Page 84 of Hilarina and the Ogre

“You won’t. You have a small bladder.”

Hilary began to cry again. So sad. So full of despair. Trenton had never seen anyone so sure of oncoming hurt. And he couldn’t even comfort him. “I’ll be here.” It was all he could promise. “You’ll see. And I won’t forget this time.”

Hilary cried himself to sleep, hiccuping briefly. But eventually, finally, he was still. Trenton watched him a while, his beautiful man. The evening had aged Hilary further, and he knew he had to do better.

He woke when Hilary jolted him awake, trembling, the fear making him mute. This time, Trenton had the words ready. Had practiced them as he was falling asleep. “I haven’t forgotten. I’m here. I love you, Hilary.”

He couldn’t even call it relief. What Hilary felt, what he sank into. The man cried like his heart had been born only to be hurt by him, wracking him with it and shuddering over and over, made worse with a whole year of waiting for the shoe to drop. All through it, he held Hilary close. “You’re going to see,” he promised him. “Maybe not today. It might be frightening for a while, but I’m not going to forget, Hilary. I swear it. Whatever I might have said in the past, whatever anyone might have told you, I’m not going to run. I’m here. This is me choosing you.”

Hilary took off a few days, calling in sick. It wasn’t even a lie. He really was sick. The stress and the crying even bringing on a low-grade fever. Thankfully, it cleared up quickly, and by the weekend they were even going outside. They went to the botanic garden together. A waste, Hilary said, because it was still too early for flowers, but that wasn’t what mattered. He held Hilary’s hand all while they were out. Bringing him even to the bathroom with him. Hilary seemed surprised by that part. “You don’t like it. When I hear you pee.”

That made Trenton laugh. “Why would I care about that?”

Hilary didn’t have a proper answer, but he seemed determined about it. “I don’t know. You just don’t like it.”

Slowly, they made their way through the poetry books. They still made Hilary cry, but not all the time. The man did love them, and certain passages Hilary made him read over and over until Trenton had them by heart and could recite them whenever he was asked, even without the books in front of him. It grew warmer outside, and they celebrated Hilary’s birthday. Trenton called some of the man’s coworkers at the hospital and organized a little something for him there as well.

They stopped taping him at night. Trenton had insisted on it for weeks—far longer than Hilary would have. They did it in stages. First, Hilary demanded having his hands free. “I like when you hold me.” But that soon became his legs as well. “It’s annoying to cut you free in the morning. And to keep buying the tape.” But still, Trenton would have insisted if he thought his beloved needed it. But Hilary was doing all right. The fear still came over him, especially around bedtime, and he had a lot of trouble being alone, but there were more good days than bad. Even Hilary thought so, thanking him, in a vulnerable moment, for putting up with the anxiety and all the accommodation it required.

Later, Trenton would hate himself for how he acted, but in the moment, he felt only warm and good. He pulled Hilary close and told him there was nothing to thank him for. Told him that he loved him, that he would do anything for him. How Hilary didn’t knock his teeth out for saying so, he didn’t know. But he would learn that mistake, the sickening nature of his so-called indulgence. How smarmy and almost masturbatory his care was, as if he were really helping Hilary. As if he were ‘healing’ him.

It happened one day in late spring when they were expecting a package. They’d already missed it twice, or so the shipper claimed. They’d both been home during the first ‘delivery.’ The second time, Trenton had settled himself in the main room so he’d hear the doorbell, putting off his customary run to be home for the entire delivery window. But then he’d gotten a text saying it had once again been missed. So now they were both out on the stoop with a bucket of popcorn (or animal feed, as Hilary called it) until Hilary grew thirsty. “I’m just getting some juice,” the man warned. “Tackle that liar if he comes. We need to get the confession out of him.” And that was easy enough to agree to, keeping his eyes pinned to the road in front of the house like a proper watchdog. And then it came—the call that would change everything.

They’d made the order on Hilary’s account, so he had the man’s phone in his lap because the driver was supposed to call. But when the phone lit up, it wasn’t the delivery driver. The screen read Prima Mamarina, a term he thought he understood. Hilary had mentioned once that his mother was a dancer. “Hilary!” he called out. “Your mother!”

He got back a muffled, “What?”

“Your mother!” he repeated, louder. But it was hopeless. Hilary could never hear anything without looking at the speaker’s lips. Tests had shown there wasn’t anything wrong with his ears, so maybe it was some kind of auditory processing disorder. Either way Trenton was stuck with what to do with the phone. He could have let it go to voicemail and let Hilary call her back. But that seemed rude. He could also go inside to Hilary, but that would have meant abandoning his post, and he’d sworn not to do that. So he did what he thought was best—what he thought harmless—and answered the call. “Hello,” he said, a little awkwardly. He’d never picked up anyone else’s phone before. “Hilary’s inside, but he’ll be back out in a minute. Did you want to wait, or should I take a message?” He thought that was all right. Decently respectful, he hoped, if maybe a bit robotic. He couldn’t help his nervousness. They hadn’t talked about parents, something Trenton thought was maybe Hilary trying to be sensitive about the situation, and he hadn’t wanted to bring up the topic himself. In either case, he didn’t believe his beloved had any problem with his parents. He saw messages from them come in sometimes on the lock screen. So he was sure it would be okay, but the pause, after he finished speaking, was so heavy he thought he might be imagining it.

And then a single word.

“Trenton?”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Amelia

There was no reason for that to be the key. Hilary should have been the trigger. Any of dozens of things the man had said or done could have catapulted him back into the past. The books. The music. Jokes, and movies, and food, and kisses. The sweater and the unfolded stars in the mason jar. So many, many things it could have been. But for some reason, it was that voice, and that tone, that had him answering, “Mom?”

It was the passcode he hadn’t set. And then it flared to life. All of it, and all at once. He didn’t feel the phone dropping from his hands. Didn’t feel himself rising from the brick stairs.

Axel Marlin. He’d read the name in the court reports, but until then it had been just letters on the page, just one of the victims to his senseless violence, and now not a victim at all. Axel was the one who had—and to his own Hilary—

The taser hit Trenton in the chest and neck. Fifty thousand volts that locked his muscles and had him crashing against the doorjamb and half inside, but the chaos of that could hardly touch the turmoil he was already experiencing. He was seeing it all again, a horror story of images. The bat shattering his arm, and the separation, that car ride and Hilary trussed like a turkey, being dragged into the warehouse, the fear painted so thickly on him, and then that bat again, but this time with Axel—

“Quiet! Be QUIET!” Hilary’s voice was tight and hard, and Trenton realized he was inside again and the silver duct tape back on his wrists.

When he tried to lunge upward, Hilary tazed him again. It had always been hiding in plain sight, that taser. The man kept it either in the pocket of his jeans or in his jacket. It was a decent precaution, Trenton had thought, for someone as pretty as Hilary, who often worked at odd hours, and not in the best neighborhood. He’d been glad his beloved carried it. He hadn’t realized—it had never once occurred to him—that the reason Hilary carried it, and the only reason, was because of him.

This time, when he regained his senses, his legs were tied as well, and Hilary was working on his mouth. That more than anything was a problem. “Hil—”

“Not a word!” Hilary was more desperate than he’d ever seen him, the panic cracked so tightly over his features it was a wonder he could breathe. “One word, and I’m getting the propofol. You would not believe the number of drugs I have in this house.”

Trenton did believe it. He’d even seen some of the hoard. And it was more than drugs. The shelves were stuffed with canned goods, and there was a tower of toilet paper in the hall closet. They were the kind of preparations you’d expect of someone with higher-than-average anxiety. There was also a treasure trove of medical equipment. Not just the standard first aid kit, but practically an entire emergency room. Hilary had joked once that he could treat a bullet wound from the comfort of their living room. And Trenton was realizing now that it hadn’t been a joke. Hilary had been preparing for this. A just-in-case kind of scenario.

And then it was too late to speak. Hilary had tied off his head with so much duct tape he’d definitely lose most of his hair once it was ripped off—If it was ever ripped off. “Not a sound,” Hilary repeated, more and more unstable by the second. “Not one. I’m serious, Trent. Not now. I can’t take it.”

Trenton wanted to reach for him. To touch him—any part of him. To feel the heart that beat beneath that skin. Alive. Perhaps not well, but alive. Not bleeding. Not vomiting or sobbing out his name, no screams to savage his brain and cut away everything inside. Hilary, who hadn’t lied about anything. Who had not exaggerated or been crazy in the slightest. The man was no stalker, no delicate neurotic.