Get on with it, Shane.
I wipe my gloved hands on my pants, glance up at the moody sky, lick my cracked lips and start up the hook-up ladder on the side of the scaffolding. The muscles in my arms and legs burn with fatigue, and I focus on gripping carefully the rungs that are slippery with ice.
If only I could focus on my training at Damage Control, finish it and start working there… Then I wouldn’t have to be out in the fucking wind and the swirling snow, climbing scaffolds and carrying pipes.
Seth might be done with the training before me, Zane said, and that’s great. Seth is an awesome artist, and he’s humble. He’d never admit it if asked. After what he went through a couple of months back—all the beatings he took, and the accidents… Fuck yeah, he’s entitled to some good luck and happiness. God knows my half-brother deserves it, and more, for taking care of me too many times to count.
Even if he doesn’t really know what happened at the prison and…
Spicy smell of cinnamon, and hands reaching for me. The snick of a match being lit, a flare of hot embers at the tip of a cigarette—
A face appears over me, one I see in my nightmares, in my memories, a man’s bearded face with a scar below one eye.
“Miss me, little bitch?” he asks, and my heart stops.
Fuck.
My vision blurs. He shoves at me—and my hands slip from the rung. I jerk, making a grab for the ladder and miss, tumbling backward. Dimly I hear someone call my name. The ground isn’t far, I think, I haven’t climbed up high yet, and…
A moment of suspension in the air.
A crash. An impact knocking the air from my lungs.
I’m lying on my back on the ground, staring up at the bruised clouds. Bruised and lost, like me.
“Shane. Shane, hey!” Someone’s leaning over me. Bright yellow helmet, reflective vest. “You okay?”
Why does everyone keep asking me that these days? Do I look okay? I can’t breathe…
Then my lungs finally expand, and I gulp in air, which may or may not be a mistake because ow, fuck, my back hurts. I curl on my side, coughing.
“He can move,” someone says as more people arrive, gathering around me. “Looks like he didn’t break anything.”
“Shane.” Hands pull on me, helping me to sit up. “What the hell happened?”
I slipped, I think. I slipped and fell, and shit, too many men around me, looming over me. My heart is pounding hard, trying to break through my chest, and my lungs won’t work properly.
“Seth?” The prison walls close around me as the men pull me under the showerhead, icy water spraying me as they beat me up and tear at my clothes. I kick at them, twist in their hold. “Shit, get off me, get your fucking hands off me!”
Help me…
***
Someone gave me a blanket, and I’m wrapped in it, sitting inside the construction office. The wind howls outside. It’s cold in here, but dry, although it doesn’t matter anymore. The melted snow has seeped into my clothes, my boots, into my skin, and deeper, the ice crackling as it spreads inside me.
Can’t remember how I got here. Why can’t I remember? A shiver wracks me, and my bruised back spasms. I remember… the prison. A face with a scar.
Why the fuck do I remember that? The prison was at least two years ago. I’m at… the construction site. Where I work.
I prod my mind, cautiously, like some snarling animal caught in shadows. Something happened. I was lying on the ground, looking up at the gray clouds. There were men around me.
No, before that.
A sensation of falling. An impact. I frown, trying to piece the memories together. To decide what really happened and what didn’t. I’ve struggled with that since the prison. Did I really fall? Or slip on the ice? Did someone hit me, or is the pain in head and my back from hitting the ground?
Holy shit…
The door opens, slamming against the metal wall, and I jump to my feet, pressing back into the corner of the container. My heart’s racing, and my stomach’s in a twist. Bile rises in my throat, acid touches the back of my tongue.