I'm cocooned in bed, my dreams a swirl of indistinct voices and dark shapes. Scraping noises and an insistent pressure against my skin penetrate my subconscious. My nose wrinkles, tickled by the cloying stench of smoke.
When I crack my tired lids, I find two dark figures looming over me. Red embers cut through the darkness as one of them sucks on a cigarette, followed by a fresh wave of smoke billowing in the air.
Before I can even get out a cough, two pairs of hands seize me. I cry out.
"That’s right, girly. Scream," Elijah hisses in my face, hot spittle hitting my cheeks as he manhandles me. "It’s why we’re here, after all. Your goddamn ruckus that gives us no peace. All that crashing and banging, your slutty wails getting me hard and pissed."
In minutes, I’m duct-taped and tied to one of my rickety dining chairs and a filthy rag is crammed into my mouth. He rips off the oversized sleep shirt, leaving me only in my panties.
"Caroline," Elijah barks.
Elijah’s wife clicks on the bedside lamp, a cigarette still hanging from her mouth. The dim light washes over my cold, horrifying reality, sending a chill slithering down my spine.
"There we go," Elijah sneers, gripping either side of the chair and getting in my face. "Now I can get a good look at you, girly."
Unfortunately, I get an up close and personal view of him as well. The scruff on his face resembles dirt more than facial hair. Bulging bloodshot eyes bore into me with open hatred. His gut matches the same heft of his cheeks, and I can’t escape the stink of the meat stains on his shirt as well as the sour yeast of too much liquor wafting from his pores.
My skin crawls with invisible pinpricks of fear as my stomach churns with something hot and sour.
"You’re skinny," Elijah observes, his eyes openly taking in my body with hungry, lecherous eyes. "Don’t even have a decent pair of tits," he scoffs as he reaches out and roughly grabs at one of my bare breasts hard enough to cause pain.
When his hand dives down to pinch at my crotch, I jerk. He lets out a booming, hideous laugh.
I’m on my own. If Shadow was going to come, he would have been here by now. There is no use relying on him, I can only count on myself.
Despair snakes around me, coiling and squeezing. My life is a never-ending nightmare. Anything good in my life is either yanked from my slippery grasp, or I ruin it myself.
Maybe if I’d tried harder with Miguel, tried to be normal, this wouldn’t be happening. But I rejected my chance at a happy, normal life with him. This is my punishment. If I want to live in darkness, in the muck, this is what people like me get.
Still, I turn my gaze to Caroline, silently pleading with her.
From what I’ve heard of their knock-down-drag-out fights, she often accuses Elijah of sleeping with whores and giving her crabs. Surely, she’s too jealous to let this happen. She must beaware of him unbuckling his belt and pulling it from his pant loops with a sickening slide of leather against fabric.
But her grayed, sallow face doesn’t react to his lewd attack or my silent plea. She sucks harder on her cigarette and crosses her arms. Caroline hums as she sways back and forth a little to some tune only she can hear.
Stubby fingers grip my cheeks, turning me to meet Elijah’s face. "Don’t look at her. She’s not going to help you. She’s too busy riding her own high. Isn’t that right, baby?" he calls to her.
It’s then I notice her eyes are dilated, cloudier than normal. Closing them, she draws on her cigarette long and hard again, as if experiencing some type of private bliss. I don’t know what drugs she’s on, but she's half in this world, half in another. Though when her gaze catches on me, I know she’s aware enough.
So she’s fine with him fucking other girls as long as she’s in the room?
Something splits wide open inside me. Not a crack, not a spark—a rupture. Hot, brutal rage pours through the breach, drowning everything else in its path. Fear, shame, helplessness—all of it swept away in a tidal wave of white-hot certainty.
"If you’re going make so much noise," Elijah spits in my face again, pinching my cheeks so hard the metallic taste of blood slides across my tongue. "If you’re going to groan and moan like a slut so we can’t watch our game shows without me getting a chubby, then you aren’t being very neighborly, are you?"
I jerk my head. If I had even an inch of freedom, I would tear his fucking throat out with my teeth. I don't want to survive him. I want to destroy him.
I can feel what’s left of my humanity incinerating, like a fragile sheet of paper consumed by a blaze of searing orange sparks and thick, acrid smoke.
I’ve told Shadow so many times that I’m a monster just like him, but I was wrong.
It’s only now that I feel some powerful, and terrifying muscle its way out from the depths of my being. With it comes hellfire, paradoxically cold and yet fiercely controlled.
"No, that’s not neighborly at all. And you’re not being a very good host right now either."
When he releases me, I cough through the rag, flexing my face to help release the ache left by his fingers.
"Maybe I should take out that rag so you can show me how neighborly you can be."
