Too Late

by C. Hoover

  Asa doesn’t even take two seconds to process what he’s seeing. His eyes turn heated with rage. “I gave you one fucking job, asshole!” he yells, striding toward us. Just when the guy releases me and begins to spin around, Asa lifts his gun and presses it to the top of the guy’s head. “One fucking job!”

  Ringing.

  I can’t hear anything over the ringing in my ears. The sting of liquid in my eyes—on my face. I cover my ears with my hands and squeeze my eyes shut.

  No, that did not just happen.

  No, no, no.

  I hear the guy fall to the floor and I have to step to the side to get my left foot out from under him. “No, Asa. No, no, no,” I repeat, my hands still over my ears, my eyes still shut.

  “He probably thought you were a whore, Sloan,” he says, grabbing my arm. “Can you blame him?”

  Asa yanks me forward and I trip over the guy on the floor. Asa doesn’t let go of my arm as he drags me to my feet and yanks me toward the door.

  My eyes are still closed. I think I might be screaming, because my throat is stinging, but I can’t tell if that’s me or the ringing in my ears. I’m suddenly lifted up into the air and thrown over his shoulder.

  He carries me down the stairs and the last ten seconds replay over again in my head.

  This is not happening.

  Seconds later, he lays me down on a bed. I’m still too scared to open my eyes. Several moments pass and I can feel my chest pulling for air. I gasp between tears as Asa’s voice comes at me from inches above me.

  “Sloan, look at me.”

  I slowly open my eyes and look up at him. He’s kneeling over me on the bed, touching my face, smoothing back my hair. There are specks of blood on his face—across his neck.

  I look into his eyes and his pupils have overtaken everything. Two huge black irises stare back down at me, and it sends a shiver over my already trembling body.

  “Sloan,” he whispers, still smoothing his hand over my hair. I try to look around the room, but he grabs my jaw and forces my eyes back to his. “Baby, I have some really bad news.”

  I don’t think my heart can take whatever it is he’s about to say. I’m afraid if I open my mouth to respond to him, I’ll puke.

  “I know about you and Luke.”

  My heart crashes to a halt at that name. I fight back the flood of tears attempting to return. He called him Luke.

  How does he know his name is Luke?

  I muster every ounce of strength I can find and I use it to play dumb. “Who is Luke?”

  His eyes scroll over my face. His pupils contract and then expand again. A slow smile spreads across his face and then he presses his lips to my forehead. “That’s what I thought,” he whispers, pulling away from me. “It’s not your fault, Sloan. He brainwashed you. Tried to turn you against me. But his name isn’t even Carter, baby. It’s Luke. Ask him yourself.” He slips his hand under my back and pushes me up until I’m sitting on the bed.

  I’m suddenly face-to-face with my worst nightmare.

  Luke is sitting at a desk chair, his hands cuffed behind his back. The agony on his face speaks volumes of what he thinks about our predicament.

  No.

  Asa is watching me, waiting for my reaction. I try to control it—to hide my fear, my heartache, my own agony. But knowing we’re both at the hands of Asa right now leaves little strength for pretending.

  Don’t react. Don’t react. Don’t react.

  I repeat these words in my head while Luke speaks the same silent words to me with his eyes.

  That’s what Asa wants. A reaction. I do whatever I can to not give him the one he expects. He’s standing now, so I look up at him with the most innocent expression I’m capable of right now. “Asa, what are you talking about? Why is Carter handcuffed?”

  He stares down at me like he’s disappointed. Like he expected me to come out and say I knew Luke was undercover, or in the least, that I’m sleeping with him. He smirks. “You still think I’m stupid, Sloan?” His eyes slowly slide over to Luke. “So I guess it’s okay if I do this then, huh?” He lifts his gun and strides toward him, just like he did in the second before he shot the guy upstairs.

  I immediately jump up, grab his arm and scream, “No! Asa, No!”

  He doesn’t shoot him.

  Instead, the hand that’s holding his gun swings around and hits me so hard, I fly back onto the bed. He didn’t even need me to admit what was happening between Luke and me. My reaction just gave it away.

  He’s on top of me now, gripping my wrists, pressing his forehead to the side of my head. “Sloan, no,” he says, his voice instantly strained. “No, no, baby.” He pulls back and his eyes are full of hurt. “He was inside you? You let him inside you?”

  I’m crying too hard to admit it. I’m crying too hard to deny it.

  His entire face pulls into a grimace, as if he thinks this is the absolute worst thing that could possibly be happening right now. He just shot a guy upstairs, and he’s more upset that I might have cheated on him?

  I turn my head to the side and squeeze my eyes shut.

  This is it.

  This is how I’m going to die.

  Asa buries his head in the crevice of my neck and shoulder and mutters, “I can’t remember if I locked the door.”

  When he crawls off me, I try to process what he just said, but it was so random and my pulse is racing too fast to process thoughts, I don’t even know what to think. As he’s walking toward the door, I turn my head to find Luke. His hands are cuffed behind his back around the desk chair. But he quickly stands, slipping his arms up and over the back of the chair, and then he sits down again, this time with his arms directly behind his back without the barrier of the chair. It all happens so fast, it takes me a second to realize that he’s not even cuffed to the chair.

  Asa must not realize this or he’d never turn his back to him.

  My eyes flick to the door and Asa is locking it. My eyes flick back to Luke’s and he’s shaking his head, warning me to stay calm. He can’t bring his thumb to his lip, but he’s biting it, running his teeth across it.

  I tug at a strand of my hair, just as Asa rests his back against the bedroom door. He places his gun flat against his cheek and looks straight at Luke. “I already told you about the first time I fucked her,” he says. “It’s your turn.”

  My Dad is standing at the window, watching for the men.

  He watches for them all the time. He tells me if they find out where we live, they’ll shoot him. Then they’ll shoot my mom and then they’ll shoot me. He says after they shoot us, the men probably won’t even tell the police. They’ll leave us all here and our bodies will rot inside this house and the mice and roaches will eat them.

  “Asa!” he yells from the window, pointing at the front door. “Check the door again!”

  I already checked it for him two times, but he never believes me that it’s locked. He says, “Check the door again,” every time he looks out the window.

  I don’t know why some days he thinks the men are coming for him and some days he doesn’t care. I slide off the couch and crawl to the door. My legs work, so I could walk to the door just fine, but sometimes I’m scared if the men show up, they’ll shoot me, so I crawl when I pass the big window.

  I check the door. “It’s locked.”

  My Daddy looks at me and smiles. “Thank you, son.”

  I hate it when he calls me son. The only time he calls me son is when he’s scared of the men who are going to shoot him and then my mom and then me. When he’s scared, he’s really nice to me and makes me help him do things, like push the couch against the door and unplug all the things that have electricity. I’ve been helping him a lot today and he keeps calling me son. I like it better when he doesn’t call me anything and he just sits in his chair all day.

  I crawl back to the couch, but before I make it there, I feel my dad squeeze my arm. “They’re here, Asa!” he whispers. He pulls me to my feet and says, “You hav
e to go hide!”

  My heart beats real fast inside my chest and I nod.

  My dad is scared of the men a lot, but they’ve never actually shown up before. I look out the big window while he pulls me across the living room, but I don’t see anyone. I don’t see the men.

  My dad pulls me out the back door and down the steps. He kneels and grabs my shoulders. “Asa, hide under the house and stay there until I come get you.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t want to.” It’s dark under there and once I saw a scorpion.

  “You don’t have a choice!” he whispers real loud. “Don’t come out until I come for you or they’ll kill all of us!”

  He pushes me toward the opening that leads under the house. I fall to my knees and my hands sink into the mud. I don’t look behind me. I crawl as far as I can so the men don’t see me.

  I pull my knees up to my chest and I try to be quiet when I cry so the men don’t hear me.

  I got really cold and hungry and cried until the sun came back up. But my daddy said not to move, so I didn’t. I still haven’t moved. I hope he doesn’t get mad, but I peed on myself while I was sleeping. I haven’t peed on myself while I was asleep since before my last birthday. If the men haven’t killed him yet, he’s going to be so mad at me for what happened.

  I can hear them walking around inside the house. I don’t know if they killed my dad. My mom was in the bedroom where she stays most of the time, so they might have even killed her, too, if they found her.

  But they didn’t kill me, because I did exactly what my dad said. I stayed here and I’m not moving until he comes for me.

  Or until the men are gone.

  I got really cold and hungry and cried until the sun went down again. But I still didn’t move. My daddy said not to, so I didn’t. But my legs don’t feel like they’re a part of my body anymore. My eyes keep closing. I’m not so thirsty anymore because there was a little water coming out of a pipe next to me and I put my mouth on it and drank some of it.

  I think the men killed my mom and dad, because it’s real quiet in my house now. I haven’t heard the men walk around since the sun came up, so maybe they left.

  I know my dad said not to move, but if my dad were still alive, he would have been back to get me.

  But he never came back.

  I crawl out from under the house. It’s real dark out now, so that means I’ve been under the house for more than an entire day now. I don’t think the men would kill my mom and dad and then stay at our house for more than a whole day, so I think that means they’re probably gone now and it’s safe for me to go inside.

  When I try to stand up, I fall back down. My legs are tingly and my fingers hurt. I crawl up the back stairs and that’s when I realize my clothes have mud all over them. I’m scared to get the floor dirty. I try to wipe some of it on the rug, but I just keep spreading it around on my clothes.

  I grab the door handle and pull myself up. I still can’t feel my legs very well, but they’re working now. When I open the door and walk into the house, I can see my father’s dead body. It’s in the recliner in the living room.

  I hold my breath. I’ve never seen a dead body before and I really don’t want to see one now, but I know I have to make sure it’s my dad and not the men. I tiptoe into the living room and I’m so scared, it feels like my heart is beating in my neck.

  When I reach his chair, I take a deep breath and then step around it to look at him. I’m a little surprised to see that dead people don’t really look all that different from the people who are still alive.

  I thought he’d have blood all over him, or be a different color—like a ghost. But he still looks the same.

  I lift my finger to touch his cheek. I heard dead people are colder than people who are alive, so I press the tip of my finger into his cheek to see what his skin feels like.

  His hand goes around my wrist and he squeezes it. His eyes pop open and it scares me so bad, I scream.

  My dad’s eyes are real mean when he looks down at my clothes. “Where the hell have you been, boy? You’re filthy!”

  I thought he was dead.

  He’s not dead.

  “Under the house where you told me to go yesterday. You said you’d come get me.”

  He squeezes my wrist real tight and he leans forward and says, “Don’t ever fucking wake me up from a nap again, you little bastard! Now go get in the shower, you smell like a goddamn sewer!”

  He pushes me away from him. I step back, still confused how he’s alive.

  I thought the men came. I thought they killed him.

  He squeezes the back of my neck and shoves me until I stumble out of the living room. He said he would come get me, but I don’t think he even remembered I was under the house.

  I can feel my eyes start to get warm, so I run out of the living room. I can’t cry in front of my dad or he’ll get really mad.

  I walk down the hallway toward the bathroom, but really all I want to do is eat something. My stomach has never been this hungry before. When I pass the bedroom where my mom stays most of the day, her door is open. She’s asleep in her bed, so I walk inside her bedroom to ask her if I can have something to eat. I shake her and try to wake her up, but she just groans and rolls over. “Let me sleep, Asa,” she says.

  I don’t like how much she sleeps. She says she can’t sleep very well on her own, so she takes lots of pills that help her sleep better. She says the white ones are for the nighttime, but she takes them when the sun is up sometimes. I’ve seen her do it.

  She has some yellow ones, but she says those are her special pills. She says she saves those for the days when she wants to go somewhere else in her mind.

  I look at her bottle of pills and I wonder if she would notice if I stole one of the yellow ones. Because I want to go somewhere else in my mind. I don’t want my mind to be inside this house anymore.

  I pick up her bottle of yellow pills and I try and try, but I can’t get them open. I’m not very good at reading because I’m only in the first grade, but I finally figure out that the lid says I have to push down and then twist it open.

  When I do that, it opens this time. I look at my mom, but she’s still facing the other way. I hurry up and take one of her yellow pills and I put it in my mouth and chew it. My face crinkles up because it’s the grossest thing I’ve ever eaten. It’s real bitter and makes my mouth dry. I take a drink of my mom’s water so I can wash it down.

  I hope she’s right. I hope this pill takes me somewhere else in my mind, because I’m getting really tired of being in this family.

  I put the lid back on the bottle and I sneak out of my mom’s room. By the time I get to the bathroom to take a shower, my legs already feel like they aren’t mine again.

  So do my arms. My arms feel like they’re floating in the air.

  I look in the mirror after I turn the water in the shower on, because it feels like my hair is growing. It doesn’t look longer, though. It looks the same. But I can feel it growing.

  My toes start to tingle just like my legs. I feel like I’m about to fall down, so I hurry up and sit down in the bathtub. I forget to take my clothes off, but that’s okay because my clothes are really dirty. I think my clothes need the water, too.

  I wonder how long I was under the house for. I probably missed a day of school. I don’t really like school that much, but I really wanted to go today so I could see what Brady’s mom packed him for lunch.

  Brady sits next to me at the lunch table and he brings a lunchbox every day. One time his mom packed him a piece of coconut cake. He doesn’t like coconut cake, so he told me I could have it. It was so good. I went home and told my mom how good it was, but she still hasn’t bought me coconut cake.

  Sometimes Brady’s mom writes notes and puts them inside of his lunchbox. He reads them all to us and he laughs because he thinks they’re dumb. I never laugh, though. I don’t think the notes are dumb.

  One time I saw one of the notes he threw in the trash
and I picked it up. It said, “Dear Brady. I love you! Have a great day at school!”

  I tore the top of the note off that had Brady’s name on it and I kept it. I pretended my mother wrote it for me and sometimes I would read it. But that was a long time ago and I lost the note recently. That’s why I wanted to go to school today because if Brady had another note from his mom, I wanted to steal it and pretend it was for me again.

  I wonder how it would feel to have someone say those words to me.

  I love you!

  No one has ever said that to me.

  I feel dizzy. It feels like my head is floating on the ceiling and my eyes are looking down at my body, sitting in the bathtub. I wonder if this is why my mom likes the yellow pills. Because it makes her feel like the important parts of her are floating high in the air where no one can reach her?

  I close my eyes and whisper, “I love you,” to no one while I float in the air. Someday I’ll find someone and I’ll make them like me enough to want to say those words to me. I want it to be a girl. A pretty girl. One my dad doesn’t think is a whore.

  That would be nice. Maybe she’ll love me enough to make me coconut cake. I really like coconut cake.

  If I ever find a girl who says those words to me and makes me coconut cake, I’ll keep her. I won’t throw her away like Brady throws away the notes from his mom.

  I’ll keep her forever and I’ll never let her leave me. I’ll make her tell me she loves me every single day.

  “I love you, Asa,” she’ll promise me. “I’ll never leave you.”

  I’ve never killed anyone before. Not until just a few minutes ago when I shot the guy upstairs for trying to take what wasn’t his.

  I’m still not sure how I feel.

  I should probably be worried, because murder comes with repercussions. I should also be pissed, because as soon as I shot the guy and pulled Sloan into this room, the rest of those fuckers I hired scrambled like eggs.