Chapter Fifty-Four
Declan
“You aren’t going to hit me, are you?” Kent Lawson asks from the other side of the door, mostly joking.
“I suppose that depends on whether you have it coming,” I say sarcastically. “You don’t have anything to do with my insane doctor, do you?”
My best friend, Kent, stands a cunt hair over five and a half feet tall, sporting a muscular build and a crooked lump on the bridge of his nose.
“It was a joke,” I add, trying to defuse the tension. “I know you don’t know about my doctor.”
“Doctor?” Kent quips as he hands me a beer on our way to the barstools beyond his kitchen. “You know, I’ve been getting some calls wondering where the hell you’ve been. Your mom’s worried sick. She said it’s not like you to go days without talking to her.”
“That’s why I’m here,” I reply. “I went to see a shrink a couple weeks ago.” I admit, still unsure of what day it is.
“A head doctor?” Kent’s ears perk up. “You trying to have your fortune read again?” he teases, referring to my previous encounter with The Master—a night he remains skeptical about.
“A psychiatrist, actually,” I correct him, squinting at his candid look. “But thanks for the support.”
“It’s about time you got some help,” Kent insists. “I told you that last year. I even said it back when you were hung up on that Daphne girl nobody else met.” He always has a way with words when it comes to our tangled past.
“Look, Kent,” I say sternly. “I need you to be serious. Can you do that?”
“You know what that means, don’t you?” Kent asks, with a knowing smile that implies we might be heading for a few rounds of putting.
“I really can’t today,” I confess. “I know it’s where we always go, but things have been crazy, and I don’t know who else I can trust.”
“Okay, man,” Kent sighs with disappointment. “Hit me. What’s going on?”
I start from the very beginning and tell him about everything.
The creature in the dark that has haunted me for several years.
The nightmares that have plagued me since childhood.
My desperate search for Dr. Campos. The kidnap, torture and rape.
The subsequent amazing sex. All of it. Even the admission the Daphne, my Daphne, never existed.
And now here I am. In Kent’s house. Laying it all out like a connect-the-dot sequence in a Tarantino film.
RING!
My phone alerts me to an incoming call.
RING!
“It’s him,” I say to Kent with a mix of dread and resignation. “The crazy doctor who tortured me.”
“Well, don’t answer it, stupid,” he remarks with rolling eyes.
RING!
“Hello?” I answer, unable, or rather unwilling to ignore this call.