Page 43 of Phobia
I nudged him in the ribcage with my boot. The heavy body was solid and he didn’t react.
Kicking him harder, the corpse barely rocked.
Hewasdead.
He was dead!
The monster… my father.
I fell to my knees next to the body, knife still in hand. I wanted to weep for joy and scream in anger. He wasn’t supposed to die in the basement. He wasn’t supposed to get the easy way out. He was supposed to go to prison and suffer, like he’d made his victims suffer. He was supposed to get a fate worse than death because that’s what sick fucking pedophiles like him deserved. Other criminals were supposed to chew him up and spit him out for the rest of his life and even then it wouldn’t be a fraction of what he deserved.
Rage swelled within me, swift and sudden. I lunged out with the knife, sinking it into the side of his neck. The blade came away with a minimal amount of blood since it had already thickened in his veins. I wasn’t the least bit satisfied.
I stabbed him again. And again. Unleashing a lifetime of fear and hatred against the shell of the man who’d fathered me, stolen me, and made me part of his twisted fucking games.
“Look at all these little toys to play with,” he’d say when he brought me to parks and playgrounds, his arm around me affectionately like a doting father. “Go pick out your favorite. See if they want to play.”
In the dark, when I’d cry for them—for myself, for a vague memory of a mother that faded a little more each day—he’d fall back on his usual threat. “Stop crying! Only little fags cry. You’re not a fag, are you? Because you know how I feel about that… The only good fag is a dead one.”
Bile rose in the back of my throat, threatening to choke me, along with the tears I couldn’t stop now that they’d started falling, splattering all over the basement floor.
For ten years, I’d never had a single friend because the monster killed them all. I didn’t know what a real friend was supposed to be until a knobby-kneed boy with bright blue eyes and dark, shaggy hair came up to me at school—another novelty in my fucked-up life—and introduced himself.
“Hi, I’m Jamie. Do you want to be friends?”
I need tonotbe in love with my best friend.
Jamie.
The boy who breathed life into me. Who taught me how to laugh. Who gave and gave and gave, asking nothing in return. I loved him so much that my chest hurt. I’dalwaysloved him.
“Unacceptable, Larkin,” Grandma’s voice echoed through the basement. “Boys don’t touch each other like that. It’s sinful. Do you want to end up like your father? What would your mother say if she were still here?”
Squeezing my eyes closed tight, I hear him step closer and sense him kneeling in front of me.
You’re not a fag, are you?the monster sneered.
Do you want to end up like your father? Grandma tsked.
It hurts too much,Jamie whispered.
The pain in Jamie’s eyes when he said that fucking gutted me, becauseIdid that to him. I’d lied to him, over and over, and kept him at arm’s length even though I was the one who swore nothing would ever harm him again. I convinced myself he would be better off with some other guy, one who wouldn’t bring monsters into his life, whowouldn’thurt him. He deserved someone who could love him openly and wholeheartedly, without fear of reprisal.
But the nightmare was over now. It was dead and rotting in front of me, which meant I could do better for Jamie. I couldbebetter because the monsters keeping us apart were dead and gone. I was finally free. Just as soon as I got rid of the body.
Chapter 5
Going back to Larkin’s the day after I told him I needed space wasn’t my best move, but I forgot my backpack there the night before and I kinda needed that for class. Since he wasn’t answering my texts, I figured I’d get one of his roommates to let me in and grab it and be on my way.
Sure enough, Tim, one of the newer pledges, didn’t even blink when I said I needed to get my bag.
“Yeah, no problem,” he said, pushing the door open wider.
“Thanks. Do you know where Larkin is, anyway?”
“No clue. His car was gone this morning.”
“Ok. Thanks.” I darted up the stairs and into Larkin’s room. The bed looked like it had yesterday; two pillows and a blanket more or less thrown over the mattress, though half of it was pooling on the floor. It was his version of making the bed, something I’d chided him about when I thought he was planning to join the FBI. Ignoring the fact he’d apparently changed the entire trajectory of his life without telling me, I focused on the pillows. One was for his head and the other was for him to hold onto. Except, neither looked like they had been slept on or squished. Had he not come back last night? It was already late afternoon. Where the hell was he?
