Page 76 of Stoker's Serenity

“Probably,” Reaver agreed, bobbing his head like a bobble-head doll. I laughed and he winked at me. I could recognize a certain kind of broken in him. He had a driving need to be liked by everyone around him and used comedic action to that end. I recognized it, because I felt the same driving need to be liked, I just went about it a different way. By being useful, by trying to remain unobtrusive.

I had a lot of food for thought on the ride back to the lodge. Stoker checked me regularly in the side-view mirror, reaching back to squeeze my knee affectionately. I smiled for him, but I would like to talk… to him. It was no offense to anyone else in his club. I was just far more comfortable with Stoker, which considering how intimate we were, only made sense.

I took a long time to warm up to people, to trust them. While I loved Faith and Charity, I was intimidated by Hope, and to some degree, Hossler, too. Everyone with the SHMC I just plain didn’t know well enough to spill my deepest darkest secrets. That, and merely talking about them seriously felt like complaining, and I had learned early on, complaining about things didn’t get you anywhere, so why do it?

When we got back to the lodge, it was just as dinner was about to start. Lunch had been a while ago and I could eat, so that’s precisely what we all did; went in and changed into cooler clothing and went out to the back deck to load some plates.

Everyone was in good spirits when we returned and there was a bunch of chatter about Trigger ‘doing it again’, and a bunch of guys from both clubs congratulating him for it.

I just ate quietly beside Stoker, my mind still turning thoughts and interactions from earlier in the day over and over.

I mean, I knew I needed intensive therapy. The only problem was any mental health services I would need were too far out of reach for me. It’d helped, the times I’d gone when the services had been available right after – well… right after. But, then I’d been transferred, and those services were for Rachel Alice Morgan students at Rachel Alice Morgan… I wasn’tatRachel Alice Morgan anymore, so I had slipped through the cracks.

My family was working poor and didn’t have the luxury of medical insurance. Nor did I really have the luxury of it now. I mean, I lost a good portion of my wages to have it, but the deductible was so high on it, it wasn’t like I could ever really use it. In fact, it would have been cheaper to incur the tax-time penalties every year than have it. At least for a while.

I was in that subsection of Americans that suffered rather than benefited from the Affordable Care Act, but I couldn’t fault the government that had implemented it. They really were trying to help, at least I liked to think so, and I also liked to think that someday they would come up with something better that worked better for people like me.

Again, there wasn’t any use complaining about it. It just was what it was, had to be accepted, and I had to move on and make the best of what I did have.

I was a pro at that, or so I thought.

I was in the kitchen of the lodge, bringing in one of the big, mostly empty potato salad bowls, trying to be useful and bring things in from outside when it happened.

Boom!

I froze, and it was like a scene from a movie inside my own head. The kitchen wavered, the expensive tile floor, the no-slip matting shifting and disappearing, replaced by flat linoleum that sparkled with polish under the overhead fluorescent lighting.

I heard it again –Boom!Only this time I wasn’t at the lodge anymore.

My mind had taken me right back to Rachel Alice Morgan’s halls. To people running, the emergency exit chained shut – fuck! I panicked. I took a deep breath, then another one before the first had been completely exhaled. The urgency there, the flight instinct in full swing.

Okay, out. I have to get out.

But I wasn’t there, and somehow in the back of my mind I knew I wasn’t, and even though, in my memories my feet traveled forward, I felt myself sink to the floor in this cognitive dissonance of both being aware and totally unaware at the same time that you’re not really there.

I couldn’t stop it, though. My mind had me trapped on this hellride of having to bear witness to everything I tried to keep locked away in the overflowing vault of bad memories, and bad waking dreams of ‘shit I lived through.’

Down the hall, through the open fire doors, take a left, down the next hall – Boom!Was that closer or further away?

I picked up my pace, I was running now, running even though it felt like someone held me still. Terrified tears ran down my face as I made the worst decision and even though my mind screamed silently, no, no, no, no, No! Don’t go in there! I did… I went through the doors leading into the cafeteria and froze.

She was lying on her side. Caroline. Caroline Caruthers, in the midst of all that shiny linoleum, the dark stain of her blood seeping across it. Wrong all wrong. Her blue eyes sightless and staring, her face gore-flecked from the blowback of the gaping wound in the center of her chest where her heart should be, but was just raw meat.

I retched and looked up into the ice cold gaze of…

“Kyle?”

I whimpered.

He smiled at me, and his gaze warmed and I couldn’t understand… He racked the sawed-off shotgun between his hands and I jumped. He smiled at me like he held all the power, and he did...

“I did it for you,” he said, and he looked so little-boy-proud at his accomplishment.

He stepped toward me and I stepped back, asking, horrified, “What have you done?”

“Made it so these fucksticks know who’s in charge! Made it so these fucking animals can never hurt you again!” he shouted, and I cringed.

I couldn’t keep the horror, the terror, off of my face and Kyle’s face pinched in anger as he screamed at me, “Don’t look at me that way! You’re supposed to be happy! I did this for you! I did this all for you! Come on now, Serenity!”

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