Page 45 of Voyeur
“Come on, Em,” Conner says, lugging me off the floor of the bathroom as my mind works to discern what’s happening. Rolling my vision around the room, my eyes find a girl, bloody and nude on the cold floor next to me.
Conner’s trying to rouse me, tugging me to stand. “Come on, we got to get out of here!” Conner grunts.
Letting him pull me up, I turn and look down at the girl I can foggily remember trying to kiss before drugs took over. Covering my mouth, I gag before rushing to the toilet and throwing up enough alcohol to embolden anyone. And yet, I’d been full of drugs on top of it. I’m turning into my fucking brother. I swore I wouldn’t but look how fucking easy it had been.
Tears from the violent act of purging roll down my face, sliding to my chin and blurring my vision.
Conner scoffs. “Come on! We need to get out of here.”
I flush the toilet, surprised when it flushes. This house has been abandoned for as long as I’ve been alive.
Yeah, that’s what we should focus on.
Conner’s back to tugging on me, but my mind is buzzing with what to do. “We need to call 9-1-1, she’s really hurt,” I tell him, patting my pockets for my phone, surprised to find my pants on at all.
Why are my pants on?
How did I pass out?
What the fuck happened?
Drugs still hold onto me loosely as I work to find my phone. Conner spots it on the basin near the sink. Our eyes lock, but he’s quicker. He grabs my phone, pocketing it and keeping it away from me.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I ask.
“Keeping your stupid ass from fucking both our lives up. You’ll survive, you’re a Stanner. I’m not. Without you, I’m nothing, Em. Do you want me thrown into the system? Do you want me on the fucking streets?” he asks, face coiling with rage. He’s still high, as if he’d taken even more than I had. His pupils are fully dilated, and rage has him in its grips.
Do I? Do I want my only friend in this world, my only person, to be taken from me? No. But what I clearly did to this girl...it’s not okay.
“We need to call someone. We can’t leave her here,” I whisper.
He looks down at her, something crossing his face that makes him look like someone I’ve never met before. Only momentarily, there’s a monster that slithers under Conner’s skin, making him appear as another. It passes, and he nods.
“We’ll call your father when we get in the car.”
Conner tugs me toward the door, and I look back at the girl lying on the cold floor. Her body is brutalized, beaten, and used, and I’m in an identity crisis. I couldn’t have done that, could I?
Who am I?
Screaming from the other room makes Conner and I look at one another before moving out of the door and through the house.
Wes is on his knees, doing CPR on Declan, who’s staring at the ceiling above. He’s already gone, his dead eyes tell us that. But none of us move to stop Wes from trying to save him, trying to breathe life back into a corpse.
What the fuck?
Bile rises as I wake covered in sweat. I move to make it to the bathroom, but find I can’t move.
What the hell?
My eyes open, forgetting my need to vomit altogether when they open fully. I’m chained to a chair; the room is dimly lit and dank. A warehouse. I’m in some kind of warehouse. It’s cold, and the air is musty.
“What the fuck?” I whisper, looking around and seeing no one. I vividly recall falling asleep in the backseat of my car in the parking lot of The Bluefish, but I don’t remember making it home. My stomach reminds me how much I drank last night, and I fight to keep its contents where they are. Light peers in through a covered window. A tear in the paper that shows years of decay tells me it’s daytime. I should be at work. Someone’s going to notice I’m missing.
Someone will come.
Won’t they?
Who would come for a rapist? Who’s truly going to saveme?