Michael

She’s having a panic attack, so after pointlessly trying to snap her out of it with light slaps on her cheek I run out of ideas. I grab her face and kiss her. Her eyes widen with shock, stronger than the horrors she’s been through and she tenses, perceiving me on her in the back of the car.

“Breathe,” I whisper when I pull my lips from hers. “Breathe, freckles.” She blinks at me, her mouth parted and pupils so tiny they might as well be fully consumed by the gray of her traumatized eyes. “It’s okay.”

And just like that she breaks down in tears three-year-old’s cry with.

“I can’t,” she slurps as she draws herself into a backseat corner. “I can’t do it anymore! Just as I want to die, I live. And just as I commit myself to living shit like you happens.” She hits me on the shoulder with her palm. “I can’t juggle both! I’m going insane!”

I don’t argue, because she is going insane, in a steady and painful descent.

And it’s a proof to myself that I am a torturer. I torture her in a way I wouldn’t wish on my enemy.

Shivering, she curls into a ball. A feeble overhead lamp highlights the dirt on her face and her mat hair, sticking to her face and neck in sweaty strands. She hides her head under her bent arms, bawling.

I hover close, unsure how to help her. I do want to help her. Somehow…

I could just let her go?

No, I’m supposed to get rid of her. Not help her. What am I even thinking?

I look down at my own trembling hands and squeeze my eyes shut, blocking out the pain in my leg.

“For now, focus on living,” I tell her, hoping for a response, yet all that accompanies her sobs are the winds, banging against the car and howling through the shattered rear window. Only now do I notice the back seat’s blanketed with shards.

I return to the driver seat, click the overhead light off, plunging the car into the dry night, and pull back on the road. I roll down the window and throw away my cellphone. Considering the bounty on my head and condition we’re in we need to stop by a motel in a more populated area and try to lay low for a few days. At least until I figure out what to do.

…

When I find a cheap motel in the city of Odessa I’m all but falling asleep. The entire time I drove I kept glancing at her, lest she tries to kill me again. Thankfully, she fell asleep.

We check in. The receptionist looks over us with suspicion, especially at her who stands like a bloodied nightwalker about to flop face first to the floor.

With my eyes, I follow his every move, hoping it’ll intimidate him.

“Do you need a med kit?” The receptionist asks, sort of calm. We mustn’t be the first bloody travelers he sees.

“Yes, thanks,” I tell him, wondering if I should pay extra to keep quiet. I leave him another fifty and grab the keys together with a red box he passes.

We shuffle out. “You’re limping,” she says after her lengthy silence.

“You shot me,” I whisper, opening the door too our room and letting her in first. A gush of cold air sweeps in after us and drafts out through all the nooks and crevices with a high-pitched whistle. That’s one shit of a room.

“Oh.” Despite the double bed she slides down the wall next to the door, flops on her side and falls asleep before I even reach the kitchenette.

I set my duffel bag on the counter, then bandage my thigh and lie on the bed, facing her. Just in case, I pull my silver switchblade and shove my arm under the pillow. I need shuteye for at least a few hours before I find a doctor and spend a fortune on him again.

…

When I wake, hungry and thirsty, she’s still on the floor. I visit the bathroom before I prod her with my boot. She groggily parts her eyes. “You have to clean up.” All the dirt and bloody bruises draw too much attention. Her shoulders slumped, she sits. “Take a shower. I’ll go buy some food and clothing. Fine?” And hopefully find a vet who’ll patch me up.

I observe her as she struggles to her feet. I don’t help her on purpose, judging how weak she is and if I should tie her up before I go. She might try to escape, even though it looks like running is the last thing on her mind.

From the half a minute that it takes her to gather herself up I figure she won’t get far even if she wanted.

When she locks herself in the bathroom I count my reserves. Enough for now, but it’ll get tighter. It’ll be pain in the ass to find a day’s worth job during a recession, and with my shot leg—

“Fuck!” I jerk at her voice, dulled by the bathroom door.

“What is it?” A solid minute of silence follows. “Freckles?”

“I’m bleeding.”

“Your side?”

“No, well yeah, but not only.”

It takes me a second to understand. “Oh.” She’s a girl, right. “Um, I’ll buy you what you need.”

She doesn’t answer as she’s probably busy dying from embarrassment, so I leave, locking her in. I still loiter by the door for a while, making sure I won’t see her break open a window. Nothing. Thus I set out, worried over my money.

After I check my car, inconspicuously parked down the road, I limp down a poor street, surveying my surroundings for a clinic or a vet. I stop a few times when my head gets fuzzy. My strength is ebbing away.

“Hey, bud, you okay?” A man stops in his walk to look at me.

“Is there a vet or a clinic nearby?”

Once the man takes in my dusty appearance he backs away a step, squinting at my gloved hands with distrust. “Yeah.” He points down the street and describes a few turns before he scurries away.

Find the vet I do and go in through the back door. It’s not the first time I’m barging into the vet clinic, and definitely not the first time I talk my way out of trouble. I’m not a good actor, but this story of my older brother being involved in a gang has worked six out of eight times I used it.

“We gotta call the cops,” a vet lady says over the yapping of dogs. Her partner sews the bullet hole in my thigh.

“No, no, please. They’ll kill me, kill you, and oh, God…” I lower my forehead onto the table, pretending to hold back my tears.

“It’s okay. We’ll help you and let you be. And you let us be,” the man says, his worried voice music to my ears.

“Thanks, man, thanks.” I arch my head back to look at my leg. “Is it deep?”

“Hit your muscle at an angle. Looks like a small caliber.” The man inspects the bloody slivers of a bullet.

“Good.” The gun freckles pulled from the Russian’s body did look of a small caliber, but it was still a gun that could’ve killed me had she been more alert.

Once my leg is safely bandaged I leave some money for the vets and set off to find a mall. Limping through the aisles I collect some canned food, bread, TV-dinners, water, zip-ties, and two baseball caps. I stall for a minute or two in the maxi-pad section, lost in the vastness of options, almost as vast as the selection of alcohol. Finally, I grab the cheapest pack and move to clothing, then the pharmacy for a medical thread and a needle.

When I return she’s still in the bathroom. “Freckles?” I rap on the door. No answer. I rap again. “Freckles?”

“Yeah,” a lazy grunt reaches me. “I fell asleep.” She cracks the door and I pass her a bag with clothing and everything else I bought for her. “Thanks.” She disappears.

I pop a TV dinner into the microwave and have enough time to eat it before she stalks out in a big t-shirt and jeans that are a little too long for her. Instead of reaching for the food like I assumed she would, she slumps on the bed and turns away.

“You gotta eat.”

She doesn’t reply.

I stay quiet for a minute or two before I utter, “I don’t know what to do with you.”

She turns over her shoulder, her eyes pleading. “Let me go.”

“I…”

“That’s what your partner said over the phone. You’re dead whether I live or die.”

“I could still get it back,” I say. “If I did what I have to.”

“But you can’t. And even if I die do you think you’ll never get a victim like me? For whatever reason you can’t kill me.”

I gape, then divert the topic. “They’ll get you and your brother.”

She shoots upright, her hand clutching her side. “Don’t involve Shia in this.”

“He is involved. He knows as much as you do. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s dead already—” She throws a pillow at me and I realize I shouldn’t have said it.

“And it’s because of you! Everything is because of you!”

“You’re right,” escapes me before I stop myself.

Her tense shoulders slump and expression grows wide. “You admit it?”

I don’t know what to say or do. What should I do? What would I wanna do?

I’m just as lost, holding onto this girl like no other girl before, not even sure I’m comforting her or she’s comforting me at this point, just by being here.

I shake my head lightly and pop another TV dinner into the microwave. I need my head fresh before I plot my course of action and make any important decisions.

I pass the plastic plate to her. “Please, eat it,” I say. “Focus on living and eat it, just for now, Freckles, okay?”

She swallows, her attention locking onto the food like my gangmates would on whores. When her stomach gives a growl even I hear she surrenders and grabs the steaming food, crosses her legs in an Indian sitting and starts stuffing her face.

An unfamiliar warmness spreads over my chest, momentarily induced by the pleasant sight. Ignoring it, I grab the bag with my clothing and set off into the bathroom to take a shower.

As I slip from my jacket, a different, foreboding feeling overtakes me. She ate. She’s leaving her suicidal state and becoming like every other person who fits my criteria to kill. It’s not long until she begins wanting more, until she starts having deeper desires, and dreams, and other impossible things.

It doesn’t make any sense, this conundrum. If she wants to kill herself I can’t kill her, but when she begins living I can. And if I keep her in a suicidal state I’m a torturer.

The fact hits me so hard I lean on the wall with my back, too sharply aware of two sides warring in me.

Why? Why do I believe this nonsense I kill for?

Because it’s true, Mike, I tell myself, you know it.

Nonsense.

True nonsense.

I jerk at the knock on the door. “You okay in there?”

“Yes.” I notice I lost track of time.

“I tore the stitches on my side.”

“I’ll be right out.”