Thirty
Blake
I pinch myself five times and nothing changes.
I’m still in the barn, circling around on the mattress.
No. No. No. I’m back where I didn’t want to be.
I’m no longer in his bed and waking up in his arms. Why?
I tug at my hair, and when I kick the blanket away, no chain rattles around me.
I look at my ankles and they’re both bare. The cuff is gone. The ladder is too.
There’s no getting down without breaking an arm or a leg. That idea sits with me for a while and I look over the rail, smiling.
It’s a long way down. I’d get hurt if I were to fall over the edge.
I’d be in so much pain and unable to move, but I would get taken back into the house.
That’s always where he takes me to get better.
He can’t set me free if I can’t move my legs well either.
He won’t want to drop me off anywhere like that.
I wouldn’t be able to walk to safety or find help.
I look to the first floor again and my heart jumps in my throat. Am I really going to do this? Do I really need him to keep me with him this bad? I look to the barn doors where he’ll be rushing through soon. Yes, yes I do.
Before I can change my mind, I use the railing to pull myself to my feet and side step to where the large opening is.
Closing my eyes, I lift my arms and fling myself forward.
My stomach shifts upward and ears pop as my body signals to my brain that it’s falling.
I try not to tense, and I flatten my legs, blocking my face as I drop face down.
I hit the ground like a rag doll, arms flailing and bones cracking.
I try to scream but it gets caught in my throat and I pass out from the excruciating pain, my head leaving the rest of me behind as it floats away.
When I come to, my eyes are half open and T sounds like he’s underwater as he’s kneeling beside me. “What did you do?” I finally make out the words he’s trying to relay to me. “Why did you do this to yourself?”
I try to talk, but everything inside me hurts and any kind of movement I make adds to it. He strokes my cheek and when he tries to straighten one of my legs a horrifying sound screeches out of me. My teeth clamp together.
“Fuck,” he screams. “It was almost time too. How am I supposed to let you go now?”
‘You’re not,’ I want to say. But I can’t say anything, my lips as chapped as my throat feels when I try to seal them together.
He carefully lifts me in his arms, but it doesn’t matter how gentle he is, I writhe in agony. I think both of my legs are broken and my wrist is sprained. I can lift my head, so my neck isn’t broken. It still hurts like a bitch, though.
“Try not to move. I don’t know how bad you’re hurt yet.” He moves in the wrong direction and I reach for the partly open barn doors.
He’s going the wrong way. Why is he going the wrong way?
He sets me down on several bales of hay and it prickles at my skin. Looking around, he tugs at his jacket collar, breaths panicking and fogging the air around him.
“What am I going to do? I thought giving you some freedom would help you do better up here.”
I watch as he spins around, stomping the ground and rubbing at his face. “I don’t know what to do, Blake. This . . . this is so fucked. It wasn’t supposed to go like this. I mean . . . I don’t think it was. Whether or not it was what I wanted before, it isn’t now.”
I try to sit up and groan, my limbs useless around me. He looks back at me, rushing my way, panic evident in his blue eyes. They remind me of a roaring ocean being angered by a storm.
“I’m sorry,” he says. I didn’t expect that from him. “I’m so fucking sorry, piglet. I have to call someone. I can’t handle this on my own. Someone who can help you better than I can.”
I shake my head, releasing a small whimper.
“I have to. I know nothing about resetting a broken leg, and I don’t know if it’s even broken.
” He lifts his phone from his pocket and he’s nothing like the cruel, sure of himself man I met the first day I was here.
He’s lost like me. Lost, scared, and detaching from the person I thought he was. This is the most human I’ve seen him.
“Hello?” He says into the phone. “Look, there’s something I need to tell you but I can’t do it on the phone. Are you free?” He looks to the barn doors, his feet stopping half spin.
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m at home. No . . . no. It’s better if you come here. It’ll be easier if you do.” He pauses. “Oh, and please don’t tell anyone you’re coming over. Not even Jimmy.”
“Yeah, uh-huh, sure.”
Wait. This is his real voice. The noises in my head are too loud for me to focus on it, though. It could be anyone’s right now. Anyone walking through a very echoing tunnel. I wish I could hear it better. It could be another part of him I embed in my brain, like his smile and warm skin.
“Great, thanks. See you soon. Oh, and I’m over by the barn.” He looks at his blank screen and slides his phone into his back pocket.
The voice changer is turned back on when he shifts his eyes back to me. “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay. I’m going to run into the house and get some pain meds, and I should be back before my friend arrives.”
I stay quiet, trying to nod, and failing. My head is pounding. I blocked it the best I could, but not well enough. There’s only so much control you have over your own body when gravity has a stronger hold on it.
“Try not to move. You’ll only make things worse if you do.”
My gaze follows him out the door and everything fades away after my ears are hit with a loud staticky noise.