Trip still comes here often, or so the report I have tells me. He spends entire weeks binging on cocaine and cheap vodka, even though his father’s liquor cabinet is stocked with the finest whiskeys that money can buy.
It would lead almost anyone to the same conclusion. That Trip is as sick in the head as Alexander. I wonder if he fantasizes about that night too while he fucks his paid whores. If he comes up here just to relive it.
As I wait in the darkness of the lounge room, I wonder if we’re really all that different. For years, I’ve done nothing but fantasize of my revenge. I’ve watched them stumble over every hurdle I’ve thrown their way while they went about their lives as if that night never happened.
Rory wants me to believe that there is something in me worth saving. That if I cross this boundary, I will regret it.
But he’s wrong.
Because when I snuck out of his bed in the middle of the night, glancing over my shoulder at his sleeping face, nothing had ever been so clear to me.
There are some boundaries even I am not willing to cross.
And bringing him into this, using him as a soldier for my cause, is one of them. The moral dilemma of taking a human life falls by the wayside when you are at war. It’s a matter of action and reaction.
I will never be free until they are gone.
This is my battle. And mine alone.
I will be the one to live with the consequences.
A key rattles in the front door, and I grow still.
Someone stumbles into the darkness and bumps the side table in the entryway, muttering a curse. Keys fall into the key bowl, and the footsteps move to the kitchen.
A refrigerator door opens. And then he returns.
Trip doesn’t bother with the lights. He collapses onto the sofa across from me and drinks straight from the bottle of vodka. Liquor soaked sweat suffocates the space around him, and this is what he has become.
It takes him a few minutes to settle in, and he is not at all aware of his surroundings. That comfortable sense of security and peace is only afforded to someone who believes their victim is dead.
His head falls back onto the sofa, and he scrubs a hand over his face. It remains there for a few short moments, quiet, almost meditative. Then he leans forward, elbows on his knees as he tinkers with his little black case on the coffee table.
This is the moment he realizes he is not alone. Even the most drug-addled brains are capable of sixth senses. Or perhaps it is the drugs that makes him see monsters lurking around every corner. Today, though, he sees a ghost.
And that ghost is me.
I’d give anything to know what he’s thinking right now, mouth slack and face pale.
He doesn’t speak. His hands are still half frozen with the task of preparing his next fix.
Only, it isn’t coke in that case. It’s heroin. Even in the dim light, it is easy to see he is a long-time user.
His face is gaunt and sunken in, lips tinged with blue. There is no vitality left in his body. He can barely lift his arm. Everything about him is slow. His thoughts, his reactions, his words.
This place has changed him too.
“I knew you would come,” he says finally.
“How?” I ask.
I am dead to him. Was dead to him. There is no way he could know that unless Alexander already told him.
Trip shakes his head. “Alexander told us he came back up here and moved your body,” Trip explains. “But that was a lie. Because I came back up here first.”
“Why?” I ask, and it doesn’t matter. His remorse won’t save him, but I am curious.
He’s quiet, tapping the needle against his fingers while his foot keeps the same rhythm on the floor.
