“Okay, Bambi. I’ll be back.”
Then he lets out a heavy sigh and ruffles my hair like a child, before turning away from me to follow Colm out the door.
I’m not sure I believe him.
Savage
My head is already throbbing when we get into the car, and it feels like there’s two inches of plexiglass in between me and the rest of the world.
And inside that plexiglass, I’m like a rat in a cage, buzzing so hard on anxiety I’m ready to chew off my own arm. I swear it wasn’t this bad last time I ran out of my meds. It felt like I hadthe flu: I was dizzy, nauseous and foggy-headed, as well as being kind of wound up.
This time is so much worse. Maybe because I’ve been on this one for a while, after going through fourteen different rounds of trying endless medications until my shrink eventually settled on one that she said gave me appropriate “coverage”, whatever that means. They all have their own horror-show side effects, but at least with this one I’ve been able to get up, get dressed and get through my shitty day-to-day life.
Now that it’s been taken away, I feel like my skin went with it. I’m raw and exposed to the world; one giant nerve throbbing out in the open. Which completely contradicts the plexiglass imagery, but my brain is throwing these metaphors at me faster than I can process them. When I don’t really give a fuck about the poetry of the situation.
All I want is to feel fuckingnormal.
Wasn’t that the point of all this in the first place? I risk my life by sneaking out to see the shrink and I fuck up my already fucked-up body with the meds so I can feel like a normal human being. Not so I can continue to eke out a meager existence until the second I skip a few days of pills and then feel like the universe is falling apart.
But here I am. Red raw, itching out of my own hollow human shell, trapped in between reality and my own twisted perception of it, and now I have to go see my father and pretend I give a fuck about Banna business.
I miss sleeping most of all. The best thing about the amitriptyline was how I slept like the dead, which is not something I’d ever experienced before. No nightmares, no fidgeting, no staring into the shadows of the room. It was such a relief after a lifetime of nights spent in terror that I was willing to accept the drug strangling whatever enthusiasm my dick had left for life, which was hardly a lot to begin with.
Maybe it’s a sign that I’m already half-checked out of this plane of existence, but I’d rather sleep well than fuck well. No question. Anyone who says otherwise has no idea what it feels like to never be safe in your own home.
When Colm turns the engine off, the sudden silence in the car makes me jump so hard it startles him. Which makes sense, because who jumps at silence?
This guy, that’s who. This fucking walking wreck of a human being.
He looks at me, not bothering to hide the empathy and curiosity on his face.
“Do you want me to tell your father you’re still too injured? You got shot three times. I think the guys will understand if you need more than a week to sleep it off.”
I pull my normal bullish, aggressive expression onto my face to hide whatever reality might be leaking through my crumbling mask.
“No. I’m fine. Let’s just get this over with. I fucking hate the countryside. This whole place smells like cow shit.”
I’m saying it mostly for something to say, but it’s also true. The Banna headquarters, which were the local motorcycle club headquarters until we took over, is out in the middle of nowhere. It’s a huge converted farmhouse sitting off a rural route that runs in between two nothing towns, where hopefully even the Aryan Brotherhood won’t be able to find us.
And there’s plenty of land, which means plenty of space to store whatever guns, drugs or anything else Father is planning on shuffling through this place.
We get out of the car, and I concentrate on not flinching as the pain sears every time I try to bend or flex at the waist. At least Colm picked me up in an Escalade, so I don’t have to climb out of some low riding sedan or something. I might hurl if I had to bend that much.
Our feet get sucked into the mud with every step we take toward the main house. How are farms always muddy, even when it hasn’t rained? They’re steeped in misery, that’s how. The house is rundown and shabby, which is most likely deliberate. No one wants to attract more attention than they have to.
Everything seems normal until we get a little closer, and I hear the strangest noises. It’s almost like children crying? Or screaming? But not quite. Like some hell-dimension version of it. I see chain-link cages running along one wall of the main building and blink my eyes until the double-vision that’s been plaguing me rolls back.
I don’t think I’m hallucinating, but what the fuck? They can’t possibly be keeping kids in cages. Not even my father would do something like that, and I know firsthand how little he cares about kids’ welfare.
Colm catches my wide-eyed stare and makes a face like he stepped in something disgusting.
“I know. The fucking things stink and make a constant racket. But our deal for the property included the former club president’s old lady getting to stay here. She keeps her mouth shut and the place clean, so it’s a fair deal, but no one said anything about the side business she runs out of the house and how much fucking screaming we’d have to put up with. Padraig is already about to lose it, I swear. That woman of his—Cheryl—is the only reason he hasn’t set the little shits on fire.”
I’m sure my mouth is hanging open, but it feels like Colm and I are operating in two slightly different realities.
“But why are they in cages in the first place?”
I don’t know what else to ask. We’re moving at an excruciatingly slow pace toward the house, and this weird situation isn’t helping me concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other. I still can’t let him help me when the otherscould come out and see at any minute. I need to present a strong front.
