Page 58 of Master of Lies

I hear water running in the bathroom as I get closer. It roars in my ears like an oncoming train. The floor is flooded. Tinted with pink. I wade through it, ankle deep, running, splashing. The bathroom seems endless. I finally find him curled up on the ground, covered in blood.

Mickey’s eyes open as I approach. He lifts his head, trying to speak, but just a garbled cawing sound comes out.

I fall to my knees as he gestures toward his face, the finger spiraling. Then he makes a frustrated gesture with his hand, one that says, “don’t you understand me yet? What are you, thick?” He points at his face again. And again.

Now he was holding a blank plastic mask like the one Boer had used. The roar of the falling water gets louder, like a massive waterfall. It’s getting deeper, and not pink anymore. Red. A lake of blood, heaving waves, lifting Mickey’s body, sweeping him away. Surging around my knees, my thighs. Sucking and pulling at me. The mask floats on the surface, bobbing and swaying.

I turn, and see a masked Boer blocking the bathroom door. He holds Freya in front of himself like a shield, one hand between her legs, a knife to her throat, the one I threw at him. Freya is dressed like Sandee, her tight sweater stained with blood, her skirt rucked up over Boer’s hand. Her eyes are full of terror. Boer is laughing.

Boer pulls off his mask. Underneath, he has no face. Just a bloody skull, exposed muscles and tendons. Round, lidless eyes, a grinning, lipless mouth, wide open and still laughing, as the knife slashes Freya’s throat. Blood spurts—

I jolted bolt upright with a sharp gasp, heart galloping.Fuck.

Freya sat up next to me. “What?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Bad dream,” I said. “Routine for me. All those combat tours. Don’t worry about it. Go back to sleep.”

She didn’t move, just put her hand on my arm. She could feel me vibrating from the adrenaline. “Jed,” she said softly. “Please.”

“I’m sorry I woke you,” I said. “Just let me be. Go to sleep.”

“Tell me the dream,” she insisted.

“Why? So both of us can be creeped out?”

She made an impatient sound. “I’m creeped out already, so I really don’t think your bad dream is going to move the dial. A burden shared is a burden halved, right?”

“No. It’s a burden doubled, and I don’t see the point.”

She sighed in frustration. “Jed, just let me in.”

“It’s violent,” I said. “Blood and gore. You don’t need to hear it.”

“Yeah? Let’s have it. I’m down for some gore.” She repositioned herself so she was sitting crosslegged, facing me, tugging the blankets around her. I got a swift glimpse of her nipples peeking over the quilt. Just enough light filtered in from the kitchen to show the contours of her breasts, and the flinty resolve in her eyes.

It was a piss poor idea to let my bleak, blood-soaked dreams out of the the box where I hid them. Plus, she got her throat slit at the end of it. Real buzzkill, that detail.

“You won’t like it,” I told her. “It doesn’t end well for you.”

“Duly noted,” she said. “I’m not afraid of a silly old dream. Tell me.”

Aw, what the fuck. Be it on her head. “It started out in prison,” I said. “With Mickey, dying in the bathroom.”

Freya put her hand on my hand, and I almost jumped, pulling away. The toxic violence I’d seen could transmit to her, like electricity. “He wasn’t supposed to talk to me, so they cut out his tongue. To make a point. Among other parts.”

I felt her flinch, just barely. “God,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.” She grabbed my hand again and squeezed it, not letting me pull away. “Tell me the rest of it.”

So I did. The whole disjointed mess came out. Mickey, on the floor, dying. Making that gesture with his fingers, pulling on Boer’s mask, but I’m just too fucking thick to get the message. The tidal wave of blood. Boer blocking the door with a knife to her throat. The mask coming off of Boer’s naked skull before he slits her throat. All of it. It was a relief to let it out. It immediately lost some of its power and dread.

Afterward, Freya just sat for a long time. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking in the dim light. She looked like a statue. Calm, remote, thoughtful. She wasn’t letting go of her grip on my hand, and I didn’t want her to.

Then she spoke up. “The part with Mickey was just like you remembered it in real life?”

“Except for the waves of blood, and the mask,” I said. “But in real life, he wrote a name on the wall. In his own blood. Joe Grifo, and then the letters O and R.”

“Does that mean anything to you?”

“Not a clue. Now let’s forget I said anything and go back to—”

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