Page 151 of The Sound of Him

He’s scooped right out. He will never be a little boy again. He will never stop being a survivor.

I don’t have anything left to throw up, so I dry heave instead.

I sob a little, too.

I put my arm down on the desk, resting my forehead on the back of it, shoulders curled forward, eyes squeezed shut. I force myself to breathe. And breathe. And breathe.

I drift.

I don’t mean to, but I’m so exhausted. I am so fucking exhausted.

I drift.

And I’m not in my office anymore.

I’m in a dark closet.

I’m not alone. There are bodies all around me. Small bodies. They are so, so small. So fragile. So innocent. They are scared and confused and hurting and I don’t have the courage to tell them things are going to get worse.

The closet door opens, light filtering in before a man blocks it.

It’s the man who owns Elliot. I know that somehow, even if I can’t see his face.

He reaches in and yanks Elliot out of the closet while the others cry and Elliot squirms and shouts. I try to stop him, try to grab Elliot back, but my hand goes right through him. I stare, shocked, as Elliot crumbles. His little body just falls right apart, a cloud of dust where a boy once was. A small, so fucking small, cloud of dust.

He’s gone.

Elliot is dead.

The others will follow.

I look at them, so small, so scared, and I know it in my gut. They’re all going to die. Even if their bodies stay intact, they won’t leave here the same kids they were before. They won’t leave here feeling like a kid at all. Heart still beating or not, something big, something fundamental, will die in them.

“I’m sorry,” I tell one of them.

He blinks up at me with big brown eyes. “You didn’t want to be alone. You wanted us to come.”

“No. No, this isn’t what I wanted. No. No.”

“It’s okay,” another one says. Her hair is a curly mess, so light blonde it’s nearly white. “It wasn’t fair you were all alone. It’s okay you wanted us.”

“I don’t want you to hurt,” I whisper. “I don’t ever want anyone to have to hurt.”

The door to the closet opens again.

It’s Keaton, but he’s dressed in a police officer’s outfit. I ask him if he’s here to help me because that’s what police officers are supposed to do. He shakes his head. I ask him if he’s going to punish me. He grins.

He grabs me, hands big and bruising. I kick and scream and beg him to leave me alone, to put me back, I want to go back, put me back in the closet.

“Please, please, please, put me back,” I sob.

“Hey, woah, calm down there,” someone says.

Not Keaton. He’s just holding me down, still grinning. He arches an eyebrow at me. “What? Did you really think I was here to save you?”

Keatonpresses hard against my cheek, forcing me to look over at a camera. I blink when it flashes. There’s a reflection in the lens. It’s not me the reflection shows, though. It’s Elliot.

It’s Elliot’s video, paused on the shot of his face, eyes distant, the boy that used to live inside his body now dead and gone.