Page 115 of Limbo

“I don’t … I’m not…” Words won’t travel from my brain to my mouth, and I close my eyes.

Nothing bad can happen under the blankets,I tell myself, desperate to trust in the make-believe I created for a scared little boy.

“Breathe,” he says, his voice soothing. “I need you to talk to me.”

“I’m scared,” I choke out.

“I’m on my way. Dad’s on his way, too, but he’s in Waymore. Five minutes, Cal. Hang the fuck on for five minutes.”

I nod like he can see me.

Five minutes. Trey only needs five minutes. Such a short amount of time if you think about it.

The pounding on the door continues. My lip trembles when the wood cracks. After a few seconds, the door bangs against the wall, and the floorboards just inside my doorway creak. Trey says my name, still talking, but his voice gets farther away as the phone slides out of my hand.

The blankets do nothing, our refuge destroyed without effort. Graham grasps my ankles and drags me out to the hallway while I kick and scream. He loses his hold on one leg, and my foot connects with him, making him let go of the other. I scramble to my feet and run to the kitchen. Before I reach the door, he grabs my arm and yanks me back. He shoves me, and I backpedal into the living room, trying to keep my balance, while he charges in after me, overturning the coffee table on his way.

His face comes within an inch of mine, shouting and cussing. This time when his hand swings, it cracks against the side of my face.

The backhand doesn’t hurt as much as I expected. I’ve spent all these years thinking about how it could be worse. With each threat and insult, I’ve reminded myself that he could be hitting me. Maybe it’s shock, but now that it’s happening, it feels no worse than the years of emotional torment.

The strike knocks me into an end table, crashing a lamp to the floor. He waits until I straighten up for the next blow. It hurts as much as the month he only called me Mistake. The pain when he grips my shoulders and slams my head into the wall compares to seeing Connor’s face the first time Graham told him no one would ever love him. And all the times after.

The world dims for a second as he throws me to the floor. The throb in my wrist when I try to catch myself brings on another memory. I attempt to block it out, focused on a shard of the broken lamp within reach. My hand lashes out for it. When he flips me over, it slices his side before I lose my grip. He lets out a growl and holds me down, my ribs aching under the weight of his knee.

I cry and struggle, not sure what pain comes from now and what’s from the last eighteen years. Honestly, I don’t know how much more of either I can handle. Five minutes. Five seconds.

I gasp in a panicked breath when he leans over me and fight with everything I have to get him off, but it’s no use. I’m trapped and helpless, feeling his hands wrap around my neck. I slap at him. His arms, his hands, anything I can reach. I pull and pry at his fingers, scratching and clawing for relief, but his grip only tightens. As the pressure on my throat increases, the memories flash faster. My lungs burn, desperate for air, and the image of him staring down at me blurs out of focus. Shadows bleed in until my eyes fall shut.

Heaviness and the fire in my chest are all that’s left.

“Cal.”

Trey’s close. He tells me to open my eyes, but I’m tired.

When we were younger, he’d always come over way too early in the morning to make me go fishing. He would pry my eyes open with his thumbs and shine a light in them. He does the same now but without a flashlight. All of him is fuzzy, his face and voice.

He lets go of my eyelids, but only one stays open. While he’s talking into his radio, I reach up and wipe away the red streaming down the side of his face.

“Christ, Cal,” he says. He shakes his head and lies on his side next to me on the floor. “Stop trying to take care of me, you crazy woman. I’m glad you can move, but don’t do it anymore.”

Trying to swallow sets my throat ablaze. Everything seems to hurt when I try to lift my head, so I stop. Trey pushes wet hair away from my forehead and pulls a stuck strand off my cheek. His thumb passes over my temple, and I let my eye shut.

He insists I stay awake and rambles about our trip to the amusement park last summer. He pauses a lot to ask if I remember. I do, but I don’t answer. I want to sleep, but he says my name every other sentence. Each time, my mind refocuses on him and his stupid roller coasters. His voice fades in and out. Then it stays out, everything quiet again so I can sleep.

No one notices his fingers wrap around my wrist. The people around us only half-pay attention to anything as their eyes glaze over. But they all jump when he shouts, “Go!”

Trey drags me behind him, running away from the group like his life depends on it.

I desperately try to keep up with his much longer legs. “Trey, stop.”

“I can’t,” he says, glancing back at me. “They might catch us and continue the torturous death by boredom.”

If I had the extra air, I would remind him thathesigned us up for the tour at a campushechose. I might also mention that because he forced me out of bed way earlier than necessary to go fishing ahead of the three-hour drive, the physical activity itself will kill me if we don’t slow down.

Around the corner of an old brick building, he releases me. I double over, panting. It gives me great pleasure to see him do the same.

Once my breathing slows, I straighten up and spin around. “Everything looks so old.”

---