Page 75 of The Misfits
“No!”I internally scream at the voice in my head. They’re quieter than they were earlier today, but I’d rather them be completely silent. My head is thumping too much to deal with them, not to mention the ache in the lower half of my body. “He wouldn’t bring me here. He loves me. He wouldn’t hurt me like that.”
The conviction in my tone is sideswiped when my eyes finally follow the prompts of my brain. I’m waking in my nightmare, except it’s not blurry like it is in my head. It’s as clear as the moon lighting up the night sky.
As my eyes drift between the numerous photographs of Nick plastered over every inch of my room, I slowly sit up. It takes everything I have not to vomit when I realize I am alone. Not only is Dexter’s absence proof of my silly ways, but the removal of every article of clothing is also extremely confronting. Dexter went on a rampage like he did at the hotel, and I wasn’t lucid enough to comfort him.
I thought you loved him.
“I do!” I desperately want to scream back. “I just… I just…”
Chose to be a whore!
While pulling at my hair, I leap to my feet. As I shred the evidence of my whorish ways from the walls, I tell the voices in my head on repeat to shut up. They don’t know what they’re talking about. Dexter loves me, and I love him. He wouldn’t abandon me. You don’t do that to someone you love. You stick by them. That’s why my mom could never leave. She stayed for me, and in the end, it was her love for me that got her killed.
He wanted to take me. The man who came to visit my mother once a week wanted me, but my mom said no, that I was too broken for him to fix.
As memories flood my head instead of grogginess, I spin around and around. The rush of dizziness my brisk movements cause my head don’t alter the facts. The man who came to visit my mom once a week wanted to take me. He said I was pretty and reminded him of his daughter. He also promised to take care of me.
As more than my head spins in the aftereffects of my twirl, I move into the room that was once slated to be a bathroom. It was gutted during a remodel when I was a child, but with my mother’s death lessening the number of male visitors we had and my father’s backside never leaving his favorite recliner, the build was never finished. So instead of a fancy bathroom, I closed the walls and made this room a study.
I could only sit in here after coating the walls with bleach. The smell was too ghastly, and even though I knew the girl in the wall was dead, I swore sometimes I could hear her tapping.
Even the voices in my head are shocked in silence when I notice the wall that covered the little girl is no longer filled with drywall. A giant hole is right near the place she was laid to rest, and a heap of police tape adds a pop of color to the once bland room.
He didn’t want you, screams a voice in my head once they get over their shock.
“Yes, he did,” I argue back. “But my mother said she would go with him instead.” I shake my head to make sure memories come through instead of nightmares before muttering to myself like it is perfectly sane to talk to the voices in your head. “When they went into her room, I thought they were packing, but when they came out, only he left.”My nails dig into my palms when I confess.“He visited a lot after that, and every time he did, Mom always made the bath super hot, or she hurt me so bad I couldn’t leave my room.”
Where was your father when that happened?That was the quieter one of the voices. The one who promises me I’m not as evil as the rest make me out to be.
Although I shouldn’t play their games, I march out of my room, race down the hallway, then point to the end of a rickety stairwell. My father’s recliner is in the exact spot he left it, covered with rubbish and scraps of the food I poisoned.
Except his chair is no longer empty.
Someone is sitting in it.
Someone who looksreallymad.
Told you he’s cranky.
I whack my forehead with my palm two times to shut up the snarky voice before galloping down the stairs two at a time. Even if he’s really mad, Dexter is still here. That means something.
My frantic steps skid to a halt when I spot an orange canister with a white lid in Dexter’s hand. He’s gripping his prescription bottle so tightly the plastic shell is splintered and on the verge of cracking.
“When did you take them?” he asks once he detects my presence, his voice deadly low.
I shake my head, stupidly trying to lie. I know his stance on medication, but I needed something to take the edge off. I had never killed with a clear head before, so I was struggling not to spiral again. Medication is my crutch. It numbs me and makes me unresponsive, but it’s also all I’ve ever known, so it’s not an easy thing to give up when you’re barely holding on.
I don’t know why I bothered trying to deceive Dexter. He knows me well enough to know I’m lying.
“When. Did. You. Take. Them?” he repeats, his words separated by big breaths.
When I hold my index finger in the air, indicating one night ago, he throws the pill bottle across the room so forcefully, the air wafting off his arm blows a lock of hair off my face. “They fuck with your head, Megan. They make you stupid.”
I stomp down my foot, super mad that he called me stupid.
I’m not stupid.
“Yes, you are!” he denies to my angry snarl. “Because that’s the type of shit that makes you think you’re invincible. That has you willing to crash into a fucking tree to get off.” He weaves his fingers through my sweat-damp hair, grips a fist full of my locks, then yanks my head back. “It is the type of shit that gets you killed!” After bouncing his eyes between mine for several long seconds, he mutters, “How many were you hearing?” When my brows pull together, he asks, “Voices, Megan? How many voices were you hearing?”
