The Darkness Within

by Taylor K. Scott

  We both sit in an eerie silence for a moment or two, not wanting to acknowledge the elephant in the room. Eventually, she swallows and sighs before crossing her arms more timidly, her anger slowly dissipating. Given the subject, this is even more unsettling than her raging just now.

  “So, when did this happen, between you and Millie? And how many times?”

  “Once, last night. But there’s more,” I wince under her rolling eyes, no longer attempting to hide her disappointment in me, “turns out it was her first time. I swear I didn’t know that until this morning, though.”

  “Oh my God!” she gasps and places her hands over her eyes. “How were things left between you two?”

  “She told me to get out because I…” I cough uncomfortably before I even attempt to finish my admission. “Because I said she was Matt’s girl and sort of made it obvious that I shouldn’t have done it.”

  I look to the ground and link my clammy hands together, still waiting for that mounting eruption to blow, being more than convinced that this last confession is going to be the final catalyst for it.

  “Bowie! You did not say that to her, did you? Really?!” she slaps her hands to her thighs aggressively. “How the hell do you get so many girls when you are so incredibly stupid?!”

  “Hey, I’m not normally this stupid with girls, she must bring it out in me!” In all honesty, I am at a loss over Millie Thomas. I am just a special kind of shithead when it comes to her. “I also kind of hung around to see what she said to her friend about it before I left.”

  Sam arches a brow and folds her arms again, “And…?”

  “She said she had wanted to do it, that she knew I hated her and that she was just some ‘warm hole’ for me to forget about. She said it was her way of self-harming or some shit like that. I had to leave before I felt any worse than I already do! Fuck, this is messed up!”

  I place my thumb and finger deep into my eye sockets, reveling in the slight pain it’s giving me as I replay that conversation over in my head again, taunting me with its ability to make me feel like a piece of dirt. I also wait for the ensuing rage of words from Sam but when I get no response, I risk looking back up at her. What I didn’t expect to see was my sister smiling smugly at me. It’s both unexpected and unnerving to say the least.

  “What the fuck are you looking at with a smile on your face? You think this epic pile of turd of a situation is funny?!”

  “Bowie Phillips staying until morning after he’s slept with a girl? Bowie Phillips hanging around to hear what she had to say about it? The Bowie Phillips feeling bad about upsetting that same girl? I would say that’s amusing, yes.”

  “What are you trying to say?” I bite back, irritated by her insinuation.

  “I’m saying you like her,” she answers innocently, with a shoulder shrug, just for added effect. “I’ve had my suspicions for a while, seeing as you can’t leave her alone. Classic bully secretly being attracted to his victim. After all, it’s better to have a detrimental relationship than to have no relationship at all!”

  “Fuck off!” I scoff. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “Oh, don’t I?” she taunts, leaning forward onto her knees and looking me straight in the eye, cutting through my bullshit, as well as making me feel all kinds of uncomfortable. “Tell me, how did you feel when you thought she was with that guy you bitched about last summer? How do you feel when Matt goes on about being in love with her? How did you feel when you had to pull him off from her?” She throws herself back suddenly with a confused frown on her face, “In fact, how did you know where she was at that moment in time?”

  I petulantly shrug and look away, refusing to tell her that I had been watching Matt tailing Millie since the moment he had set eyes on her last night. She hadn’t seen the dark, hooded eyes he wore when he drank in her scantily clad body, but I sure as hell did. I almost told her to get her ass home and change when I first saw her but knew she wouldn’t listen to me, so what was the point? Sam smirks to herself over my sullen silence, then chooses to ignore it and to continue with her onslaught of accusatory questions.

  “How did you feel when you were with her? When she threw you out? When she said she knew you didn’t want anything other than sex?” Her smug expression and all-over body language, make me want to gouge my own eyes out just so I don’t have to see it anymore.

  “Screw you!” I snap, throwing myself back into my chair with an even bigger clusterfuck of thoughts now whirling around inside my head.

  “Exactly!” she grins, then gets up to take our bowls away.

  I brood for a little longer before shaking my head and eventually smiling over her ability to read me like a book.

  Chapter 17

  Amelia

  Yesterday was one of those days I could have quite easily eviscerated from history. I felt so utterly miserable, I wanted to crawl inside a black hole and slowly burn. After Mercy finally left, safe in the knowledge that I was too sluggish to try and top myself, owing to the fact that I had consumed not one but two ice cream sundaes and a packet of Haribo, the big bag variety, I had slumped into a statue-like position on the sofa. None of the emotions burrowing inside my head were anywhere remotely positive, and I even went so far as to question the existence of life in general, and not in an ‘I wonder why’ sort of way. I mean in a ‘humans are a plague which should be eradicated from the Earth,’ kind of way. It wasn’t good.

  Today I felt marginally better but only because I had a purpose; to go and visit Grant and most likely feel just as bad afterward. Why on Earth did I think it was a good idea to bring Bowie into my bed and make things so disastrously more screwed up?! Thankfully, both he and Matt, my handsy best friend, have kept their distance and their silence, because quite frankly I’m getting dangerously close to losing my sanity altogether. I even came close to watching reality TV, the type that has you aspiring to be both stupid and addicted to Botox before you’ve even hit thirty.

  My Uber driver, who arrived to take me to prison, looked at me questioningly when I told him where I needed to go. I shuffled into the back seat and wrapped myself up small, avoiding his frequent glances of concern through the rearview mirror. Instead, I got out my phone and started getting lost in Pinterest just so I could excuse my obvious attempts to evade his glare.

  The prison itself, is low security, with only curled barbed wire along the walls to prevent people from getting in and out, to the visible eye at least. I’m sure they have plenty of high-level technology and weapons inside to keep the inmates from getting out of their present home. The building is plain brick with a concrete pathway leading up to the entrance through the luscious front lawn, where a guy in green overalls is sat upon a mower, noisily trimming it down. A tall flagpole with the American flag is moving about with lackluster in the absence of any real wind.

  I step outside the Hyundai with trepidation, still feeling intimidated about setting foot in there, even if Grant is having to live in it. My Uber driver, who now looks sympathetically at me, sighs when I hand over a few notes to pay him.

  “Boyfriend?” he asks when he hands me my change, to which I wave my hand, silently telling him to keep it. His appreciative smile reminds me of my grandfather, someone who took pleasure in sharing a bag of sweets with me and Grant when we were little. It was a time when a toffee was enough to put a beaming grin on your face and make you forget about any troubles you had.

  “No, my big brother,” I reply, then let out a long breath in my attempts to combat the nervous somersaults going off inside my stomach. “Thanks.”

  “You want me to pick you up again?” he asks warmly. I shake my head and explain that a friend is coming to get me. Suddenly, knowing I’ll see a friendly face after this makes me feel glad I agreed to let Gabe come and take me home.

  I wave the driver off, just to give myself a few extra moments to try and build up the courage to go inside. My steps up to the Reception area are small, slow, and unnaturally heavy, and wh
en I finally reach the door, I fumble over how to get inside. I’m terrified of doing it wrong and having someone in uniform come out to berate me for daring to screw up the very first stage of this intimidating process.

  Surprisingly, getting inside isn’t as vomit-inducing as I had feared. In fact, the guard on reception smiled and looked at me kindly, like I was his own kid sister. I guess I look like a complete newbie to all this. I think it helped that I had dressed conservatively and made myself look like one of the Ingle girls on their way to school back in the nineteenth century.

  After he’d signed me in, he handed over a visitor’s form, then acted a little embarrassed when he asked me to relinquish any possessions that I may be carrying on my person. I’m routinely frisked by a female officer, who smiles tightly before retreating into an office out the back without uttering a single word throughout the entire process.

  “Don’t be scared, Honey,” the guy says with a friendly grin when he shows me into a communal room where other visitors are waiting to see their loved ones. “No one will give you any trouble and if they do, we’ll be there.”

  I smile and nod, though his words, as comforting as he meant them to sound, give me little reassurance. He can see the skepticism in my eyes but merely dips his head down before turning to walk out the door we had just come through.

  My fingers tap nervously while I wait to be led through to see my brother, watching with unease as more and more visitors are led through to wait with me. It feels like hours pass when, in actual fact, it’s probably only been about ten minutes. A girl popping her gum grabs my attention, purely because she looks just as anxious as I do. That and I can see how her fidgety fingers are missing her phone which would have been secured at reception. She’s the type who has it as an extension of herself, no doubt feeling like she’s missing a limb in its absence.

  My eyes dart over the mounting population of this small, grey room, whose only defining feature is that it has none. I pass the time by playing a mental game of ‘guess the relationship to the convict’, inwardly judging as to which ones are mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends, shifty guys visiting other shifty guys, only to then contemplate who they see me as. The loyal, doting girlfriend of a thuggish boyfriend? Or the little lost sister who just wants her brother back.

  An obnoxious buzzer, one that would fit well on a game show, sounds from the door nearby. It’s a door that hasn’t been used yet, but the well-rehearsed visitors automatically stand, getting ready to filter through into yet another room. As normal, I hang back, not because I’m not desperate to see Grant, but because it’s in my nature to let others before me; to stay far away from the clusters of people so I can go by unassumingly. The girl popping her gum smiles timidly when she does the exact same thing.

  The men waiting on the other side, the inmates, are dressed in matching grey sweatpants and t-shirts, with a small red bib over the top. They all uniformly look the same bar the small white number that distinguishes them with as little individuality as possible. Most of them remain looking on top of their desktops, remaining quiet and reserved. There is also an obvious presence of guards who line the perimeter for all to see.

  A man with long hair, a thick stubble, and sallow skin, waves at me. It takes me a while to register who this man is, but when I realize it’s actually my brother, I audibly gasp. I take a few moments to take in his changed appearance, but when he falters over my reaction, I plaster on my best smile and begin my nervous walk towards him.

  When I am but a foot or two away from him, an overwhelming feeling of timidity falls over me and I suddenly don’t know what to do with myself. My chest heaves up and down with deep breathing and I can already feel the running stream of tears falling over my cheeks as I take in his tall, bulky form, one that’s even bigger than his high school football days. He looks just as intimidating as some of the other criminals sat inside here, especially when I spy a line of deep purple bruises along his jaw, still fresh from whoever had put them there. It’s not until I look into his eyes that I truly believe he’s the same Grant who was taken from me. The same brother who had looked after me when I was still young enough to need taking care of. They look indisputably sad and lost but as I inch closer, I can see a small glimmer of hope, and it breaks me.

  “Hey big broth-” I begin, but I don’t get to finish my greeting before I’m crushed against his chest and we’re both sobbing silently against one another.

  “It’s so good to see you, Mils!” he cries into my ear, gripping onto me for dear life as I do the very same thing to him. “I’ve missed you, sis.”

  “I’ve missed you too, ass face!” he chuckles, but only for a small moment before he’s sobbing with me again.

  It doesn’t feel long enough before a guard coughs suggestively, forcing us to pull away from each other and to sit in the designated chairs. Ignoring the guard and his power trip to enforce the ‘no tender moments’ policy, my fingertips automatically fly up to his bruises. I can’t help the way he leans into my hand with desperation to take whatever affection he can get.

  You’re a good boy, Grant, and don’t deserve to be locked away with monsters!

  “What’s this?” I question, shucking away my inner dialogue before it reduces me to tears again. The hard knot of emotion caught in my throat is no doubt going to remain there until I leave. Only then will I let it out noisily and unashamedly.

  “Nothing, honestly, just a little fight club we have now and then,” he laughs when my eyes widen in horror over that prospect.

  We soon fall into holding onto one another’s hands across the table, not willing to let each other go, even though that gut-wrenching moment is going to come much sooner than we expect.

  “So how are you doing…really?” I ask softly, starting to feel like I’m in the company of my brother again, rather than the stranger I had first laid eyes upon. “I’ve waited so long to hear from you, Grant. I kind of gave up hope.”

  “I know, I’m sorry, but would you want people seeing you in a place like this?” he gestures to the space around him. “Especially your kid sister, although…” he looks at me with an almost new set of eyes, as though he’s only just realized I’m no longer the fifteen-year-old child he was taken away from. “You’re not so much a kid anymore! Christ, I hate that I’m not out there beating them away with a stick.”

  He chuckles as I automatically wince over the memory of everything that happened on Friday night, both the bad and the…well, whatever.

  “Gabe told me you don’t have a boyfriend but Matt’s still sniffing around?” I merely shrug and try to change the subject.

  “I’m sorry I don’t have any news on Sam yet.” It’s a cheap shot to use his former girlfriend to steer him away from my issue with all things boy-related, and when he looks away with a hurt expression, I mentally slap myself for being so callous. “But I’ll try, somehow!”

  I clutch hold of his hands more tightly, genuinely vowing to bring something more useful to tell him about her next time. It’s the least I can do.

  “Things have been strained between Bowie and me since you came here.”

  “I heard!” His new appearance, together with the surroundings makes him look positively terrifying when he clenches his teeth and balls his hands into fists, which instantly whiten at the knuckle. “Gabe told me about how he’s treated you, and believe me, I’m ready to kill him when I get out!”

  I cough uncomfortably, looking away as I try to change the subject yet again, because I know I’m bound to let something slip if I don’t try and rein things in soon. I wear my emotions on my sleeve, and I noticeably sweat and stutter when I attempt to lie or omit the truth.

  “So, why now, Grant? Why have you chosen to seek me out now?” It’s a valid question and one that doesn’t mention Matt, Bowie, or Sam.

  “I’m innocent, Mills,” he swallows slowly, looking down at our intertwined hands, studying them with a newfound determination to have someone listen, to have someone believe
him. “You must know that, right? You know I would never do that to anyone, least of all the woman I’m in love with.” I squeeze his hands reassuringly, smiling, even though he’s still staring at our interlocked fingers like they hold the answer to all of his problems. “I admit I gave up inside here, let it all get the better of me, but then I finally came to a realization.” I furrow my brow just as his eyes finally lift to look into mine, expertly building up suspense with his dramatic pause. “If I’m in here for the motherfucker who raped my girl, then whoever did it, is still out there!”

  Stupidly, I hadn’t even considered that the real perpetrator is still out there, still a risk, and has, most likely, been attending Matt’s parties. I’d always kept my thoughts to Grant, Sam, and me; the victims in all of this. My unease heats me from the inside when I consider someone else could end up going through all of this too, having their entire life destroyed by one sick individual.

  “You’ve gotta help me, Mills. I can’t do it from in here, you need to be my eyes and ears out there. You follow me?”