Page 58 of The Wicker King

Jack twisted toward him, startled.

August opened his arms.

After a moment’s hesitation, Jack leaned down and rested his head against August’s knee. Very stiffly, as if he didn’t belong there.

August flinched as one of the men in the room said something derogatory and vulgar about the nature of their relationship, but his hand was steady as it rested against Jack’s neck.

“You are my sunshine. My only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray.” He hummed the next bit because he didn’t know the words.

GREEN

His lawyer was a woman, and he thanked fuck that it was a woman who had sons.

“If you plead guilty, you’ll probably get some community service and a fine at best and a year in prison at worst,” she said, taking a sip of her coffee. “You torched the place with gasoline. A jury isn’t going to believe it if you plead innocence.”

“Is there any way I can plead insanity?” August asked tentatively.

She put the cup down and gave him a look. “Why on earth would you want to do that?”

“Because that’s what Jack is going to do. He’s unstable. He can’t hide it anymore. Plus, if we both plead the same thing, there is a chance that we’ll be sent to the same place. I don’t care how slim it is, it’s worth it.”

She pursed her lips and drummed her fingernails on the table as she thought about it. “What is the nature of your relationship? I know you were living together at the time of the incident.”

“We’re not dating, if that’s what you’re asking,” August sighed. “We’re just friends, I think. We grew up together. His mom and my mom were really close when we were kids, before my parents’ divorce. So we have just always been together.”

“I have kids myself. Three boys … they’re not much younger than you.” She shook her head and laughed to herself a bit. “I can almost understand … but do you mind if I ask a question? Why did you do it? You don’t have any prior offenses. Your grades were pristine until this semester. It all seems so uncharacteristic. What happened?”

August frowned. “I had to.”

His lawyer gazed at him for a while, then placed her hand on top of his.

02/07/2003

The case was quick. The twins sold them up the river.

“No one was supposed to get hurt,” Roger said, pleading with August to understand. “Not even you.”

Jack’s hands shook the whole time.

Sixteen months in the psychiatric ward for them both, with the stipulation that they be kept away from each other. Separate facilities, then.

Jack looked terrified as they dragged him away. Too scared to even reach out for him or call his name.

GUT

They dressed him in a special orange uniform and escorted him down the hall to his room. The other patients shrank away from them and muttered fearfully at the large security officers that flanked August. He had never felt more anxious in his entire life. He tripped over his feet. One of the officers grabbed his arm in a crushing grip, jerking him upright. When they finally got to his room, the orderly said something that he couldn’t hear over the roaring of his own blood. Then they slammed the door shut and left him in the dark.

August stood still where they had placed him in the middle of the room and clenched his hands into fists. He glanced at his roommate, who had scrambled as far away from him as he could without melting completely into the wall.

August gritted his teeth.

He had failed. He had failed in every possible way with every possible choice he had ever made. Jack was still crazy. He was alone. And he was in a prison of his own design. The embarrassment and regret were choking him from the inside out, and all of a sudden he was screaming.

It started small, but it bubbled bigger every minute. Rising black and ugly through the veins in his feet, up and up, bursting his cells and filling his lungs, encasing itself around his bones and finally spilling from his eyes, tacky like tar. It tumbled from his mouth in a howl of rage so deep it shook his teeth. The hairs rose on the back of his neck.

It was a shout of pain so pure and hot, he could have sworn it was burning out his eyes.

And then, like a living nightmare, his howl roused the other patients to noisemaking. Like a battle cry. It soared above the symphony of their screams of confusion and fear, the banging on the doors and the weeping. Soared above all. A phoenix that burned and fell to ash before it could set alight the room at the very end of the hall where the dreammaker lived, imprisoned by his visions. Unanchored and unnoticed in the dark.