Chapter 17 #2
Darren, Bradley, Jeremy, Henry, Ezra—fuck, Ezra… I crawl away from them until my back hits something hard and rubbery, pinning me in place. I reach for my gun, only to find my hands dripping with blood.
Red.
The room.
Five.
His face is splattered with blood once again, standing over them one moment, and the next he’s in front of me with a bullet to the head.
What have you done?
Golden light flashes, bringing me back to that house… What will she think of me?
Ashia.
She’s home, unprotected and vulnerable.
My men’s screams fill my head once again, followed by hers.
Something bad always happens when I’m away, and I’m not there…
I scramble for my phone, squeezing my eyes shut to force the images away.
The device slips from my hands, and I rake at the ground frantically, desperate to find it.
Dirt and grass pierce under my nails, feeling like splinters from the wooden floors.
It hurts. It all fucking hurts. I claw to find my lifeline as my head pounds behind my eyes.
Once the weight is in my hand again, I open my eyes to find her contact and yank the phone up to my ear. Everything stills around me as the phone rings once, threatening to play my death toll. When the line clicks, and her voice breaks through the fog, my heart stops.
“Hey, baby.” I gasp at her voice. My surroundings come back to life. The lights begin to flash again, the breeze whisps across my now drenched forehead, and the carnival sounds rush in my ears—bringing me to the surface once again. “You’re okay, Damien. Just breathe,” her soothing voice calls.
My chest heaves up and down, and my vision throbs with my pulse. I’m gripping the phone for dear life, unwilling to let it slip from my bloody grasp. I’m fucking losing it. It’s too much. The bodies lie in front of me completely still and unmoving, yet everything else is running at twice the speed.
“Tell me something you can feel with your hands right now,” she commands in the sweetest tone.
“What?” I can’t tell her. She doesn’t want to know of the blood on my hands or the men lying in front of me. Her mind doesn’t need to be troubled with my ghosts. Not yet.
“Tell me something you can feel,” she requests again, a little softer this time.
I can feel my fucking heart jumping out of my chest, my mind rolling, and the blood on my palms, but I don’t think that’s what she means.
I throw my other hand up to run it through my hair, but the bottom is too short to grasp, and that only makes it worse.
There are no fucking strands to pull. I claw at my scalp instead, desperate to feel the sensation, and the grit under my nails digs in further.
“Dirt. It’s cold and grainy.” I settle for that instead.
“Okay, good. What else?”
I shake my head and drop my hand, trying to focus on her voice. My hand rubs the ground, needing to wipe the blood away, but it only sends a tickling sensation through my limb. Blades of grass tickle the insides of my fingers, sending pinpricks along my arm and making me cringe.
“The grass. It’s long and cool to the touch… I’m trying to wipe my hand on it, but it’s not—”
“That’s great, baby,” she interrupts confidently and sighs, like she knew what I was going to say but didn’t want me to finish. “Now what’s something you can taste?”
Why is she asking me all of these questions? Does she want to know what I just did? Is she trying to stir memories back up? She sounds so sincere. I don’t believe that she would ask if it didn’t have some purpose, but I can’t focus.
Taste. What can I taste? I run my tongue along the roof of my mouth, realizing how dry my throat has become. Saliva coats it as I swallow harshly, taking the rolling sensation down to my stomach.
“The air is thick and heavy, kind of like it’s about to rain. It’s almost salty, but I think that’s from my sweat,” I admit. She giggles, and that sound alone makes it easier to breathe. I take a full breath in, letting the humidity settle in my lungs as her humor dies down.
“Yeah, I think they were calling for storms tonight.” Her voice is plain, like we’re having any normal conversation and I’m not on the verge of passing out. “What’s something you can smell?”
“Besides the rain?” I inhale through my nose to pick something out, the most obvious hitting me first. “Blood…”
“What else?” she asks quickly, like flipping a page in a book. I inhale again, shakier than the last.
“Carnival food. Popcorn, maybe? No, definitely popcorn, and something sweet, like funnel cakes or fried Oreos.”
“Okay, just focus on that for a second. You like those.”
“You do, too,” I counter, but do as she says when she doesn’t respond.
As long as this woman keeps commanding me, I'll do anything she asks. I continue smelling the air, trying to pick everything out and appease her. We saw a lot of different food trucks here, as well as the usual snack stands. Grilling meat permeates its way in, then a heavier scent of oil. “Yeah, there’s definitely a lot of deep-fried things here.” She laughs again, and I finally feel the whirling in my head start to slow down.
“What about something you can hear?”
“You mean besides your beautiful voice?” I ask bashfully, and I swear I can feel her blush through the phone.
“Yes, goofball. Besides that.” Her tone alone tells me there’s a smile on her face. I want to keep it there. Even if I can’t see it right now, I know it’s beaming. My chest warms just imagining it, easing the tension in my shoulders.
“I can hear screams—happy ones, though, like from the people on the rides. And there’s music, but not the good kind. It’s the creepy, stalker-clown, fair music.”
“Well, I would say that’s good, but I'm not so sure about that one.” She laughs, actually laughs. It’s real, coming from deep in her belly, and my eyes sting at the sound.
“Yeah, me neither.” I catch myself chuckling with her this time.
“Now, tell me something you can see.”
I glance towards the way I came, noticing the same lights and people walking in the distance.
“Bright lights from the rides. They’re almost blinding, but they’re flashing all sorts of different colors.”
“Anything else?” she asks curiously. I shift my gaze to the other direction, diverting from the chaotic fun inside the fairgrounds. The night sky is visible this way, barely showing the ridge of the rolling hills.
“The mountains. I can’t see any stars if I look straight up, but if I look out there, the tops are riddled with them. The ridgeline kind of looks like waves underneath the sky.”
“That sounds beautiful.” Her tone is wonderous and proud, like for the first time in what seems like forever, I’ve said all the right things.
“It’s not near as captivating as you,” I reply honestly, and then all I can hear is her soft breathing. Each breath sends a relaxing pulse through my body, easing the rest of the strain in my limbs.
“How do you feel now?” Her tone is cautious, like she’s afraid she’s poking a bear.
My lungs take another deep fill of air, and as I release it, I look back down.
The bodies lying in front of me are no longer guarded by ghosts, and I gasp softly, realizing the voices are gone.
They’re not hiding behind the music or whispering to me anymore.
There’s nothing. I can hear the crickets that decided to sing at some point in the night that I didn’t hear before.
My head feels still, as if I’ve overcome the lingering vertigo once and for all.
I’m lighter. There’s still a mist of anticipation crowding around me, but I feel like I can stand without something trying to pull me back down.
“Much better…” I whisper, hating how I choke up. She groans angelically in quiet approval, and I let a tear slip at the sound. “You are my God-given solace, little wolf.”
“No, Damien. You did all of that by yourself. You chose to see the good things surrounding you. You could have told me about the lives you took, or what the reason was, and every detail of that, but you didn’t.
You chose to see, hear, and feel the good things.
That’s all you, baby. All of the bad is still there, but you chose yourself, and that’s the most important thing. ”
My fucking chest explodes. The air around me isn’t cold anymore, and my body feels languid, like if I laid down right here, I would fall asleep and float away.
“Just keep choosing the good things…” I whisper to myself, realizing that’s what I should have done all along.
There was so much bad. I didn’t think I could just look past it.
It doesn’t mean that it goes away, or that all of the trouble disappears, but I’ve let it consume me—let it block out everything I’m fighting for.
“I fucking love you, Ashia. So. God. Damn. Much.”
She pauses for a moment, letting out only a shaky sigh before she speaks.
“I love you too, Damien.” Her voice is soft but strong, filled with absolution.
It flows easily, even through the phone, and I know I’ll be able to hear those five words until the end of time.
I’ve always been able to hear them. Even when their voices threatened to consume me, she was always battling to push through them.
“I’m sorry I’ve been so—”
“Don’t do that,” she interrupts again, but her tone isn’t harsh. It’s calm and full of understanding. “You don’t need to apologize for anything, okay? You have done nothing wrong.”
That immediately makes me feel like shit, knowing what I’ve done and what I continue to hide from her.
“Well, I'm going to anyway,” I retort, knowing what needs to be done.
“Stubborn ass,” she jokes, and I can’t help but chuckle another time. “Be careful, okay? I'll see you when you get home.”
“Damn right you will.” She giggles at me again and fuck, I think I’m going to pass out from the sound.