Kshhh!
“God damn it!” I yelped as I finally yanked the remote control out from beneath my leg. “Shut up!”
I pressed the red power button and the box of doom powered down. Silence filled the room once more with nothing but the sounds of the gusting wind outside creaking the bones of the house every once in a while. I flopped down, tossing the remote off to the side. I’d never been one for television. That had always been Gordon’s avenue. I preferred a good book, or a nice walk, or maybe even a bit of an impromptu afternoon swim.
Gordon didn’t like to swim, though.
Not after he almost drowned as a child.
Do you have anything in common with him at all?
I groaned. “You shut up, too.”
I pulled a couch pillow over my head and stuffed it as close to my ears as I could stand. I wanted the voice in my head to shut up. That little narrative voice that had pissed me off over the years with all sorts of nonsense and fuckery. That voice had gotten me into a lot of trouble as a child. Sneaking out with Gordon. Riding to school with him on his bike and getting my skirt caught in the chain. Changing my nursing school of choice because he wanted me to stay closer to him after we graduated.
Accepting his half-assed proposal.
“Can it,” I grumbled.
I curled my legs as close to my chest as I could stand and closed my eyes. My head pounded with an ache so deeply embedded into my system that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make it go away. Maybe if I slept long enough, I’d wake up feeling better.
Maybe if I slept long enough, I’d wake up from this hellish nightmare.
Maybe if I slept long enough, I’d wake up and find myself back in bed with Gordon calling after me and Dad coming over with breakfast.
And as I laid there, thinking about being back home, happiness didn’t overcome me as much as I thought it would. It didn’t bring me peace, or serenity. It didn’t give me something to look forward to, or work toward. It was just… another memory. Another world. Another lifetime, or so it felt.
Which pulled silent tears down my cheeks as I succumbed to the darkness around me.
Hoping, and praying, that when I woke up, I was anywhere else but there.
Anywhere else but home.
Anywhere else but inside of the nightmare I had created for myself.
13
DUTCH
“Hahaha! That’s some bullshit, Dogma. You know you fucked up.”
The man with the bald spot scoffed. “Are you ever gonna shut the hell up with that nickname?”
Gordon, the man with the beady eyes and wry smile, slapped the man’s shoulder. “When you stop pissing me off with that Saran Wrap bullshit. I damn near pissed all over my shoes this morning!”
It made me sick to watch, and that was a first for me. As I sat there, perched on an abandoned rooftop a quarter of a mile away from the downtown police precinct, I pointed my cone of communication—as I so aptly called it—right toward that motherfucker as he stood underneath the awning of the front door of his place of work.
While shooting the shit with a friend as if his fiancée hadn’t gone missing.
Does he even know she’s missing?
My knives pulsed against my hip bones. What I wouldn’t give to plunge them directly into his chest. Men like him made me sick. Every single laugh that fell from his fish-thin lips made me want to yank his testicles up through his throat. Sure, we peddled weapons. But, he was on another level of disgusting we never broached.
We gave a shit about the women around us.
“Hey, hey, hey,” the man named ‘Dogma’ said as he slapped Gordon’s gut, “you, uh, workin’ out there?”
Gordon snickered. “The only workout I get nowadays is convincing my girl I deserve a blowie.”
