Take Me With You(44)

But logic has no place in my life any longer.

We break the silence with our moans and groans. He rocks in and out of me as I dig my fingers into his taut back. And it's only a few seconds before I am trembling underneath him, tears mingled with shower water so that I'm not sure if I'm still crying.

He lets out a growl as he comes inside of me. Every time he does, it's like he's injecting me a little more with his sickness, making me a little more like him.

He stays there for a moment, hovering over me. I reach out to touch a tendril of his hair. To prove this really happened, that the man behind the mask exists. He lets me for a beat, but then he comes to his feet, standing over me and under the shower head which is now slowly dripping over him like a leaky faucet.

He walks out and I crawl towards the door on all fours, hoping he'll slip and switch on the light so I can see his face, but he just opens the door. The sound of crickets floods the cabin. A hint of moonbeam sneaks through the doorway so I can make out his movements. He simply grabs the heap of tattered clothes on the floor and his boots, holds them at this side, and walks out into the wild, dripping wet and naked.

Then he latches the door.





It's noon, but the house is dark. All the shades are drawn because mom doesn't want visitors. I'm still in pain. They put new skin over the skin that was stripped from my side and it's still healing. It hurts when I move. Mom, dad, and the doctor explained to me that they had to put me in a coma. I always thought comas were bad. I didn't understand why they would give me one on purpose. But they explained it let my brain rest and heal because it was swollen. I guess I'm glad I slept through a lot of the pain. My cheek was torn open, the skin hanging off my face. Scoot said some of the kids threw up when they caught up with the accident.

The man ran over a cop's kid. He's in big trouble now.

They wouldn't show me my face at the hospital. On the way home, I tried to sneak peeks at my reflection in the car window, but the glare made it hard to see. When I got home, I begged Scoot to bring me a mirror. Mom had covered them all with blankets. He snuck in at night and brought me a hand mirror. It was pretty with vines carved along the handle and up the frame. I saw the reflection. A red, raw scar running from my ear to the corner of my lip. The stitches were still in and it made me look like Frankenstein’s monster.

They tell me it will heal a lot, and by the time I am a grown up, it'll be a line, not red and swollen like it is now. But all I can imagine is what the kids will say when they see me. At least I was normal on the outside before.

There's a knock on the door. Mom comes rushing in and puts her finger up to her lips. She closes my bedroom door so it doesn't make a sound. She crouches as she walks past the window and over to a chair beside my bed. She's pale and sweaty and her eyes are always moving around, searching for something.

When I got home last week, a bunch of people came over with food: cakes, pies, casseroles. I was excited to have all these sweets. But mom kept inspecting them all. She said she found things like bugs, and poison and that she wouldn't let anyone hurt me ever again. That we can't trust our neighbors anymore. They tried to kill me once and she won't let it happen again.

The doorbell rings again and mom jumps in her seat, like someone just set a firecracker off next to her.

“Mom, why d-d-do you think they want to hurt m-me?”

“Because you're going to be someone special when you grow up and they are trying to kill you before that happens,” she whispers, rubbing my hair away from my forehead. “I finally understood. W-w-when I saw you at the hospital…” her voice starts to shake. Sometimes when people cry, they sound the way I always do. “All the tubes and you were so still…” Her tears fall onto my bed sheets. “I understood. The teasing. The way they lured you out there. It was a set up.”

It's easy to believe what she's telling me. That they don't want me because I am better than them. That I will be famous one day. That this was a way to take me down, the way that The Joker is always trying to take down Batman.

“I'm going to protect you. I won't leave your side again. No more trips to the hospital for me. They know I know. And they are trying to make me forget so that I won't protect you.”

The knocking and ringing stops. She turns to the window and peeps through the shades.

“See? Someone left something at the door. I'm going to get it and inspect it. They keep trying to sneak in poisons.”

“But ma. D-d-dad is a cop. He arrr-ested the man who r-ran me over.”

She smiles sweetly, grabbing my hand in hers. “Oh my little Samuel. That's just his job. Your daddy is one of them too.”





I don't startle anymore when I wake up and find Night sitting in the corner of the room, watching me in silence. This time, it's late, the skylight above still black from the night sky. Usually I sleep through his entrance. He can be silent when he wants, but tonight, I am restless. Once I see his silhouette, watching me, I can't even entertain going back to sleep.

It's been weeks since he chased me through the black woods, tackled me to the mud, and attacked me. Weeks since he tenderly carried me back to the cabin, showered me, and then made the pain he caused go away on the wet shower floor. That hasn't happened again. No, the sex has been rough, as if he's trying to erase that night from my memory. As usual, my compliance is rewarded—with orgasms, food, clean clothes, fresh water. I never quite know what is coming my way…a knife held against my throat, being bound or blindfolded, gagged, or sometimes it's just raw. He comes in and he takes, he gives, and he leaves.