by K. L. Savage
“But what he is going through is violent,” I argue, then drape myself over Tongue when he cries out again. I hold him as tight as I can as he quakes in his sleep. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. I’m here.”
So is every member of this club, apparently. The room is rapidly filling up with all the others coming by from the commotion.
“Justine, the red dress. No! I don’t want to.”
“Everyone get out!” I yell at every member in the room. They are watching Tongue like he is some sort of sideshow, and I won’t allow it. “He isn’t some sick enjoyment for you. Get out!” A warm tear slips free at the same time another cough grips my chest.
“It hurts. It hurts. Stop it! Get off me. Get off! I don’t want it.” Tongue’s arms are glued to his side, as if he is unable to use them.
“I think it’s best if I stay, to make sure he doesn’t hurt himself or you,” Doc states.
“I’m going to stay,” Sarah says, sitting down in the chair in the corner that Tongue always sits in when he watches me. “He needs us.”
“Me too,” Slingshot agrees.
“Aye,” Skirt nods.
“I’m not going anywhere.” Badge crosses his arms and leans against the wall. “He is family. Family doesn’t suffer alone.”
“This isn’t a sideshow, Daphne.” Reaper’s fingers slide under my chin and tilt my head back, so I have no choice but to meet his eyes. “He is family, and out of everyone, we worry about him most.”
“I’m going to come so far in your ass, you’ll leak me for weeks, Wayne.” His voice is deep, as if his memory is having him role play what’s happened to him.
I hold my breath and stare down at him in horror, crying for him, crying for the boy that lost his innocence way too young. “Oh, Comet.” I lean down a kiss his cheek. “You aren’t there anymore. He can’t hurt you.”
“No, Justine. I’m sorry. I’m sorry!” he sobs and starts to fight me in his sleep. I grab the blanket just in time before he throws me off him. I fly off the bed and slam against the floor. Pain radiates up my spine, and my head hits the wall with a hard thud.
“Daphne!” Badge drops to my side and touches the back of my head. “Fuck, Doc. She’s bleeding.”
“I fucking hate you! Get off me, you bastard. I’m going to fucking kill you!” Tongue roars and swings his fist through the air, connecting with Reaper’s cheek.
Doc kneels at my side and shines a light in my eyes. “She has a concussion.”
“Help me hold him down.” Reaper tries to gather the troops, but Doc is quick with his order.
“Fuck no. You can’t. If you do, he could feel that in his dream. He could hurt you or hurt himself. He can break his bones or bite his tongue off. You have to let him work through it.” Doc gives his attention to me again and tucks the blanket around me to make sure I’m covered. “Do you have a robe?”
“Bathroom,” I wince when sharp pains spreads across the back of my head. “He didn’t mean to. He’d never hurt me.” I fist Doc’s cut and use it as leverage to help myself sit up. “He wouldn’t.”
“I know. This is no one’s fault.”
“Go to your bedroom. I have no use for you.” Tongue’s voice takes on another and the bed finally stops shaking. There are books scattered along the floor, open and face down, pages bent from him shaking the bed and knocking them loose from under the mattress.
His body relaxes and everyone in the room exhales.
Not me.
I want to lie next to him and tell him everything is going to be okay. “Can I be with him?”
“No, I have to get you downstairs. You hit your head pretty good on the edge of the wall. You need stiches.”
“I’m not leaving him!” I yell, placing one hand against the wall to steady myself as I stand. “You can fix me here because I am not fucking going anywhere.” I forget I’m naked under the blanket. Cold air hits my butt as the cover parts. Badge, despite being able to see me, doesn’t say anything. He holds out the robe, keeping his eyes fixed upon my face, and I slide one arm through it while clutching the blanket with the other, so no one sees the front of my body. I turn to the wall and drop the blanket, then sling my arm through the other sleeve, and tie the belt in the middle. The robe is soft and warm, but my body is cold and in pain.
Not because I hit my head or the floor. Not because I’m sick.
But because Tongue will always suffer. When he is awake, when he sleeps, when he breathes or fucks, the innocence inside him is twisted and burnt, stained with hate that love cannot clean.
I’ll always comfort his innocence, cradle it, and cherish it because no one ever has. No one believes it’s there, but it’s all I see when I look into his eyes: the tarnished, innocent boy that needs to be held.
And until the breath is stolen from lungs, I’ll grip on with every ounce of strength I have. Even if Tongue tells me to let go, I won’t.
It will be in that moment he’ll need me most.
Right when I think I’m done hating myself, I’m shoved three steps back, ruining any progress I’ve made at finding some sort of self-love.
It’s why I’m outside in the chilly weather, manually digging the start of Happy’s Haven. I don’t deserve help. I deserve to sweat and hurt and think about what I’ve done. It’s going to take me months, maybe years to dig this hole for Happy, but I deserve it.
I hurt Daphne.
I made her bleed.
I threw her off the bed.
I’ll never forgive myself.
I don’t care that I was asleep and having a bad dream. I don’t care that I was fighting my Uncle, fearing for my life, and I don’t care that I had no idea what I was doing.
I simply do not care because I should have known. I should have woken up. I’ll never take that damn sleeping pill again. I’d rather stay awake for days, starve, and die of thirst then to ever risk hurting her again.
Forcing the shovel into the ground, I step on the metal lip with my boot. The dry dirt cracks only the surface, the fissure stopping near a small cactus. Dust kicks in the air, and I wipe the sweat off the side of my temple against my shoulder before throwing the dirt to the side to add to the growing pile.
I’m a real bastard. I’m no good. How can I take care of her when every time I turn around, I do something wrong? With another angry shove, the metal point burrows into the desert as I gather another round of dirt.
“What do I do, Happy?” I ask him as he swims in the pink kiddie pool I got him. Pink was the only color they had left. “I can’t let her go, but how can I hold onto her when all I do, all I’ve ever ended up doing, is hurting her?”
His paws scratches along the edges and his head pops up from the side. His snout rests on the edge of the pool, staring at me with those big reptilian eyes as he waits for me to say something else. “I love her so much, Happy. It’s tearing me apart what I did. When I look at my hands, all I see is her blood. Even though it never got near me, I made her bleed. Therefore, her blood is on my hands.” I toss another scoop of dirt to the side and stare at the small hole I’ve managed to make.
I deserve to be out here thinking about what I’ve done, just like a child.
Happy hisses as he lifts himself over the edge of the pool and then walks over to me, wiggling his body across the ground. His talons sink into the sand, scraping along the hard surface rather than sinking into it. His tail swishes. His black, tan, and green coloring are stark against the red desert. He stops at my feet, purring as he rubs his reptilian skin against my leg.
“I love you too, Happy.” I bend down and scratch the top of his head. I don’t know how Seer found a gator so damn friendly toward me, but I’ll forever be thankful. Besides Daphne, he’s the only friend I have who seems to understand me.
I’m lucky, but I don’t know if that’s sad or not. I’m surrounded by a dozen men that claim to be my brothers, my friends, and I know they would risk their life for mine, but would it be for our code? The law we live by? Or beca
use they are truly my friends?
I don’t know. I only know Daphne actually cares and Happy cares as much as a swamp kitty can.
“Go on. Go swim. I’ll be okay. I need to start digging,” I say to Happy, pointing to the kiddie pool. He brushes against me one last time and scurries over to the pool. It always surprises me how quick he can move. He isn’t full grown just yet, but he’s still fast. In the water, alligators can travel up to twenty miles an hour, but on land, around eleven miles per hour.
It doesn’t seem fast, but their bodies are so awkward, it’s impressive.
He slides into the pool and floats, spreading out his legs.
“Man, you live the life, you know that?” There’s a heat lamp next to the pool to make sure he stays warm, since this isn’t his ideal environment. I plan to fix that for him. In our house, he is going to have his own room, heated, but I’m sure he will hang out with us throughout the house. He’ll be able to go back and forth to the swamp I’m going to build him too. And eventually, I’ll get him some friends.
“At the rate you’re going, you aren’t going to get that hole dug until 2034. And that’s being generous.”
My foot lands on the shovel, and I grip the handle, tightening it to the point I think it’s about to break. “What the hell do you want, Slingshot?” I throw another scoop of dirt to the pile and begin working again.
“I brought you lunch. I used my gift card I got for Christmas and I got the family pack. There are fifty steak tacos in here. It’s going to be so good.”
“I’m busy.”
“A man has got to eat, you know,” Slingshot says, sitting on his ass on the pile of dirt I’ve made.
“You didn’t come out here to share your lunch. And besides, I doubt you—”
“I took my pill, damn it. Sit down, shut up, and eat the tacos or I’ll never offer them again.”
“No.” Slingshot is a good man, a bit naïve, and thinks tacos are god, but he doesn’t want to get caught up in the likes of me.
“Come on, Tongue. I have an update on Daphne.”
I never thought he’d play that card. I toss the shovel on the ground and take a seat next to him just as he…
“Are you kidding me?”
“I’m sorry. I just took the pill…” he slurps on his coke and kicks the ground with the tip of his foot, an innocent action by a very guilty man.
“You know, you better hope you don’t always smell like ass, or no girl is going to want to be with you.”
He shrugs. “As long as I have my tacos, I’ll be a happy man.”
I lift a disbelieving brow at him and watch as he digs through the simple white bag with grease spots on it. One by one, he takes out different sauces. “We have my favorite, salsa verde, which has this tangy kinda sweet flavor with a tiny kick of heat. There is the pico de gallo, which is good, but I always get extra of the verde. Extra sour cream, because duh, sour cream is the best. And then we have jalapeños. Voila,” he spreads his arms out over the buffet of sauces and then hands me an aluminum foil wrapped taco. “Bon Appetit.” He claps his hands and rubs them together evilly before diving in the bag and pulling out one for himself.
“You said you had an update on Daphne?” I ask, turning around to stare at the clubhouse where she is resting. She’s downstairs in the medical room where Doc can keep an eye on her, because not only does she have the flu, but she has a concussion. Thanks to me.
I’ve been checking on her every few hours. The last time I went down there, she was finally allowed to go to sleep, so Doc sedated her because apparently, she kept asking for me.
Not that I deserve her to want me. I deserve the desert and being alone.
“She’s doing good, Tongue.” Slingshot groans when he bites into the taco. A chunk of sour cream, steak, and salsa verde drips from the end of his lover—at least it sounds like a lover with how he is moaning—and falls on to the foil laid across his lap. “Her fever is still there, a little higher than where Doc wants it, but with the concussion and fighting the flu, he isn’t surprised. She’s going to be fine. His words.”
My stomach turns knowing she is still sick, worse with what Slingshot is saying. Her fever is higher and it’s all my fault.
“Hey,” the playful demeanor of his voice changes. His hand claps me on the shoulder and whether he knows it or not, he has smeared sour cream all over the sleeve of my shirt. “You can’t blame yourself.”
I dress the taco in the sauces I want. I’m not hungry but doing something with my hands helps my mind ease.
“Tongue, I’m serious. You couldn’t help what happened to you last night. Doc knows that you need a different kind of sleeping pill—”
“I’m never taking them again, and no one can make me. What I did last night was inexcusable.” I bite into the tortilla and the flavors burst across my tongue. On any other day, this would have been an amazing meal, but right now, it tastes just like the dirt I’m digging up.
“What you did last night was survive. You were lost.” He taps the side of his head with his finger. “Here. You were gripped by a nightmare, a bad horrible nightmare, and from what I heard from you, I’m sorry you had to go through that. I saw the journals… but… they were nothing like this. Daphne doesn’t blame you. No one blames you for what happened.”
“I do. I blame me. I should have felt her there. I always feel her. I always know where she is, whether it’s dark or I’m asleep. I know when she’s near. But last night I felt nothing.”
“It was the medication, Tongue. Any other night, do you think you ever would have pushed Daphne off the bed?”
I tear into the taco with a vicious snarl, like a primitive animal feasting on his kill. “No, absolutely not.”
“Then there’s your answer, man. You don’t deserve to kill yourself out here. Whose hole are you really digging?”
“What do you mean?” I finish off the first taco and dip my hand in the bag to grab another.
“Well, you say it’s a Happy Haven, but it looks more like a grave to me.”
I analyze the hole and realize for the first time it’s a long, deep shape. It does look like a rectangle.
“Looks like you’re punishing yourself, digging your own grave to plan your own funeral for something that was beyond your control. Tongue, there are things in this life that you cannot hold onto with both hands. You can’t take care of every problem by cutting someone’s tongue out, and you can’t work yourself to death as penance.” He dives in for another foil wrapped taco and sighs, staring off across the desert. “Can I tell you something? It just stays between you and me.”
Something… different blooms in my stomach. I don’t know what it is, but if I had to guess it would be happiness. No one chooses me to tell their secret.
I am the secret. I’m what the corners hold, and the shadows keep. I’m the monster no one talks about until he is seen, until he is believed.
That’s who I am. The ghost story people tell around a fire to scare each other, but in my case, the ghost is real, and I haunt people every chance I get.
Yes, I think I’m feeling excitement. Someone wants to tell me a something about themselves that maybe not many others know about. “Sure,” I keep my answer short and keep the impatience out of my voice. I want to know. I want to know!
“So only a few people know this here because I don’t go broadcasting it, but my mom died of the same cancer I had in my twenties.”
“Your mom died from cancer?” I didn’t know that. “I’m sorry.” I don’t know what else to say. I’m slowly learning how to empathize, but it’s taking time.
“Stomach cancer. It’s why I’m so big on tacos. ‘Cause for the longest time I didn’t think I’d ever be able to eat them again. When my mom died, I blamed myself. I thought, ‘you know, maybe if she didn’t have me and could focus on herself, maybe she wouldn’t have died.’”
“You had nothing to do with it. It was the cancer.”
He gives me a knowing look, then winks
. “See what I did there?”
“No.” I shake my head. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You don’t get the point?”
“Not unless you say it,” I state obviously.
“You just said cancer was the reason my mom died, not me. Just like you aren’t the reason Daphne got hurt, but Justine is. The sleeping pill is. Medication doesn’t mix well with people sometimes, man. Take it from me. I’ve nearly been on all of them.”
I think about what he says and let it roll around in my thick skull. It’s hard not to take blame when the woman I love got hurt because of me, but maybe Slingshot is right. Maybe there were circumstances beyond my control.
And I need control just like I need air in my lungs and Daphne’s lips on mine. I need it to keep the tiniest edge of sanity sharp in my mind or without it, innocent people will get hurt.
“I see,” I say, finally understanding the point he tried to make. “So, is that why you are so damn gassy?”
He tosses his head back and laughs so loud it booms across the desert. Buzzards fly away in the distance and ignore the roadkill. Even Happy jumps out of the pool, a bit startled, before jumping back in. “Between us?”
I nod, feeling way too damn giddy about this secret sharing.
“Yeah. I had a portion of my intestine removed. We weren’t as close when I was a prospect so I’m sure you don’t remember. I had to work up to foods like this, but now that I can eat them, unfortunately, gas is a part of it. And the pill I take? It isn’t the only one I take.”
I frown. “Why do you let us give you a hard time? It isn’t…” I think of the right word. “Nice.”
“I don’t care. I lived through something I shouldn’t have. I’m okay with joking about it. I like that you guys tend to forget about it. Makes me feel normal. Besides, it could be worse.”
“How?”
“I could be in a grave like the one you just dug for yourself, Tongue. And honestly, I’m real fucking glad I’m not.”
I bite into the taco again and stare at Slingshot in a whole new light. I always thought he was this annoying guy with a childish personality. He does have a childish personality, but in a way that I’m still somewhat a kid too. He never got a chance to be a child, not a real one, and I can relate to that. I feel bad for not knowing or not trying to get to know Slingshot as well. I stayed in the shadows too much for this to be new to me.