The Liverly

PART TWO: THE NIGHTMARE

My eyes creak open, the crust around them sealing them shut to the point that I almost give up and go back to sleep. It's so tempting to do that instead of facing reality. I've been awake for a while now and haven't moved because that meant dealing with life, but now I need to pee, and I can't avoid it anymore.

Bright lights blind me, and I take in my new surroundings while squinting. I'm in a large room with three walls of windows with some sort of lattice over them letting in the soft light of the sun. The far wall is covered with curtains. Where the curtains stop in the center is a hallway. In the far corner away from me is a table with a desk beside it, both pushed up against the walls and framed by the windows behind it.

A man sits at the table, pencil in his hand, papers across the table. He's obviously older than me, maybe in his thirties, with bright, short red hair and pale skin. He slams his hands down on the table and curses loudly. I recognize his voice. It's the same man from before. He's the one who grabbed me, who kept me from Caleb—

Caleb.

My heart explodes and tears stream down my face. I grab the pillow behind me and sob as quietly as I can into it, praying the stranger doesn't hear me. The chair creaks back, and I hear footsteps as the guy walks toward me. The bed bends under his weight as he sits down next to me. I don't move and my crying stops, but I don't look up at him.

"I, uh, I'm sorry about your boyfriend," he says slowly, his voice thick with an accent I can't place.

"You left him to die," I mumble into the pillow.

"What? I can't hear you with that pillow in your face."

I throw the pillow at him with all of my might and feel something in my left shoulder pull wrong. Ignoring the pain, I scream, "You left him to die!"

He half-dodges the pillow, but it hits him on the side of his head, and he grabs it as it falls and lifts as though he's going to throw it back at me, but he stops mid swing. His eyes glitter angrily, and his mouth moves but no words come out. He breathes in and out a bit and looks at me with a dark look and says, "He was already dead."

"No, he wasn't!" I scream. I reach for the pillow, but he gets up and holds it back. "No, he wasn't! You didn't bother to check. You just left him there, and he's all alone. He's all alone..." I break off and start sobbing again. My shoulder is screaming with pain, and my head is pounding.

The man tosses the pillow back at me angrily and stalks off without another word. It takes me a few more minutes until I stop crying and I'm breathing normally without hiccupping. I rub my face with my right hand, getting rid of tears. My left hand is basically useless, and I can't move my arm very well. I look down and see that there are bandages wrapping my upper arm to my body, pinning it in place. My shirt's underneath the whole thing, and it's still covered in blood and what looks to be vomit. My hands look clean enough, but there are dirty, dark red, almost brown lines under my nails.

Blood.

I hide my hands under the blankets and shimmy myself backward until I can prop myself up on whatever is behind me. All thoughts of going to the restroom are gone.

The man stands in front of a small fridge that's beside the desk across the room. He pulls out a can and some fruit and walks over to me. Standing a foot away from my bed, still glaring but the pure anger is gone, he tosses the fruit—an apple—which I miss, and it plops on the bed near my legs. I scramble to reach it and sit back, wincing at the pain in my shoulder.

"At least you can move without screaming," he says.

"What's wrong with my shoulder?"