Unchained

Chapter 1

“Get the hell out of here! I don’t want to ever see or hear from you again!”

Staring down the barrel of the revolver, he froze. His heart was pounding. He tried to speak, but the words froze in his throat. She pulled the hammer back. He closed his eyes and prayed.

The sound of the alarm startled Levi awake. His heart still racing and drenched in sweat, he fumbled to silence the shrieking alarm.

“Shit,” he mumbled to himself as he fell back onto the bed. “Why the fuck was I dreaming about her again? I haven’t had these dreams in years.”

He tried to sit up in bed and stared at his phone. Another nightmare, another reminder of the night everything had changed, and the weight of it made it difficult to move. He hadn’t spoken with her since that night, though he often thought about reaching out. A combination of anger, pride, and fear kept him from calling, but it was mostly fear. He doubted she cared, but he was her only son, and even though the last time he saw her she had tried to kill him, part of him still longed to reconnect.

He threw his phone down on the bed. Don’t even think about it. She’s not worth it.

He lay there for a moment staring at the ceiling, contemplating going back to sleep, but knowing instead of blissful sleep, he would be thrust back into his nightmare. “Well, if I’m up, I might as well get a shower.”

As he entered the bathroom, he stopped to look in the mirror. He stared at the reflection, almost unrecognizable from the young boy he had been moments ago. His black mane was still shaggy but kept a neater frame around his face. His stomach had lost the definition he had worked so hard for, and he had lost most of his color.

“I don’t look too bad for thirty,” he thought. “Maybe I should start going back to the gym and get some sun.” His eyes found the scar. It was not large, but to him, it was as if his left bicep was gone. He had thought about getting a tattoo to cover it, but Gus had suggested that might not be the best idea to draw attention to the one thing he was the most self-conscious about.

Tearing his gaze from his arm, he stepped into the shower. He stood under the hot water and allowed his mind to drift with the steam.

His dream was fresh in his mind. He thought of his mother. He hadn’t seen her since he was eighteen, and while he wouldn’t let himself dwell on the circumstances of that night, the pain was hard to escape. The memories weren’t normally this raw, but he could still smell her house from the dream.

He tried to only think of her when he played his guitar. Those were happier memories. She was the one who instilled in him a love of music. When he was young, she would force him to sit beside her at the piano and practice scales. He always wanted to be the best to win her approval, but as the years passed, he wondered if she even knew—or cared—that he was still alive.

If he was honest with himself, it was his love of music that had kept him sane. His guitar was his unfailing escape, a lingering companion keeping his mind from wandering too far into the darkness.

The chill of the water turning cold broke his stupor. “Shit!” He hurriedly washed off and stopped the frigid spray. “Well, I’m awake now.”

He had just started drying off when the phone rang. He wrapped the towel around himself and rushed to answer it.

“Gus, how are you this mornin’? Is everything ready for tonight?”

He knew it wasn’t. Gus was a good bartender, but a terrible owner, and worse planner. Levi mostly ran the bar for him, and when Gus approached him on Monday with the idea of having a “Mardi Gras Bash and Open Mic Night” that Friday night, he knew it wasn’t the greatest idea but had tried to be supportive.

He suspected that the idea wasn’t entirely original, considering the only other bar in town was also having a Mardi Gras celebration that started on Saturday. Not to mention the fact he wasn’t sure which part was worse, putting together the bar’s first Mardi Gras party in a rush to be the first in town, or mixing it with the bar’s first Open Mic Night on the same short schedule. But Gus was the boss, and ultimately, if that’s what he wanted, that’s what he got. What Levi hadn’t planned on was Gus’s bright idea to have him be the master of ceremonies and fill spaces between any scheduled performers. Even worse, he had insisted that Levi was too busy with everything else so he would handle scheduling performances himself. He had only agreed to relinquish that much control when the old man offered to give him the rest of the weekend off with pay.

“It’ll be fine, Gus. I got up early to get some last-minute practice in. If you want, I can come on down to the Dragon to help with setup. Let me get some coffee and a bite to eat. I should be there by noon.”

He headed to the kitchen, opened the coffee canister, and muttered. “This is going to be a long fuckin’ night.”