My eyes snap open.
Steam clouds the small bathroom, but I can see there’s no one here but me. Still, I feel it. I feel a presence, a warmth on my skin, and I hear it in the air like a painter’s brush stroking its canvas. I try to quiet my breathing, forcing each exhale to be long and slow, so I can hear the sounds better. It’s clearer now, heavy, coming and going in strong, steady patterns. Breaths.
A cold sliver of unease sneaks up on me, mostly because the logical part of my brain tells me I should be panicking. That’s the natural reaction, after all. Somehow, my body and my mind are on completely different planets. I know it can’t be real, whatever this is. Yet I feel it, a gentle pull. A warm hum calling to me. Even if it is my subconscious tricking me again, manifesting some way for me to overcome Grams’s death and the accident, it’s hard to care when such a soothing cloud of calm surrounds me. No sense of malice, no threat in the air. Something about the presence comforts me, easing the ache of loneliness, and it’s drawing me in.
For reasons I can’t understand, I don’t want to lose the feeling, the sound. The presence. Not yet. And right now, I’m choosing to feed it.
On a shaky breath, I close my eyes again, my breaths falling into pattern with the soft breaths behind me. When I hear the inhale, I fill my lungs. When I hear the exhale, I release. Soon, we’re in sync with one another.
An entire minute goes by like this, with me continuing the slow and steady breathing and listening to them—it? him?—follow. I’m in a trance—a romanticized state devised by the newly unstable half of me, and it’s the first true sense of peace I’ve felt since Grams’s passing.
It’s fading now, drifting away. I don’t want it to leave me yet; I’m not ready to be alone again. But what can I do? It’s dwindling, the warm presence around me diminishing and leaving my skin cold, until the sounds are barely even an echo anymore. Once they’re gone completely, my eyes slowly open and I look around once more.
The room is just as empty as it was before, but somehow I feel even lonelier.
CRACK.
CRACK.
CRACK.
A desperate, shaky scream climbs up my throat, but it’s not mine. Boyish and small, the unfamiliar voice pours out on its own.
My arms, small and skinny, hang over the side of the bed. Jeans pulled down to my ankles, each draft of wind seeping through the open window sends a fresh wave of pain through my raw backside.
What’s happening to me? This isn’t me, my body, my voice. And yet the pain, the fear, the anger, it’s real enough that it may as well be.
A long shadow stretches over the bed before me, warning me of what’s to come.
CRACK.
This lash is harder than the last, tearing my flesh open as pain ripples to my core. “Please, Pops! No more!” I have no control over the words I cry, nor over this child body I don’t recognize.
“Don’t you fuckin’ talk back to me, boy.” Hatred burns through each word, and the giant looming over me inches forward. He doesn’t stop until his tobacco and whiskey-stenched breath is close enough to touch the nape of my neck. He lowers his voice to a menacing whisper. “Unless you want little Tommy over there to take the rest of your beating for you, of course.”
I feel my head involuntarily jerk toward the right-hand corner of the bedroom, where a boy lays in a heap on the carpet. I’m unsure how I know this, but the boy is six years old. One of his eyes is swollen shut, while the other looks up at me pleadingly. His nose is caked with dried blood.
On its own, my jaw snaps shut, teeth grinding together.
“That what you want, boy?” taunts the man, leaning closer still. “Your little brother to take what you ain’t man enough to handle?”
My eyes narrow, and the voice that isn’t mine grits out, “No, sir.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” He backs away, but my relief is short-lived as the shadow before me raises its arm. I know it’s coming, the burn, the blood, but I keep my eyes locked on little Tommy. I will not close them for this bastard. I will not cower, not while the tiniest spark of hope still gleams in my little brother’s single, unharmed eye.
When that next CRACK comes slamming down on my tender skin, searing through every inch of me and blistering me raw, I keep my eyes centered on Tommy.
And just like that, he knows.
He knows not to let go of his last shred of hope.
He knows I’ll get him out of this shithole.
And I know, one day, I will make this sick, twisted monster pay for what he’s done to us.
Gasping for air, I bolt upright in bed, my hands clutching the comforter.Thump, thump, thump, my heart tries to claw its way out of my chest. My eyes flick around my surroundings. Fireplace. Brick wall. Rocking chair. Large window revealing a dark, midnight sky.
I’m in my room at the inn.
