Dark Child

by Jo Raven

  Help me, he whispers as he starts to fade, like a ghost, like a cloud.

  “Merc!” I call his name, or try to. My throat is closing up. “Merc, wait.”

  Help me, he says once more and disappears.

  I sit up with a gasp, horny and terrified.

  What a weird dream. A golden boy like Merc can’t have any problems. He has a good family, good friends. Why am I worried about him? Especially after he ditched me the other day, stood me up, left me waiting without an explanation.

  Come on, subconscious. This is ridiculous.

  I sigh and rub at my eyes. I haven’t been sleeping well ever since I got back. Lots of dreams. Weird dreams. About things I thought I’d forgotten, erased from my mind. My parents fighting, screaming and throwing things at each other. Soph crying.

  And Merc. I keep dreaming of him, and it’s always hot, and sweet, and worrisome.

  It’s not the first time he’s asked for help in my dreams.

  Why would Merc be visiting my dreams to ask for help? Me of all people? I’m a disaster in my own life. What are my dreams trying to tell me?

  I mull over this as I brush my teeth, then make coffee and drink it seated at the kitchen counter. Obviously something is bothering me, like a thorn under my skin, and it has to do with Merc.

  Probably just the fact that he didn’t show up that day.

  That must be it. It shouldn’t have bothered me so much. I mean, I even left my phone number with the waitress in case he came by later. And so what?

  Let it go, Cos.

  I thought I’d stomped on the broken pieces of my heart until they turned to dust after my last boyfriend kicked me out, after he told me what an idiot I was to think he’d stay with me when he had his whole life in front of him.

  Just like Mom walked out on us to live her life, after dragging us all over the country, after all the scandals that got pinned on us like dog shit.

  Like Soph walked away saying she needed to find her own way.

  Too many abandonments, okay? I know I have issues. Anyway…

  God, what a pity party I’ve thrown myself. Someone put up some streamers and get hold of a Mariachi band.

  This isn’t like me. I need to get out of this funk. Get myself together. Like I told Lin, I’m a big girl. I don’t need anyone to save me. I can take care of myself.

  I don’t need anyone at all.

  But I’m still looking morosely into my empty coffee mug a while later when my bestie wanders out of her room, yawning hugely. It’s as if… I need some reassurance—that I’m making the right moves.

  That I’m well within my rights to be mad at Merc.

  “Lin,” I pounce. “Merc set me up, right?”

  “Wha? I just woke up, woman. Gimme a minute.” Her hair is dyed a pinkish red these days, and it’s falling across her face. She pushes it out of the way to search for a mug in the cupboard. She stops with her hand inside the cupboard and turns a bleary eye on me. “Wait, who?”

  Oh right, because we have a pick of assholes to choose from. “Merc!”

  She blinks, turns back to the cupboard and extracts a black mug with a pink heart stamp. “I don’t know.”

  “What? Lin.” I groan. “You told me many times over he played me. That I was better off forgetting about him. That it’s for the best that I had to go when I did and that I can now take some time off men for real and rebuild my life.”

  She huffs. “Sure, but that’s what I got from your retelling of what happened. You never seemed to believe it.”

  “Oh my God.” I sink back down on my stool. “You can’t do this to me. I thought you held all the answers in the universe.”

  “I do,” she says easily. “Once I’ve had my coffee. Same as you. Have your coffee, and it will come to you, you’ll see.”

  But even with all the coffee in the world, I bet I’ll still have no answers at all.

  Maybe leaving St. Louis in such a hurry was not my best idea. I sort of panicked at the thought of being dumped again.

  Like preventive medicine, right? Cut the ties before they choke you. Besides, Soph said I was free to go, and I went, desperate to leave my new mistake behind and pretend it never happened.

  At least you never slept with him, I told myself for the hundredth time, but it doesn’t reassure me. Didn’t sleep with him, didn’t kiss him, but in my dreams we did, many times over.

  I feel as if I’m in a dream relationship with him. Living with him, having sex with him, worrying about him after I’ve gone to bed.

  Dream relationship. Maybe I should put that as my Facebook status. God knows in real life I don’t have anything much going on.

  I will change my life, though. I’ll find a full-time job, in an office someplace, get myself a cat, and then decide where to go from there.

  Put the past behind me. Set goals.

  Like, no boyfriends. This time for real.

  Lin texts me with a line of angry and yelling emojis, followed by a terse ‘No way.’

  Oops. I guess she doesn’t find my Facebook relationship update funny. ‘But it’s true,’ I text her back.

  She calls me then. “Woman. Take that update off your page.”

  “Lin...”

  “I don’t give a shit if it’s true or not. You sound crazy.”

  “I am crazy.”

  “I know, babe. It’s why I love you, but—”

  “What do dreams mean?”

  “Come again?”

  “If I keep dreaming of Merc, if I keep worrying in my dreams about him, what does it mean?”

  A silence meets my question.

  Just as I’m about to ask again, in case she didn’t hear me, she produces a strangled sound that could be laughter.

  Or a choked howl of despair.

  “Damn, girl,” she gasps into the phone. “What it means is that you’ve got it pretty bad for that boy. I hadn’t realized.”

  I roll my eyes. “And what’s your prescription, Dr. Lin?”

  “Damn if I know. Drink? Wait, I’ll come home soon, and we can drink together.”

  Sounds like a plan.

  Lin is late, so I pour myself a glass of the wine she keeps in the cupboard. Thing is, I don’t really want to get drunk. I’m not sure it would help.

  I don’t know what could help with this ache inside, this need to see Merc again.

  I’m nuts, right? He’s not an ex-boyfriend, a long-lost lover that I miss. I only got the courage to talk to him last time, and although I watched him from a distance every time I visited Sophie, he never knew I existed before now.

  And I didn’t know him. Didn’t know his name, for God’s sake, or his voice, or how he grins, and laughs…

  Point is, I can’t be missing him. There’s nothing to miss. I never had him in the first place. Not even for a while, not even for a day.

  No, this is something I’ve never felt before.

  I chug down the wine and pour myself another glass.

  This sucks, this unaccountable feeling of loss, the feeling of passing up on something wonderful if only I had the guts to go back.

  Go back to St. Louis and find him. Even after these past couple of weeks I’ve been away.

  The guy who probably doesn’t even remember me. The passing blip on his radar. The faceless girl he had a coffee with and then got bored of.

  Just another sexy-boy-meets-average-not-so-sexy-girl story.

  The end.

  But maybe I need to meet him one last time to put this ache to rest before I can rebuild my life. Tell him he can go screw himself and leave my dreams alone.

  My phone ringing startles me so badly I almost drop the glass. Merc, I think, and Jesus on a stick, why would I think that?

  Because I can’t stop thinking about him, that’s why.

  But no. The name flashing on my phone is my sister’s. My heart starts to pound, and my thoughts to race, torn between worry something bad has happened to her and anticipation of… what, exactly?

  “What’s u
p, sis?”

  “Hey.” Her voice is kind of broken by static. As if she’s a million miles away. “Can you talk?”

  “Sure. Are you all right?”

  “I… yeah. How are things? Did you get a job? How’s your friend, what’s her name?”

  I sit at the kitchen table and put the glass down. “Lin.”

  “Right. Lin.”

  “She’s fine. And I got a part-time job, just until I find something better.”

  “That was quick.”

  “Yeah. But I can drop it at any moment.”

  Why did I say that?

  Why is my heart beating so fast? Not with fear or dread for what I think she’s about to ask but again that sick anticipation.

  Please, dear God. Please let her ask me to go back. Though I shouldn’t. I should stay right here, get myself together.

  But I can’t seem to set roots in this town. In this life.

  She coughs lightly. “Cos…”

  “Yes?”

  “I know I’ve been asking you too much for some time now, but… please help me out again? I know I can’t keep asking you this, you have your own life…”

  “No! I mean, yes, of course I will help.”

  Yes, yes, yes!

  “You sure you’re okay, Cos? You keep putting your life on hold for me.”

  “Nonsense,” I say brightly. “You know you only have to ask.”

  And if I feel guilty for having my own reasons for wanting to go back, so what? I’m trying to kill two birds with one stone. Help my sis. Find Merc. Get this out of my system.

  I’m sure he’s okay, but I need to give him a piece of my mind, show him I’m not okay with being dumped. Not anymore.

  Sounds like a plan. Even if Lin will kill me when she finds out.

  Chapter Seven

  Merc

  In my dream, a huge eye is watching me, yellow and unblinking like the moon.

  Then I see blood. Rivers and lakes and seas spreading around me. Shallow seas I stumble through, my shoes getting stuck, gluing me to the ground so I can’t lift off.

  Someone is after me. Heavy steps follow me as I struggle through the dark mire.

  A body is lying on the ground bathed in golden late-afternoon sunlight, and I know… I know this place, and I know how it got there. I saw… I saw things before I started to run, the images flashing in front of me like a film, and I crash through them, shredding them apart.

  A meandering stream, a silver swan, a temple, trees sweeping low over the banks—a scream, a crash.

  A hand lands on my shoulder, spinning me around, hauling me off the ground. I’m too small, too weak, windmilling as I am lifted in the air, my heart thudding so hard it feels like it might burst out of my chest.

  I can’t see his face. I can never see his face. The only thing I see as I dangle from his hand is a symbol drawn on his forearm, a symbol I can’t make out.

  You killed her, I try to say, you killed her, you bastard. I try to talk, try to scream, but I can’t, can’t fucking move.

  Can’t escape.

  But as another scream rises in my throat, I jerk and sit upright, a strangled sound leaving my throat. I bend over, gasping for breath.

  Fuck. I’m awake. I’m awake, goddammit. Fuck’s sake.

  Breathe. I put a hand over my racing heart and swallow down bile. Calm down.

  Just a dream.

  I don’t always wake up in time to avoid what comes after, the fall into abject terror that has me thrashing on the bed until I fall off or mercifully wake up, a howl dying in my throat.

  See, the problem is that I’m not always that lucky.

  Yawning so hard my jaw cracks, grabbing my phone from the nightstand, I shuffle into the kitchen in a pair of boxers I just threw on. I normally don’t bother wearing anything in bed, but JC walking in on me the other day made me wonder whether I should change my habits.

  My phone dings, and I glance at it, instantly irritated with myself for still expecting Sophie to be the one texting me. As if she has my number. As if she’d care.

  But it’s not her, it’s the blond I took out for drinks the other night. She wants to see me again. I thought I made it clear that wasn’t in the cards.

  Even if I’m not hung up on Sophie. I’m over her, remember?

  It’s not as if anything had a chance to happen anyway, and I shouldn’t feel so fucking disappointed at the thought. Not when she now pretends not to know me. I’m a popular guy now. I’m not the scared, bullied boy I was back in our little town of Destiny, the fatherless bastard, the scrawny poor boy in second-hand clothes and patches on my knees and elbows.

  Fuck… My head’s screwed on wrong today.

  “Up early today,” a voice says, and it’s a punch straight through my chest.

  “Whoa.” I stumble backward, still off-balance from the dream, my heart trying to burst out of my goddamn chest. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  “Guessed wrong,” JC says.

  “What?” I belatedly notice that he’s dressed in pressed gray slacks and an immaculate white shirt, the cuffs rolled up over powerful forearms. “What are you talking about?”

  “JC doesn’t stand for Jesus Christ.”

  “What the fuck.” I sigh. “You’re fucking weird.”

  He shrugs.

  “Okay, I’ll bite. What does JC stand for?”

  Instead of a reply, I receive a mug of black coffee that he pushes over the counter at me before sitting down at the table.

  Frowning, I bring it to my lips and almost gag on the amount of sugar. “The hell, man. This is diabetes waiting to happen.”

  He sips his own coffee, peering at me over the rim. His eyes are dark. “Bad night?”

  I shrug. “Bad month.”

  “Girl trouble?”

  “You could say that.”

  He nods thoughtfully. “You’d better get over her.”

  “Come again?”

  “If she’s the one that has you moaning her name all night. Get over her, or go out with her. Only way.”

  I gape at him. Is he serious? “For fuck’s sake. Can’t a man have some privacy?”

  “If you bring chicks home, just keep it quiet,” he mutters. “Is all I’m saying.”

  Then he winks. The asshole winks.

  "Stay out of my room and out of my business.” I stab a finger at him. “I mean it.”

  “As long as you stay out of mine,” he says easily, pushes off the counter and leaves the kitchen.

  What. The. Hell.

  I can’t figure this guy out, and it’s driving me nuts. This roommate thing isn’t working out so well after all…

  I wasn’t moaning anyone’s name… Was I? JC is fucking with me.

  But the question is stuck in my mind. Before the nightmare began, did I dream of psycho girl? Did I dream of touching her, kissing her, fucking her? It would be far from the first time, and even now, pissed off as I am at my roommate and still shaken from the bloody dream, I think of dark eyes and a sexy mouth and I get hard.

  So hard for her. Every time.

  Elliot is chattering in my ear, something about classes and girls and… mothers? What the hell? I’m tempted to ask if he’s on drugs.

  I’m equally tempted to pull on the headphones hanging around my neck, jack the volume up and get lost in music—but I don’t, because that’s the easy solution.

  “Hey, man. Listen…”

  But he isn’t listening. Now he’s planning how we’re going out Saturday night to a bar he knows and how it’s going to be so awesome. With my nightmares worsening, going out is not in the cards any time soon. I can barely make it to nighttime before dozing off. I’m dead on my feet.

  And then I see her.

  There’s no way to miss her, not for me. She’s like my own private beacon, shining at the edge of my vision, calling me.

  I resist. I tell myself not to be a fucking idiot.

  But she looks up and gives me a sweet smile, and fuck it. Something inside me unclench
es, I take my first real breath in days, and I’m already walking toward her.

  “Merc!” Elliot calls after me, but I don’t even turn.

  I hurry toward her. “Hey. Hi.”

  At this brilliant conversation opener, her smile slips. “You,” she says.

  “Yeah.” I stop and lick my suddenly dry lips. “I thought you might want to study with me. Calculus. You said you’d like that, remember?”

  I wonder how I remembered this bit, but hell, anything but stand there like an awkward teenager. Besides… I’d had a good time with her in that dimly lit diner. I’d felt relaxed, and free, and kind of happy. It had felt right. The dark images from my dreams didn’t seem to reach me when she was around.

  Funny how I can’t quite feel that way now as she glowers at me. It’s as if the girl in the diner was another person, in another universe.

  Why is it that this girl can make me hard and horny but confuses the hell out of me?

  “I don’t remember telling you that,” she says in a clipped tone.

  And that’s the problem right there. She barely remembers me when I can’t fucking stop thinking and dreaming about her.

  She’s dressed in a dress today, light gray, and high heeled pumps. No cat T-shirts. So conservative. So… unlike herself.

  Wait, this makes no sense.

  “Look, you’re a nice guy. You’re cute. You got girls lusting after you. I’m not one of them, so leave me in peace, okay?

  I lift my hands. Whoa. Okay. Fucking hell.

  Hey, it’s all right. Got it this time. Message received loud and clear. Never going near her again.

  Fuck that. This chick isn’t for me.

  I’m done.

  “…and together with Coleridge launched the Romantic Age,” a voice drones somewhere in front of me, and I blink, my eyelids too heavy to lift.

  Dammit. This week I’ve barely caught a wink, and I keep falling asleep through my literature class. I’ve skipped work at the garage with the excuse that I need to catch up on classes, and here I am, dozing on my desk.

  JC is right, I think randomly. I need to get laid and get psycho girl out of my system. Get everything out—the twisted dark dreams and the weariness of sleepless nights. Maybe a good fuck will help where the sleeping pills have failed.