Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
C hainsaw…
Fuck.
I’d scared the shit out of her with my poorly timed joke, and I hadn’t meant to.
C’est la fuckin’ vie, dipshit, I thought to myself as I carried the dishes to the sink and she slipped inside her bedroom door. She closed it most of the way, just leaving it open enough for the cat to come and go as he pleased.
Never have I ever been so jealous of a fur ball.
Lucky bastard, I thought.
I rinsed the dishes and loaded them into the dishwasher, and put the lid onto the glassware casserole dish that she’d left out, sliding it into her still, mostly empty fridge.
She kept most of her shit in the freezer, which made sense with how she tended to cook.
I went back to the living room after the kitchen was cleaned up and stretched out on the couch. I made sure my phones were plugged up and charging, and after a bit, switched off the television and the lamp at the end of the couch over my head.
It wasn’t often I went to bed this early, but shit – I was tired, and given the opportunity, I was going to take the rest. A front was moving in off the Gulf, and while it wasn’t anything like a hurricane, or hell, even a tropical storm – it was supposed to generate some severe thunderstorms. That was usually enough to knock out power in some of the more rural places and along the coast.
I was expecting to be called out. In fact, I’d be surprised if I wasn’t.
I closed my eyes and settled. I swear it wasn’t more than five minutes later, and I was jolting awake.
I stared into the dark, listening, waiting for whatever had disturbed my sleep to do it again so I could make sense of what it was.
There was a low growl from the sky outside, and the windows flashed blue, but before the clap of thunder could follow, there was a faint cry from the direction of Gen’s room.
I sat up more fully and listened hard as the newest roll of thunder dissipated, to make sure my mind wasn’t conjuring things, and there it was again… “Ah!”
I was up and moving, another flicker of lightning lighting the way as I traversed the living space and opened up her door a little more fully to see what was going on.
She writhed in a tangle of her sheets, the comforter spilled off the end of the bed and onto the floor.
Her cat leaped down from her bed and turned back as Gen cried out one more time.
She pushed back, as though trying to escape someone or something.
I went to her, and sat down on the edge of the bed, grasping one of her hands balled up in her bottom sheet by her hip, and giving it a light shake even as I swept some of her blonde hair from her sweating face.
“Gen,” I called out. “Gen, honey, wake up.” She cried out and sat up, her eyes flying wide open as the newest clap of thunder crashed, making her cry out and flinch from the noise.
“Easy!” I called out. “Easy, baby – you’re okay. You were dreaming. It was just a dream. You’re all good.”
She stared at me, like a deer caught in the headlights – eyes wide and showing too much white, body stiff as a board, as her sleepy mind tried to catch up and gain traction. Then she did something totally unexpected…