I know. I checked. Asked. Made sure.
But knowing isn’t enough. It never was. Doubts crowd my mind. What if they managed to get out? What if they escaped? Or bribed a judge? They had the whole prison staff at their command.
Shit.
Yeah, I’ll call Seth. If I hear Seth say it, tell me they’re still behind bars… then maybe I’ll believe it.
My pencil scratches along the rough drawing paper without conscious thought. Black lines, black smudges, deep crosshatching, almost tearing into the paper, punching a hole through it. Shapes emerging, like in my dreams, crawling out of the shadows, hands reaching for me, fingers outstretched.
I reach up with my other hand, grab the pendant. I’ll be all right.
I sketch the faces, the eyes white and the mouths open, fanged like those of snakes, their tongues forked. Demons. Bloodthirsty ghosts.
No, that’s not real. They’re fucking asshole humans.
This is real. Me, sitting on my couch, pressing the tip of my pencil to the paper, trying to draw out the poison with each stroke, each line. Drawing myself as if in a mirror. A still figure, caught in a web.
But something’s changed. I’m drawing fast, like always, my hand doing its own thing, my mind jumping from thought to thought, from image to image—when I realize the central figure isn’t central anymore.
The web is broken.
At the center of the image, something else is imprisoned: a star. And I… I’m standing at one side, looking on.
I touch again the star pendant resting at the hollow of my throat as I stare at what I’ve drawn—so similar to what I usually create, and yet so fundamentally different.
Okay. Think, Shane. Focus, dammit.
That’s not exactly what I dreamed of. Then again, it rarely is. What comes on paper is the impression, the condensed meaning, the feel of the nightmare.
So what the fuck does this mean?
***
“You going in to work?” Cassie is sitting in my tiny kitchen, sipping coffee. She’s wearing her black stockings, her pale green panties and bra, and a thick cotton button-down shirt thrown over her shoulders.
I don’t even remember owning that shirt. Weird. It’s not like I own many things. Did Ev, Micah’s girl, give it to me last Christmas?
Frowning, I stir sugar into my coffee. Why can’t I remember? Weird how my memory has holes not only from my time in prison but from later, too.
I remember sharing a tiny room with Seth for a while, then living on the streets. Bits and pieces, flashes of nightmare and faces peering down at me.
Then Zane and Rafe taking us to Damage Control, explaining they’d help us get a place to live and train as tat artists. I remember meeting the other guys—Asher and Tyler and Dylan.
I remember when Micah and Jesse and later Ocean were added
to the group. Drinks and shooting pool in the evenings sometimes, cleaning up the shop in the mornings, finding the job at the construction site.
Blurry, grainy memories like old photographs.
Did I have flashbacks last year? Nightmares, sure. Panic attacks? Sometimes. But flashbacks?
I rub at my forehead.
“Hey.” Cassie is giving me a quizzical look. “You all right?”
“Yeah.” She asked me a question, didn’t she? What was it? … Work. “I should go get ready.”
“What time shall I pick you up?”