7. Bastian #4
Warmth floods back into my body along with a long, stuttered breath. My lips pull into a smile as I lean back against the wall I’d just been assaulting.
I knew she’d come back to me. I knew if I was patient, if I gave her space to realize that I could offer her exactly what she wanted, what she needed, that she’d find her way to me.
…you were right. About—
I’m about to type a response, but I stop before my fingers touch the screen.
Haven said I was right about everything.
And for the first time in my miserable existence, I don’t want to be right.
Not about what’s happening to the girl in my basement while I stand here smiling at my phone like a lovesick fucking imbecile.
I spin around, eyes wide as I punch in the key code. Too fast—it beeps and flashes red. Again, slower, trying to breathe when all I want to do is pant. My feet thump down the stairs, the impact jarring my phone out of my hand before I reach the bottom.
Melissa’s head lolls forward. I grab her chin and wrench her head up. Heavy-lidded eyes roll in their sockets, mouth gaping.
“Christ!” I drop to my knees in front of her, grabbing her face, forcing her to look at me. “No, no, fuck! Wake up. Wake the fuck up!”
Her eyelids flutter, then drift closed all the way.
Fuck! The fentanyl’s already in her system.
I jam my fingers into her mouth.
She gags, but I don’t stop, shoving deeper until I hit the back of her throat. She’s so far gone that for a moment I think her gag reflex has been affected, then her body convulses violently.
Milk and bile splashes onto my hand, my arm, the floor.
“Good girl,” I whisper, shoving my fingers back inside her mouth. “But I need all of it. All of it, Melissa.”
She pukes again. Again. And I keep shoving my fingers back, until she’s retching on nothing, until she stops retching.
Her head rolls back on her neck, eyes lidded, mouth slack. I peel back a lid, staring at the pinpoint of her pupil with a sickening weight growing heavier in my stomach.
“Christ!”
I wasn’t fast enough. I gave her too much. It’s fucking over.
“Not yet,” Good Wolf says.
Fuck, of course! I shove away from the chair, racing up the stairs, skidding down the hall, rushing into my bedroom and wrenching open the nightstand drawer again.
Not the leather pouch this time, but deeper.
Past the gun I don’t remember putting back in there, past lube and a crumpled pack of cigarettes.
There’s a box back there. I grab it, tear it open, shake the nasal spray free. I rip it out of its blister pack as I rush back down the hall, taking the stairs three at a time with my teeth clacking painfully with each lunge.
Her limp body is incapable of resisting when I wrench back her head and shove the Narcan in her nose. I give her a double dose because fuck knows if she’s even breathing anymore.
I sink down on my knees in front of her, watching her lolled-forward head as my heart tries to pound its way out of my chest. As I’m about to administer another dose, her chest slowly stutters up, then down.
I grab her face, shoving her head up so I can look into her eyes. They flutter before falling shut again.
“Why?” she mumbles and starts crying again.
I laugh as I go to fetch my phone, still laughing as I drop down cross-legged a foot away from Melissa’s chair, still laughing as I type a reply with sick-stained fingers as the doped-up girl across me watches with glassy eyes.
@inherentvice
Took you long enou—
I delete it. Too bitter. Too petty. She’ll bolt.
@inherentvice
Are you oka—
Christ, that’s even worse.
It’s a question a concerned friend asks, and I’m not her friend. More importantly, it gives her the opportunity to back out, say she’s fine, then the conversation is over and she never messages again.
Haven didn’t message because she’s happy. She messaged because the boy failed her, like I knew he would, and she hates him for proving me right.
I can’t gloat. Can’t interrogate her, because I know my girl’s no snitch and she’ll clam up the moment I ask for specifics.
He hurt her. She wants revenge.
And she’s asking me to exact that vengeance.
Me.
Something tickles my cheek. I wipe at it with the back of my wrist.
@inherentvice
There’s my sweet girl.
No concern. No inquisition. Just the quiet certainty that I was never surprised. That I’ve been patiently waiting, that I’m not going anywhere.
I watch the screen. No delivery receipt.
Because she panicked and turned her phone off.
It doesn’t matter.
She reached out for me, I grabbed her. She can thrash all she wants, I’m not fucking letting go.
@inherentvice
You don’t have to tell me who hurt you.
I already know.
I glance up at Melissa. Even in her state, she recoils at whatever she sees on my face.
“The boy hurt what’s mine,” I say through a chuckle. “And he’ll pay for that. Dearly.”
Melissa’s bloodshot eyes stare back at me with undisguised horror.
I look back down at the screen. Still no reply. No delivery receipts.
I type one more message, the one I want sitting at the bottom of the message thread like a goodnight kiss.
@inherentvice
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream
Sleep well, sweet girl.