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I wanted to believe him. I wanted to feel at peace with this whole thing, but I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that bringing Brett here was the worst mistake I could’ve made.
Chapter Seven – Charlie
I stood in a long, dark hall. The air was cool on my skin, a breeze coming from nowhere. The walls felt stifling, like they were starting to close in. An invisible force pressed against my neck, a hand trying to choke me. I clawed at my neck as I pushed forward, trying to find my way out of this place.
I didn’t like it here. I… I didn’t know how I got here.
My feet stumbled along, like they’d never been used before. I thought I was moving, but nothing around me was changing. I tossed a glance over my shoulder, and my heart nearly stopped.
At the end of the hall, where the only bit of light was, a figure shrouded in black stood. Tall and lean, muscular in all the ways that counted. Though the figure was a good forty feet away, I knew it was a man.
I stopped running, turning fully toward the figure. “Brett,” my voice was hoarse, “is that you?”
The voice that answered me did not belong to Brett, but it was familiar all the same: “Afraid not, kiddo.” He took a step toward me in the darkness, coming for me, like he always did.
My stomach fell to the floor once I recognized the voice, and I turned away from the figure, starting to run. I had to run. I had to try. I didn’t know where I was going, but anywhere had to be better than here.
I ran for what felt like ages, until I stumbled upon a door with light shining behind it, and I flung myself through it, landing on my knees in my bedroom.
The voice behind me was even closer now, and it asked, “Where are you running off to? I’m not done with you yet.” He sounded like he was right there, like he was right behind me, and I panicked.
I did the only thing I could think of: I crawled to my desk and fumbled to open the bottom left drawer. Beneath all my shit sat something I hid. A small blade, no bigger than an inch, the kind of blade that went into a box cutter. I’d taken it out of the garage, stealing it from my dad when he had to replace the blade on his, and he’d never noticed.
No one did.
No one ever noticed. That was my downfall. That was why I had to take things into my own hands. That was why I grabbed the blade out of my drawer and spun around, waiting for him to saunter into my bedroom. I lifted the sharp edge of the blade to my wrist.
“Charlie,” the voice called out. I couldn’t see any light in the hall; it was pitch black beyond the boundaries of my bedroom, and yet I knew he was right there, seconds from coming inside.
I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. Not again.
And so I dragged the blade over my wrist to end it all—and not a moment too soon, because right then, he came inside, giving me that smile that was meant to reassure me but only served to make me sick.
“There you are,” he spoke, coming toward me. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“No,” I whispered, and I glanced down at my wrist to find that I was covered in blood. Blood everywhere. So, so much. It flowed freely from my wrist, from that full, important vein, and yet I wasn’t dying.
As he came closer, as he knelt down and stretched his hands toward me, I screamed.
That’s the thing about death a lot of people would never understand. Though final, cold, and lonely, sometimes death was better than the alternative.
My eyes opened to stare at my bedroom ceiling, a line of sweat coating my hairline. My heart raced inside my chest, my palms clammy. I lifted my wrists out from underneath the blankets, checking them. No cuts, no blood.
That was the first nightmare I’d had in a while. I’d be a big fat liar if I said it was the first in general. When you had secrets, when you lived a lie, nightmares were just your memories fighting their way to the surface, forcing you to think about them even though you were trying to do everything you could to move on.
I rolled out of bed, unable to shake the weird feeling that nightmare left. I got out clothes and went to the bathroom to hop in the shower. That nightmare had made me sweat in all the worst ways, and I needed to wash it off so I could at least pretend I was fine.
When all you did was pretend, those closest to you thought that was your normal. Fake it till you make it had never rang truer.
I turned the shower on before getting out of my pajamas, and once I stood before the shower, naked, I didn’t get in right away. Instead, I dropped a hand to my leg, running my fingers along my inner thigh. Risen lines of flesh were the only interruption in otherwise smooth skin. Scars. The only ones that were visible on my body, but certainly not the only ones I had.
They were high on my thigh, so high you couldn’t see them when I wore shorts—provided the shorts weren’t the kind with your ass-cheeks hanging out, but I never wore those types of shorts anyway.
No one knew about them. Not my parents, not even Zak… though the latter didn’t know because I did it after we’d broken up.
Funny how the thing that pushed me over the edge wasn’t the big thing. No, it was a small thing. A stupid breakup from a stupid relationship. Zak had helped me be happy for years, and then… then it was like he wanted to throw it all away, and that happiness was torn from me, stolen just like that.
Even before the breakup, I’d barely been hanging on, but after, well, let’s just say it was a miracle I wasn’t dead.
