by Lake, Keri
Masked faces glance back at me. I hear a voice announce an open room. More bright lights flash in my eyes, these ones much more intense, and my head throbs a rhythm of relentless agony. Everything is sterile. Cold. Bright.
The masked faces talk to one another but I can’t hear what they’re saying.
The biting taste of metal coats my tongue, and a smoky scent overpowers the strong odor of alcohol.
“Where’s my wife? My son?” I think I’ve spoken aloud, but none of them answer. “Lena!” I bellow, and her name crashes against my skull in searing pain. “Lena! Jay!”
Writhing does nothing to free me from what’s bound my wrists. I catch sight of a mask covering my nose, before my field of view begins to narrow into a small circle, and the masked faces, no more than shadows, stand over me, watching, waiting for me to die.
Their voices turn distant, drifting farther and farther away, until all I hear is the swishing of blood in my ears.
Easy now, a voice breaks through the barrier. The pain dissipates. The circle of view closes.
* * *
A well-groomed dark-skinned man stands over me, wearing a white lab coat. His murmurs reach my ears, but I can hardly make out what he’s saying. Something about surgery. Taking things slow.
“I … want … to see … my wife.” Flames lick my throat, and pushing the words past my lips forces me into a coughing fit. “Son.”
His eyebrows come together in a frown, and he bows his head before lifting his gaze back to mine. “Do you … remember anything about them? Your name? What’s your name?”
The words don’t sink in at first, because why doesn’t he know my name? Didn’t he have my ID? How the hell did I get here?
A tidal wave crashes over me with the memory of stumbling along the side of the road. Cold. So fucking cold, I thought my heart might freeze inside my ribs.
An explosion of pain rips through my skull, like tiny bits of glass shattering inside my head. I slap a trembling hand to my face and let the all-consuming misery pull me under. Pain churns in my gut and I weep. I still don’t know if the images in my head are real, or if this is just an everlasting nightmare I’m trapped inside, but I can’t stop sobbing behind the shield of my hand.
Clenching my jaw, I drop my fist to my side, and through gritted teeth, I say, “Kill me.”
“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.
“How you been?” As I took a seat across from her in our usual booth, Blue sat as still as a statue on the floor beside Lauren.
“Good.” Her cheeks caved with a smile and my sensors flared on high alert. “Seeing someone new.”
“Who?”
“Her name’s Jade.”
Jade. Something about the name. Reminded me of jaded, being depressed and taking drugs. Three things I didn’t want Lauren to experience, after she’d already lost everything and everyone around her. We both shared a bond in that respect—the night I lost my family, she lost her mom and older brother in the same sweep.
Somehow, she’d bounced back from it better than I had, had worked harder than most kids her age to make a better life for herself, and planned to go to college.
“What’s her story?” The nice thing about Lauren’s gay preference was that I didn’t have to think about some misogynistic asshole pushing her around, though some of the chicks she dated could be ruthless in their own way. The last had left her crushed, starving herself for three straight days, before I finally had to whip her ass out of bed and convince her to keep going.
Me. I could hardly whip my own ass out of bed, yet there I was, dragging her across her apartment, shoveling food down her throat.
Hannah, the short, busty waitress who’d worked at Esteam’s for years, set a new cup in front of me and poured in coffee before petting Blue. “How ya been, Nick?”
I buried my groan in the cup of coffee, taking a sip, and before I’d set it down, Hannah had already left. Nothing personal. She’d asked me out two Wednesdays ago, and I just didn’t do the dating shit. Not even the fucking shit she’d offered in the same breath.
“Why you gotta be all … mean?” Lauren said. “Not like she asked you for a kidney.”
“I’d have given her a kidney to not ask me on a date.” I ushered her to continue. “So, Jade?”
“She’s cool.” A wily grin stretched her lips. “Different. Fun. She makes me laugh.”
The kicker. Find someone who makes you laugh, I’d once said to her, like I had any fucking business giving relationship advice to a teenage girl.
“Using my words as weapons, now, huh?”
Laughter spilled from her mouth, and I couldn’t help but smile back. The next five minutes were about to kill me as much as I knew they’d kill her, so I took a moment to enjoy the sound.
“Hey ….” Goddamn the queasy feeling in my stomach. “Lauren …”
“Uh-oh. That’s not good.” She leaned back into the booth, kicking up a knee between her and the table. “Any time you start with Lauren”—she attempted to mock my deep voice, lightening my somber thoughts—“I know it’s bad.”
“Something came up.” My jaw shifted, making it hard to form the words I’d practiced in my head so many times before. “I’m not gonna be around.”
Her face twisted to a frown, muscles twitching like she couldn’t formulate the right words either. We had a code, Lauren and me. Not a lot of questions. No ties.
“Already?” Like her eyes had gone into spasm, she couldn’t seem to stop blinking.
I couldn’t look at her, so instead I stared down at my traitorous face in the reflection of the coffee. I’d promised to take care of her, to protect her, and what I couldn’t tell her was that cutting off ties with her was the only way I could ensure she’d be safe. “I’ve got some stuff to take care of.”
“So … when you say you’re not going to be around, what exactly do you mean? Not around, like out of the country? Out of Detroit? Dead? How far away are we talking?”
She’d already broken the first rule, and I couldn’t blame her. We’d made the pact early on, when neither one of us had much invested in the other. Three years later, she was like a kid sister to me, one I tended to treat more like a daughter. A daughter I’d grown to love, assuming I was still capable of loving anything.
“You know the rules, Ren. I’ll continue to look out for you. But it’s safer if you don’t come around.”
Tears formed in her eyes, but before they could steal her pride, she shot her gaze toward Blue. “What about him? Who’s gonna take care of Blue?”
“Blue’s along for the ride.”
She triple, quadruple-blinked, kicking her head back toward the ceiling. “Well, your timing’s shit, as usual, Nick. I tell you I’m happy, you tear it down.”
“Hey, c’mon. Don’t say that.” I leaned to the side, trying to catch her attention. “Remember? We had a deal.”
“Fuck the deal. Whatever you’ve got going, I want in on it. I want to be a part of it.”
Hell, no. I shook my head. “Too dangerous.”
“You think this is … making this easier?” Her voice cracked and her eyebrows pinched. “What if you die? What if something happens to you, and I’ll never know!”
I reached for the hands she’d balled into fists on the tabletop but hesitated, choosing to keep mine at a distance. “You got your shit together now. You’re gonna go to college—”
“I don’t know that!” She looked around as her voice bounced off the walls, drawing Hannah’s attention. “What if I don’t? What if I’m not accepted, huh?”
“You’re gonna be accepted. You’re fucking brilliant, Lauren.” I huffed. “I told you, I’ll be around. Who knows, maybe I’ll pop in on you and your girlfriend sometime. But no coming around my place anymore, hear? No asking about me. Promise me.”
That seemed to bring some relief, because she slumped back into her seat and crossed her arms a moment before reaching out to pet Blue. “Will you bring him to see me?”
“We’ll see.” No promises. In fact, I wasn’t sure I’d follow through to visit her. Why pick at the sting?
Her lip twisted like she chewed on the inside of her cheek, as she often did in thought. “Okay. I promise.” She wiped tears from her cheek. “Damn, Nick, why you gotta make me cry in public?”
Only on occasions that I made her feel uncomfortable, or pissed her off, did she lose her usually articulate manner of talking.
“I’m sorry. I don’t like seeing you cry at all. What d’you get outta this, anyway, meeting up every Wednesday? Old people do that shit.”
As planned, my comment tugged a laugh from her. “Someone’s gotta take care of your ass. Not like you found yourself a woman.” Her lips kicked up to a half smile. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were gay, too.”
I raised a brow and sat back, throwing my arm across the seat, and goddamn if that wasn’t the precise moment Hannah chose to walk up—as if the two of them had planned something.
“Hannah?” Lauren’s eyes shot to mine and back to the waitress. “Nick’s a good lookin’ guy, right? Would you fuck him?”
I choked on my coffee, leaning forward to
catch the fallen drops on the tabletop. “What the fu—”
As she filled our coffee cups, Hannah pursed her lips, then her gaze locked on mine. “Hell, yes, I would.” She winked and sashayed back toward the kitchen, tossing another wily grin over her shoulder as she went.
“You see? It’s not like it ain’t practically falling in your lap. And by it, I mean clean, straight pussy. Lots of it.”
I ignored her comment. “Few weeks, I’m going to transfer some cash into your account.”
“You don’t have to keep doing this.”
“Someone’s gotta look out for your ass.” I took in the weight of her smile, the sadness, as if she couldn’t let go. “Hey, who guards the flock?”
She rolled her eyes. “The shepherd.”
“And who’s the shepherd?”
“My brother.”
“Don’t forget that.” I hooked a finger beneath her chin and lifted her gaze to mine. “No matter what shit I got going on, I will always watch out for you. Got it?”
She leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. “For a sadistic, loveless bastard, you got a heart of gold, Nick.”
4
Nick
It wasn’t hard to identify a trap house. Any joint on the block a bastard would’ve ordinarily stayed the fuck away from, and he’d have stumbled upon a crack whore’s dream. Chipped bricks lay half tumbled from the front porch, where posts from what must’ve been a banister in its heyday stuck up from broken concrete steps.
The rancid smell of shit stung my nose as I climbed the steps. The porch was littered with liquor bottles, shitty diapers, bicycle tires, a shopping cart, a white bucket filled with a thick black liquid, garbage bags—the kind of random objects that didn’t make sense when piled together.
