Page 1 of Ricochet

Shadows drag me down withtheir teeth and claws. They live inside me, drowning me in their darkness nearly every night when I’m least able to fight them.

This time, something saves me from them.

As though by some invisible hook, my consciousness is wrenched back to the land of the living, out of that deep abyss where I suffocate over and over again, those shadows wrapped around my throat. Where I’ve died a thousand slow deaths.

Of course, wakefulness comes with its own nightmares too.

My eyes blink against the amber glow of the streetlamp that stands right outside my window. It’s nothing more than a worthless sentinel. I’ve considered hanging blackout curtains now that the monsters don’t come for me after the sun goes down, but I refuse to cling to a false sense of security.

I learned a long time ago that the monsters still come whether you can see them or not.

The alarm clock on the nightstand sneers at me with itsglaring red numbers until they’re etched into the inside of my eyelids, visible even when I blink. It’s just after one o’clock in the morning.

My birthday.

I’m sixteen today. I thought—Ihoped—that with each year that went by, I’d feel safer. That being older would come with a stronger shield, every year an added layer of protection.

I was wrong.

I don’t feel any different.

Another noise—because therewasone before, the one that woke me out of a dead sleep—pierces through the pressing darkness and the nocturnal quiet from somewhere downstairs. The crunching of glass, as if beneath a heavy boot.

I imagine my stepdad down there, stumbling around drunk, a broken beer bottle smashed on the dirty kitchen floor.

It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve woken up to that.

It wouldn’t be the first time I’d be forced to clean up the mess if I went downstairs to check.

So I don’t move, instead tucking the thin, threadbare comforter tighter around me. I bury my head into the pillow and shut my eyes, preferring the nightmares that come for me in sleep to the ones that haunt me while awake.

But I don’t get the chance to fall back into their clutches.

“Hey. Wh—”

My stepdad’s gruff voice drifts upstairs, followed by a grunt and a thud.

A booming comes next, filling my ears, furious and incessant. It’s my heart, running rampant in my chest and shooting up into my throat. My mouth goes dry. My hands tremble where I grip the sheets. My mind races as it attempts to fill in missing pieces of what it’s hearing but not seeing.

There’s another crunch of glass and then…nothing.

Silence.

Deathly stillness.

I want to pull the blanket over my head and shut out the world. I want to pretend I didn’t hear anything. I want to forget all the unnerving images my brain has conjured to explain the noises.

I definitelydon’twant to go downstairs.

But everything is so quiet, and, in the end, curiosity gets the best of me.

The old mattress groans as I move gingerly, stifling a pained groan of my own against the persistent ache in my shoulder. And another from the deep bruise that’s stamped into my left side.

As I make my way down the stairs, avoiding the creaking step halfway down, dread settles in my gut like a lead weight. It’s not because of the danger I sense. It’s the one that Idon’t. The threat that I should be feeling? It’s not there.

And that makes me more uneasy than anything else.

That deceptive reassurance I constantly fear.

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