by Esme Devlin
I do the stew properly and switch on the gas stove, letting it heat slowly while I get changed out of my uniform and into my pajamas. I empty my bag and come across the note Shaun wrote. It’s a full size of A4 paper, and I wonder if I should take the time to translate it. Surely, he can’t know that many foreign expletives? No. I won’t give him that power over me. I really don’t want to know.
I text him back at lunchtime and I’m still wondering if that was the right decision. I head back down to the kitchen and check my phone, but my home screen is blank. He hasn’t replied. Probably a good thing. I know engaging with him is dangerous. I’m not stupid. But there is something between us. How could there not be, when he’s all I’ve thought about for the last four days? It’s natural that anyone would have that reaction, although I fear that’s exactly what he wanted.
When the stew is ready, I set the table and get the roll from the bread bin. I sit down to eat, it’s piping hot and I watch the steam come off the top and disperse into the atmosphere. This is what lonely people do when they have nothing else to do. They watch steam.
Fuck it.
I leave the steam to do its thing and head back up the stairs, returning with the letter in my hand. I pull out my phone and begin typing his words into the note application while blowing on a spoonful of stew. It takes much longer than I expected, because I have to check every single letter, assuming that a misplaced E could be the difference between “house” and “giraffe”. Or something like that.
I’ve long finished my stew by the time I type the last word into the note app. I copy the whole thing and paste it into a translator, feeling butterflies in the pit of my stomach. Do I really want to read this?
Princess.
I think of you all the time. Your hair is like the sun to me, your eyes shine like stars and when you’re not here, it’s like an eclipse. I want to squeeze my fist around that golden hair and push my cock into your mouth until I see the light go out in your eyes…
The rest of it continues in the same way and I stop reading. I can’t finish it. I tuck the letter away in my beside drawer and put all thoughts of choking on Shaun’s cock to the back of my mind. Well, I try to. I take a cup of tea into bed with me and flick through the channels on the TV while browsing on my phone, until my eyes grow heavy and I nod off to sleep.
❖
Someone shakes me and in my half-dazed state I tell myself I must be dreaming. They shake me again and I come to my senses slightly, Dad must be home. I turn around in bed; the room is dark, but a figure sits on the edge of it just inches away from me. The shadow isn’t my dad. I’m certain of it. I scramble up out of the covers and am about to scream when a hand shoots across and covers my mouth.
I try to wrestle them off me but their other arm grabs onto my shoulder and pushes me back on the bed. I punch and kick, and they use their body to restrain me. My heart is racing at a hundred miles per hour. This is it. I’m the girl who dies in her bed. I don’t want to be the girl who dies in her bed.
I draw my fist back, as much as possible, and crack them on… I don’t know what. My fist connects with something hard and pain erupts from my knuckles. My startled gasp collides with a palm and my eyes squeeze shut while the person above me draws a sharp intake of breath.
“Fucking hell, Lacey, calm yer tits!” The man says.
I recognize the voice instantly: Shaun Keagan.
In my house.
In my bed.
I freeze.
Everything freezes except my chest, rising and falling at lightning speed, despite the hard lump of weight that’s pressed on top of it. Shaun Keagan, in my house. What the fuck is he doing in my house? He must sense my fight has temporarily ceased because he removes the hand covering my mouth and quickly locks it around my wrist.
“What the fuck are you doing in my house?”
“I missed your face,” he says.
“You’re not normal. Get out,” I hiss.
“We’re leaving.” He shifts his weight off me and gets up from the bed before switching on my beside lamp. A soft warm light illuminates the room and my eyes adjust as I take him in. He’s wearing black jeans, slim fit ones that show off his thick thighs. A black T-shirt sits under an open black hoody, and he finishes the look off with yet more black — a leather jacket. With his dark hair and eyes, he looks like a fucking henchman. “Do you need me to tell you what to wear, or are you capable of not dressing like a slut this time?”
I laugh at his absurdity. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“You don’t get a choice, princess. You can get dressed and come nicely, or I’ll remove you. I’m sure my friends will love the silky pajamas.” He nods his head and raises both eyebrows while his gaze runs over me. I might as well have been wearing nothing, because that's how his stare makes me feel. He watches me like he can see right through the thin scrap of fabric, my cheeks flush uncomfortably, and he smirks as if he knows exactly what he’s doing to me.
I look at my bedsheets instead of him. None of this seems real.
“You’ll have to drag me kicking and screaming. I will scream. You might think you own the school but my neighbors won't give two shits about that when they hear me.”
Shaun shrugs. “I’ll just tell Stevie her best friend couldn't be arsed getting dressed then, will I?” The bastard. He's doing it again. Using my only weakness against me. “Or, if you really want, we could stay in. Watch a movie. Snuggle under the covers. I’ll text Calvin right now and let him know Stevie’s on her own with him tonight.”
Fuck’s sake.
“Where would we be going?”
“Out,” he says.
“Where?”
His face is deadly serious. “You’ll find out. Now make your choice before I take it away. Stay in with me, get dressed for me, or I rip you out of bed right now and put you over my shoulder like a rag doll.”
I consider him for a moment. Do I doubt that he really would pick me up and remove me from my house in my pajamas? I don’t think I do. Everything he’s done until now has been the actions of a boy who shows little regard for consequences. There have been no consequences this far. I eye him up. He could easily lift me. I’m small, five foot two… and he must be over six. Would anyone hear me scream?
“Can you go out of the room while I get dressed?”
He shakes his head. “I’ll turn my back if it means you go faster.”
“Fuck's sake,” I mutter under my breath as I haul myself out of bed and make my way across the room to my dresser. I pull out a pair of ripped jeans, a white T-shirt, and my white Air Force 1s. I stick my black leather jacket over the chair. He’s still watching me. “Can you turn around now?”
“I think you missed a word there, princess?”
“Please,” I say with a huff.
He chuckles and turns around. “Someone really needs to teach you some manners. It’s quite disgraceful.”
“I wouldn’t need manners if people didn’t take it upon themselves to break into my house,” I tell him as I slide out of my pajamas and pull on my jeans.
“I’d have text you if I thought you would have replied.” He glances back over his shoulder towards me and my arms fly to cover my chest. I shoot him a look that could cut through concrete, and he turns back around with a grin. “Nothing I haven’t seen before, darlin. Your photo leaves little to the imagination.”
“I replied today,” I argue.
“Wasn’t exactly nice though, was it Lacey?”
“When have you ever been nice to me?” I reply, shoving my arms through my T-shirt.
He turns back towards me, but since I’m mostly dressed, I don’t let it bother me. “Would you like me to be nice to you?” He takes a step towards me. “Is that what you want?”
The way he’s looking at me like he wants to fucking eat me tells me we have totally different expectations of what being nice actually means. “No.”
“So, you want me to be… not nice to you?”
&
nbsp; “I want you to leave me alone.” I say, my face serious.
He takes another step closer. “Not an option.”
“What do you want?” I ask him.
He stares into my eyes for a moment and I shift uncomfortably. I look at his face instead, the stubble that runs along his jaw and across his lips. The lips that claimed me not so long ago… I stop my trail of thought right there.
“You’ll find out. Come on, we’re leaving.” He spins around and makes for the door and I stand there. My feet don’t want to move. Why the hell did I agree to this? It’s like every cliche from every horror movie ever. Don’t go with the crazy person.
I don’t even know if Shaun is crazy, but there is something not right about him. There’s a glint in his eye when he looks at me, one that could be interpreted as either wanting to fuck me, or wanting to ruin me. Maybe he wants to do both?
He stops at the door and looks back at me. I haven’t moved. I don’t want to move. This is a bad idea.
With a sigh, he doubles back and puts a hand around the back of my neck again.
“Get your hands off me,” I say. “I don’t need you to push me around all the time. I can walk.”
“Then fucking walk,” he barks, dropping his hand and clenching it into a fist.
I follow him out of my room and out of the house. The whole time my stomach is doing backflips and my heart is racing. A feeling of dread fills me, like I’m walking towards my own fucking downfall. Like I’m walking straight into a trap.
His gray Q5 sits on the drive next to my A1 and bleeps as the LEDs come on and the indicators flash once. He opens the passenger side door for me and I hop up to the seat, thankful I had the good sense to lift my jacket. He gets into the driver's side and turns the car on, and I immediately crank the heating up to full and push the button to warm the leather seat.
“Make yourself at home, princess,” he chuckles.
“It’s freezing.”
“It’s 13 degrees.”
“I was warm in bed ten minutes ago,” I argue.
“And now you’re off on a little adventure. Thank god you have someone like me to save you from your life of boredom and drudgery,” he says sarcastically as he reverses the car off the drive. He holds on to the headrest of my seat and his body turns while he looks out of the rear-view window. The smell of him fills the air around me and I turn my head away, looking out of my own window as if something more interesting is happening there.
“If I needed saving, I would have asked for it.”
“Things aren’t half as fun when you ask for them,” he says.
I’m convinced there is something wrong with him. I turn around and watch him as he speeds down the road. His driving is effortless, one hand on the steering wheel and the other never moving from the gearstick. He’s so fucking casual, while I’m sat here wondering if I will make it through the night in one piece.
“Are you okay? Like, you know this isn’t normal, right?”
He glances over at me and flashes a smile when he catches me watching him. “Who wants to be normal?”
“I do. I want to be normal. I don’t want to be taken from my bed in the middle of the night and wake up to graffiti on my walls and have videos of me go viral at school.”
“We went viral?”
“Fuck off,” I hiss.
He chuckles.
“You’re deliberately missing the point.” I tell him, while he takes a left and speeds the car up. We’re on a single track road now, in what appears to be the middle of nowhere. I shudder. It looks like an ideal place to murder someone. “Where are you taking me?”
“The Devils Playground.”
“What?”
“I’m kidding. We’re going to a party.”
“It’s a school night,” I protest, realizing how lame I sound as soon as the words are out.
I cringe while Shaun laughs at me. “I think it’s fair to say we both just lost a bit of respect for you there, Lace.”
I snort to stop myself from laughing. He’s fucking right.
“See what I mean? You’re always so serious and boring. Just try unclenching your arsehole for me, princess.” He smirks. “You might even find you enjoy it.”
I don’t give him the satisfaction of replying. Shaun speeds along the track like he’s done it a thousand times before, and a while later we reach a patch of tarmac with a huge building behind it. It looks like it could be a warehouse of some sort. There are floodlights attached to the top of the building that light up the surrounding ground. A row of cars sit in a perfect line along the edge of the perimeter, maybe twenty or thirty of them. I expect Shaun to find a space in the row, but he stops the car right in front of the building and switches the engine off.
“This is the party?”
“This is my party,” he says as he unclips his seatbelt and gets out of the car. He comes around and opens my door for me, holding out his hand while I get down. I try to let my hand slip once I’m out but he holds on to it with an iron grip. His hand is warm and rough, and he threads his fingers through mine and leads me to the door.
I could hear the thumping of the music the second I was out of the car, but as we enter, it reaches deafening levels. I look up at Shaun, but the hall we walk along is too dark to make out his features. We reach another set of double doors and I can see some light through the glass. Green light flashes in quick bursts and I see the shadows of people on the other side. He drops my hand and opens the door, motioning me inside. I step through.
“Stevie’s in here somewhere,” he says in my ear, bending down behind me.
I look back at him but he makes off as soon as he’s finished speaking to me. Bastard. It’s too dark to see where he’s going, but even if I could, do I really want to follow him? He brought me to a party and now he’s fucking left me. I look around the room. This isn’t even a party; it’s a fucking rave. Probably highly illegal.
People dance in the middle of the room, but the strobe light cuts off half of their actions, making them look almost robotic. All the while the music thumps in my chest, making me feel like there is nothing but a drumbeat inside my ribcage. I don’t know what to do with myself. I consider going straight back out the door and waiting in the car park until he’s finished whatever it is he came here to do. The room is too loud, too busy. Too many people.
Maybe I can find Stevie? If she’s here, she must have got here somehow. Maybe she has a car with her?
I walk towards the center of the room, looking left and right, and I almost get crushed by bodies on either side. I don’t know or recognize any of these people, and I wonder if they even go to our school. Some of them look young enough, but others I assume are definitely in their twenties.
The lights change from the green strobe to a disco-ball and the crowd lets out an unanimous groan. I can see people easier, though none of them are Stevie. The girls that surround me are dancing like it is life or death, wearing hardly any clothes and gulping drinks from plastic cups. I notice a few with body paint on. The boys are worse, some of them completely off their faces on either drink or drugs, I can’t be sure. Couples are making out and gyrating against each other.
I want to leave. I don’t like this at all. I feel like I’m suffocating.
I move to the far side of the room and do a quick survey of the people before me, double checking that Stevie isn’t here. Was he lying to me, or is there other parts to this warehouse? I edge along the wall and eventually come to a door.
I open it and slip through. The door is weighted and it shuts itself the second I’m on the other side. Must be sound proofed too, because already the loud music has turned into a low hum. There is at least some light in this hall, coming from a single strip light above me that's buzzing and flickering. The paint is flaking from the walls and there is no floor covering, just concrete. What is this place?
Taking a cautious step forward I listen for sounds of movement. Doors line either side of the corridor and I press against t
he first one, listening. A few moments pass and I hear nothing but the sound of my own breath and the muffled music coming from the main room.
I go to open the door but it’s locked, so I move on to the next one, and the next one, listening again. I hear faint sounds of laughter, but it’s not coming from this door. I think it’s coming from the end of the hall. I walk slowly, quietly in the direction of the sounds, hoping that I can see who it’s coming from before they see me. I reach the end of the corridor and can go either left or right at this point. I listen again, and turn right, staying close to the wall.
I reach the end of that section and the voices are louder now, though I still can't make out who they're coming from or what is being said. I turn, expecting to see another corridor but instead there is an open room filled with people. I freeze, but it’s already too late.
He’s already seen me.
Where the rest of the warehouse looks old and in a state of disrepair, this place could match even the swankiest of nightclubs in any major city. There’s a red tinge to the surroundings coming from the lights above us. Hardwood parquet flooring spans the length of the room beneath my feet, reflecting the light in the empty centre. Tables line the edges, surrounded by leather high-backed chairs, with further plush velvet benches behind those. The walls are covered with deep crimson drapes, and two doors at the back lead off into darkness and are partially covered with a curtain of sparkling jewels on strings.
Shaun sits at the top of the room and motions me with a finger to come forward. The rest of the people in the room stop what they’re doing and turn to look at me. I glance around at their expectant faces, some of them I recognize. And then I see Stevie. She’s curled up in a ball on Calvin’s knee. I can't see her face because her head is resting on his chest and her hair falls forward covering it, but I’m positive she is sleeping. Or otherwise unconscious.
She’s not the only one in the room sitting on a knee either. I turn from Stevie to Shaun. His chair sits on a raised platform at the back of the room, and Rosheen sits on top of him, smirking at me like the cat who got the fucking cream.
