Page 67 of Hilarina and the Ogre

“Arm.” It was all he could gasp, the only word in his head.

His sleeve was wrenched up. Almost he grabbed at it, at Hilary’s wrist, to stop him, sure that whatever lay beneath the material would explode outward as soon as it was free. But there was nothing. No bulging break. No barely contained explosion.

“Not real.” Hilary was still urgent, but something in his voice was promising solutions. “Not anymore, it isn’t.”

But it had to be. No pain like that could be imagined. But even as he thought it, the feeling was fading. Still there, but already an echo of itself, dwindling with every moment.

Someone offered something—a handkerchief, and the hand attached to it was thin and papery with blue veins close to the surface, but it wasn’t trembling. Debra.

“Orville’s gone and called the police,” she said, looking a little put out. “I told him not to, but you know how stubborn he is. Says it’s better to do it than to have these bastards be the ones to call.”

Hilary took the square of fabric and passed it to Trenton. It smelled faintly of lavender. “Thanks for the warning. Is anyone hurt?”

Debra sniffed. “No one who matters.” She waved over at her husband, who was dithering a short distance away. “I’ll tell him to wait for them outside. He does better when he thinks he’s being useful. Doris, dear, is it really time for the lemon cake?”

Hilary’s arm was around Trenton’s shoulders. That was what he was focusing on. The warmth of it. The steadiness there. “Can you stand?” Hilary asked, pulling at him. “Just to that table over there. I’ll get you something to drink.”

Trenton couldn’t let go. The shadow of that feeling and the panic at the thought of meeting with it again kept him clamping down on the arm that held him, but Hilary didn’t break the grip, giving him instead the water already on the table. “Just a little,” the man insisted when he tried to refuse, a choking kind of lump pushing into his throat as if he were the one being strangled. His shirt was sticking to him, the sick sweat covering him and still coming, his mind racing with nothing, unable to grip onto anything, lending to that feeling of urgency.

When he heard the sirens outside the restaurant, panic came. “No.” He wanted to run, but the dizziness swung back up with a vengeance when he tried to stand. “I can’t—”

“It’s alright.” Hilary had not let go of him for a moment, that hand gripping tight.

And still, Trenton was going to be sick again, his stomach churning, his throat burning with the taste of it. “There’s something you don’t know. Because you don’t know—”

“I know.”

Hilary was never supposed to find out. Trenton had avoided closeness—had avoided anything that might have steered them to this exact situation, and here they were anyway. He groaned, the feeling like a cancer inside him. He was going to lose Hilary. All this, and he was going to lose—

“I know about it.” And Hilary’s grip was on his face, a tight hold on his chin. “The incident when you were a boy. The details. I know everything.”

And the man did. Trenton could see that he did, and that was impossible. He himself didn’t know the details, only what the case reports said and what the people at the center had told him. Deaths. Five murders, though it was true he’d been ruled mentally unfit to be tried for it. The case had been deemed one of self-defense, though Trenton himself couldn’t have argued for it one way or the other. He had no memories of the act and all the time surrounding it, that entire year a blank as if it had been cut out and his life roughly sewn back together without it, jagged and ill fitting.

When the door opened, the panic came. The police were here, and it would end. Like starting over. “I can’t.” His knees wouldn’t take him. He had to run, but his knees—“Not again. I can’t do this.”

“You won’t.” Hilary’s grip was almost painful, but still separate, each divot of his fingers outlined in white. “You’re with me.”

“You’ll leave.”

But Hilary refused that. “We’re going home together once they’re gone. You see this hand? It won’t let go of you. Not for a moment.”

It was too good to be true. Or to believe in. Terrible things would happen if he believed in it. Because if something happened to Hilary, Trenton knew he wouldn’t be a person anymore. He’d just be that explosion in his arm again, a tearing collapse.

“Together,” Hilary reminded him. “Just keep thinking my name. Don’t look away.”

The change in the man should have left him reeling, this new intensity to him baffling, but it was the opposite. Trenton sank into it, like the feeling of having his feet finally touch bottom, the first real breath after a struggle so long he couldn’t remember the beginning of it, or that there might be any other way to be.

The police had questions, but Hilary took all of them, pulling back any attention that dared radiate wider.

“What’s wrong with him?” one of the officers asked, pointing rudely just in case anyone might not follow.

Hilary’s hand tightened on Trenton’s elbow, a silent reassurance. “He was attacked when he was a boy and is re-experiencing trauma. If you want more details, I can get his doctor on the phone for you. Otherwise, I’d like to finish here so I can get him back home. He’s very ill.”

That last part wasn’t a lie, at least. Holding Hilary was helping, but every moment was still defined by the fight to hold back his vomit. He was trying not to move his head or speak or do anything but keep his focus on Hilary as he’d been instructed, but everything was so much and loud, and at the edge of his awareness was that thing, gone in all its details, but like a malevolent presence, reminding him that it could break everything—that it wanted to break everything and was just waiting for the most impactful moment to do so. But he still had doubts. Had he been attacked? Hilary had, but himself? He didn’t know. He couldn’t remember anything but having his hand around that guy’s throat. The others in the restaurant all corroborated Hilary’s story, but they were also his regulars—all others having fled before the worst had happened.

There was posturing and swaggering and a lot of repetitive words pushed at his head at varying volumes, but then somehow they were outside, and the cold air was much better for him. He took great gulping breaths of it, his hands up against the brick of a shop, then his brow, just letting himself feel the roughness of it, a thing that was just a thing, solid beneath him.

“How?” It was as much of the question that he could get out. If he’d been afraid of ruining things before, it was nothing to now. Though he also couldn’t understand how it was not yet ruined, the disbelief of still having Hilary there—of having him more than ever—was baffling enough even to edge out over his fear.