Or maybe things have changed more than they’ve let on...
“Uh...I can?” I asked, my knees cracking as they began to work again. Slowly I shook the leg out and muscle memory took over I was able to take a few small steps. “What’s the catch?”
“You can talk as much shit as you want to me as long as you’re prepared to be dead again,” he said, pulling Doe tightly into his side. “For real this time.”
I scowled. “You’re not a friend. You’re a monster!” I cried dramatically, taking larger and larger steps as I crossed the room. Suddenly, while doing my Preppy shuffle across the pink carpet, I was hit with a flash of memory.
My hands around a throat. Feminine screaming. Flashes of dark hair.
I paused.
“Was anyone else here besides you guys? When I woke up or maybe even before?” I asked.
“Were you expecting someone?” King asked.
“No, but I’ve just got this weird feeling...” I trailed off, staring at the shade of bubblegum pink on the wall. Although it was now pink, it used to be blue. My old room. The room where I broke down and wrapped my hands around Doc’s throat. It must have just been a memory. A distorted one, but a memory at that. “Never mind. I think my brain is still misfiring.”
Doe sat the clothes down on the bed.
“We’ll be in the living room when you’re done. You need help down the stairs?” King asked.
“Fuck off,” I said, giving him the middle finger, which he returned.
“Welcome home, motherfucker,” he grumbled, unable to hide his smile. It was like our version of hugging it out.
I love that big mean bastard.
I stared down at the clothes on the bed. A pressed white shirt, khakis, matching pink and yellow suspenders, and bow tie. It was my usual pre Narnia attire. I ran my hand down the soft clean fabric but when I picked up the shirt from the pile I dropped it back onto the bed as if it stung my hand. I pushed the suspenders and bow tie off the pile and rummaged underneath, opting for a pair of grey sweatpants and plain white t-shirt on the bottom of the stack.
I made my way out into the living room, holding onto the railing as I slowly descended the steps, each one becoming easier and easier as my muscles adjusted to the feeling of walking and I remembered how to put one foot in front of the other again.
Voices speaking in hushed tones stopped me before I turned the corner.
“I don’t know why we lied to him, that was stupid,” Doe said.
I could hear the guilt in King’s voice when he responded. “What were we supposed to say? Yeah, Prep, you had a visitor while you were in a coma, and by the way, I don’t know who that girl is to you, but you woke up in a panic, almost strangled her to death, and you called her your wife. Also, you kind of freaked the fuck out on Bear and we’re guessing it’s because he looks so much like his psycho old man so he’s decided not to come around so you don’t flip your shit and try to kill him again?”
My entire body stiffened.
She WAS here.
King sighed heavily. I peeked around the corner and his head was in his hands. Doe was rubbing his back, sitting on the armrest of the couch. The two kids were sitting at the table off to the side, picking the crust off their sandwiches and throwing them at one another.
“I know it’s hard, but we have to tell him the truth. He deserves that much. We’re his family. We can’t lie to him.”
“As his family it’s our job to protect him, so we can’t just dump all this shit onto shoulders at once either,” King said. “He’s already been through too fucking much. I just wish I would have known where he was. He was so close the entire fucking time. So fucking close...” King’s voice trailed off.
I stepped out into the living room, ready to tell him that it wasn’t his fault and he shouldn’t blame himself for not knowing where I was when I real
She WAS really there.
Neither King nor Doe saw me limping into the room. King continued. “I mean, this shits, fucked up. How the hell are we supposed to tell him that Grace died?”
It was the shock shooting through my system that made me walk right into the coffee table and make myself known.
“Shit,” King swore. He stood up and came toward me. I held up my hands and took a step back.
“We didn’t mean for you to find out...” He started, running a frustrated hand over his hair. “It’s my fucking fault.”
“No, No,” I said, waving them off and trying to keep down the bile rising in my throat. My legs again grew shaky but I stood straighter, not wanting to make them feel worse by breaking down in front of them. “You guys have nothing to feel guilty about. Grace was sick right? For a long time. I mean, I kind of already figured,” I lied. I was positive Grace would outlive the cockroaches of the apocalypse. She could have been run over by a mac truck and I would’ve put money on the truck having more damage than her.
I turned back toward my room. Or what USED to be my room. “I’m just gonna go take a shower,” I said heading back up the stairs.
“Preppy, wait,” King called out but I kept going.
“He needs some time,” Doe said.
With each step back to my room the threat of losing my shit grew greater and greater. It wasn’t until I was behind the closed door when I let the tears fall.
And fall they did.
I cried for the loss of Grace, my mother in all ways except blood. The mother who never let me down. The woman who would let me have it when I’d done something she didn’t approve of, but who wasn’t judgmental. She loved me for me. She loved all my crazy.
She never tried to change me.
I never even got to say good-bye.
I eventually made my way into the shower, spending several minutes under the water long after it turned cold. When I finally dragged myself out I went to take a piss and caught a glimpse of my reflection out of the corner of my eye. I turned toward the mirror and faced someone I hadn’t seen in a very long fucking time. Someone I used to like looking at.
A lot.
I wasn’t fucking stupid. I knew that after the shit I’d been through that I wouldn’t exactly be GQ material.
But I also didn’t expect to be staring at a total fucking stranger either.
I leaned in close to the mirror. I felt around my long knotted beard with my fingertips and almost lost my shit when they dropped into my severely sunken cheeks. The bones around my dark and hollowed eye sockets protruded out like a fucking caveman. My once hazel eyes which now looked more like a muted shit-colored brown.
At least Grace won’t ever have to see me this way.
Even when my hair was at its longest, I’d always kept the top long and shaved the sides to show off the tattoos on both sides of my head. Post-torture, the parts that were normally short were grown out well past my shoulders, and for some reason looked much darker than the medium blond I remember it being.
I looked like a skinnier, demented version of Jesus Christ.
Walking death.
I could count my ribs, something I hadn’t been able to do since I was a kid and suddenly I was back on the playground again, getting the shit beat out of me by a sumo wrestler of a twelve-year-old who entered puberty well before his time.
Everything about the pathetic soul in that mirror told a story that didn’t bare repeating. My head spun. I grabbed onto the sink for support and lowered my head, staring at the thin ring of rust around the drain.
After every single motherfucking thing I’d been through in my life, I’d never considered myself a victim.
But a victim was all I saw in that mirror.
With one last scowl at my reflection I shuffled over to the toilet and leaned on the wall, pulling out my flaccid cock to take the piss I’d started to take earlier, but I couldn’t help but keep thinking about Grace.
You are a good person, my Samuel. You’re a good boy. Grace’s words rang in my head. You are loved.
Mid-piss I stepped away from the toilet, spraying u
rine on the seat and floor. I ripped open the cabinet under the sink. I knelt and my knees crunched loudly, like gravel being rubbed together. I groaned at the odd sensation and the even more awful sound.
“Are you okay in there, Preppy?” Doe asked from the other side of the door.
“Fine,” I barked back. Of all people she didn’t deserve my irritation. I instantly felt guilty. “Fine,” I repeated, softening my tone as much as I could although it wasn’t much when my teeth were still gritted and I was speaking through the splitting pain burning in my legs and torso.
“Okay, we’ll all be out in the living room. So...you know. That’s where we will all be when you’re done. Waiting for you.” Sadness filled her voice. “I’m so sorry, Prep,” she added. I heard the slide of her hand as she ran it down the outside of the door followed by the light padding of her feet on the carpet and finally, the sound of the outer door of the bedroom clicking shut.
I reminded myself to apologize to her for being such a dick. She didn’t deserve me throwing a tantrum just because of what I’d been through.
I was just so fucking tired. Tired of laying there in that bed for so long. Tired of wasting fucking time. Tired of not living.
Tired of being fucking dead.
And maybe I was just tired of being fucking tired.
Once I found what I was looking for I held onto the sink and righted myself to stand back up. I plugged in what I thought was the solution to my problem, waving it in the air tauntingly. “Bye-Bye, motherfucker,” I said to my reflection. I flipped the switch and swear I saw panic flash in his eyes as the buzzing sound echoed off the walls of the small bathroom.
I clicked over to the shave setting and ran the clippers over the top of my head from front to back in one long stroke.
A sense of immediate satisfaction coursed through me as I ran my fingertips over the newly sheared section of my head.
I needed to do more.
Much more.
ALL OF IT HAD TO GO.
I didn’t bother to cut the hair with scissors first so every strip I shaved off burned like I was slowly being scalped, but I didn’t stop. I didn’t give a shit about the pain.
Not anymore.
Pain wasn’t exactly a new thing for me.
However, freedom was.
Feeling free from the anger. From the regret. Free from not caring if I could ever be the person I was before all the shit went down.
That person was almost as much of a stranger as the fucked up Jesus in the mirror who was in the process doing some long overdue and much needed manscaping.
My head was bloodied and scraped as I worked the clippers over my head again and again.
I didn’t fucking care.
More and more hair dropped down and piled on top of my feet. First from my head and then from my face when I started on my beard, until I was completely clean and skin that hadn’t seen the light of day in years was now bared to the world.
To me.
The satisfaction I felt while cutting it all off quickly turned to disappointment and a sudden sinking feeling. I gripped the sides of the sink and let my head fall with a growl.
I’d expected to be staring at someone new.
Someone clean.
The reality was that I was anything but.
Rage burned in my chest, bubbling over to a boil when I realized it was still the tortured looking man from moments before.
Just clean shaven.
And now all the weight loss and scars were on full fucking display. Every lump and poorly healed cut. My once colorful tattoos on the sides of my head were tattered and scarred like tears in my paper thin skin, matching the many many ruined ones on the rest of my body.
A roar tore from my throat. I reared back and punched my reflection, sending shards of glass to the floor, dying the piles of hair with drops of thick red which also dripped down the center of the cracked mirror. It wasn’t enough. I punched it over and over again, my fist burning with the pain of each impact against the glass. “I fucking hate you!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, spit flew from my mouth as I wailed and wailed on the mirror until my knuckles were completely covered in red.
I fell to the floor as my shoulders shook with rage turned despair. I crumpled into a ball, pulling my knees up to my chest and willed the world to go the fuck away.
Willing it ALL to go the fuck away.
I clutched my bleeding hand and went to the only place I felt safe. Deep in my mind to memories so clear and bright I thought sometimes that they’d never happened at all.
I closed my eyes and started to drift away amongst the piles of my stripped identity. I was so far gone down the path that took me to that place that when I heard all of the commotion going on around me, I couldn’t bring myself to lift my head to see what it was all about. Not even when the door burst open, the hinges falling from the frame, skidding across the floor. Not even as a cascade of concerned voices, both male and female, shouted above me to one another.
Or maybe to me.
I couldn’t even bring myself to open my eyes when I was carried from the room and placed back in the bed I’d grown to fucking hate because I was already there. Chasing after a girl with dark doll like eyes, raven black hair, and fuck-me bright red lips.
“Keep me,” she whispers, crooking her finger at me.
I felt myself being turned over and inspected for more serious damage I might have inflicted on myself but I just let it happen because that didn’t matter anymore.
Nothing did.
I chase her further and further until the voices around me faded away.
But no matter how fast I run, she just runs faster.
Soon I’m not chasing her at all anymore. She’s gone.
I’m alone, standing on the train tracks. Unmoving.
Staring into the blinding yellow headlight of a train as it grows closer and closer...until it’s too fucking late.
CHAPTER FIVE
DRE
I was more awake than a college kid with a seven-cup-a-day Starbucks habit.
It was the middle of the night and after a very long day of fighting against the jungle like back yard, armed with a rented weed-whacker and a borrowed lawn mower, I should’ve been dead to the world, but no matter how much I tossed and turned I couldn’t reach any sort of restful state.
Not that night. Not any night since I’d been back in Logan’s Beach.
The moon glowed orange through the dirt caked windows. Tired of battling with the sandman I decided that sleep and I were going to have to break up for the time being.
I felt around for my glasses and put them on while I sat up with my back against the wall. I powered on my laptop while listening to the overgrown tree branches in desperate needed a trim, rustling against the roof. I fished a cherry sucker out of my bag and plucked the plastic off the top. Sucking on candy was a weird little trick I’d picked up in rehab that I used whenever I was feeling restless and that night I felt as if I was gonna jump out of my own skin.
With the house being empty of all furniture the usual creaks and groans from years past sounded as if someone were slowly walking around inside on the hardwood floors, each little noise echoing through the tiny rooms. Brandon was sound asleep in the sleeping bag next to me, lightly snoring in a way that made me think it was adorable, and also want to kick some of his perfect teeth in at the same time.
I clicked over to the local BY OWNER real estate website and decided to turn my sleepless night into a productive one by scanning the comparable sales in the area to see what else I could do in order to get the most money out of the sale that didn’t cost a fortune. With each stroke of the keys and click of the mouse the thought of selling the house grew from a nagging in the back of my head that told me it was wrong to a sickening thought of how I was going to live with myself after it was all said and done.
You don’t have a choice, Dre.
A noise in the kitchen, like something had fallen caught my attention.
&nb
sp; I snapped my laptop shut and looked around the dark room, my eyes taking a moment to focus in the black space after staring at the bright screen.
I was used to hearing things at night. Being paranoid and exaggerating sounds in my head wasn’t exactly new for me. I looked over to Brandon who was still sound asleep and realized it was probably nothing.
Finishing my sucker I reached into my bag for another but realized that I’d left them in my purse in the other room. Slowly I shifted out of my sleeping bag and tip-toed into down the hall trying not to cause too many more creaks on the floor so Brandon wouldn’t wake up.
It was then I saw it. A tall thin figure standing at the screen door. I opened my mouth to scream but no sound came out. At the same time a flash of heat lightning lit up the backyard and for a brief instant I was able to make out the man wearing a black hoodie with the hood up.
My knees buckled when the recognition hit me and fell forward onto the counte top for support.
PREPPY.
The facial hair was gone, his face sunken in, but it wouldn’t of mattered if he were standing there with a ski mask covering his entire face.
I would know him anywhere.
I pushed off the counter and darted for the door, throwing it open with such force it banged loudly as it crashed against the stopper. I stepped out onto the porch but I was too late. It was empty.
I reached inside and hit the switch for the back light. It flipped on just in time for me to catch the rustling of the trees just beyond the fence.
With my adrenaline racing I slipped my feet into my grass stained KEDS that I’d left by the door and took the porch steps two at a time. The latch on the fence gate was rusted and overgrown with weeds. It wouldn’t give when I tried to open it so instead I climbed over the small metal fence, it rattled and wobbled under my weight as I jumped down on the other side.
The moon overhead was bright as hell and my only guide as I sprinted through the dark woods. I couldn’t help but remember that the last time I was running in those very woods I was running away from the man I was now heading toward.
Preppy, The Life & Death of Samuel Clearwater, Part TWO (King) Page 4