Then I did what I had to do to forget. To feel peace for the first time in a long time.Chapter 5If I were to give up sarcasm, that would leave interpretive dance as my only means of communication.
-Banks to Callum
Banks
I felt the bullet as it burned through my abdomen. Watched as my father killed my younger two siblings, then watched some more as he shot my mother, poured gasoline over the living room floor and then lit it on fire. Then, moments after lighting the fire, he turned the gun on himself.
I watched as the contents of his head—brain matter, bits of brain, pieces of his skull, blood—all of it splattered onto the wall behind him. Then, like a limp sack of grain, he hit the floor.
“Nooooo!!!!!!”
“You’re going to be all right, son,” I heard said at my bedside.
I blinked open my eyes and looked over to see someone I recognized.
I wasn’t sure why I recognized him, but he was nice, so I smiled.
“Thanks,” I rasped.
My voice hurt from screaming.
The nightmare of the night before just wouldn’t go away.
Even worse, I was in the hospital away from all of my family.
All of us had separate rooms.
“You need anything?” the man asked.
I swallowed hard and opened my eyes. “Umm,” I hesitated. “Who are you?”
The man smiled.
His smile was kind.
Not something I was used to seeing from an adult lately.
“I’m Candy Ray Sunshine’s dad. My name is Orlen,” he said. “Candy heard that you were over here from her nurse and wanted me to come check on you.”
I gave a half-hearted thumbs up.
Everything hurt.
My head. My wrists. My brain.
My sinuses. My lungs.
Every time I took a breath in, fire shot down my throat into my lungs. Then the deep breath penetrated the muscles that’d been stitched back together by the surgeons after removing the bullet from my gut.
Then what he said penetrated my brain.
“What?” I blinked my eyes open again. “What do you mean her nurse?”
“After you dropped her off from the dance.” He inhaled deeply, sorrow filling his eyes. “She went up to her room and tried to kill herself.”
Everything inside of me just… died.Part IIChapter 6Why is the recommended age for a Ouija board 8+ but you have to be 21 to buy alcohol? So you can summon the devil at 8, but not drink?
-Candy to Banks
Candy
I knew without a shadow of a doubt that the man swaggering up my driveway wasn’t Callum Valentine.
Why did I know that?
Because I was into sadism, maybe?
Though, really, it was due in part to the fact that I knew Banks.
I knew him so well that I could pick his walk out in a crowd. I could see the back of his freakin’ hand, see the scars on his knuckles, and know it was him.
Hell, even in the time that it’d been since I’d seen him so long ago in our high school parking lot, he’d acquired new scars. New nuances. New everything.
Yet, I still knew it was him.
It was possible that it was just the way that my body felt when his was around.
Who the hell knows? Stop trying to figure out something that isn’t explainable, Candy.
Banks didn’t look up from his swaggering walk up my driveway. Instead, head down with the large brim of his cowboy hat shielding his eyes from the afternoon sun, he watched his feet as he moved.
My donkey, Fern, was walking along nicely beside him until he looked up and spotted me.
The moment that he saw me standing in the middle of the driveway, he came to a complete stop and refused to budge.
Banks halted just as suddenly, turning his back to me and giving Fern an experimental tug.
That was when I heard him talking to my donkey.
A low, soothing bass that made my heart clench and my insides tingle.
“Hot damn,” Mack said. “Look what the cat dragged in.”
I glared at the back of Banks’ head and wondered if I would get caught if I just hauled back and slapped him on that fat noggin of his.
“What are you thinking?” I heard whispered from my best friend beside me.
Mack, my best friend since that fateful day when my life had changed, knew me better than I sometimes knew myself.
“I was wondering if I could get away with shooting him and burying him on my property,” I admitted as Banks finally got the donkey moving and once again started up the drive toward me.
It was another thirty seconds later before Banks finally looked up and acknowledged me standing there.
“You can’t,” Banks said as he made his way toward me. His hand was wrapped loosely around my donkey’s bridle.
I blinked. There was no way on earth the man had heard me.
“You can’t, what?” I hedged.
“You can’t shoot me and then bury me somewhere on your property and get away with it,” he repeated. “And no, I didn’t hear you, but you have a very expressive face.”