Chapter 8
Eight
Rafael
It happened again. My eyes blink open and my hands shake against the steering wheel.
Blood is caked under my nails and a plastic bag rests in my passenger seat.
I stopped looking inside them after the first time, wanting to pretend the last few didn’t have clothes stained red with a heavy-metal stench.
All I know is I have to get rid of them.
I have to bury them in a place someone will be less likely to look and far away from where I wake up.
Glancing out the window, my chest tightens. I don’t know where I am. Nothing around me is recognizable. A raggedy trailer sits on a hill surrounded by what looks like several project cars. The front door swings open and the porch looks three steps away from fully caving in.
What did I do when I was in there? No doubt I was.
My fingers tighten around the wheel, my heart thudding so loud it’s all I can hear.
Some answers I’m better not knowing. I’ve been in this same situation too many times, not wanting to know the truth.
Not wanting to find proof of how fucked up I really am. But how can I stop if I don’t know?
I keep thinking I’m better and have put days like this behind me, but then I wake up parked somewhere I’ve never been before, with blood on my hands or my clothes and zero recollection of how it got there.
Tears sting my eyes and I can’t stop watching the banging door.
It’s growing as loud as my pulse. I don’t need to know what’s inside.
What will it really help? I’ll go home like I usually do.
I’ll shower after leaving my shoes outside, and I’ll wash whatever bad I may have done off my clothes.
I’ll scrub my car to be on the safe side and go another week without sleeping.
I’ll keep going while waiting for whatever I can’t remember to catch up to me.
For the cops to show up in front of my door and make me face what I’ve been trying to run away from.
Maybe I should save us all time and turn myself in now.
Only I don’t know what I’d be confessing to.
My eyes fall to the bag on my seat. I can hand them whatever’s in there.
Maybe it’ll be all they need. When I told my family they were better off living far away, I meant it.
My brother thinks I can get better, but I think it’s too late for that.
Sucking in a breath, I slowly open the car door and lay one foot on the ground. I inhale and exhale deeply, my breath fogging around me. I’ll have to see what I did eventually. Wouldn’t it be better to do it on my own terms?
Legs feeling like they’re weighed down to the ground, I get all the way out and carefully close the car door behind me.
One foot moves slowly in front of the other, and before I know it, I’m standing on the creaking porch.
The worn-out wood sounds like it’s ready to snap under my feet at any given moment.
My hand reaches in front of me to stop the squeaking of the waving door, and I step inside the dark house.
The air gets more frigid the further I go, and none of the light switches work when I flip them. There’s no power, and the silence is so still it’s unnerving.
“Hello?” My voice shakes, and when no one answers, I take out my phone to use the flashlight to look around.
Moldy food sits on the small counter, the putrid smell making my nose curl.
Lifting my hand to my face, I pace around and circle the whole area until I’m sure no spot has been overlooked.
No one is in here but me. Needles cover the corner of a badly stained mattress on the floor and empty beer bottles are discarded around it.
Awful things happened here but it doesn’t look like I was involved.
Whatever I took part in must have happened outside somewhere.
Except I don’t find what I’m looking for out there either.
A phone with a different ringtone than mine goes off in the distance and I follow it.
I’m led to a pond, and the ringing is coming from a metal boat.
Teeth clenching from the cold, I tighten my jacket around me as I lean down to grab the small black device lighting up at the bottom. Hitting answer, I lift it to my face, and my breaths grow ragged but I don’t say anything, waiting for the other person to talk first.
“Rocky?”
I press the phone to my ear and step back, blinking my eyes.
“You there? It says you answered. Can you hear me?”
“Uh-huh,” I say, shifting my feet inward.
“Why do you sound weird? You know what? Never mind. Did you make the delivery?”
“Which?” I say, with the chilled air causing my throat to tighten.
“I’ll take that as a no. Do I seriously have to do everything? You’re lucky you’re my brother or your ass would be at the bottom of the fucking lake like the last guy who screwed me.”
“Uh-huh,” I say again, looking around as my car and everything else blends more into the dark.
“Are you high again?” He lets out a frustrated sound. “Always fucking high. Look, I’m going to give you two more days. Your ass better do what I pay you to do and stop wasting away all day in that fucking dump trailer of yours.”
The line goes quiet and I flip to the images, my stomach knotting when I get to the third one.
Zooming in, the next breath I take is like glass cutting at my throat.
Rocky didn’t sound familiar, so I was hoping the guy whose phone I held was no one I knew.
No one anyone could ever connect me to. I didn’t recognize the name because it’s not what I knew him by.
When we were deployed together, I knew him by the name Sanchez.
He was one of the guys who stayed behind with me in the barracks that day .
. . the day when I started to hate everything I became.
I couldn’t remember anything that took place then either.
I tried. Fuck, did I try. Every day I’ve been determined to piece together what went on in that room and why none of the guys who were there would come within a few feet of me afterward.
I woke up naked in my bunk bed, covered in cum and aching all over.
I asked two of the people I once called friends what all went on the night before and they wouldn’t meet my eyes.
One told me several times to leave it alone, and Rodriguez kept turning his back to me with a look of disgust on his face.
“You really don’t belong here, you know that?
Not sure someone like you belongs anywhere. ”
Those words stuck with me. Did I hurt one of them?
Did I take things too far? Nausea hits me and I start to sway.
The phone nearly falls from my hand and I look at the picture again.
He looks so different. His eyes are empty and look like they belong to a man who checked out mentally a long time ago.
If it’s his phone in my hand, then where the hell is he?
This is his trailer and his brother thought it was him he was talking to, but I haven’t seen him once since I’ve woken up.
Did I kill him? I lift my hand to my nose and the tinge of metal under my nails has my stomach recoiling.
Why would I come here? How would I know to come here?
I lost touch with those guys years ago. That deployment changed so much for me and for us.
Wiping the phone clean, I inch closer to the water and take out the battery before yanking out the sim card. Everything in my hands sinks into the pond within minutes of me letting it go.
I don’t know why I’m here or what led me back to someone from my past, but I do know I need to get the fuck out.
I’ve already hung around for too long, and who knows who could show up soon.
It sounds like he was involved with dangerous people.
I don’t need to be anywhere near this place whenever they come looking for him.
I wipe down everything I’ve touched, looking around one more time for any sign of a body before getting in my vehicle.
Looking in the rearview mirror, my eyes focus on the trailer growing smaller as I drive away in a random direction to bury the bag I’m dying to have out of my sight as fast as I can.
I park near a large soybean field and mud joins the blood under my nails as I dig a small hole to drop the bag in.
Standing up straight, I kick dirt forward until I no longer see any signs of the white plastic.
The air is so thick around me on my way back to my car, and I slam my hands against the wheel, squeezing tears from my eyes before turning the engine over.
The roaring sound doesn’t drown out the noise in my head for as long as I wish it would.
I’m only ten minutes from my house when my phone alerts me that my assistance is needed on the Be My Eyes app. It’s him. My heart thrums, and as I lift the phone, the light on the screen highlights the blood on my hands. Closing my eyes, I force a smile and answer the call.
“How can I be of service?”
“I . . . sorry . . . I normally wouldn’t contact you for this sort of thing, or any stranger for that matter, but neither my best friend nor my sister are answering.”
My lids break apart and my heart jumps into my throat at the sight unfolding on the small screen. He’s standing in front of a running shower in nothing but a towel that’s hanging super low on his hips. Droplets scatter along his pale skin and his eyes are frantic.
“It’s okay. I’m here for whatever you need, remember?”
“Yeah.” He lets out an awkward laugh, tucking wet honey-gold strands behind his ear. “I know it’s late, and I usually don’t shower this late, but I spent almost all day making myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I wanted to do something completely on my own.”
“Sounds like you did, so way to go.”
“Yeah.” His eyes bounce around and he grinds his teeth. “Eventually. I ate mayonnaise and jelly sandwiches first. Then took a bite into a chili crisp and peanut butter one right after.”