Yesterday's Gone: Season One Part 29

"Oh, you're up?" a familiar voice said next to her.

She felt thin fabric brus.h.i.+ng against her nipples and realized she was naked in bed. Naked and smelling of chlorine. She lifted all hundred pounds of her head, then slowly turned toward the voice. It was Bob, also naked.

She wanted to jump up, run, vomit, anything as long as it was something far, far away. But her body refused to budge. Instead, she fell back on her pillow, trapped by inertia. She closed her eyes and swallowed, gathering her strength.

She sat up. "What the?" she said, her voice as slurred as her mind felt.

She turned to Bob, who was strobing between full-on a.s.shole and fuzzy blur. "You drugged me?" she asked, her voice somewhere between accusation and confusion.

The last thing she remembered was waking up, looking for Charlie, then drinking beer with Bob. After that, she had no memory at all. Given her state of undress, and sore v.a.g.i.n.a, she was sure she'd been raped. Rage, hurt, and fear flooded her system as she struggled to keep calm and avoid a full-blown panic attack.

She would have accused him; h.e.l.l, she would have found something nice and blunt to bash Bob's f.u.c.king face in, but her head was a dumbbell's worth of hurt and she was far too dizzy (and defenseless) to risk provoking the savage animal he so clearly was.

She'd have to play it cool, bide her time, then escape.

"Drugged?" Bob said, laughing, "Girl, you were down with it. You asked for it. Not gonna say you were begging, but just between me and you, you kinda were."

It took everything she had, and then some, not to knock the smirk from his face.

"What did you give me?"

"I think the kids call it 'G,' it really f.u.c.ks you up sorts of good."

The date-rape drug?

"How ya' feeling?" Bob asked, reaching over to cup her breast.

She pulled away, covering herself with the sheet.

"Oh, you're gonna play shy, now?" Bob asked. His voice was playful. He reached over again with one hand, the other playing Jaws beneath the sheet.

"Not now," she said, "I feel like I've got the worst hangover ever. My head is killing me."

"Want some water?" he asked, getting up from the bed, his c.o.c.k pointing straight. She fought the urge to vomit.

"Yeah," she said, "JUST water."

Bob laughed.

a.s.shole.

Callie didn't wait for the water. She jumped out of bed, head spinning, and stumbled to the bathroom, then shut and locked the door and fell to the toilet and vomited. She took the longest shower of her life, not caring that the water was almost ice.

She sank to the floor of the shower, her bottom on the freezing tile and her head in her palms. She would have given anything if tears would finally fall, but they were trapped, burning her lids in horror and shame.

She hadn't cried once since the world went to h.e.l.l.

She thought about everything that had happened since the world went away. Watching as her neighbor was torn to ribbons, missing her mother with a bottomless depth she didn't even know she could feel, and now getting raped at the hands of a creepy white trash old man. She should have been a broken mess. As water from the shower streamed down her face, her mouth opened in anguish, trying to open a spigot of tears that simply refused to flow.

She'd always been strong, had to grow up that way being a mixed girl in a lily-white neighborhood with fat pockets of deep-rooted, if slightly closeted, racism. But she wasn't heartless, far from it. She loved her mother more than life; so why wasn't she able to cry for her absence?

What kind of daughter am I?

She wished, not for the first time, that her mother was there for her. But at the same time, she was glad her mother had been spared whatever was happening. Monsters, rapists, and G.o.d knows what else. Maybe her mother was lucky, vanis.h.i.+ng along with the rest of humanity.

A knock at the door. Bob.

"You want this water or what?"

"I'm good," she said.

He didn't respond, so she figured he'd gone off to start his day boozing. She'd wait until he got good and drunk. That's when she'd leave. She'd look for Charlie, hope he wasn't too mad at her for rejecting him, and they'd take off together. She'd have to be careful, though. Bob was a ticking time bomb and she wasn't sure how long she'd be able to bury her obvious disgust.

Maybe it was a good thing she hadn't been able to cry. It was as if someone unplugged the weakest part of her, so she could stay strong and do exactly what she needed to do to survive.

"That little f.u.c.ker stole my shotgun!" Bob said from his spot on the couch, thumbing through p.o.r.n magazines he'd picked up at a convenience store.

I hope he's not fueling up for me.

Other than briefly asking where Charlie had gone earlier in the morning, it was the first time Bob had even mentioned Charlie's absence. When Bob asked if she'd seen him, she was honest, saying Charlie was probably hiding because she'd rejected him. She felt horrible about telling Bob that, and even more awful when Bob couldn't stop laughing. But better to tell him that than give him more reasons to be mad at Charlie.

No wonder he ran off.

Her only wish was that Charlie had asked her to go with him. Though she rejected him, it wasn't because she didn't like him. She did, just not in the way he seemed to like her. He was a nice kid, maybe the nicest she'd ever known, but she wasn't attracted to him at all. He was too young, too green, and altogether not her type. Besides, love, l.u.s.t, and s.e.x, none of that was on her mind now. She was in survival mode, barely able to cope with her own feelings, let alone ma.s.sage another's. She hadn't been lying when she said she wasn't looking for a relations.h.i.+p. The world had changed in a flash, and she had changed right along with it.

"When he gets back here, I'm gonna whip his a.s.s," Bob said, cracking open another beer.

"Where do you think he went?" she asked, fis.h.i.+ng for information. "Does he know anyone here?"

"I doubt it. Though who knows? The little freak sits in his room all day on the f.u.c.king Internet. Maybe he had a buncha other geeky computer friends all over the country just waiting to jerk him off. Jokes on him, though. Ain't n.o.body left to pull his pud. He'll come back when he realizes how bad he needs me."

Bob downed the beer and crushed the can against his head like some kind of frat boy a.s.shole.

"You want another beer?" Callie asked, purposely making sure she was up when he finished.

"Yeah," he joked, "About time you make yourself useful."

She didn't respond.

"Aw, come on, I'm just messin' with you. Sheesh, women are so sensitive."

She went into the kitchen and found the plastic water bottle that was different from the others. For one, it was the only bottle in the fridge which had been opened and was only a quarter full. The bottle's label was also worn, indicating a lot of re-use. She didn't know if it was Derek's G, though she doubted it, or Bob's personal supply, which seemed all the more likely. She had no idea how much G you'd put in someone's drink, so she poured what seemed like twice the appropriate amount into Bob's open beer can.

She brought the can in and handed it to Bob with a smile. "I'm not feeling too good," she said, putting a hand over her stomach, "I think my friend is coming."

"Your friend?" Bob said, taking a swig, then realizing, "Oh, your mensies. h.e.l.l, woman, you did not need to tell me that s.h.i.+t."

"I'm gonna take a nap," she said, "Call me if Charlie comes back."

"Don't worry, you'll hear the sound of him begging me to let him in."

Callie forced a laugh, then went upstairs.

She didn't know how long the drug took to work or even if it would knock Bob out completely. If it was his supply, maybe he had built up a resistance to it. Maybe it just made him delirious. She thought he'd said something about getting good and f.u.c.ked up on it. She hoped it would at least impair him long enough for her to get out of the house without him noticing.

She waited 20 minutes, then got out of bed and snuck out of her room and down the hall to his. The door was open and the duffel bags of guns lay on the bed. She found the Glock she'd been practicing with. She grabbed it, along with a box of bullets and went back to her room.

She loaded the gun, grabbed a charcoal jacket from the closet, about three sizes too big, put the bullets in her pocket and headed out the window to get the h.e.l.l away from Bob. She hoped she could find Charlie before Bob came looking for her.

Clouds hung low in the sky, as Callie stepped onto the street.

No sign of Charlie or the Toyota he'd taken from Derek's driveway. She hoped he'd not gone far. Though she didn't know him well enough to venture an educated guess, she thought he may have stayed relatively close, just to be on the safe side. Far away enough to make a point and hide from Bob, but close enough to run home if necessary.

She needed a car. She wasn't about to risk taking Bob's car, or the car in the garage. She went a few doors down on the opposite side of the street where a cute purple VW bug sat in the driveway.

She knocked on the door on the off chance someone was home. The door was made mostly of etched gla.s.s framed in a deep redwood. Seeing no one inside, she tried the doork.n.o.b. Locked.

She glanced down, searching for a rock to break the window, then laughed out loud at the planter beside the walkway filled with small round rocks and one large square gray one, so out of place it may as well have had a label on it reading, "fake rock key holder."

She retrieved the key and let herself inside.

The house was warm and the smell of cinnamon potpourri made her think of her mom's craft room. She went to the kitchen and combed the wall for a key rack and the counter for keys. Nothing. She headed back to the doorway to see if she'd missed an obvious spot where people might keep car keys. She found a mail sorter on a ledge, and a small box of random c.r.a.p, but no keys.

Callie remembered seeing an anime decal on the VW's rear window, which made her think the car belonged to a teenager, so she went upstairs and found a door with purple letters spelling out "Meghan" on the door.

She went inside the room and into an explosion of purple. Light lavender walls, dark purple curtains and bedding, and dark purple wood trim on the door, closets, and baseboards. It was a room Callie could definitely live in. Very cute. On the walls were some anime posters Callie wasn't familiar with. She was strictly a Marvel and DC girl. In the corner, a s.h.i.+ny creamy purple BC Rich electric guitar and Peavey amp.

"Cool!" Callie said, picking it up and strumming with a dark purple pick which matched the strap. She wished the power were on so she could do a little shredding. She wasn't a great guitar player by any stretch, and didn't have the patience to learn other people's songs. Mostly, she played her own tunes. But she hadn't played anything in more than a year, since her band broke up due to excessive b.i.t.c.hiness of two of its members.

The strings felt good beneath her fingers. Felt right. She regretted not playing more.

She strummed a few chords, trying to remember a song she'd been working on. Just when she got it, and fell into a rhythm, she heard the door slam open downstairs.

s.h.i.+t! Bob!

She sat the guitar on the bed, ran to the closet, and slid the door open. Despite the room's neatness, Meghan's closet was stuffed with boxes and mountains of clothes. Callie wedged herself inside, trying to keep quiet while also listening for sounds of footsteps coming up the stairs. It was a tight squeeze, but she managed to get in and slide the door shut, leaving the thinnest of cracks, still allowing her a thin sliver to peek outside. She wondered what she'd do if Bob came into the room. If she'd stayed where she was, she could have innocently claimed that she was just looking for Charlie.

But now that she'd hidden, her intentions were clear. She was on the run. And he would be p.i.s.sed. And worse, if he realized she'd drugged him, he'd probably kill her. She grabbed the gun from her jacket pocket, found the safety, and clicked it off. She wondered if she could pull the trigger. This morning, when she realized Bob had raped her, she could easily have shot him. But now, a few hours later, her anger had been replaced with a steady drip of mounting fear.

The closet was an echo chamber for her rapid heartbeat and shallow breaths. She put her left hand over her mouth as if it could silence the sound of her breathing.

A crash sounded downstairs, something being knocked over.

Bob was p.i.s.sed.

Then another crash.

And another.

Suddenly, Callie began to realize it probably wasn't Bob downstairs. As if the intruder sensed her realization, the creature made its horrible clicking.

And it wasn't alone.

BORICIO WOLFE.

October 18 Somewhere in Alabama Boricio took off his blindfold.

Well, f.u.c.k me.

He almost didn't believe what he saw.

That pile of s.h.i.+t Moe wasn't wearing a blindfold, and he sure as h.e.l.l didn't have a f.u.c.ked up face. The other captives were as they said, knees on burlap and rags over their faces. And like he said, Adam looked just old enough to buy beer without getting carded. But Moe, that f.u.c.ker was on his knees, and though his hands were behind his back and bound like everyone else's, he was in full custody of his eyesight. For now.

Moe drew a surprised breath the second Boricio leapt to his feet.

They stared at one another, neither speaking. The prisoners rustled beside them, sensing movement and tension, but could see nothing and prove even less.

Boricio slithered toward Moe, but Moe didn't flinch or move. At least not much. His lips were quivering and his breath was scattered all over the place.

Boricio sniffed the room then put his hand at the back of Moe's curly mat of hair and yanked it by the root. Moe whimpered. Boricio leaned in and whispered low enough so only Moe could hear him, barely.

"The itsy bitsy spider, crawled up the water spout..."

Boricio's fingers crept along the back of Moe's neck.

"Down came the rain and washed the spider out. Out came the sun and it dried up all the rain ..."

His fingers crawled over to the other side, the longest one making a circle inside Moe's ear. "The itsy bitsy spider, went up the spout again."

"What... what do you want from me?" Moe started to shake.

Boricio bit the edge of Moe's ear, right at the cartilage, just enough to hurt like a hard-on bent in half, but not enough to draw blood. He whispered again: "The itsy bitsy spider, crawled up the water spout. Down came the rain and washed the spider out. Out came the sun and it dried up all the rain..."