by Callie Hart
And then I feel nothing.
“Are you ready, baby? Oh my god, Paul. Watch. Watch.”
A high-pitched whistling sound is piercing my eardrum. I have no idea when I’ve ever felt this bad. My head…my head is killing me. It literally feels like my brain is revolting against the rest of my body, intent on causing me so much pain that I simply expire. Fuck. There’s a lot of thinking involved in trying to move myself into a sitting position. My shoulders, elbows, wrists—every single joint in my body—feel like they’ve been dislocated and roughly forced back into place.
I can smell sugar. Something sweet.
“I can’t believe it¸” a woman’s voice whispers. It is a whisper, soft, the words deeply felt, but the volume of the words is loud. Ear-splittingly loud. I have no idea what the fuck is going on. I risk opening one eye, then the other, and the pain in my head increases. I’m looking at a bright rectangle of white light. Dark shapes move within the light.
“He hasn’t even realized. Look,” the female voice whispers again. I squint, trying to clear my vision, and things begin to take proper shape. A cinema screen. I’m staring up at a cinema screen. And on the screen…
“He’s such a big boy. I had no idea he was gonna grow so fast.”
“Yeah, he’s gonna be tall like his dad.”
My mother. And my father. Well, the man I remembered as my father, before Charlie ruined my fucking life and announced he was actually my dad. My father’s arms are wrapped around my mother’s waist from behind, his chin resting on her shoulder, and two of them watch as a pudgy little baby holds his dimpled arms above his head and takes staggering, teetering steps down a long pathway.
“He’s got your eyes, Paul,” another voice says somewhere in the background. “So dark. He’s gonna terrorize the ladies with those eyes.” My mom turns to the camera—she knows they’re being recorded—and pokes her tongue out at the person filming. “Oh, shut up, Dee. I can’t bear to hear that. He’s never going to grow up. He’s just gonna be my little boy forever and ever.”
Dee, whoever she is, laughs. “You’re going to be the most overprotective mother, aren’t you? Your child’s not going to bring a woman home until he’s already married her for fear you’ll hate her on sight.”
In the background, the baby tumbles backward, landing on his butt. There are enterprising stalks of grass thrusting their way out of the cracked concrete where he’s sitting now, the green blades reaching for the sky. The baby focuses, wrapping a dumpy little fist around a handful, and tries to uproot them.
“No, Zeth. That’s not for eating, baby boy.” My mother frees herself from my father’s embrace and lifts the baby—me—from the ground. She then turns and presents me to the camera, as though I’m a trophy she just can’t bear to stop displaying to the world. Even then my eyes were darker than your average chocolate brown. I reach out with dirty, muddied hands and try slapping them against the lens of the camera.
“No, baby. That’s Duchess’s new camera. You can’t break that. Psycho Charlie will get mad.”
“Hey, please don’t call him that. And don’t call me Duchess, either. I hate it.”
My mother turns her huge, wide eyes on the camera, looking right down the lens.
“Charles Holsan, you’re an arrogant prick and you’ve been treating my best friend like shit. Now put a ring on her finger and a baby in her belly, or leave her the hell alone.” She laughs, her serious expression disintegrating into a broad smile that illuminates her whole face. She looks just like Lacey. Beautiful.
“He’s nowhere near as bad as everyone thinks he is. You should get to know him a little better. He really likes you two.”
“He doesn’t like me. He hates me,” my father says. “I can’t do anything right for the man.”
“He’s just never had an accountant before, Paul. Don’t worry. It’s just his dry English humor. It takes some getting used to. All right, I have to go. You,” the woman, Duchess, says to my mom, her manicured fingernails suddenly visible on screen as she points, “need to remember to show your husband some love. He’ll start to think you’re playing favorites.”
Mom smiles at Paul over her shoulder, hugging me tightly to her chest. “Awww, baby. You know I love you, right?” She breaks out into a wicked smile. “But I do love Zeth more. He came from you and me. He’s perfection. I will never love anything in the world as much as I love this little boy.”
My heart feels like it’s doing somersaults in my chest. My eyes are burning like crazy. I try to shunt myself into a more upright position, but my body is so fucking sore. I need to get up. I need to find Sloane and Michael. I grit my teeth, using a combination of what little upper body strength and momentum I have to lift myself.
A voice speaks out into the darkness, almost right on top of me. I nearly shit my pants. “That was always ’er fucking problem, y’know? She always did love you more than anything or anybody else.”
Charlie Holsan is sitting to my right, comfortably slouched in an upholstered seat. He turns and gives me a clinical once over. “Not lookin’ so hot, my boy. You got a bad ’eadache?”
“Fuck you, asshole.”
“Ha! I fuckin’ love it. You always did have a fuckin’ mouth on you.” Charlie goes back to watching the screen, as though I don’t even exist. I take a moment to look around. No bodyguards. No Sloane. No Michael. No Lacey. No one. Just him and me in an empty movie theater. It’s an old place, traditional. The kind of place with brocaded curtains that draw apart at the beginning of a feature, unveiling the new, fantastical world you’re about to immerse yourself in. No drink holders or recline features on the seats. From the elaborately scrolled cornicing on the ceiling and the grand arch over the screen, this place was definitely built back in the twenties.
I wrestle myself to my knees, and then throw myself back into a chair to my left. “Where are the others, Charlie? Where the hell is Sloane? What the fuck are you up to?”
Charlie holds up a hand, pointing one finger in the air. The video reel of my mother and me starts all over again. Her laughter. Are you ready, baby? Oh my god, Paul. Watch. Watch. Me taking my bumbling first steps down an uneven pathway.
“I loved your mother from the very moment I set eyes on her. Did you know that?” Charlie says, ignoring my question.
I want to cut out the fucker’s tongue just for talking about her. I will not engage in this with him. I will find my friends, and then I will end this miserable bastard’s life. “Where. The. Fuck. Are. They?”
Charlie looks at me again, a small, amused smile on his face. “They’re watchin’ another movie, I’m afraid. They weren’t too keen on this feature. ’Specially not your sister. She’s had a rough few days.”
“Because you convinced her the Duchess was her mother, when she wasn’t, you fuck. And now the woman’s dead.”
“And now the woman’s dead,” Charlie agrees, slowly nodding his head. He taps his index finger against his chin, appearing to muse over something. “It was pretty shitty of me to do that, I suppose. But this life is a circular thing, if anything at all. The Duchess wanted kids so fuckin’ bad. She couldn’t ’ave ’em, though. And your mother stole Lacey away from me before I even ’ad a chance to get a look at her. So I thought it prudent to take Lacey away from ’er in the end. Give her to the Duchess.”
“The Duchess is dead. My mother’s dead. You can’t seek revenge against the dead, Charlie. You sure as fuck can’t make up for your failures as a human being by giving a dead woman a fake daughter, either.”
“Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong, Zeth, my boy. I firmly believe in an afterlife, and I firmly believe your mother is watching down on ’er kids. So she can definitely hurt over me fucking with what Lacey believes. And she can definitely ’urt because ’er precious boy knows she was a fucking prostitute. I took everything from ’er. I made it so neither of ’em could work. Not a single person your parents knew would ’elp ’em for fear of what would ’appen if I found out, you see. I
made it so there was only one option left open to her, and I made fucking sure it ruined your mother’s marriage.” He grins. “Exactly ’ow I wanted it. That was before I knew she was pregnant with my kid, of course, but still. All’s well that ends well, right?”
I have no idea what kind of shape I’m in—I’m assuming bad, since I was thrown so far in that blast—but that doesn’t matter. If I die trying, I’ll make this man pay for the things he’s done. The things he’s said. But first, I need to know the truth.
“You’re not my father, are you?”
Charlie gives me a cold, stony look. He reaches inside the breast pocket of his suit jacket, draws out a small, silver vial, and proceeds to unscrew the cap. I know what’s inside it. He tips some fine white powder out onto the back of his hand, holds it to his nose, and inhales sharply. “I did my first line of coke the day the Duchess came ’ome and told me her best friend was knocked up. I was so fucking angry. That was the first time I gave the silly cow a slap, too. A day of firsts all round.” He grins at me like he’s telling me a funny joke. The drugs do this to him. He acts like he’s happy, like the buzz is still enough to lift him, when all it’s doing is making him angrier. More sour. More aggressive. More vile.
“The Duchess came bouncing into the room, all hopped up on her good news, babbling about how Celia and Paul were gonna have a baby. Celia and Paul. Celia and Paul. Celia and motherfucking Paul. He wasn’t wrong, y’know. I really did ’ate that fucker.” Charlie does another bump. This time he doesn’t even pretend to smile.
“That was also the first time I’d ever been jealous of another man. I had more money than anyone else I knew. A big fuckin’ ’ouse. I ’ad everything I thought I needed, but then along came your fuckin’ mother with all that curly blonde ’air and that smile that seemed to light up the world, and I wanted ’er. And I couldn’t have ’er because of Paul. Because she didn’t fuckin’ want me. And then you came along, and I saw how fuckin’ happy you made her, and I hated you. You were supposed to be my son. But you weren’t. You were the glue that made them stronger.” He points an accusing finger at the screen, where my mother is picking me up from the ground, prying plucked grass stalks out of my fat little hands.
It hits me with the weight of a twenty-pound bowling ball to the chest. He’s not my father. Charlie really isn’t my father. A cold sweat prickles at my skin, my stomach twisting; the relief is just too great. Better my father be a dead man I can barely remember than this piece of work. “So you lied about, Lacey, too?”
Charlie glances sharply out of the corner of his eye, tapping the silver capsule against the top of his leg. “Oh, no, son. Lacey’s mine. I put her in your mother one night. I sent your father, prissy Paul, out of town for me. He needed to go collect some money for me, I told ’im. So off ’e goes, and I go pay a visit to your mother. She was always a little wary of me. I’d waited years by this point, though. Years. And I was done waiting for her to be impressed by the shit I bought her or the money I tried to give ’er. I made ’er let me in. And then I made ’er behave herself while I got what I wanted.”
Fuck the pain in my body. I rocket out of my seat, launching myself at the man. My fists rejoice in pain as I drive them into Charlie’s face, once, twice, and then I’m suddenly being dragged back off him. I lash out; I kick; I holler. I can’t get free. O’Shannessey and Sammy are gripping me by the shoulders—must have been lurking there in the dark the whole time. Charlie straightens himself out in his seat, and then spits blood onto the ground. He dabs at his mouth with a handkerchief that O’Shannessey, ever the fucking suck-up, hands to him.
“That was quite rude,” Charlie tells me. “To be honest, though, I can see why you’re upset about me forcing myself on your mother. But you should know, despite how fiercely she fought me off, I could see in her eyes that she liked it. She always was the sort of woman who pretended to be good, when on the inside she was just begging for it. If I’d met her before she married Paul, she would have been mine. I don’t doubt it for a moment.”
“You’re fucking dreaming.” I have another go at jerking myself free, but it seems I’m weaker than I thought. O’Shannessey and Sammy manage to keep ahold of me, though I don’t make it easy for them.
“Speaking of dreams…” Charlie says. “How you sleeping these days, Zeth?” Something sick and suddenly frightened curdles in the pit of my stomach. “After you came to live with me, you never could seem to get a good night’s sleep.”
Fuck. No. I do not want to think about this right now. I do not want to think about him. “You’d better kill me now or shut the fuck up, Charlie, otherwise I’m gonna slit your throat for you.”
He laughs. “You used to say that when I’d come to you, too. Do you remember? Fuck you, asshole,” he says, mimicking the high, reedy voice of a child. “You’re not going to kill me. You’re not going to touch me. I’ll kill you first. I’ll slit your fucking throat.”
I don’t want to remember those words. They don’t appear in my night terrors, but they ring fucking true. I said them. I said those words when I was trying to defend myself…from him. It makes sense, of course. A deep, obvious kind of sense that I should have realized long before now. The thing is I have known. I’ve known all along, even back then, but I could never admit it to myself. When Charlie came for me and took me from my uncle’s place in Las Flores, I thought this strong, powerful man had come to save me. He treated me like a son. I didn’t want to believe it was him coming into my room each night, trying to rape me. Kill me.
When it first started happening, I reasoned with myself that the man in the dark didn’t really want to hurt me. If he wanted to have sex with me so badly, he had to like me a lot, right? I was too young to realize rape and murder went hand in hand. I thought raping someone was an act of tortured love instead of seeing it for what it is—degradation. Humiliation. An act of hatred so vile and evil that even criminals in prison will beat a rapist to death.
“Don’t say another fucking word,” I snap.
Charlie raises his eyebrows at me. The video of my mother has stopped playing again. He lifts his hand, gesturing to whoever’s in the projection room to start it over from the beginning. “Why don’t you want me to talk about it?” he asks me. “Does that mean you won’t want me talking about how I killed your best friend and then let you rot in jail for his murder? Does it mean you won’t want me talking about how I tried to run your girlfriend off the road? Does that mean you won’t want me talking about how I did run your mother off the road?”
“What?” The night Charlie murdered Murphy, he’d been making trashy suggestions about the Duchess. With Charlie’s shitty temper, I’ve always thought that was the reason why he took a machete to his neck and slashed his throat wide open. But that…that barely registers against his last confession. The official police report on my parents’ death was that my father had an embolism that burst. That he drove their car straight into a street sign. But Charlie…Charlie?
“Oh, come on. Don’t look so surprised. Your whore of a mother ran away with my child. I could hardly let her get away with that. I don’t forgive, Zeth. And I sure as fuck don’t forget.
“Sloane. Sloane, wake up.” Someone’s shaking me. Roughly. It’s possibly the worst feeling in the world. I don’t feel like I should be waking up yet. I probably shouldn’t wake up for a really long time. “Sloane, you need to get up. Now!”
The urgency in the person’s voice breaks through the fog clouding my head. It all comes flooding back to me—the church, the casket, the bomb. The azure blue of the cloudless sky spinning into the industrial gray of the street below me. The pain and the heat and the panic. I open my eyes, and Lacey is staring down at me, concern creasing her face.
“Oh, thank god. You’re alive.” Her hands are trembling as she pats them over my torso, fingers gently pulling pieces of my shredded dress together. I look down my body to find I’m a mess. A seriously big fucking mess.
“What the hell’s going on?”
I croak.
“Charlie tried to have you killed. Didn’t work, though,” Lacey explains. I try to sit up and fail. Lacey hooks one of my arms over her shoulder and heaves me upright. The room spins a little, but then slows and stops altogether. Michael’s laid out on the floor a couple of feet away. Looks like he’s in the recovery position.
“Oh, shit! Is he alright?” I scramble forward on all fours, hands fumbling at his collar, trying to unbutton his shirt so I can check for a pulse. It’s there, strong and steady if a little slow.
“His head was bleeding when they brought you here,” Lacey says. “It stopped a while ago, though. I didn’t know what to do.”
She’s right—Michael’s head is wounded, just above his right temple. The blood’s already congealed there, forming the beginnings of a scab. I tease open his eyelids and try to see if his pupils respond, although in the darkness of the room it’s hard to tell. I think they do. His body is probably just trying to heal itself, but he still needs medical attention. The first thing I do is scan the room, not for a medical kit or an exit, but for the one person who can make this okay. For the one person who will be able to fix all of this. But he’s not here.
“Where’s Zeth, Lacey?” She gives me a guilty, torn look. My stomach begins to fizz, like I’m about to throw up. “Lacey, where is your brother?”
“Charlie took him down into the basement.”
“The basement? What the hell’s in the basement? Where are we?” The room is a dark, square box—no windows, no furniture. Nothing. It’s entirely empty aside from the three of us. There’s only one exit, and that’s a steel door with a keypad wired into the wall next to it.
“Used to be an old movie theater,” Lacey says, sniffing. “Charlie said he brought my mom here on a date one time. Back when it was still open.”
I sit on the cold, hard ground, bridging my knees up and hugging them to my chest. “Lace…god, Lace, Charlie didn’t bring your mom here, I promise you.”
