Page 12 of Sick Like Me

Caelus

Lungs wheezing with inhales of dense smoke, I hack a cough.

“Em,” I choke, smoke tasting like coal on my tongue, extinguished fire in the back of my throat. “Emilius?”

“Cal,” my eldest brother responds with a wheeze.

Prying my streaming eyes open, I can see nothing but heavy grey clouds filling the car. My restraint is still strapped across my chest, but I’m hanging, and I know we’re upside down, the car flipped.

“Fucking hell,” my brother groans, just before his hand lands on my shoulder, giving me a gentle squeeze. “You alright?” he coughs, his fingers tight, it helps me relax a little, confused and dazed, but it’s like my brother’s touch pulls my soul back into my body.

“Yeah,” I huff out, my nose filled with soot. “You?”

“Well, I’m not having a fucking picnic,” he chokes out with a laugh, the sound quickly strangled with a pained groan.

My fingers flex, uncurling and pressing against the roof. Turning my head, I look at my shattered window, the metal warped, bent, and see nothing but smoke billowing out of it and the dark night beyond. We’re on a residential street, and despitethere being only so many mansions set along it, it won’t be long before the police arrive.

Ozzie is in one of them.

This isn’t a coincidence.

My seatbelt is stuck, and it’s pointless to keep hammering at the button to release it.

“Emilius,” I start, choking and spluttering in my panic as more smoke billows from the crushed dashboard. “Can you get to your knife?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, rustling fabric, I can’t see him properly, but his hand drops from my shoulder and then it’s back, a metallic snick loud in my muffled ear. “You want me to cut you down.” he says without question, we’ve been in a position like this before.

Without responding, I press the flats of my hands to the ceiling, bracing myself for the seatbelt to disappear, readying to take my weight so I can crawl out of the window and get to my Little Ghost.

Whatever the fuck is happening in there, I can guarantee it’s worse than being blown the fuck up.

“Ready.”

The blade saws through the seatbelt awkwardly, the angle of Emilius’ hand twisted and difficult, and it feels like I’ll never get out, but then suddenly I’m free. And regardless of how prepared I am to tumble to the ground, or rather the roof, I seem to have no upper body strength and fall into a heap of myself.

“Jesus,” I hiss, untangling my long limbs and finding the jagged edge of the car window with my fingers.

I heave myself out, snaking my belly along the tarmac, coughing as I gasp, inhaling cold, clean air. My back heaves as I crawl around to my brother’s side of the car, my eyes watering so much from the smoke I can hardly see. Then two small feetappear in the corner of my vision, and a young girl drops into a crouch at my side.

Short blonde hair, round brown eyes, terror twisting her features, her shoulders tremble, and I’m reminded instantly of my girl.

“I’m Ostara’s sister,” she tells me, “let me help.”

I sort of collapse against the side of the overturned car, and she’s reaching in through my brother’s shattered window, murmuring things I cannot hear. My limbs vibrate, my muscles shaking, and my bones seem to throb with a confusing mass of pain and pins and needles, I can’t quite decide if I’m injured or just in shock.

My vision blurs and my heart thuds slow, and I think of my girl inside that house, with a man that ordered her to kill me. But she wouldn’t.

A smile lifts my lips, remembering her panic at the prospect, how she finally let me see her.

‘You’re the only person in the world who sees me.’

‘I never wanted to be seen.’

‘Not until you.’

I’ve seen her for too long, slowly getting closer, and then one day when I spoke to her, she finally responded, like she felt safe or trusted me. Perhaps she only replied to my incessant conversation because I was driving her up the wall.

I think of her breath against my neck, her lips on my mouth, her tongue tasting my skin, and her cunt squeezing my cock.

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