41

THE FOUR WALLS TAUNTED him again.

He’s not coming for you, don’t you know that? You’re a fool to think he would. The world has chewed you up and spit you out, and he’ll do the same.

“Stop it,” Kevin meekly whispered, scratching his scalp like a lunatic. “No more.”

You were the reason he left.

How did the walls know? How could they speak in tongues of misery? His misery. Every crack. Every flaw exposed to him now, with water bleeding through. He was the same. He was the cracks, living within, bleeding.

His ears absorbed the horrible sounds of torment, the things his thoughts seemed to echo without contest.

Big bro is hard enough.

“I’m not even listening.”

But you can’t just shut it up. We’re the voices in your head. We’re you. We’re everything you can’t be.

“Stop,” he begged, dragging his fingernails into his eardrums, until blood painted the edge of the nails.

He doesn’t need a wart like you on his hands, does he? You’re just an addict, jittery as the day you crawled hopelessly out of the womb. Should’ve died in there. This world don’t need you. Crystal didn’t even need you.

“The sickest part is that it’s true,” Kevin wept.

But his voice was young and weak. No limbs, no hands. Indecipherable speech. It climbed the walls on its belly, like a snake. He imagined its tail twisting along the cracked, slick concrete. How it begged to be heard above the taunts, above the demonic shrill born inside his head.

“I’m still lost,” he murmured.

The voices were right. He was just a jittery addict. The jitters were planning a hostile takeover, even now. The shakes made his hands creak. His legs came alive with spasms.

“Gotta get out. Gotta get help. Get help. Big bro. Get out. Get out. Jude. Get out! Help. Out. Here. Now.”

Kevin rushed to the stairs and leaped over the broken boards. He didn’t care what might happen to him if Morgan discovered he was trying to escape. It didn’t matter. He had to be free. He needed the fix to pump salvation into his blood.

He lost his footing and tripped, his ankle twisting into a hole and cutting up his shin. He toiled, hoping to get loose. His hollow pleas sought freedom. Sweating. Panting. He prayed to his god. The only god his mind could fathom.

The god refused him peace.

Left you here to die, he did.

“Morgan!” he shouted. “Morgan!” He prayed the sounds could make it farther than he did, prayed they’d make it to his new master. Louder and hoarser the groans turned, desperate. Almost rabid.

And out of the eventual dark came a stitch of light. It was almost piercing. Out of the light walked a ghost.

“They are so lost…” the voice spoke, “like sheep without a shepherd.”

“Morgan, I-I-I n-need-need…I…need…” Kevin trailed off in a dizzy spell. The light was crushing him, the light that had breathed a wretched voice. “I’m so weak,” he managed. “I’m nothing without it. Give it to me. I have nothing else. Give-G-Give it to…me.”

Morgan reached down, releasing Kevin’s leg from the clenched jaws of the dusty step and wiping the blood on his pants. “You cut up your leg pretty good, didn’t you? Tsk-tsk. You shouldn’t have tried to get out. Bad boy. Come now, don’t you like it here? You’re safe from the mind-twisting freaks outside these walls, rat. Like your brother. He tried to come and kill me once. Thought I was sadistic and evil. But he was a bad rat too.”

Kevin nodded, shaking and sweating, unquiet. “He probably isn’t even looking for me. For-f-forgot about me.”

“Yeah. They all will forget about you.”

“Help me…I need—”

“Yes, of course.” Morgan fed his arm down his shirt and reached for a thin tube and unscrewed the mouth, pouring a sliver of powder onto his fingertip.

Kevin greedily inhaled the dust.

“All better now?” Morgan asked.

“More…more,” he cried, and Morgan let him consume the remainder.

Heartbreak. Loss. The inescapable and the inevitable. Reality. Playing rhythms with no music. Horror in black and white. He was consumed. Regret. Remorse. They were the children playing in the sandbox at the back of his mind. They were the unfound choruses of hope trapped beneath the sand. Not breathing. Never breathing.

The craving suddenly deserted him.

Morgan whispered then into his ear, “You…belong…to us.” But the words did not come out human. They were mutilated, disguised, tormented.

Kevin’s heart sank then drowned, his pulse blistering and alive again. Lost and alive.

Morgan grabbed him and threw him down the last steps. But he didn’t care. He knew the dark as home. He knew the doorman as master. He knew the light would fade to the inevitable cold, drab walls and weak pillars of this underground chamber.

Kevin’s vision spiraled until he shut his eyes. The light had finally forsaken him, and it took the devil with it.