Page 9 of Ricochet

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

A spear of pain strikes my chest, and the cold frost branches inside my veins. It feels like death all over again, but it’s not. It’s defeat. Hopelessness. As if I’m sinking in the middle of the ocean, watching the light at the surface fade out of reach.

***

Sucking in a sharp breath, my eyes flipped open. I jolted upright, kicking my feet over the edge of the bed, and clutched my skull. Tremors spread through my body, jarring my muscles. The dark room of the abandoned mansion I’d taken as a home for the last six months stood quiet. Empty. As lifeless as I felt inside.

The glint from my long blade called to me, and I swiped it off the nightstand beside me. Closing my eyes brought images of black, thick poison pulsing through my veins, searing them from the inside. It tore through my organs and flesh, as my heart pumped faster, diffusing the darkness to every part of my body—until it burned. Hot! So fucking hot. Goddamn it burned, like acid snaking through my vessels, as it crawled up my arm, sinking deep inside my bones. I had to get it out of me. The poison would consume me. Turn me mad, insane, violent.

Did I want to be one of those sorry motherfuckers staring out the window of an asylum, drooling, waiting for death to take me?

No.

My hand trembled when I placed the blade to my forearm and made a long cut there. Kicking my head back, I let out a hiss, as the poisoned blood seeped from the cut, falling onto my jeans. A cluster of skinny red, some white, lines marred my forearm—small slits that released the pressure inside of me, kept it from building, combusting into a fit of rage.

I had them sometimes, crazed fits, on the occasions I’d thought about my family. The blackness crawled through my body, into my eyes, stealing away my sight. A complete blackout, from which I’d awake to destruction.

It used to be I’d dream of my wife and son a few times a week, see their comatose faces staring back at me, hear the constant ring of gunfire over their muted screams. I’d wake up with that awful metallic taste in my mouth and the smoke in my nose, sweating like I’d run a marathon in my sleep, needing to slice the blade into my skin.

The dreams eventually lessened, though nothing I noticed immediately, because Lena and Jay remained at the forefront of my mind.

The hallucinations were the worst. They’d appear so vivid, almost felt like I could touch them again, could hear their voices calling out to me to save them.

Alcohol had always numbed my body, and the drugs cleared my mind. I’d slip into a comatose state of being alive and functioning, but having no awareness of anything around me, so much so, I couldn’t even say, exactly, how I stumbled upon Alec. Could’ve been in one of those group therapy sessions, or maybe while I was teetering on the parapet of Book Tower with a gun in my mouth. I had no recollection of any human interaction in that first year, no connection that kept me grounded. I’d been a zombie, moving through the human experience as if I’d had any place there.

I’d always thought it funny, the way therapists tell someone how to deal with death and half the bastards didn’t even have a family. How the fuck could they tell me the right way to deal with losing everything I loved, when they’d never known the devastation of having their son collapse just a few feet out of reach, watching the blood pool and knowing it was too much, too much fucking blood for a body so small. At the same time, hoping to God to be wrong. Maybe it wasn’t too much after all, maybe he could survive it.

Hope. A cruel bitch who kept me alive when I should’ve burned alongside my family. She hoisted me up on my elbows, when I could hardly keep my head from dragging on the floor, and drew me to my son’s dead body, only to find what I’d feared all along—it was too much blood.

A therapist once told me there were five stages of grief, with the bright marquee of acceptance hanging over the finish line. I’d chosen to spin my tires in anger for a while. Anger was where I felt alive. I needed it to survive, to feed some twisted, charred part of my soul with which I’d been waiting for a plan, craving something I couldn’t formulate inside my own head.

Alec whispered the word revenge, and like a rich liquor, it cooled that burning thirst inside me. He’d constructed a plan, so elaborate, so meticulously well thought out, I couldn’t say no. Death to every one of them, and at the end, the bullet would bounce back on me and put an end to my own misery and suffering. Alec had agreed—he’d pull the trigger himself.

So, how could I refuse?

Weeks turned to days, days turned to hours, until I found myself so consumed with vengeance, the hours I thought about the murder turned to minutes. Short flashes that came on without warning, but failed to break me entirely. Only on rare occasions did I wake shaken and sweating, the echo of the promise I’d whispered to Lena as I clutched her still-warm hand alive in my head.

Every one of them will die—painfully and mercilessly.

The promise fueled my will to survive.

Through the dark drapes, a beam of sunlight hit my hand, so warm the heat dispersed beneath my skin, a wake of comfort penetrating my tired bones. I lifted my hand, mesmerized by the specs of dust drifting along the ray of light, slow and directionless, suspended by a moment in time.

“It begins today,” I muttered, pushing myself up from the bed.

***

Blue, my full size Cane Corso, had been the only piece of my life that’d managed to survive the fire set to my house. His bulky head blocked my rear view in the back seat, while I drove in the direction of Esteam’s Coffee Shop in downtown, just as I had every Wednesday morning for the past two years. It was probably the only place in the city that’d allow a Cane Corso to sit at the table like he had any business there.

The parking lot stood empty at ten thirty in the morning, well past the morning rush, and I parked in front where Lauren sat waving at me through the window. The pale brown of her mixed heritage gave off a glow, set against a pretty smile and bright green eyes. I could easily imagine the same beautiful face staring back at me from the cover of some French magazine—too damn pretty for a nineteen year old who’d grown up on the streets most of her life.

Warm hazelnut hit me as I entered the coffee house with Blue in tow.

“Blue!” Lauren jumped up from her seat and knelt to give the dog a hug.

“I see how it is.” I smiled down at her pouty face, as she rose to a stand and wound me in a tight hug.

Lauren was the first person, besides Alec, that I bothered to connect with after the murder, though only because she’d taken it upon herself to care for Blue during my stay in the hospital. In fact, I owed her my life. She’d found me, passed out and bloodied on the side of the road, and called 9-1-1. For months, I was nothing more than John Doe to the docs and nurses who cared for me. Even once I was coherent enough, when they began asking questions, I left Against Medical Advice and never looked back.