The Bulletproof Boy

by Loretta Lost

  Well, if I can’t shut my eyes tightly and will him away, I can surely beat him into the carpet until he turns into a snake and slithers away. Action-y dreams are the best ones, anyway. I turn my wine bottle upside down, ignoring that some of the wine is pouring out onto the carpet. Then I proceed to lunge forward and smash the bottom of the bottle against his head. He flinches, and I spring back, disappointed that the bottle did not break against his skull. At this point, we are both splattered with wine, resembling blood. I frown and smash the bottle against the bedside table, causing the bottom to shatter, and study my improved weapon.

  Clutching the neck of the bottle, I feel like I am holding a spiked club. How do I use this? Do I continue to try to smash it against him, or stab and twist with the sharp edges? It doesn’t matter. I’ll figure it out.

  “You wouldn’t hurt me, would you?” Benjamin says as he slowly circles me. “You would never hurt me, my darling girl.”

  I still can’t believe this is really happening. My hand holding the bottle trembles for a second, and I am furious with myself for this. I try to summon up my inner superhero, begging her to take over and handle this for me, but all her strength is just out of reach. Benjamin comes at me with the syringe, trying to plunge it into my neck. I dodge him, and slam the wine bottle into his back, twisting it. I am trying to pull the bottle out and strike again when he roars and turns around, his eyes aflame. Before I can sidestep his maneuver, I feel the sharp prick of the needle being shoved into my side.

  What the fuck is in that needle? I look down in horror, to see it sticking through the material of my blouse, plunged into the soft area just under my ribcage. My fingers drop the wine bottle as I scramble to pull the needle out, but all the liquid has already been administered. It’s empty. My hands begin to shake.

  I’m not sure if it’s more from fear, or actually a physiological effect of the drug.

  Looking up at Benjamin, I see the glint of victory in his eyes. I want to reach for the bottle and slam those sharp edges right into his eyeballs. But involuntarily, I find myself taking a step back.

  I want to talk to him, to distract him. I want to ask him if he doesn’t have better things to do now that he’s a senator. I want to gain the upper hand, but I am just clutching my side and cowering in fear.

  Then, I proceed do the stupidest thing a girl can do in this situation. The thing that I always get pissed at girls for doing in movies. The one thing that Levi told me never to do in a fight.

  I turn and run.

  I manage to get the hotel room door open and run into the corridor, screaming for help before I find myself sinking to my knees. My whole body is suddenly very heavy, and it feels like I am suspended in a very viscous material. Floating.

  I have a moment where I can look around at the world, and see little particles of light and energy suspended in the air. They are beautiful and prismatic in color, and I feel like I can see something that was always there, but invisible to me until this moment. Are they trying to tell me something? Are they trying to help me? I could almost reach out to touch them, these magical molecules and kaleidoscopic particles dancing all around me.

  Then my face hits the floor.

  The last thing I feel is someone grabbing my ankles and dragging me across the hotel corridor.

  My thoughts grow dark and fuzzy, but I try to hold on.

  I think about that last kiss I shared with Cole at the airport.

  I wonder if I’ll ever get to kiss him like that again. Probably not.

  What’s going to happen to me now? It hurts to think about it.

  But Cole is out there, so I know I’ll keep fighting. I try to find the rainbow particles in the air, but my vision is going dark, and I can no longer see them. They might have been good fairies, flapping their wings and waving their wands in an effort to free me from the sinister spell of whatever was in that syringe.

  Please. I call out to them silently, praying and begging for more help. I plead with them to save me. Do fairies grant wishes? We’ve already established that I haven’t had much luck with hopes and dreams in my lifetime. But I’ll forgive all of those unanswered wishes if they can only grant me this single one:

  Whatever happens now, I just need to know that I will see Cole again. We can stay locked away in the desert forever, or anywhere he wants to go. We’ll stay safe.

  I know I messed up.

  If I get another chance to hold him, I swear I will appreciate it more.

  I will kiss him so hard that the earth will shake again.

  Please. Please let me see him one more time.

  Don’t let this be the end.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  When I wake up, everything is spinning. I don’t know exactly where I am.

  It takes me a moment to focus. I am looking at a ceiling that Cole did not design—I know that much. Still, it is a very nice ceiling.

  Wait.

  I’ve seen this ceiling before. Sitting up suddenly, I am alarmed to find that my body is cold and naked. I am not wearing a stitch of clothing. I rub my head as I try to remember how I got here. There was wine, and…

  A lifelong nightmare became reality.

  I rub my side where the needle pricked me. It’s a little tender and itchy. My thoughts are not yet clear, but something feels familiar about this mattress. When I move to stand up and get off the mattress, it even sounds familiar. I know the creak of this mattress.

  I know the duvet cover. I know the pillowcases.

  It’s all pink. It’s all pink and flowers. I turn to the windows, and I somehow know what I’m going to see. Pink and white curtains, perfect for the room of a nine-year old girl. Moving toward those curtains, I push them aside to reveal bars on the inside of the windows. The glass is so darkened that I can’t see outside. The windows do not open. And even if I smash the glass, I can’t fit through those bars.

  I couldn’t fit through when I was twelve. I certainly can’t fit through now.

  Moving to the bedroom door, I wonder if I should bother to try the handle. Every step I take makes me colder in my nakedness. Out of sheer habit, and knowing it will be futile, I turn and twist and yank at the bedroom doorknob. Nothing happens.

  I know this door. I know this doorknob. I have spent many, many hours crying and screaming to be let out of this door. Banging on it until my hands were raw. Scratching at it until my nails bled. Kicking at it until I broke the door, and my leg, and then having it immediately replaced with a stronger door. There’s an old fashioned keyhole in the door.

  I take a few deep, ragged breaths.

  Against my better judgment, I lower myself so that I can peek through the keyhole.

  There is an eye staring back at me.

  I gasp and move to the side so that the person cannot see me. I sit on the floor, naked and shaking, and deeply disturbed. Then it occurs to me that the eye looked exactly like mine. Pale and blue. Was it just a mirror? Crawling back to the keyhole, I peer through again, but there is nothing. No eye. No mirror. I can see nothing.

  This is unsettling. Am I losing my mind?

  Rubbing my forehead, I look around the room, searching for anything that can be used as a weapon. I know more now than I did then. Everything is a weapon. My body is shaking so hard.

  I consider moving the dresser in front of the door, but then how will I receive food? Rubbing my hands together, I consider going under the blanket to get warm, but I don’t want that vile blanket to touch my skin. Still, warmth is important—as much as food or water. If I’m going to fight my way out of this room, I will have to get warm.

  And I know I’m going to get out. I’ve done it before. I will always get out. I will always survive.

  I will get back to Cole.

  The mere thought of him makes tears prick my eyes. Things were just starting to go really well. Things were perfect. I should have listened to him. I should have taken Zack with me.

  I am sure Cole will find me. And if he doesn’t, Lucy will find me.
Or Zack. Or Detective Rodriguez.

  I am not just a pathetic nine-year old girl anymore, like when I first met Benjamin.

  I am not alone in this world. I have an amazing boyfriend, a caring ex-boyfriend, and a brilliant boss who works for the CIA, and was able to find me in the middle of the desert. I even have a real, biological brother who seemed like an asshole, but is probably not as much of an asshole as I believe he is. I was communicating with them all before I was taken, and they should notice I am missing fairly quickly.

  Surely Luciana can find me here, in…

  Am I in Benjamin’s old house? I’m not sure. This room looks identical to the one I used to live in. But is it the same room in the same location, or a perfect replica? I can’t tell with the windows all blacked out like that. Either way, someone went through a lot of trouble to set up this whole charade.

  And it’s creepy as fuck.

  Definitely the scariest haunted house I’ve ever been to.

  But how can every detail be so perfect? Guys don’t pay attention to such details, do they? There is no way this room sat unchanged like this for all those years, is there?

  Finally growing truly uncomfortable with how fucking frozen I am, I move to the dresser and begin opening drawers, looking for an article of clothing. They are all empty. I move to another piece of furniture, an armoire, and another, until I have opened every drawer in this goddamned room.

  There is only one place left to look. The closet. I don’t really know why I am avoiding it so much, but I feel an overwhelming sense of dread as I approach it. My face twists up with fear as if I am bracing myself for a saber tooth tiger to leap out of that closet and rip me to shreds.

  Swallowing down a bit of saliva, I find that my throat is very dry as I reach for the hand of the doorknob. My cold hands are shaking violently. As soon as my hand touches the metal, I pull it way, feeling cowardly and spineless.

  “No,” I tell myself. “No, no. No. No.”

  But I can’t stand here forever, naked and shivering, with someone possibly watching me through the peephole. This is too damned disturbing. Gathering all my courage, I reach for the doorknob again and twist it, pulling the door open.

  The closet is filled with cute pink clothes and princess-y dresses, all items that would fit a very young girl. My face contorts in disgust. I reach up and sort through them, searching for something, anything to wear. I pull the items of clothing apart, looking at them miserably, feeling appalled and sickened by their extremely small size. Are these my old clothes? I don’t remember. They seem smaller than I imagine I was, even at age nine.

  My eyes are narrowed and concentrated in focus as I try to think of how I can combine these tiny pieces of fabric to make adult clothes. I keep flipping through the clothes with frustration until I pull aside one dress and see an item that makes every drop of blood in my body turn to ice.

  I stand, frozen in shock for a long time. I’m not sure how long.

  Then I reach up to touch my neck, where the skin feels like ice.

  I have been holding my breath as I stare at the item, and now I must finally force myself to breathe. My lungs are cold. My throat is cold. My tongue is cold, and my lips feel like they might be turning blue. My whole body is shaking now, as I fight away memories and feelings I can’t bear to have.

  There is a pain in my chest. A dull, deep ache. Moving both hands to touch that naked area between my breasts, I feel around to check if I have been stabbed, but there is no projectile I can rip out. Still, the pain is growing, as though the object stabbing me in the chest is being shoved in deeper by the second.

  I begin to claw at the skin with my nails. I tear at my breastbone, digging, trying to make the pain stop. I try to sink my fingernails in deep between my ribs in an attempt to perform surgery to remove whatever jagged object is causing this pain. As my nails pierce my skin and slice into my flesh, rivulets of blood begin to slowly drip down my stomach. Still, I can’t reach the offending object that is giving me such agony, maybe even trying to kill me.

  Then it occurs to me—

  I am trying to rip out my own heart.

  Tears are sliding down my face incessantly now, and my body is growing very weak. My mind is shutting down. The item I’m staring at is a perfectly normal item you might find in any closet. In fact, there are dozens of others in this very closet.

  But this particular one is twisted up into a horrifyingly recognizable shape.

  It’s mostly straightened, but the few curves it does have give it the shape of a screaming swan.

  A screaming, dying swan.

  I remember it well. I remember every curve and angle of that coat hanger, as though it were part of a distant dream. A recurring dream. A bloodcurdling dream. When I reach out to touch the coat hanger, I see that there are blood stains on it. Little flakes of deep red blood, so darkened they are almost black, come away on my fingertips.

  I stare. I stare in absolute horror.

  The emotions are sharpened knives and toxic chemicals, slashing and fusing together inside me.

  The feelings are sinking and rising and swirling, like a mushroom cloud.

  The grief is a deafening explosion mounting in my chest.

  I cannot sustain this.

  Tilting my head back, a mournful wail escapes my chest, like the scream of a banshee.

  And it’s not enough.

  Falling to my knees, I scream and I scream. I smash my fists into everything I can reach until they are bloody and bruised. Then I smash them some more until I am sure that I have broken my hands, smashed them clean into bone dust. I scream until it hurts my throat, my voice, my head.

  I scream until it infiltrates all these walls. If I am to die here and now, I am sure that this scream will continue to be heard here for centuries.

  I scream until I wake the dead, and make them feel what I feel.

  I scream until I summon the dead, and feel their phantom hands all over my body.

  I scream until I have emptied everything in me.

  I scream into a vortex of pent-up rage.

  And now, I am no longer me.

  Now available…

  The Shatterproof Heart

  Sophie is trapped in a hellhole by her worst enemy, and is forced to face her deepest darkest secrets. She hopes to be rescued while she desperately tries to rescue herself.

  As her mind breaks and bends and transitions between her different identities, she is forced to come to terms with herself. Can Sophie win a battle of wits with her captor to survive and escape, or will she have to find another method of saving herself?

  One thing is for certain: Cole will do anything it takes to get her back.

  Find out what happens next!

  Acknowledgments

  For the girls who have shown me the kindness of a sister. Even though I didn’t marry their brothers. =)

  And for my father. Someday, when I have kids of my own, I hope I have a man in my life who inspires me to write stories about wonderful, devoted fathers. Someday, I really hope that I’m less obsessed with writing about fathers who are murderers and rapists.

  But that day is not today.

  Thanks for that.

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