Page 158 of Pierce Me

‘Just gum,’I had shrugged, laughing my ass off.

She had taken a piece and had put it in her mouth carefully. I’d watched, completely mesmerized. Completely in love with her every movement.

But I didn’t know that she had never seen gum before. That she really didn’t know what it was. She got addicted to it after that. I used to bring her sticks of strawberry-flavored gum and she would chew on it and say her dad wouldn’t allow her to have it at home.

I never questioned her. It seemed to be one of those things.

Her dad wouldn’t let her have it. Whatever. Dads are weird like that.

Her dad.

Except her dad wasn’t her dad. He was Solomon, the man who had kidnapped her and was keeping her his prisoner.

I’m being violently sick again. It chokes me and I cough and fight for breath. Jude swears loudly and holds me up, yelling for help. I remember how I almost hit him two days ago, how mad I was at him. And now he’s holding me up, my entire body pressed to his, as if he’s my brother, more than my brother, as if he’s my everything.

“Sorry,” I murmur, between heaving for breath.

“I got you,” he tells me like I’m five years old. “I got you. You’re ok.”

I am not.

There’s this ringing sound in my ears that suddenly covers the reporter’s voice. I can’t hear what the idiot is saying on the screen and I get up to turn up the volume, but the room takes a dip to the left. The next moment, Jude is screaming his head off far away and I can feel the carpet on my cheek.

Oh, wait, he’s not far away. He’s leaning over me, yelling at me to “stop watching, stop watching it now, Zay!”

Lou and Miki burst through the door, frantic. They circle me, dropping to their knees on the floor around me, but they can’t do anything to help me.

“What’s wrong with him?” Lou asks, panic in her voice.

“Is he dying?” Miki says, ever the tactful one.

I can’t answer. Yes, I’m dying. What’s wrong with me? Everything.

From the floor, I turn my eyes to the screen.

Jude brings his hand in front of my eyes to shield them. I bite his fingers.

They’re showing Eden, ‘Edie’, again on the screen, and I can’t look away, even though the video somehow seems to be sucking the air out of the room. Whatever. I don’t need to breathe to survive. I need to stare at this screen. At what the screen is showing.

Eden.

My Eden.

As she was then, as she was when she was mine.

It’s just a video of her, but it’s enough to stop time.

To stop the air from moving in my chest.

To stop the entire world.

She starts talking and it’s hard to understand what she’s saying, because my ears are ringing. She’s quickly replaced by the reporter who flashes a trigger warning on the screen: ‘The following is not suitable for minors and might be disturbing content for adults as well. Extreme viewer discretion is strongly advised.’

Then Eden, in her calm, beautiful voice, proceeds to explain how Solomon called her his ‘pet’ and how he treated her like one, most days making her eat off a bowl on the floor that had her name written on it and making her sleep in a–

“Turn it off.” Is that my voice? It sounds strange, off-beat. Destroyed.

The sound stops. Then I’m stumbling to my feet dizzily, heading for the bathroom again, but there’s nothing left in me to come up. I just flop down on the floor, arms gripping the toilet. Jude follows, his footsteps soft on the carpet. He grabs my shoulder and I fight him off. He won’t let go.

---