Page 51 of Running Feral

My voice cracks, and I trail off. I was getting more heated the longer I spoke, but nothing was stirring in the demeanor of the man opposite me.

Nope. Nothing. This was still a big waste of his time, as far as he was concerned.

I can’t do anything else, but I will at least spare myself the indignity of breaking down and crying in front of this fucking waste of oxygen.

Officer Bumblefuck sighs and leans in, furrowing his brow in a way that he’s probably practiced to try to look sympathetic.

“Look, pal. My hands are tied. I can’t file a Missing Persons Report with no evidence, especially if the person is gonna pop up at the sight of a robbery or a drug deal in a couple of days. Keep an eye out, keep asking around about him, and next time he comes back to see you, encourage him to file a report so there’s a paper trail. Until there’s a paper trail, nothing’s going to happen. It is what it is.”

I’m flipping the table in my mind’s eye. Papers are scattering and hot, bitter coffee is splashing over his pock-marked, doughy face. Then I’m cracking his skull open on the linoleum and leaving him here while all the blood and spinal fluid slowly drains out of his body, before going to find Tobias myself.

In reality, I nod. I don’t thank him or accept what he’s saying, because I’m not that weak, but I do accept that I’m not going to change his mind. There’s a record of me trying to make the report, at least. I’ll try the same thing tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after. That, and have everyone I know harass everyonetheyknow to see if anyone’s seen Eamon or Tobias.

I don’t have the power to do anything else. It’s that, or wait to hear that Tobias has been killed. Which is not something I’m willing to contemplate right now.

Chapter Seventeen

The only bright side right now is that I haven’t been away from Eamon for that long. It’s been long enough for my brain to get used to freedom, but not for my body to completely reset. My internal defenses are still there. I just have to dig them out. Or maybe they’ll always be there no matter how long I’m away for them, like my DNA has twisted and warped to be shaped around him, and him alone.

The thought makes me shudder with revulsion. I wish I could crawl into a brand-new body as well as a new life. I want a vessel he’s never touched. Neither of those things are in the cards for me, though, so I need to focus on surviving the here and now. If I can.

It helps that a part of me always knew this was coming. Instead of having to cope with feelings of rage or loss or despair, it’s just resignation. And exhaustion. These are emotions I know how to handle.

“I hope you know how disappointed I am in you, pet,” Eamon says. He grabs me by the hair and shakes my head possessivelyfor what feels like the thousandth time since we got in the car, and we’ve barely been driving for ten minutes.

I block it out. The pain of him pulling my hair, the sound of his voice, all of it. I drown it all in the synthetic white noise that I’m trying to fill my skull with. Don’t think about anything. It’s all out of your control now.

Eamon has been driving over the speed limit with one hand on the steering wheel and a cigarette between his fingers the whole time. He keeps forgetting to smoke it for long enough that the cherry dies and he makes me pull out a new one for him, throwing his out the window. His jaw is tense, and his normal babbled ownership crap is even more nonsensical than usual.

So, not only is he taking me back, he’s fucking high. Great. Eamon doesn’t get fucked up that often. He prefers to be in control, and he especially prefers to drug me into a state of passivity and then exercise that control without any obstacles. Whenever he does get truly fucked up, though, it’s not good.

Everything gets amped up. The rage, the aggression, the crippling insecurity that’s clearly underlying it all. These are the times when I’m the most afraid of him, even though it’s also when he’s most likely to pass out and let me make a run for it.

I make a decision in that moment. If he gets weak, I’ll run. If he doesn’t, I’ll stay. I can’t fight him. It’s too dangerous. As long as he stays awake and alert, I have to wait with him. If he kills me before I get the chance to leave, that’s just how it is.

“Are we going home?”

I know I shouldn’t speak or do anything to provoke him, but I can feel the exhaustion overwhelming me. I need tonight to be over. Let’s get where we’re going so he can do what he’s going to do, and it can all be done.

Eamon grins. I catch sight of it out of the corner of my eye, but even that glimpse is enough to make my stomach churn. I don’t want to know where we’re going anymore.

Of course, he doesn’t drop it, now that I’ve brought it up.

“We’re going somewhere much better. Don’t you worry,” he says. I can hear how reedy and strung out he sounds, like maybe he’s been high for a while. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him quite like this, and it pushes my consciousness deeper and deeper into the dark place at the back of my brain where I can wait for it to all be over.

Eamon reaches across, grabbing me by the jaw and yanking me toward him. A gesture that would feel like the purest, most scintillating show of possession from Gunnar makes my skin crawl instead, and I switch to consciously trying to shut down every single nerve ending I have.

I don’t want to feel his skin on mine. I don’t want to breathe the acrid scent of him in the air or hear his panting breaths that are making me itch internally. I want to twist myself until I’m inside out and there’s nothing but blood and viscera coating me, so everything he touches is slick and wet and so revolting he never wants to touch me again.

Instead, he kisses me. Forcefully, pushing his tongue into my mouth until I open for him. It’s rough enough and long enough that I’m worried the swaying car is about to jump a barrier or hit a tree, but he finally disconnects before we collide with anything.

Regret trickles through me when I realize we’re not going to crash, which is quickly followed by shame that I was thinking about it in the first place. As if I have the power to control whether we have an accident.

For the rest of the drive, it’s all I can think about. Grabbing the wheel and jerking it so hard we collide. I picture his body smashing through the windshield and shredding itself on the road while I survive. I picture him being injured, and how I would manage to finish him off before the ambulances arrived, but no one would ever know. I picture him being tangled in hisseatbelt with a broken leg while I slowly, meticulously strangle him to death with a tire iron.

Endless iterations of it flick through my brain, but for all of them, my body stays completely still. I barely breathe. Nothing to draw his attention. I know I’ll never do any of it, but picturing it all on a loop is as cathartic as it is upsetting.

Maybe it’s wallowing in the shame of not being able to finally do something and save myself that’s actually cathartic.

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