There’s a faint beeping. The air is cool. My eyelids are heavy, and my limbs feel like they’re tied down by thick, leather straps. My body aches with a dull but intense pain. It ebbs and flows, but it is always there. I’m dreading what I’m about to see before opening my eyes. If I […]
The stairs behind me are shrouded in darkness, but I can feel the chain of an overhead light dangling in front of my face. My chest is tight. My breaths are quick and barely effective. The wink. The wink. The wink. It’s all I can think of as I descend the steps. Even now, as […]
I’m silent now as I ever was, running through the bushes and overgrown grass the chain-link fence that wraps around Gerard’s warehouse. A little trick I learned early on was to individually wrap my equipment in small towels to dampen the sound of metal clinking together. The setup and teardown are longer, and your bag […]
The warehouse looms in the center of what used to be an industrial park, surrounded by several other rundown and ready-to-fall-over buildings. The roads are filled with potholes and random stretches of gravel or dirt interspersed within what remains of the beaten-down pavement. Every time someone drives through, which is surprisingly frequent considering the state […]
“Oh, come on!” I punch the couch before I realize what’s going on. “He was offsides! You blind, you fucking ref?” Head shakes off the cobwebs. Eyes blink away the surprise. It’s early in the morning, about seven. I’m in a living room, watching a soccer game, clad in a Real Madrid jersey. Soccer match, […]
It’s cold and chilly, and every small gust makes me think Catarina or the Cruel Man are right behind me. I should have packed a scarf, both for warmth and to hide my identity. As it is, the hoody I grabbed from Albert’s accomplishes both tasks, though not well enough for me to feel comfortable. […]
“Ally, you damn fool!” There’s no time to ruminate. All I can do is run, but that won’t stop me from yelling at myself. “You screwed us all!” I thought they’d let us free, Ally says. Now that I’m mad, I have more control over who’s talking in my head and I push her back […]
I’m lying face-down in the bed of a new woman, restless, wide awake despite the fact that I just woke up, perhaps kept so by the cold torrent of bloody rage flowing through me. “That motherfucker.” I told you he was just using you, Ally mutters. My hand instinctively reaches for the bottle of alcohol […]
Cars are roaring overhead and what little warmth being out of the rain provides is chipped away with every gust of wind. The concrete is cold—has been all night—and my neck is stiff both from the brief fight and laying on such an uninviting surface. I ran away from the bus and hid until I […]
Vivian’s alarm goes off at six, just like yesterday. My head is ringing and I’m lethargic; the rest of the day after finding Gerard’s former hideout was a blur of small bottles of alcohol and unanswered texts to the Guilty Man. I go back to sleep until my phone buzzes several hours later. It’s a […]