Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
The Numbing
My mind stirs from the abyss, like rising through dark water to the surface, but where there’s light, there’s pain.
A throbbing pressure clings to my face, stirring me from sleep.
It’s so intense that unconsciousness is tempting as my weighted lids strain to open, but this is not where I thought I was.
Not the bar, not my room—in fact, I don’t know this place at all.
A panic stirs in me when I find I’m covered by a single sheet in a bed, still wearing my bloodied clothes and boots, when a cold, sickening feeling swells in my chest. I push myself up, worsening the headache, while one eyelid refuses to lift beneath its own weight, and I reach up to discover where the pain is coming from.
I’m startled by a sickly-sweet voice. “Oh, honey. Don’t touch it.”
A delicate blonde woman sits at the foot of the bed. She seems so pale, so lightly spoken that she could be a hallucination. Like a living vintage doll, her platinum bob frames her porcelain face as she gently tucks my hair behind my ear.
“Where am I?” My voice is hoarse against my raw throat, while my tongue zings at the bloodied interior of my cheeks. The room is a grim, shadowed space with two beds, and the drawn curtains deny sunlight, leaving a warm, muggy taste coating the air.
“Honey, you’re home,” she says daintily. “It’s me. Kelly.”
It takes a while to process who Kelly is. My roommate Kelly? As in Kelly and Tanya, Kelly? It jumpstarts my mind to life, bringing more questions than answers. My hands raise to grip hers, and the questions erupt from my burning face.
“Joey! Where’s Joey?” I ask. “Did they arrest Donnie? Did they arrest Krick?! What happened?!”
Between her shaking head and the delay, I know she doesn’t have the answers I want to hear.
Joey’s connection—I hadn’t realised how physical it was.
But when I pull on that usually taut rope, it’s loose, the tethers of my heart unbound and left to swing in the void, their severed edges raw like an unearthed nerve, hypersensitive to the cold disconnect.
I realise now that the cause of the icy nausea rising in my chest is loss.
I’ve lost him.
“Some rangers brought you around with a doctor,” a voice from the doorway says.
This must be Tanya, who leans unapologetically in the doorway, wearing a tiny tee and panties while scooping dry cereal from the box and into her mouth.
Her long, flat charcoal hair fits almost like a headpiece, as it sits so still and sleek.
Her dark skin appears all the darker as the kitchen lights her from behind, highlighting the thigh gap and spaghetti-strand arms.
Tanya sounds bored as she says, “Krick was with them, faking concern for you. They arrested Donnie, and Krick’s real mad about it all, but was playing it down in front of the rangers.”
I wait. Wait for my heart to sink, for the wailing to begin. But it never comes. An invisible pain deep in my core pulls at me, draining me. My heart is numb. I didn’t save Joey. They took him away despite my efforts, and Krick is still out there.
Kelly says, “Honey, we know how you feel.”
I realise I am still gripping her hands, releasing them to clutch the strangeness in my chest. “No, I don’t think you do. A good guy has lost everything because of me.”
“I had a guy once. We were going to escape to Canada, but Krick found out.” Her yellowed eyes twitch as she floats her fingers through the air. She seems almost ghostly, or like she isn’t from this world.
“Krick found out about my guy too,” Tanya adds through a mouthful of food.
I feel a little less alone and a little less foolish. I have never heard of anyone else taking the risk within the city, but they had been next door to me this whole time.
My eyes close as I ask reluctantly, “What happened to them?”
“I never found out, exactly,” Kelly says, “but they probably took him to a … uh…” She turns to Tanya. “What are they called again?”
“The drudgery droves.”
“Ah, yeah. The drudgeries. He probably went there. He’ll be there until I go to Eden, no doubt… My Harry.” Her attention drifts across the room as if she’s following something I cannot see.
The drudgery droves are labour camps full of criminals—from tax evaders to murderers—serving their sentences in the grimmest, most physically demanding jobs: mining, drilling, and stripping fallen cities. But Joey isn’t a criminal. He does not deserve this.
I rise to my feet, when the room spins, and my heart thuds through my ears. I throw my arm along the drawers as I wobble into them.
Kelly says, “Honey? Krick said we have to look after you. Do you need something for the pain?”
I think about it, but if I numb the pain, I won’t be able to feel anything at all.
Before I can refuse, Tanya struts into the room, throwing up a cloud of dust as she bangs her cereal box on the chest of drawers.
She slides her long, slender fingers into the top drawer, pulling out a small jar filled with the orange and purple diamond-shaped pills—the same ones they planted on Joey, no doubt supplied to them by Krick himself.
“This is Kyte. They help. Help with all the pain,” Tanya says, planting her finger in my chest.
I understand it all now. Why they take the pills. Why so many are emotionless zombies. Taking the drugs helps them get by.
Tanya places two tablets in my palm, when I catch the glint of something new.
On my right thumb rests a ring. He had held my hand in my last moments, and as I lift it to the light, I recognise it instantly: Joey’s dark platinum ring.
He boasted about how he recycled it from an exhaust pipe, but made it too small, so he wore it on his pinky finger. I didn’t even get so say goodbye.
The pills disappear in my fist, and I excuse myself.
It’s disorienting to step from their room and into the hallway, palming the wall while unsteady on my feet. My door is already ajar when I hesitantly edge towards it, letting it creep open, and as I step in, something crunches beneath my boot.
The floor is littered with shards of plastic—the remains of the portable DVD player from Joey, and my CD Walkman my fathers gave me.
Pages of books torn out, every DVD and CD pulled from its case and shattered across the hardwood floor.
Nothing of mine has been left untouched.
My drawers have been emptied, lotions and products spilled across my desk, poured onto my clothes and smeared over my smashed mirror, while the mattress has been bent and flopped against the wall.
And there on the floor lies my escape backpack, pulled inside out atop its spilled contents.
I go to check the inside pocket, and I’m not surprised it’s empty.
My wages, my tips, the thousands of dollars I have scrimped and saved—gone.
“He likes to do this, in case it didn’t break you enough already,” Tanya’s emotionless voice says from behind me. She munches on cereal before returning to her room.
She’s right. I am broken, and this is cruel.
I came to this city with nothing. The life I built, the memories I made now lie on the floor, pulling in waves of moments with Joey.
How he gave them to me, the conversations they sparked.
His words lap over one another, flooding my brain with their chaotic chorus.
The pain pulsates through my head, and I slam my door behind me, holding my hands over the locks, for what it’s worth.
All this time, Krick has had a key to my room.
I knew sleeping under my bed was worth it. I fucking knew it.
I catch my fragmented reflection in my broken mirror.
A dark crescent of bruising underlines my eye, weighting my swollen lid.
Blood crusts my nostrils, dry trails flaking away from my swollen upper lip.
I trace my finger over it and wince as it captures a cut hidden within the deep purple shadows.
Another bruise and cut straddles my nose—the second hit from Donnie.
It’s a minor victory, him being taken away, but let’s see how Krick makes me pay for that one.
Employers are within their rights to send troublesome women to the R&R facilities, and at this point, I no longer know what will be worse. All I know is I don’t care right now.
I toss the mattress squarely onto the frame, shake the cover free of debris, and dive beneath the raised blanket as it falls, slowly cloaking me.
My knees pull up to my chest, and the two pills rest beside my head, staring at me.
I think about taking them, but my attention pulls towards Joey’s ring.
He left it with me, knowing it was his last moment.
A part of himself, which will only reinforce his memory, but will do nothing to compensate for his absence.
I force my eyes shut, recalling the waves of his hair, the deep glow of his eyes, the light freckles across his nose.
With fierce intensity, I force his image into my mind, and his voice into my ears.
It stirs a longing for him, and I press my face into the mattress as if I’m resting on his chest, safe in his embrace, but no heartbeat reverberates—just emptiness.
There I stay, floating in and out of sleep and hoping that when I wake, I will feel … something.
Shadows meander around the room as the orange sunrise fades into a lemon glow of daylight, only to fade to dark again with the finish of the day, and within the dull glow, I’m hypnotised as the light catches the dust motes dancing through the air.
Kelly and Tanya take turns knocking on my door throughout the day to ask if I’m all right and offer food, but I have no appetite.
I only want to be alone. My lips turn dry and chapped, while my hair grows oily, and I’m still wearing the same clothes from the fight, too scared to remove them, as if it will take me further away from my last moments with Joey.
A sickening curse cloaks me as I’m realising I will never see him again.
I hold his cold metal ring, rubbing it against the split in my lip.
With his absence comes a darkness. The world lacks colour and brightness—but maybe that’s what drew me to him in the first place.
He was like a bright lifebuoy ring in a dark, rough sea.
Now, without him, I find myself treading water, sinking, and I’m not sure if I care enough to stay afloat.
My mind echoes with our past conversations, haunting me, yet those two pills have yet to pass my lips.
I feel abysmal, but I know they will only sink me to a place of no return.
I throw them at the wall, watching them roll amongst the rubble on my floor.
I know it’s late, as the city’s artificial illumination pours into my room. Kelly and Tanya have left for work, but I have enough energy for a shower. I should get moving. If I move my body, it may move my mind.
My boots crush the plastic shards as I stand and reluctantly scoop the mess into a pile, but I don’t have the heart to sweep the remnants into the trash yet.
The heap of shattered CDs and DVDs twinkles like a disco ball, reflecting the neon streetlights and sending colourful rays around my room. It’s almost beautiful.
Under the yellow glow of the bathroom light, I scrub away the dried blood from my neck, feeling a little better in the shower until I allow the warm water over my face, stinging my tender skin.
Then I step into fresh clothes, and even buttoning my jeans feels like a chore.
With a glance in the mirror, I see that my bruises have darkened, and a star of blood sits on the white of my eye.
I wait for an epiphany, for an emotion. Overwhelming sadness? Fiery fury? Anything.
While my mind is distracted with hazy memories, I retire to bed, my feet dragging beneath me, brushing my fingers through my wet curls, when a figure in the kitchen halts me.
My vision sharpens, and my breath stops like prey before a predator.
My gaze meets his beady pupils. He has been waiting for my return, his itching lip creeping into a snarl.
I knew he would be back, but for what? Revenge? Punishment?
I stand frozen before Krick, awaiting his first move.