Page 5 of Lock Me Out

For starters, there’s Bradley’s charred remains lying in my grave. Nobody would believe me if I told them the fire was his idea. I still see his wicked grin in my mind’s eye. “You can teach the bastard a lesson.”I never told Bradley the details of the shit Dad made us do or what he did to Mom, but he knew I hated the son of a bitch.

Even now, knowing Dad’s dead and gone, just thinking of him makes my fists clench in my pockets as I walk with my head down and my shoulders hunched. It’s become a habit, hidingmyself from the world, making it so they don’t have to look at me.

If it weren’t for the constant craving to see Leni again, I might never leave my apartment. It’s not worth risking people seeing me—wincing, immediately looking away. That’s the thing about people trying to be kind: they end up being the most hurtful. Someone like me, someone who used to take good looks for granted and revel in the attention he got from girls… the ultimate punishment is people feeling too sorry for me and too disgusted by me to stare too long at my face.

“You’re lucky to be alive, young man. If you hadn’t been found out there, there’s no telling what might have happened.”

I’ll never forget the agony as I stumbled away from the burning house, fumbling my way through the woods. I had to get away. That was all that mattered—getting away. There was no feeling. I didn’t even register my injuries, no more than I noticed the branches whipping against me or the uneven ground that made me stumble and fall to my hands and knees more than once. I just kept going, some instinct telling me to put as much distance between myself and that house as possible.

Looking back now, I know I was in shock. I could barely string two thoughts together after apparently getting out of the house before the explosion, though not soon enough to avoid the fireball that burst from the windows and blew out the back door. I got lucky, even if I didn’t feel lucky in the days that followed.

Dark now. So dark. Lights up ahead, traffic sounds. I can barely breathe. Every breath feels like fire in my lungs. And my face, there’s something wrong, I know there is. Every breeze that moves across my skin is like a thousand knives slicing into my flesh. I don’t want to see it—I don’t even want to touch it,afraid of what I’ll find. All I can do is keep moving, dragging myself forward, forcing one footstep after another.

It was only when I reached the road that I let myself rest. I had no choice. I collapsed in the dirt along the shoulder, my last conscious thought hoping someone would find me before I allowed exhaustion to win out.

Someone did find me, someone I was never conscious enough to speak to. I woke up in the hospital without any idea how much time had passed until one of the nurses told me the date. It had been two days since the fire.

And according to the news, I was dead.

By the time I reach the sketchy part of town that is now my home, the sun is sinking. Broken glass crunches under the soles of my boots, and a stray cat darts out from between a pair of trash cans as I approach. What was a warm breeze earlier has turned colder, sending ripples of goosebumps over my skin and making me hunch my shoulders higher, my chin close to my chest. Walking around with my hood pulled up gives me tunnel vision. I can’t see what’s happening on either side of me, which makes it all the more important to listen carefully to my surroundings.

This is my life now. Hiding from the world, protecting myself, wondering how much longer it has to be this way.

The old brick building where my apartment sits is about as grim and depressing as I can imagine. It always stinks of piss, and the walls are paper-thin, meaning I can hear every damn thing happening around me at all hours. But everyone minds their own business. That and a couple of working locks are all I need right now.

A pair of guys who I’m pretty sure live on the front steps day and night jerk their chins in my direction as I walk past. I give them my usual grunt in response before walking through the plexiglass door into the narrow space where rows of mailboxes sit. There’s no name on mine—not that I get any mail anyway.

“He came to us with no identification and doesn’t give any answers when we ask about his identity. And nobody has called in looking for a missing person.”

Theythink I’m asleep, in a drug-induced haze, which is the only way I can be sure they’ll speak honestly while I can hear.

I’m supposed to be dead. Bradley must’ve been killed, and they figured his body was mine. They haven’t said anything about him on the news, so that’s the only thing that makes sense.

Dad is dead. Amanda, too. I didn’t mean to kill her. She wasn’t supposed to die. I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry for Leni. One more way I destroyed her.

I take the stairs slowly, as usual, listening for anyone hiding out further up in the stairwell. Sometimes, a guy who lives here will wait around, hoping to score a little something out of the pockets of someone coming in or leaving. Considering I helped kill my father and stepmother, I can’t really give them any shit over it. Everyone does what they have to do to get by.

They probably see me and figure I came from a shitty background, addict parents or something like that. It’s easy to make assumptions about a person’s past based on the way they look and act today.

I wonder what any of them would think if they knew how I really grew up. The comfort and privilege. I had every opportunityto be better than this, at least on the surface. The rot was underneath, out of sight.

Not that I owe any of them an explanation. Nobody asks questions—and nobody looks too long at me if we happen to pass in the hall. I might as well be living on the moon, away from humanity, even if I can hear them through the walls.

I unlock both bolts on the scarred front door of my third-floor apartment, glancing to the right and left one more time before opening the door and quickly closing it behind me. Once the locks are flipped again, I release a long breath and touch my forehead to the cool wood.

That was a close one back at the cemetery. I need to be more careful, which means not venturing out in the daytime. It would be too easy for Leni to spot me and maybe recognize me.

The thought makes me laugh—softly, bitterly—before lowering my hood and running a hand through my short hair. It’s longer now than I used to keep it, covering the random bits of damage to my scalp.

Turning the lights on only makes everything look bleaker. If I cared, I’d get some actual furniture, maybe lamps, to make it warmer and more homey. But who needs comfort? Who needs to pretend life is anything less bleak than it is? Anyway, it’s what I deserve. After what I did, the bare minimum is all I should ever have.

Not that I’m super upset about what happened to Dad. Fuck him. It’s the memories of everything I did to Leni—and how I ended up destroying her life—all because he wanted me to.

Though really, thinking back on what I saw at the cemetery, she doesn’t look like her life has been ruined. And she did leavethose flowers for me. Does that mean she’s forgiven me? A brief smile touches the corners of my mouth. That’s rare nowadays, with pretty much nothing to smile about most of the time. It would be just like her to forgive me. Somehow, that’s who she is. Life has handed her so much pain, disappointment, and shame, but she’s still Leni.

I don’t understand that kind of person and can’t pretend to. I carry grudges. I hate, I resent, and I want to inflict pain on those who have hurt me. Sometimes, imagining inflicting that pain is all that gets me through the worst of my solitude—the long, lonely nights spent doing absolutely nothing. Back in the day, there was always something to do: a party, a night out with my brother, maybe someone to hook up with. There was never a shortage of ways to distract myself or reasons to keep going.

Now, all of that is gone. And I have to wonder why I’m still alive while Bradley is dead in my grave.

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