by K. L. Savage
I lean my head back on the pillow and close my eyes so I don’t shed tears in front of my brothers. “ Please, find Sunnie. I need her here. And I’d like everyone to leave.”
“Of course,” Dr. White says. “I’ll be back in fifteen minutes with an update on Sunnie.”
“Thank you.”
“Patrick—”
“Go, Reaper. Everyone, please…” I turn my head away from them and sigh, my chest deflating from the lack of air. “Just go. I need to be alone.”
I like being alone, but I love being alone with Sunnie more. She brings the peace I’ve been looking for. For so long, I looked in the wrong place, in the bottom of a bottle, hoping to find a solution to why, but I never found it.
Until therapy.
Until Sunnie.
I’m finally a new man.
And I’m dying.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
SUNNIE
That weaselly bitch.
“I swear when I get out of here, I’m going to wring her neck.” My words carry in the small room, seeping into the cement walls.
I’m sitting on the floor in the corner, looking at my new surroundings and wondering how the hell this is the path my life always seems to take. The room is smiliar to the one I grew up in, only darker, colder, and wetter. There’s a leak in the ceiling that drips every few seconds, and the sound of the drop hitting the floor is testing me.
Speaking of floor, my white slip-on shoes are ruined from the muck and grime that’s settled onto the floor over the years. I’ll have some type of disease by the time I leave here.
If I leave here.
There’s an old rusted bed frame from an old cot on the other side of the room, and it makes me think about the people who were here before me. Recently and centuries ago, how many people died here?
Maybe this house was never a home, but a torture chamber.
The light in the room strobes on and off, barely hanging by the electrical wire from the ceiling. I can see the fuse in the clear bulb, trying to ignite to stay on, but flickering is the best it can do.
Being in this room alone has given me plenty of time to think and berate myself for not trying to escape from Patricia, but I knew if I did, I’d only be in rehab longer or a psych facility. The truth is, no one will believe what an addict says. I was better off playing her little game and then deciding how I was going to escape her.
Only the door to the room isn’t made of wood, so I can’t break it down or kick it in. The damn thing seems to be made of four-inch steel. If I were to kick it, I’d break my leg.
I’m thinking about Patrick too and how much pain he has to be in. What’s wrong with him? Is he okay?
I miss him.
Voices from down the hall have my lovestruck train of thought brought to a quick halt. I know those voices. Patricia scared me, but these voices terrify me.
I stand by pressing against the walls to help myself up. I’m tired, weak, hungry and thirsty. I’ve only been in here a day, but being in a semi-dark room with the smell of death lingering around me and nothing but the doom hanging over my head, the stress has depleted my energy.
A jingle of keys sound, and if it weren’t for the environment, they would sound like sleigh bells in the snow. I snort. This is far from a holiday, Sunnie. My hand lands on something slimy, and I can’t look to see what it is. My stomach isn’t strong enough, so I wipe my hands on my sweats without looking.
The metal grinding together as someone swings the door open has me cringing and covering my ears since the acoustics of the room are so damn loud.
The small splash of a someone stepping into a puddle tells me they have entered the room, but I can’t see who they are.
Not until the first monster steps into the light.
Dear old Dad. Go fucking figure.
He is dressed in a pristine suit with gold cuff links. He tugs on the hem of the sleeve and looks down on his shoulder to see a cobweb. Tom dusts it off. Fuck him and fuck calling him Dad. He is nothing to me.
“Hey, sweetheart.”
“Don’t sweetheart me!” I spit at him. Three against one, my odds aren’t looking too good.
“Watch your mouth, whore,” Lundon creeps around from behind Tom and gives me a look that says he wants to fuck me, eat me, and kill me.
In that exact order.
“Fuck you. I wouldn’t be a whore if it wasn’t for you, Tom. I wouldn’t be an addict either. Why can’t you just leave me alone?”
“Because you’re the best cunt his business has, Sunshine,” Ross says from Tom’s other side. “I’ve yet to feel someone as good as you.”
“Gentlemen,” Tom interrupts their abuse with a friendly title to make them stop talking.
I scoff, “Gentlemen? More like scum of the fucking earth!”
Lundon power strides over to me and slaps me across the face, then wraps his hand around my throat, squeezing so hard that I can’t breathe. “You didn’t seem to mind my scum when I was fucking you raw all those many months ago.”
Disgust rears its ugly head and sinks into me. I clutch my stomach with one hand and hold my face with the other, rubbing the spot where he slapped me. “What? No, I don’t even know you! I’ve never seen your face before until I was here.”
Lundon rubs his nose up my cheek and hums when his hand dives between my legs and cups the space there. “Oh yeah, Ross and I would take turns on you. You were so out of it, all compliant and high, taking us any way we wanted you to. Sometimes Tom would join, wanting in on the fun.”
I lose it. I drop my hands to my thighs as I lose control of my stomach and spew bile all over Lundon’s shoes.
“Ugh, you stupid bitch!” He backhands me again. “These are Italian leather.”
The right side of my face slams against the stone wall, and it makes me see stars. “No, no, I don’t believe that. No,” I say with a continuous shake of my head. I can barely catch my breath. My eyes land on Tom, his beady brown eyes bore into me, and with a crooked tilt of his lips, he confirms what Lundon is saying. “I’m your daughter!”
“You’re not my daughter. You’re just a whore born from another whore. I raised you the best I could, but I didn’t love you like a father would. And when you became the age where I could have you, I fucking took you, just like all the other bitches who work for me.”
“You’re disgusting. All of you.” I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, thinking about all the times I can remember being with any of them. I remember Ross, but I don’t remember Tom or Lundon. I only remember Ross because he was my first, and he made sure it hurt every single second. “Women are more than fuck toys! You wouldn’t be here without women.”
“Women are made to be broken, Sunshine.”
“I know you’re lying. I have a memory of my mother telling me why she named me Sunnie. We were at the park. You stole me from her. You had to have. She wasn’t a whore.”
“No, Sunnie.” Tom’s sinister laugh is like a dangerous snake rubbing over my skin. He unbuttons his suit blazer and reaches into the inner pocket and pulls out a syringe. He taps the side of it with his finger. “You imagined that all on your own. You made it up. You were drugged more than half the time. You probably had more than one crazy dream. That’s just the one you latched onto.”
He takes a step forward, and I try to take a step back but the wall blocks me. Is what he’s saying true? Have I always been nothing? No one? I’ve never been loved? I was never cared for. I don’t know if Patrick loves me, but I know he cares.
Love is an energy someone should always feel. It’s strong enough to change the world, and I hope it has enough momentum to save me from mine.
“Why?” I ask the one question that’s been bothering me ever since I’ve had a clear mind. “Why are you doing this to me? I don’t want this. Don’t you care about that?”
“No.” His tone is flat and uncaring. “I only care about what it takes to be the man everyone loves and fears at the same time. I want power. I wa
nt money. When I saw you were getting too far gone with being on heroin, I put you in here so the media could run with it. A supportive father caring for his daughter? Do you know how many votes that will get me? The drug users, the people who sympathize, they will all vote.”
“And when I get out of here?” I sneer and make sure my hate for him cannot be missed. Delusional people are the worst threat to run into because they are so unpredictable, so tempted to continue to think they are doing what’s right.
Delusions kill, and I refuse to be a part of its statistic.
Tom pretends to cry, and Ross offers him a handkerchief to add to the theatric event.
And then he abruptly stops, tossing the cloth onto the ground and steps on it. “I think it’s funny that you think you’re getting out of here.”
I cannot show any more panic than I already have. “What will your voters say when they want answers?” I think I have him there. He has to let me out of here, or what will all of this have been worth?
The soles of Tom’s shoes click against the murky ground as he stands in front of me and traces the outline of my face. “It’s going to be a sad day. You died fighting your addiction, but your addiction won in the end. I’ll be mourning. I’ll say, ‘I did everything I could. I loved my daughter with my entire heart.’ And then I won’t speak to the public for a a few days, maybe weeks. I’ll go unseen and unheard, make them believe I’m depressed. We will have a funeral. You’ll be missed.”
Lundon snickers and Ross smiles, licking his lips like a hungry hyena waiting to tear into his kill.
“But really, you’ll be back where you belong.” His chest bumps against mine, and he sniffs my hair, then he pinches my bottom lip between his fingers. Tom kisses the side of my cheek, and I tremble, afraid that this is going to be my life forever. “On your back with your legs spread and willing.” He sucks my earlobe into his mouth, and I yank away, but he saddles me to him by the strands of my hair. “Won’t you?”
“Fuck. You!” I lift my knee and kick him between the legs, and he goes down quick. The syringe falls from his hands, clattering against the floor. Without thinking, I step on it, shattering the vile holding the poison that made me into who I am.
“You bitch,” Tom gasps, holding his pathetic cock with his hands. “Get her!” Tom yells to his goons, but they are idiots because they launch for me at the same time as I dart between them, and they slam into each other.
I run out the door, nearly slipping on the gunk on the floor, but I manage to right myself. I don’t take a right because it leads back to the main portion of the house, and the last thing I want is to be anywhere near Patricia.
I’ll bet anything she works for my father. How many other people here work for him? Is the center state funded or is it just another way for Tom to pick and choose his victims?
Turning left, which is probably going to kill me somehow, I sprint down the darkened hall. The scurry of rats across my feet almost have me screaming. I shove a hand over my mouth to shut myself up. I can’t afford to be loud.
“You aren’t going to get out of here, Sunnie!” Lundon sings. “You’ll be ours again. Don’t you miss it? The sex, the high? Oh, I bet you miss the high. We can fix that for you. We can give you whatever you want. You’ll never have to yearn for it again.”
The sex.
What a fucking joke. I can’t even remember the sex. They made sure of that. And the high… It’s tempting to go back just for that. I can have all of the drugs I want. I don’t have to fight the need for it every day. I can give in.
No.
No!
I’ve come too fucking far to sink into that horrible habit again.
“You are owned, Sunnie. You don’t have a life outside of us. No matter how hard you try to run, no matter how hard you try to fight, we will win. We always do.” That’s Tom. I suppose he finally picked his cock up off the floor in order to wander out of the room.
The lamps hanging from the ceiling sway when a breeze blows through the hall. Where the hell is a breeze coming from? If I can find where it’s coming from, I can escape. Maybe. It’s farfetched. I’m better off hiding until they give up.
An abandoned wheelchair sits in the middle of the hall. One wheel is broken off, and the leather of the seat has disintegrated in the middle leaving a hole. It’s a scene out of a scary movie, only this isn’t Hollywood—this is real life. I try a few doors to see if they are unlocked, but they aren’t. It’s a never-ending hallway of dead ends.
“No, come on. There has to be somewhere…” I spin around in a circle, and the light at the end of the hall flashes for a second, showing me another hallway. This place is a maze. No wonder they didn’t renovate the entre thing.
Left in the dark, I head toward the other corridor and try to keep the brief image of Patrick in the forefront of my mind. My head smacks against a door with a hard thud, and I bite back a curse. I don’t want to take any chances for them to hear me.
The light spasms again, and it’s enough to see the way I need to go. I take a left, and there is an open door to the right, but I ignore it. They’re going to be checking every room that is open. I need to be more creative.
“Here kitty, kitty, kitty,” an echo of a voice plays a devilish song in the distance. “Come out, come out, wherever you are. I promise, I won’t bite … hard.”
They are getting too close.
I speed up. The hallway feels like it’s getting narrower, but that’s impossible. It’s just my fear squeezing my ability to see clearly. I lean against the handle of the door and crack it open enough for me to slide through and ease the steal slab closed behind me.
The sun shines through the large windows to the left, and I’m able to a see the room in natural light. It’s huge, maybe an old ballroom. It has a dome ceiling with beautiful flowers, people, angels, and clouds hand-painted. There is a large chandelier on the floor, broken in pieces, and the crystals are scattered about the entire room.
Even the trim is detailed. I hate that I’m focusing on this room because I need to find a way out, but it’s too difficult to not appreciate something so beautiful, especially when I have never seen anything like it before. There are a few tables turned on their sides, curtains hanging by a thread from years of aging, but the dance floor still shines as if it is brand new.
To dance in the arms of someone I love, spinning in circles wearing a big dress and laughing because life is so good and sweet.
I’m with Patrick.
And life couldn’t be more beautiful than it is in that moment of dancing.
Daydreaming, a silly thing for a broken girl like me to do. I’ll never have the gown, the guy, and the life I’ve always wanted. I’ll always be on the run, or on my back, as Tom says.
Laughter and love isn’t in the deck of cards for me. I’m holding a joker in my hand, and all it promises me is pain and constant addiction.
I pry my feet off the dance floor, leaving what-ifs and could-have-beens behind. This room may be beautiful, but the house that holds it is ugly. I head toward the back and see a sign that says, ‘stairs’ in bright red, but before I can make it to the exit, they enter the room.
I duck down and crawl to a table on its side, hiding myself from their view.
“Sunnie. There’s nowhere to go now,” Tom taunts.
“You might as well come out and play.”
I close my eyes and wrap my arms around my legs, burying my face in my thighs to quiet my heaving breathing.
“Come. Out!” Tom yells and something crashes on his rampage, probably from his doing. “I’ll make sure your boyfriend dies. I’ll make sure the guy who killed his sister comes for him, but not before the guy has a taste of you. He’s been in prison a long time.” Another table splinters into firewood after he throws it out of his way. I assume it’s the tables, since there is nothing else to throw. “Can you image what Patrick’s nightmare will do to you? Knowing you are connected to the man who ruined his life?”
I almo
st get up to defend Patrick, but I stay where I’m at. It’s Patrick’s life that got ruined. That man deserved every bit of prison time, and the fact that Tom got him out on parole shows just how inhuman Tom is.
Shoes peek out from the side of the table, and I slowly run my eye up the legs the feet belong to.
“Little Miss Sunshine…” Tom stabs me in the neck with a needle before I can react, shoving whatever substance that’s in the tube into my body. Tom squats and grips my chin, my head lulling back and forth from the drug. “And my, oh my, what a cloudy day it is.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
PIRATE
I feel better after a day of medicine and constant fluids. I was adamant when I told Dr. White I didn’t want pain pills. I’m not addicted to them, but I didn’t want to risk it. I’m still healing from alcohol, and the last thing I need is to add another problem.
Besides, I’m not in that much pain. I can live with it.
“No, I’m not going to tell him.”
“You’re going to tell him.”
“You’re going to!”
“No, you are. I’m not giving him bad fucking news on his death bed.”
I open my eyes from a deep sleep and see Knives and Tool hashing it out. Knives shoves Tool in the shoulder. “I’m not doing it.”
Tool pushes him back. “As your VP, I’m ordering you to, Knives.”
“Oh, that’s cold, Tool. You’re using your authority to make someone else do what you don’t want to.”
“What else is authority used for, dumbass?”
“Don’t call me a dumbass. I will ninja star you, VP or not.”
“Guys, shut up. You’re giving me a headache,” I yawn.
Tool looks down at his feet, the big guy is nervous, and Knives looks like he’s about to lose all of his ninja stars. “Guys, what’s going on?” I sit up a bit straighter, noticing the ache in my side has lessened, but my nailbeds are tinted yellow. I’m stronger, but it’s temporary, at least according to Dr. White. I’ll start feeling lethargic soon enough as my liver gets worse. I have a month or so before I truly start to feel like shit. “I’m not getting any fucking younger here, guys. What the hell is going on?”