Page 31 of Filthy Savage
She looks up at me. “But no one, yourself included, would want to overhear the person they just slept with hours ago, having a conversation like that.”
I nod and take a seat on the sofa, dropping the pillow beside me. “True. I agree. That was not okay.”
“All right.”
I watch all the anger physically drain out of her. She places her pillow flat on the bed and stretches out on one side, turning her back to me.
I take this silence as progress. Removing my shoes, I swing my tired legs over the side of the couch and relax my head on the pillow.
* * *
Blood.
There’s so much blood.
All over the walls, my toys, and sticky on my fingers where I touched the stair railings. Nancy still whimpers upstairs in the corner. She’s deafening compared to the silence around us, the silence that comes with death.
Whatever happened, I know with a weird, warped clarity that there’s no coming back.
At first, my vision can’t make out what I see in the living room. Like a puzzle, it’s too much to put together in my head, too complicated—but the second it starts to make sense I lean over the banister and puke onto the floor. It’s as if my whole stomach has turned inside out on me. A burning sensation goes all the way up into my lungs, like trying to hold lava in my throat while it eats away at my insides second by second. I force myself to look back again at our living room that’s distorted with red streaks, puddles, and drips.
I know there’s no way they could have survived.
Not in so many pieces scattered around the room.
Where’s Vincent? Why isn’t he covering his eyes as he did during this tragedy? Why is Nancy still at the top of the stairs when Vincent has lifted her up and carried her outside to his car? Why is this nightmare continuing to change? My stomach gives another hard lurch, fingers going tingly and numb. I ignore it all and step forward into the living room. On autopilot, I navigate through the squishy carpet and lean over the hand with my mother’s wedding ring still gleaming as if nothing has ever happened. I watch as my fingers reach out to the touch the stone—
“Axe.”The echoing female voice calls to me from a distance. “Wake up. I need you to get up for me now, Axe!”
I jolt up into a seated position on the sofa. For a heartbeat, the world blurs. I blink, rubbing my eyes to force the nightmare back, but still see my parents’ bodies sprawled across the motel room floor. My insides are burning again. A pounding headache behind my eyes that feels like someone is jabbing tiny needles deep inside my brain. I run a hand down my face. Blood is on it too. I try to ignore the shaking and the cold sweats dotting down my spine, but then a foreign hand presses into the back of my neck.
“Don’t fucking touch me!” I roar, jerking back from this new female player with the blurred out face, trespassing into my waking dream as if she means to shoot me too. My hands fly up defensively and grip her hard around the neck. “I didn’t fucking say you could touch me! Who sent you?”
Her eyes damn near bulge out of her head, and I can feel her pulse pounding under my hands as she tries to say something. Right now, I don’t give a fuck what makes her shake like a leaf, or that she’s not actually armed, given her hands grip my fingers as she tries to get me to release her neck. And why is she calling my name, Axe? No one uses that name that night. The memories in my brain start to teeter like a seesaw. They layered over what is around me, but seem real enough to force me to act.
As this intruder’s body starts to go limp, and as her hands drops to her side, the threat of imminent death fades, as does the waking dream. That’s when Angel’s face comes back into focus.
Fuck.
Angel.
I hurriedly release her neck and help her to sit and catch her breath. “God. I didn’t know it was you…you just…” I try to say something to explain as Angel holds her neck and fights to suck in air. The fear in her eyes etches into my brain. I almost killed her because of this fucking flashback. If I was any rougher or used any more force, she’d be dead right now. Because of my past. Because of me. There’s nothing I can fucking say or do to make up for that. I can’t make it go away, and I can’t make it right. Grabbing a bottle of water, I pass it to her, then walk to the opposite end of the room. I don’t deserve to be close to her right now.
“Are you okay?” I ask, still feeling guilty as fuck. “I can get you to a hospital if you’re hurt. Fuck, I’m… Dammit, I’m sorry.”
If she’s okay, I’ll get the fuck outside and let her be so this can’t happen again. I swallow the frog-sized lump in my throat, hoping I have not done too much damage. I’ve never wanted to or had to sleep in the same bed with a woman before tonight. Even back in foster care after my parents died, they were careful to place my sister and me with smaller families so we could have rooms to ourselves.
Fuck.
Angel has the full picture now.
Talk about seeing me at my worst.
Now she’ll finally see how fucked up and broken I am, that I’m damaged beyond fucking repair.
“I’m fine,” Angel chokes out after gulping down the entire bottle of water. “Please. Just sit.”
Fuck, I barely recognize her voice. The guilt claws at my chest. I’ve hurt her. I’ve given her that choke mark, now layered over the bite on her neck. It’s all kind of sick, fucked up, and twisted now. I can’t help wanting to walk out the door and get as far away from her as possible.
