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“Thank you for crossing this off my list,” I murmur. “I hope we never meet again.”
And with that, I grab my heels and silently step out of the room.
3
KNOX
Gray shadows creep up on me.
Their ghostly hands reach out to my neck and wrap a noose around it. My trachea jerks and crushes to pieces as the distorted voice whispers.
“Look at me.”
My fingers flex, but I don’t reach for the hands that are stealing my air. If I touch them, they will force my eyes open, they will make me see.
“Baby boy…” The voice is less distorted now, honeyed, almost in a singsong. “Let me look at those eyes…”
Fuck no.
No.
If I don’t look, I’ll be safe. If I don’t look, I won’t know what will happen and it’ll all be over faster.
Or that’s what I believe as the ghostly harsh fingers jam against my neck and crash the one thing that’s giving me air.
“If you don’t look, it’ll hurt more.” The voice is still honeyed, cool, soothing almost, and I would’ve believed it if I didn’t know what hides behind it.
“No…”
“Knox, look at me.”
“No.”
“I’m going to hit you and make sure to leave marks, you little jerk.”
“No!”
That’s when my eyes open.
There’s a ringing, loud and constant and without any breaks.
At first, I think it’s all in my head. The ringing. The pounding against my skull. The fucking shadows.
My head is the place they go to when they decide to visit me occasionally, just to make sure they still have a hold on me. That the little boy inside me that I’ve been slowly killing over the past twenty years isn’t dead.
That he still breathes, still closes his eyes, and has fucking nightmares about the shadows of the past.
He still lives with his demons.
But the ringing isn’t in my head. It’s from somewhere beside me.
My phone.
I snatch it from the side table, throw an arm over my eyes to darken my vision. Light is blinding in my post-nightmare state. In a way, I become one with my shadows, thirsty for darkness and unable to exist outside of it. So, light and I were never really close friends.
“You better have a good fucking reason for calling me this early in the morning.”
“Her Majesty the Queen called and said, “Excuse your bloody French.””
