Page 8 of Still Beating

“What the fuck is this? Where are we?” Dean is out of breath, his questions heaving out of him with frantic desperation. “Are you hurt?”

I think I should be surprised that my well-being is at the forefront of his concerns, but I’m too overwhelmed with terror and anguish to ponder it. I swallow hard. “My head…” It’s all I can manage before more tears well in my eyes and I’m too choked up to say anything else.

“Yeah, me too.”

I try to pull myself together, sucking frazzled breaths in through clenched teeth. I feel a panic attack edging its way through me, but I can’t let it take over. I’ll panic when hope is lost—when everything else has failed, death is imminent, and all options have been exhausted.

Right now, I need to stay focused. Level-headed.

I need to get us out of here.

I watch as Dean rises to his feet, his hands cuffed behind him and chained to his own pipe. Metal screeches against metal as he stands, then he slams the cuffs against the steel with all his strength, over and over again. “Someone, help! Get us fucking out of here!” he bellows, his voice echoing through the dank basement, mingling with the clanking chains.

I lean the side of my head against the wall beside me. “What do you think he wants with us?”

Dean continues to cause a ruckus, loud and shrill. “Don’t know. Don’t want to know.”Ding, ding, ding. Clank, clank, clank.“I’ll fucking kill you, motherfucker!” he shouts.

“He knows you can’t kill him. You’re chained to a pipe.”

Dean ceases his efforts to glare at me from across the cellar. “So, what, I’m supposed to just give up and rot down here? Not a chance.”Clank, clank, clank.“Help!”

“Do you think he wants you or me?”

I can hear Dean’s heavy breaths huffing and puffing from a few feet away. He hesitates before responding, a low hum skimming his lips. “You.”

God.

I close my eyes, forcing back a new wave of tears. A few drops slip through, sliding down my bruised cheeks and stalling at the edge of my jaw. I wipe them away with my shoulder. “I guess you’re the lucky one.”

“Theluckyone? I’m chained to a fucking wall in a psychopath’s basement. At least you hold some kind of value. I’m a dead man.”

“I’d rather die than be ofvalueto that sicko. You know what that means, right?” I curl my legs to my chest, bile gliding up my throat at the mere thought. “He’s going to rape me.”

A silence settles between us because, honestly, what is there to say?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

We both know what’s on the agenda for me and there’s nothing either one of us can do about it. Why he kidnapped Dean, I’m unsure—maybe because he saw the creep’s face?

A bitter anger seeps to the surface and I expel it the only way I know how. “I can’t believe I’m going to die down here with you of all people. The Powers That Be must really hate me.”

“Seriously?” Dean is quick to bite back. “We’re probably going to be gutted and sodomized, and you’re holding onto a high school grudge? Jesus, Cora.”

I try to balance myself on my high heels with wobbly ankles and pull myself up, sliding my chains up the pipe. My knees are shaking, and I almost collapse back down to the rubble. “Why didn’t you drive? I told you to drive.” The rising sun continues to spill more light into our hellhole, illuminating the look of outrage on Dean’s face. I look away, my jaw tight.

“Are you saying this is my fault? I was trying to save you.”

“If you would have just stepped on the gas, he would have let me go, and we’d be safe and warm in our own beds right now.” My resentment is spewing out of me, and maybe Dean doesn’t deserve it, but it’s easier this way. It’s easier than accepting the reality of our situation.

I can see him shaking his head at me, clearly insulted. “You’re really something else, Corabelle.”

I expect him to go on. I want him to say more. I wish he would take the bait and funnel his own fear and frustrations into petty rage and throw it right back at me.Give me all you got, Dean.

But that’s it. That’s all he says, and I feel hollow again.

I slide back down to my butt, the weight of my body, the weight ofall of it, unable to hold me upright any longer. Dean sits down a few moments later, his legs sprawled out in front of him, leaning back against the pole with closed eyes. My own eyelids feel dry and brittle, almost acidic—like lemon peels. It hurts to blink.

Silence dances between us for a long time. The sun is up, shining its happy, brilliant rays into our dungeon, bringing to light the harrowing truth of our circumstances. I almost wish for the darkness. Most things can be masked in the dark.

---