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Or I could get in an Uber and have them race back to my house. Seeing that Gabe was safe would give me the peace of mind I needed. Maybe I’d even have enough time to rush back to finish the show.
I shot a quick text to Eric so he wouldn’t worry.Stomach’s really hurting. Might be a while.
Minutes later and I was in an Uber. “Don’t mean to rush, but if you could be heavy on the pedal, I’d appreciate it.”
The driver gave me a nod and a wink in the rearview mirror and pressed down on the gas. I tried calling Gabe again but was greeted by his voicemail. It twisted in my gut. Like a cat had its claws tangled up in my intestines, playing with them like string. This felt wrong. I should have left with him or at least had him tell me more about what he’d found out. I tried imagining him sitting on my couch, researching something on his laptop, smiling at me when I opened the door.
The image flashed, replaced with him on the couch, looking up at the ceiling with lifeless eyes, blood soaking into the pillows from the multiple stab wounds in his chest.
My legs bounced up and down; my hand gripped onto the door handle. I wanted to roll out of the car and run to the house myself. Anxiety and dread boiled inside of me. I started to chew on my nails, down to the quick. Blood blossomed against my skin. It tasted like copper on my tongue. I bit down a little harder. Could this guy not drive any faster?
Finally,finally, we made it to my house.
“Stop here,” I said a couple of houses down from mine. “I can walk.”
Something told me I didn’t want his headlights shining in through the living room window. I got out of the car on steady feet, even though my knees had a tremble to them. Butterfly knees was what my grandma called them. Whenever I’d get scared as a kid, my entire legs would start to shake. She’d always teased me, saying that it was just a bunch of butterflies that moved down from my stomach to my legs.
I always asked what they were doing in my stomach in the first place, which would get my grandmother laughing. Her laughter would then fight away whatever childish fears I was scared of.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t around anymore to fight away the shadows with her bubbly laugh. It was just me. And this dark street. And the dark houses. And… where was Gabriel’s car? He had driven us toHamiltontonight, so I figured he would have driven his car back to my house. But the driveway was empty. In fact, the house appeared to be empty, too. Not a single light was on or window open.
Was he really here? Maybe my watch slipped off before he even left the house. I walked down the quiet street, my heart hammering inside my chest.
There!A flicker of light. As if someone had moved a flashlight across the bedroom window, toward the back of the house.
I could walk in through the front door, but I made a last-minute turn and tiptoed to the fence that surrounded my yard. I took out my keys and silently slipped one into the padlock.Click.The heavy fence door swung open, inch by inch. I didn’t want any creaks or squeaks announcing my presence. I couldn’t exactly say why I was sneaking into my own house, just that it felt right.
My yard, the grass freshly mowed thanks to a very attentive Gabriel, looked just like how I’d left it. No glass on the ground from a broken window or tread marks from someone stepping through it. I still tiptoed my way toward the back door, the one that led into the kitchen. I dug in my pocket for the key, pulling it out as silently as I could, stiffening when the keys jingled together at a decibel level that likely wasn’t able to be picked up by anyone further than a foot away.
I broke through the freeze that branched out through my nerves. Closing my hand felt like I was cracking it through ice. I turned the key in the lock and gently pushed open the door.
It didn’t creak. Gabriel had sprayed the hinges a week ago after I’d mentioned them sounding like banshees.
I wanted to thank him. For everything. Wanted so bad for him to be waiting in the living room, smile on his face as he wondered out loud why the hell I was creeping through my own house.
A groan from my bedroom confirmed my deepest, darkest, most venomous fears. It was followed by the sound of something cracking and then another groan, louder, more pained than the last.
“He’s waking up.”
That voice. I recognized that voice—no. It couldn’t be.
“Hand me the needle.”
“Here.”
Someone else was here. With Steven. Holy fucking shit. Steven was in my house, he had a needle, and it sounded like he had Gabriel in pain. He was going to kill him here, right there on my bed. I would have gotten home to a silent house, walking straight to my bedroom, where I’d be the one who discovered a lifeless Gabe staring up at me, never seeing me again.
No. That wasn’t happening. No.
No, I thought to myself on repeat as I reached for the butcher knife, sliding it out of the wooden chopping block. Inch by terrorizing inch. Time slowed down to a torturous crawl. Like the minutes ticking by inside of a sterile waiting room, waiting to hear if a loved one had made it through a dangerous surgery. Time could contain such infinite possibilities, and inside of those possibilities were nightmarish things tucked away. My hand gripped onto the handle of the knife as if I were a free climber clinging onto the last purchase of rock I could grab before plummeting down to my death.
Another groan. He sounded more lucid. That’s when I heard him speak.
“Fuck you,” he said.
Gabriel. He was still alive. I could save him. I could get him out of this.
I was only a couple of feet away from my bedroom door. It was dark, but there was some kind of light source in there. Maybe a phone flash turned up toward the ceiling. Stark, bone-white. Shadows moved across it, flickering into the hallway like spirits spilling out from a portal.
