Page 53 of Art of Sin

23absence

Six years—that’show long it’s been since I’ve dreamed of that basement. The couch our jailer finally realized we hid inside. The ever-present dampness. The stale, acrid smell from some rodent dying in the walls however many months before.

When he figured it out, there was punishment. Oh, there was punishment. And not the type that leaves scars on the skin, but rather inflicts those deep soul-cuts that never heal. That the mind has to just… accept. Ignore. Deny in order to live any sort of normal life.

It was bad for me, but worse for Nate. I sold my virginity for a bus ticket; I didn’t have any self-worth left by the time our keeper found us half-starving and freezing our asses off under an overpass in Riverside. But Nate had a little still, leftover from his life before.

His parents, devout Mormons, kicked him out when they found him kissing another boy in his bedroom. He begged for forgiveness, tried to explain that he liked girls, too, but they said there was no room for him in God’s Heaven, and therefore no room for him in their house.

But until that day, he’d felt loved, and after, his two little sisters called him every day, missing him, pleading for him to come home. Until his parents shut off his cell phone.

Until he found us.

Until our teenaged souls, already cracked and dirty, were warped into twisted, ugly shapes.

Until the monsters changed us.

Until we became the monsters.

* * *

The last personin the world I expect to see when I leave the firing range the following afternoon is Gideon. Yet he’s leaning against the driver’s door of my car, arms crossed and eyes closed. He looks relaxed, happy to be soaking up the sun in a dingy parking lot in downtown.

When he hears my heels nearing, he opens his eyes and smiles. No shadows in his eyes. Like last night never happened.

“Lovely day, isn’t it?” he asks.

I squint at him, wondering for half a second if I’m hallucinating. “What are you doing here? How did you know where I was?”

“Technology is a wonderful thing.” He gestures vaguely to my car. “Most vehicles these days are equipped with tracking mechanisms. You know, for safety.”

I huff in annoyance. “I never should have started sharing my phone location with Maggie. What did you bribe her with?”

A hand rises dramatically to his chest. “I’m hurt.”

I stare at him until he laughs.

“It was nothing—a painting she admired at the house.”

My eyes widen. According to reports, his paintings sell for between ten and eighteen thousand dollars. Gideon notices my reaction and shrugs.

“It was a fair trade. Don’t tell her I told you, though. She’s scared you’ll be angry.”

“I am angry.”

“No, you’re not. I think you missed me. You didn’t say goodbye last night. I feel used.”

“You’re a real piece of work.” Struggling not to smile, I walk the rest of the way to my car and wave him away from the door. I open it and toss my purse inside. “What do you need that a phone call wouldn’t have sufficed?”

“I called you three times,” he says, eyes searching the dark lenses of my sunglasses. “You didn’t answer. I was worried. So was Maggie. She said you left abruptly this morning claiming to be sick, but you haven’t taken a sick day or missed work in three years.”

Fucking Maggie.

I’m not about to tell him about my nightmare, waking up to a familiar—horrifying—scent, and the sensation of being watched by a fathomless darkness. Or what happened after, when I turned on every light in my condo at three in the morning, then locked myself in the bathroom with a kitchen knife until it was time to get ready for work.

“I had a headache.”

“So you decided to spend the day shooting guns? Try again.”

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