41. Esperr
ESPERR
Ifeel something is off before I even step foot inside.
My keys stay in my hand, and I just stand there.
The door is closed; everything looks the same as it always does.
But something is different, and my body knows it before my brain catches up—the same way it always knows.
I take a deep breath and then shove my key into the lock, hating the dread that washes over me when I find it already unlocked. Pushing it open slowly, my eyes immediately find the lamp that’s usually flickering is now on the floor.
My eyes sweep across the living room, and everything is ruined.
Cushions are gutted and thrown; the small bookshelf in the corner is swept clean, everything in a pile on the floor.
Cabinets in the kitchen are opened, drawers pulled out and upended, the contents of my kitchen scattered across the tile.
The kitchen table is missing a leg and on its side.
My favorite mug, along with all the others, is smashed on the ground, broken into tiny little pieces.
I stand there, unable to move, not able to breathe, and then suddenly it hits me.
It’s the cold concrete and copper mixed with chemicals that invade my nostrils. I squeeze my eyes shut, swallowing before I blow out a breath?—
My back hits the door, hands fisted at my sides until my knuckles turn white. If I move, I’m going to fall, and I can’t fall right now—I can’t.
My mother stands at the counter, her back to me, and just as she turns, I see it: the knife that’s caught in her gut.
She makes a sound, not a scream; it’s smaller than that, more like she’s surprised than anything, and I keep telling myself she was surprised because she was strong. Strong people don’t see it coming and?—
I can’t breathe, but also it’s like too much oxygen floats through me. My vision blurs as my knees start to give out and I’m sliding down the door until I’m sitting on the floor.
The floor is there; my hands are right there—the basement view hits me, the swinging light.
The cold hits me first; it’s bone deep, but it has nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with this room.
I’m suddenly aware that I’m on the floor with my back against the wall and my wrists bound behind me, the rope cutting into my skin, and I stopped feeling my hands a while ago.
My father is in the middle of the room on a foldout table, tied down so that he can’t even move an inch.
“D–dad…” I whisper, my voice cracking.
I’m vaguely aware of someone moving at the corner of my eyes, and my skin crawls as Michael crouches down in front of me.
He’s not a large man, and somehow that’s the thing that catches me off guard even now, even here—he’s not what you’d picture. Medium height, unremarkable face, the kind of person you’d stand next to in a grocery line and forget immediately.
He tilts his head and looks at me the way he did upstairs right before he gutted my mother.
“There she is,” he says softly.
“Please.” The word rips out of me.
Michael stands up slowly and turns towards my father, and I immediately start yanking at the rope around my wrists. I can feel the skin tearing, but I don’t care. I don’t care; I just need to?—
“You know what’s funny?” Michael asks, walking a slow circle around my father’s head. “He probably didn’t tell you that he was in the process of getting you a new identity.”
I go still, and my father’s eyes close briefly; it’s only a second, but it’s enough that I know it’s true.
“A whole new life,” Michael continues, acting as if this is a normal conversation. “New name, new city, new everything. He was going to get you out.” He stops on the other side of the table, his hand hovering over a tray that I can’t see the top of.
My father says nothing, his gaze locked on mine, and somehow that makes this worse—the look in his eyes.
“He loves you very much,” he says, glancing down at the tray before his hand picks something up—a nail gun. “That’s actually why we’re here. He was trying to take you somewhere where I wouldn’t be able to find you.”
The rope bites into my wrist as I pull against it again.
It happens so fast—Michael moves without warning, without any of that slow, deliberate circling he did with mom. He reaches out, grabs Dad’s hand, and flattens it against the table; the sound echoes through the basement.
My father squeezes his eyes shut, grunting, as I scream.
It rips out of my throat, my vision blurring. I pull against the ropes until I feel it cut into my wrist, my skin giving. But it doesn’t matter; nothing matters except that my father’s hand is pinned to the table, and I am unable to stop it and I cannot?—
“Stop it.” My voice is barely a voice anymore. “Please, I’m begging you, please?—”
Michael smiles and moves the nail gun down to my father’s thigh, just running the point against his clothed skin. “I just couldn’t have you disappear on me.”
My father lifts his head just enough to find my eyes across the room, and the look on his face destroys me completely because it isn’t fear; it’s an apology.
He knew. My father knew something was wrong, knew that Michael was dangerous, knew long before I did, and was trying to fix it and he didn’t tell me because he didn’t want me to be scared and now we’re both in this basement and?—
“D–dad.” My voice breaks completely on one word. My father opens his eyes and looks at me, not saying anything.
But I see it, everything my father is trying to tell me, specifically the agony that he thinks he failed to protect his child not through carelessness but through the cruelty of someone else’s obsession.
I want to tell him it’s okay; I want to tell him none of this is his fault, but Michael moves again, and the words die in my throat.
The nail gun is pressed against my father’s thigh, and one, two, three nails go through his skin. Dad grunts, eyes squeezing shut as pain that I can’t even imagine hits him. But Michael doesn’t stop there; he grabs pillars and?—
I gasp, the sound in the back of my throat, as I feel my vision slowly come back, but it’s hazy from the tears dripping down my cheeks.
Feel something, anything; ignore the mental pain and feel the physical.
I press my fingernails into my palms harder and harder until I feel the skin start to break. It’s just enough to remind my brain that this body is here and it’s real, that I’m in my apartment and not in the basement anymore.
I drag in a breath, and it stutters on the way, coming out as something halfway between an exhale and a sob.
He was here.
Michael was in my space, moving through the things I’ve collected in the quiet, careful years since I stopped running. He’s touched everything, and now everything feels wrong and contaminated. I hate this space; I hate this apartment. I don’t know how to be anywhere that he’s been?—
The numbness starts at my fingertips.
It’s like that feeling when it starts creeping up through your hands and into your arms when your body decides it’s had enough of feeling and just… switches off.
My breathing is all wrong again.
It comes in too fast and too shallow, but it’s never enough—my chest heaves as if something is sitting on it and I can’t get it off, and I know what this is because I’ve been here before. But knowing what it is doesn’t make it stop; it never makes it stop.
I press the back of my hand against my nose and mouth and squeeze my eyes shut, telling myself it’s not real, it’s not there, I’m in my body?—
My father’s face, the blood pouring from his left eye socket as Michael rips his eye out?—
I make a sound into the back of my hand and fold forward until my forehead is almost touching the floor and bite my lip until the skin breaks. In through my nose and out through my mouth… just like Oliver taught me three years ago.
In and out.
I’m not sure when I grabbed my phone, but it's suddenly in my hands, which are shaking so badly that I can’t read the screen. When it gets this bad I usually call Oliver, but my finger doesn’t even attempt to find him, but Zyran instead.
It’s only a split second that I think about how he shouldn’t know, shouldn’t get involved. Everyone in my life gets hurt or killed, and I can’t risk him. And yet my finger still presses his name, and I listen to it ring.
And ring again.
“Esperr.” Zyran answers before the third ring goes through.
It’s his voice; it’s an anchor. Like my body finally has something to hold on to that isn’t flashbacks of my father being tortured.
I press the phone harder against my ear and close my eyes, listening to his breath on the other end. The numbness in my hands starts to recede just slightly, but it’s enough and is replaced by something warmer than I think just by the simple fact of him existing on the other end of the phone.
“Esperr,” Zyran says again.
“H–hey,” I barely managed to get out. My voice sounds terrible, wrecked and small, sounding nothing like myself.
In and out.
I press my free hand flat against the floor and feel the cool of the tile against my palm and use that physical feeling to keep myself grounded.
“Where are you?” He asks, and his breathing on the other line is steady and even, and I find myself matching it without deciding to, my chest following the rhythm of his like my body knows what to do.
“M–my apartment.” I swallow, the inside of my throat feeling like something is blocking half my airway. “The floor.”
“Are you hurt?” He immediately asks, his voice laced with concern.
I look down at my hands, seeing small spots of blood coating my palm—the way my wrists are red from where I was pulling at?—
I blink; there’s nothing there, just the faint scars.
“No,” I sigh. “I’m not hurt.”
He doesn’t say anything right away; the faint sound of his truck in the background, the low sound of the engine, traffic, and him driving through the city towards me.
And something about that, just the sound of him already heading this way, loosens something in my chest that had been locked so tight I forgot it was there.
“I’m almost there, Esperr; I’m almost there.”
I lean my head back against the doorframe and look at the ceiling and breathe, thinking about how he doesn’t know. It all comes back to that, the fact he doesn’t know the whole truth, that someone is after me, and he should know.
Because I don’t want to run anymore. I want to be with Zyran. And that means I have to tell him how I got my parents killed.