17. Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Seventeen
T he only bright side right now is that I haven’t been away from Eamon for that long. It’s been long enough for my brain to get used to freedom, but not for my body to completely reset. My internal defenses are still there. I just have to dig them out. Or maybe they’ll always be there no matter how long I’m away for them, like my DNA has twisted and warped to be shaped around him, and him alone.
The thought makes me shudder with revulsion. I wish I could crawl into a brand-new body as well as a new life. I want a vessel he’s never touched. Neither of those things are in the cards for me, though, so I need to focus on surviving the here and now. If I can.
It helps that a part of me always knew this was coming. Instead of having to cope with feelings of rage or loss or despair, it’s just resignation. And exhaustion. These are emotions I know how to handle.
“I hope you know how disappointed I am in you, pet,” Eamon says. He grabs me by the hair and shakes my head possessively for what feels like the thousandth time since we got in the car, and we’ve barely been driving for ten minutes.
I block it out. The pain of him pulling my hair, the sound of his voice, all of it. I drown it all in the synthetic white noise that I’m trying to fill my skull with. Don’t think about anything. It’s all out of your control now.
Eamon has been driving over the speed limit with one hand on the steering wheel and a cigarette between his fingers the whole time. He keeps forgetting to smoke it for long enough that the cherry dies and he makes me pull out a new one for him, throwing his out the window. His jaw is tense, and his normal babbled ownership crap is even more nonsensical than usual.
So, not only is he taking me back, he’s fucking high. Great. Eamon doesn’t get fucked up that often. He prefers to be in control, and he especially prefers to drug me into a state of passivity and then exercise that control without any obstacles. Whenever he does get truly fucked up, though, it’s not good.
Everything gets amped up. The rage, the aggression, the crippling insecurity that’s clearly underlying it all. These are the times when I’m the most afraid of him, even though it’s also when he’s most likely to pass out and let me make a run for it.
I make a decision in that moment. If he gets weak, I’ll run. If he doesn’t, I’ll stay. I can’t fight him. It’s too dangerous. As long as he stays awake and alert, I have to wait with him. If he kills me before I get the chance to leave, that’s just how it is.
“Are we going home?”
I know I shouldn’t speak or do anything to provoke him, but I can feel the exhaustion overwhelming me. I need tonight to be over. Let’s get where we’re going so he can do what he’s going to do, and it can all be done.
Eamon grins. I catch sight of it out of the corner of my eye, but even that glimpse is enough to make my stomach churn. I don’t want to know where we’re going anymore.
Of course, he doesn’t drop it, now that I’ve brought it up.
“We’re going somewhere much better. Don’t you worry,” he says. I can hear how reedy and strung out he sounds, like maybe he’s been high for a while. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him quite like this, and it pushes my consciousness deeper and deeper into the dark place at the back of my brain where I can wait for it to all be over.
Eamon reaches across, grabbing me by the jaw and yanking me toward him. A gesture that would feel like the purest, most scintillating show of possession from Gunnar makes my skin crawl instead, and I switch to consciously trying to shut down every single nerve ending I have.
I don’t want to feel his skin on mine. I don’t want to breathe the acrid scent of him in the air or hear his panting breaths that are making me itch internally. I want to twist myself until I’m inside out and there’s nothing but blood and viscera coating me, so everything he touches is slick and wet and so revolting he never wants to touch me again.
Instead, he kisses me. Forcefully, pushing his tongue into my mouth until I open for him. It’s rough enough and long enough that I’m worried the swaying car is about to jump a barrier or hit a tree, but he finally disconnects before we collide with anything.
Regret trickles through me when I realize we’re not going to crash, which is quickly followed by shame that I was thinking about it in the first place. As if I have the power to control whether we have an accident.
For the rest of the drive, it’s all I can think about. Grabbing the wheel and jerking it so hard we collide. I picture his body smashing through the windshield and shredding itself on the road while I survive. I picture him being injured, and how I would manage to finish him off before the ambulances arrived, but no one would ever know. I picture him being tangled in his seatbelt with a broken leg while I slowly, meticulously strangle him to death with a tire iron.
Endless iterations of it flick through my brain, but for all of them, my body stays completely still. I barely breathe. Nothing to draw his attention. I know I’ll never do any of it, but picturing it all on a loop is as cathartic as it is upsetting.
Maybe it’s wallowing in the shame of not being able to finally do something and save myself that’s actually cathartic.
Fuck knows.
I just want to go home.
As soon as the thought crawls through my brain, I have to blink and do a double-take, because we’re pulling into the Feral Possum. I wasn’t completely conscious that this was what I meant when I thought about ‘home’, but now that it’s sitting in front of me… it is. This is home.
So why the fuck are we here?
The parking lot is empty, and all the lights are off. It’s well after close, so everyone else is gone, and I’m sure Gunnar is still out looking for me. The thought makes me ache with guilt, but there’s nothing I can do about it now, so I try to shove it aside.
“Come on, pet. It’s time to earn my forgiveness.”
Eamon practically scampers out of the car, slamming the door behind him hard enough that my window vibrates, and I jump in my seat. I stay frozen. It’s too much. Whatever he wants here, he’s going to take it from me. I don’t have the capacity to figure it out first and offer it to him.
My door swings open just as roughly, then those fingers are back in my hair and I’m being dragged out of the car. It’s a struggle to get my feet under me, and Eamon is moving fast to fuck with me. My knees are dragging through the parking lot gravel half the time I’m drag-marched over to the bar, long enough to shred the denim of my jeans and get to the skin underneath.
I’ll never understand why he loves pulling me by my hair so much. Maybe it’s how utterly dehumanizing it is. Either way, by the time we get to the back door, I feel weak and worthless, like I’m about to be slung over his shoulder or traded like a piece of damaged livestock.
“Eamon, please,” I gasp, desperate enough to beg. I don’t like that we’re here, and there’s no way hurting Gunnar isn’t the point. If I can appease him, maybe I can keep Gunnar out of it. “Let’s go home, baby. I missed you. Let me show you how sorry I am.”
The words are ash on my tongue. My hand feels like ice as I reach for his cock, still on my knees in the gravel, but it’s clear he sees right through me. He pushes me toward the door, undeterred by my attempts to distract him.
Eamon fishes around in his pockets for a minute, then my lock pick kit is deposited at my feet with a soft thud.
“Get us inside. If your boyfriend wants to act like he’s hot shit around here, I need to show him who really runs this town. I told you I was going to make an example of someone until the others fell in line and started paying me for protection. It could have been that fucking feed store if you hadn’t bitched out. But now we’re here because of you. And he’s the one who needs to be the example.”
Eamon reaches down, grabbing me by the jaw and pulling me half up to my feet again.
“Break in, destroy everything he loves, and then we’ll show him exactly who you belong to.”
I don’t cry. This would be the perfect moment for one single, cinematic tear to roll down my cheek as Eamon’s fingers crush my throat, and I accept just how much my presence in Gunnar’s life is about to cost him.
But the capacity to feel sadness is well and truly in my rearview mirror. Everything inside me is hollow and numb. This is smart. Eamon is making me destroy the one place I have to run away to.
Now there’s really no point in fighting him. All I can do is wait to die.
It doesn’t even look like the Feral Possum anymore. Normally, Eamon uses me to rob places. Even if it’s a smash and grab, or something a little more destructive. This was a brutal, systematic dismemberment of the building.
I don’t even know how long we’ve been here. An hour, maybe two. The alarm was turned off, so it was easy to get in, probably because we left in such a hurry, which is also my fucking fault. There’s a single blinking security camera that has a wide angle of the bar itself, which has watched me the entire time without moving.
It feels like it’s judging me, even though it’s an inanimate object. Which is ridiculous. I’m judging myself enough for everyone. I know how disgusting I am for this. I felt it with every piece of expensive equipment I damaged or mess I made. The floor is slick with liquor, every surface is disgusting to the touch, and there’s not a wire or line that’s uncut in the entire place.
Eamon, of course, has been wearing a gaiter whenever he’s in view of the camera. Only I’m taking the fall for this one, obviously. He didn’t help, either. He stood there, leaning against the bar, drinking Gunnar’s liquor and smoking more fucking cigarettes, pointing out every time I missed something and threatening encouragement when he felt my destructive energy was lacking.
Finally, once I feel drained of every drop of energy and the room looks like it was in the wake of a hurricane, I’m exhausted enough to be bold.
“Are we done?” I ask.
Eamon chuckles, before very dramatically snorting a little powder off the declivity between his thumb and forefinger, then lighting another cigarette.
“I don’t know, pet. Do you feel like his life is sufficiently ruined? Do you think this is enough of a price to pay for stealing from me?”
My gaze falls to the floor as my shoulders droop, weighed down by something neither of us can see.
“Yes.”
“I don’t know. I think I need one more thing to make my point.” He crooks a finger at me. His gaiter is pulled down so the cigarette can dangle between his lips, and his back is turned to the camera.
I move toward him even though it feels like I’m dragging my feet through tar. When I get to arm’s reach, he snatches the front of my shirt and pulls me close to him, making my stomach drop out like I just crested the top of a rollercoaster.
I’m waiting for him to do something, but he moves slowly. Like he has all the time in the world. It’s as obnoxious as it is menacing. The cigarette gets thrown on the ground and stomped out, and it’s a small miracle he doesn’t set the fucking floor on fire with how much high-proof liquor is soaked into these floorboards right now.
He pulls his gaiter back up before spinning me around and slamming me gut-first into the bar. All the best memories of sitting here and being with Gunnar are knocking at the edge of my mind, but I do my best to shut them out. They’re ruined, of course. But I don’t have to physically watch them taint and warp in my mind’s eye as Eamon paints this place with the same disgusting brush he’s painted the rest of my existence with.
“Look at the camera, pet,” he says, his voice husky in my ear in a sadistic attempt to be seductive.
My stomach drops again as I realize what he’s about to do. I never fight him. Not anymore. I know it only makes things worse. But the realization makes so much fear and shame flare inside me that for a second, I don’t think straight.
“No, no, no, no, no, please, Eamon,” I say. My words are a jumble and the panic in my voice is obvious.
Not here. Not where Gunnar will eventually see. It’s bad enough for him to know exactly what’s happened to me, let alone actually see it.
I already have to fight with the constant voice in my head that tells me this is all my fault. I can’t do that if I’m picturing Gunnar watching me, questioning every moment where I choose submission over more pain, or compliance over death.
Fuck. Please don’t make me do this.
“I always told you what would happen if you disobeyed me, Tobias,” he says as he pushes me harder against the bar. “Stop acting like all of this isn’t your fault. You should have known exactly what to expect.”
He’s right. Well, he’s wrong, but he’s right. It’s not my fault that he’s a fucking psychopath and happens to have set his sadism sights on me. It’s not my fault that I got dealt so many shitty hands I fell from one bad decision to another until I ended up being a chew toy for a lunatic, trapped in a cycle of violence that there’s no escape from.
But I shouldn’t be surprised that this is where we’ve ended up. Allowing myself to hope… That was my fault. That was dumb. All the shame and disappointment that I’m feeling right now are because I let myself have too many hopes and dreams for a future that could never possibly exist.
I shut it down. All of it. Gunnar, the future, my own precious humanity. None of it is real anymore.
Before I was upset that Gunnar would be disappointed to see me not fight enough. Well, he’s about to see me not fight at all. I consciously make myself as limp and pliable as possible. I put a simpering expression on my face, and I focus on doing whatever I can do to end this as quickly and painlessly as possible, especially considering how long it took me to recover from the last time we did this.
Letting myself act like a human was my first mistake. I won’t make that again. Let’s just get this fucking over with.