73. Ambrose—present day
Ambrose—present day
A rush of vomit climbs my throat, but I force it back down. The ugly taste distracts me from the pain inside my chest that hurts slightly more with each breath in.
The taste runs down my throat as I swallow.
Nausea is constant since being exposed to Dollie, since opening my eyes to feelings I’d hushed for years. It’s almost like my stomach is telling me that she’s bad for me. My soul and every other part of my body say the opposite, that I can’t live without her, even when it hurts to be close.
But I’ve ruined fucking everything.
I touched her after she asked me to stop, and I’ve thought about it all night and haven’t slept a wink.
I swallow again, but my contracting stomach has other ideas, sending the wave of vomit back up my throat. I barely make it from my bedroom to my bathroom sink before that bite of pizza and all the other snacks from yesterday eject from me.
I fill my mouth with cold water from the tap, swishing it around my mouth before doing the same with mouthwash from the cabinet.
Morning light peeps in from the window behind me and tries to blind me as it reflects from the broken mirror into my eyes.
I groan and open the cabinet glass to divert the sun.
From inside the cabinet, the daily meds I force down my throat greet me. It’s not time for them yet, but pretty soon, they’ll be clogging my throat like they always do.
I step back from the sink, still using the basin to support me. The nausea has passed, leaving behind the filth I feel all over me.
She’d told me to stop.
I didn’t.
I should have.
My head drops forward, catching the edge of the glass door. My skin splits on impact, a tiny red trail dripping through my eyelashes.
I blink, watching the splatters stain the white porcelain, my thoughts still on Dollie as a sinister voice from my past echoes in my ears. “ Do you feel better about the kick? I kissed it better like Mommy would.”
Sending a fist into the mirrored door, I break it again, further distorting the ugly face staring back at me.
Quick to look away, I pull the shard that sticks from between my knuckles, kick off my sweats, and step into the shower.
My fucked up looking hand bleeds out, the wound vicious and angry. But not life-threatening. It doesn’t stop me from creating the red line that appears on my skin close to my tattoo, following the sharp edge of the shard across my flesh.
Another two times, or Dollie won’t forgive you.
Following the directions from the noise in my head, I draw two more jagged lines in my skin before I drop the shard, and it clambers away, shattering into two small pieces.
She has to forgive me. I might just die if she doesn’t.
But there’s a chance she won’t if Shane gets in her head again.
I blast the shower, not caring too much about the temperature, only caring about washing these red rivers down the drain and all my thoughts, too. I take a scrubbing brush to my skin and drag it over my body with a little too much force.
My tanned skin turns a reddish color before I toss the brush into the distance, chipping a tile with such force.
I still don’t feel clean. I feel dirtier as three new injuries and so much blood pours out.
God knows how much time passes before I turn off the shower. The sun is in a different place, and a niggling in my brain tells me it’s time for my medication. I reach for a towel to dry myself, and pop the pills with some water from the sink.
As expected, they leave a lump in my throat that I struggle to get down.
Happens every fucking day.
Not bothering to dress, I slip out my door, using the conventional way to head downstairs and retrieve my phone because while at The Funhouse last night, surrounded by noise and so many people, I’d told Valaria that I’d help her with something this morning, and my mind is blanking.
Bubbles makes no effort to join me as I return to the second floor. She’s already asleep, cuddled on the sofa that she absolutely shouldn’t be on—that sock at her side.
I pad across the hallway floors, phone in hand, lighting the way as I read through messages from Annabelle, asking if Shane was still here, then another that said, I’m assuming he’s left, and you’re otherwise engaged with lil sis.
Fuck, did she have to use that term, really?
I don’t even answer, locking my phone while it’s still on her message.
I shift to the adjoining hallway.
A sock has been placed on Dollie’s door handle, and I spot it instantly. In tacky movies from a few years back—Dad’s favorite kind—a sock on the door handle was an indicator of something raunchy going on in that room.
My hand moves, but I can’t touch the sock—it’s dirty.
A noise from behind the door pulls my eyes up. The low moans and heavy panting straighten my spine, and that feeling of nausea returns.
“Dollie?” I call, but all I’m met with is another moan. Another man’s name.
Too many thoughts run through my head.
What the fuck is she playing at?
Why would she do this?
Shock backs me away, and my spine meets the doorframe, granting me another new injury. I scurry into my room, moving until I reach the bed, and I slump there, dropping my phone to my side.
The door across the hall torments me, knowing that behind the wood, that dirty cunt has his cock so far inside my girl that I can feel it inside me, violating my mind.
It’s fucking cruel. It makes me envision storming across there and kicking the fucking door in.
The only thing keeping my ass planted to the bed is…she moaned his fucking name.
My hands drag over my face, tiny droplets of blood from my more aggressive injury splatting my towel.
My chest tightens, and I reach for my phone, typing a quick message from Lucky while not acting like Lucky at all.
Lucky:
We need to talk.
Come across the hallway, Dollie.
No reply comes. Minutes tick by as I stare at the unread message I sent. No matter how much it hurts to admit, she’s chosen this. Chosen him and not me when I offered her to stay here last night.
And it fucking hurts.
At eight years old, I literally died for her, and it didn’t hurt as much as this, as what it does, looking over to her room, knowing she’s naked in there with some other guy.
I grit my teeth, keeping the pain inside. I swallow, and another hint of yesterday’s regurgitated lunch slips down my throat. The very same second, a cold tear falls down my cheek.
Still, no message.
Still, there’s moaning and grunting and creaks from her bed.
I fall back on mine, dropping my phone somewhere on the springy mattress as I place my hands over my ears not to hear Shane get closer to his climax.
Trying to block out the noise is an impossibility.
The cracks on the ceiling mimic how I imagine my brain to look, as I can’t help but picture him mounting her like a wild animal.
Those I stare at don’t deepen with each of Shane’s effortless thrusts and breathless grunts, but the cracks inside me do—mind and heart.
It’s loud from here with nothing but a hallway between us, and it makes me wish I were deaf. Dead.
Makes me wish he were dead.
I slip from the bed, and the satin sheets fall to the floor as I head toward the bathroom. I don’t spare the inevitable germs more than a single thought, because Dollie has all my thoughts right now. Dollie and Shane, who I fucking hate more than anyone who has ever walked this earth.
My little silver shard waits for me on the shower floor, my blood still on the tip, offering a trade between pains.
Physical pain, I can handle.
It will help…
Dragging it across my flesh, the sound of Dollie getting fucked by that guy she claims she’s ending things with, mingles with the noise of my skin scraping away.
I saw harder, needing the physical pain to override the emotional turmoil as I circle my arm with the sharp edge.
There’s no way their moans make it to this bathroom, but somehow, they echo off the walls.
I move to the other wrist, the unscarred space welcoming my shard like the other arm did.
It’s all in my head.
But I can’t escape it.
I can’t take it.
I raise my hands to my ears again to block it out, and it only gets louder. Louder. LOUDER.
Blood drips down my arms, and the smell of it makes me want to vomit again.
It’s tainted. I’m tainted.
Because of one freak and two bad parents.
A ruined puppet on a string because of a man in face paint who is no longer breathing. He’s literally worm food, and yet, he still controls everything.
I toss the shard into the distance.
The clang of it bouncing off the tiles and pinging somewhere out of sight echoes with the moans I can’t rid from my head.
I lean over myself and retch, for multiple reasons.
Nothing comes out.
Still, I retch.
She said no to me, and I kept going.
I retch, again.
She said yes to him.
My pills come up whole, having not had the time to seep into my system, as vomit covers my toes. It makes me feel violently ill. All those germs climbing up my legs.
Before I move, I take another two colorful pills, replacing the ones I stomp on as I step from the mess I made and into the shower.
Shower water rains down on me, and I struggle to breathe through the force of it. My vision blurs, and I blame that on the water, too, and not the tears falling down my cheeks.
I fall to my knees, the crack of bones a background noise to all my painful thoughts.
The hot water scalds my spine, tormenting every scar, making me lightheaded. I turn it off, sitting in the cold shower for minutes before I crawl away. A trail of blood follows me, staining my carpet as I pull myself onto the bed and collapse backward, taking the sheets from the floor with me.
A haze covers my eyes, and I no longer see the cracks on the ceiling as I stare up at them. I kick my towel down my legs, feeling too hot and struggling to get it from around my feet as my blood runs cold and my body gets heavy.
Blood loss and the heavy need to sleep take my mind somewhere else… somewhere better… somewhere worse.