my throat, and there’s another cut there.
Say you want it, a voice whispers, oily and slippery, and I whip around, my heart crashing about in my chest. A face surfaces from the dark, a body.
No.
‘Missed me?’
No!
He winks at me, and the terror is a giant fist crushing my skull, crushing my spine, until I can’t stay standing and drop to my knees on the floor.
‘Come here,’ says a voice behind me, and I fall sideways, trying to get away from both of them. ‘Come here, boy.’
Shit. No, I can’t. Not again.
A hand grabs my hair and pulls, stopping me. A blade flashes. A face approaches mine, bodiless, moving out of the dark like a ghost.
‘Ready?’ the lips whisper as hands paw at my body, tear at my clothes, scratch my skin. The hands on my hair drag me backward, and I try to scream, but I can’t, my voice locked in my throat, my lungs crushed.
The pain hits. Everything hurts, everything burns, and I struggle and kick, but nothing gives, the pain eating at my bones, until the scream breaks free from me.
It echoes in the room.
A living room.
My living room. The TV is on. The curtains are drawn shut. A standing lamp is on beside the sofa.