Lead Me Out of the Dark

Inside Deck's Head

DECK

My worst nightmares were happening right before my eyes. I was turning into my mother. I’d touched Skye like my mother had touched me. She had moaned, probably in pain. Then she’d been right in the middle of asking me to stop when the nurse interrupted. I wanted to hit myself- no, I wanted to cut myself. This time, though, I wanted to cut myself until I bled to death. I wanted to watch as the last signs of life faded from my body.

I answered the phone dully, expecting Linda. I almost had a hernia when I realized it was Tiffany.

“Deck, how are you?” She gushed. I almost vomited.

“Tiff, now’s not really a great time,” I shot back. I hoped the use of her nickname would make her feel slightly more charitable towards me, but it wasn’t helping.

“I know where you are,” she said. NO SHIT! I wanted to scream. “…and you should know I have a very interesting video of us.” My blood ran cold. No. She had to be lying. What we had done… she’d promised to keep it a secret! That little bitch. I regretted what we’d done even while we did it. That was one of the reasons why I’d cut myself afterward. I slammed the phone down. My hands were shaking. I was weak, pathetic, disgusting.

“Don’t let that number ever call here again,” I gasped to the nurse. She looked up, surprised. It was Petra. I turned numbly, beginning to walk away. She jotted something down. I could only see the header of the sheet. It said something like: DO NOT CALL LIST.

“You hold yourself right there, young man. I’m not done with you.” Petra declared. I winced, knowing Petra was a force of nature. I wouldn’t be able to avoid her, so I decided I’d tell her. I trusted her enough. Petra led me to my bedroom, keeping the door slightly open so that the staff would know she was in here with me. I sat on my bed and buried my face in my hands.

“Boy, you best be telling me everything.” She declared.

“I don’t know if I can!” I screamed, standing up and throwing my hands in the air. Petra wasn’t fazed.

“Own up to it. I won’t judge.” That was all it took for me to spill my guts to Petra. I wasn’t sure what it was about her that made me trust her so much. It was one of those instinctive things, I guess.

“I hooked up with this girl named Tiffany, and she just called me. I hooked up with her just so I could see if… so I could see if it was like when my mother… Every guy I know talked about it like he’d done it, and I’d already… you know, because of my mother, so I wanted to see why they thought it was different with a hot girl. I tried it but it was disgusting and horrible and I regretted it even while I was doing it but just like when I was a little boy, I never told her to stop. Now she says she has a video of the two of us and that’s not even the bad part.” Petra had a stony face on. I couldn’t read her emotions.

“Get on to the bad part, then.” She said, but her tone wasn’t impatient or angry. It was casual, her tone lifting slightly higher at the end. I began pacing back and forth. This was the part that killed me. I hated this, so much.

“Skye and I… we kissed right before I got admitted here. She didn’t pull away but then she sat on my hips and I flashed back to some memories of my mom...” I couldn’t help trailing off every time I mentioned her.

“Anyways, today, Jackie accidentally spilled apple juice spilled on Skye’s shirt, so she went to go change. Only, when she walked away, I realized she didn’t have any clothes, and I did, so I got a shirt from her in my room. I knocked, and she said come in, so I did, and Skye was pulling off her shirt, but she was facing the other direction. She turned around and saw me and she blushed so hard… Anyways, I saw these scars on her back, and they reminded me of the ones on my face.” Petra nodded. She already knew about the scars. She’d been one of the nurses to do the body check on me the first day I got here.

“So I walked over to her, and she just stared at me and crossed her arms. She didn’t look mad, or afraid, or scared, so I asked her who did that to her and she said her dad. Then I hugged her, and she relaxed against my chest, and seeing her naked made something snap in me, I guess. I don’t know. I just wanted to kiss her scars and make her pain go away, but then I was touching her… er, stomach… and it got heated. She said, ‘Deck, please,’ but before she could finish her sentence, room checks happened and she put her shirt on and I left ‘cause I had a phone call. Skye was going to tell me to stop. I’m turning into my mom. I touched her and she didn’t want me to. Why the Hell would I… What the fuck is wrong with me?”

“Deck Harries!” A voice yelled, but it wasn’t Petra. I looked up, and Skye stormed into the room like a hurricane. She said something to Petra and Petra left to sit outside. Skye slammed the door shut so hard I winced.

“How much of that did you hear?” I asked. I had trouble controlling my tone but somehow, I managed to keep it fairly disinterested. Her eyes were wild.

“I don’t even know where to start with you, Deck!” She yelled. She completely ignored my question. Then the anger was gone so quickly it was like magic. “Why didn’t you tell me you flashed back to your mother instead of leaving and suffering in silence?”

“I didn’t want you to know why my mom did to me. It was horrific,” I said. That was the truth. I didn’t like telling anyone. I didn’t like reliving it.

“I understand that. That’s why I don’t tell people about my dad,” she said quietly. Of course, that only made me want to hear more about her father, but I didn’t say anything. I was a morbid human being. Then again, I suppose my mother made me that way. Or maybe I was just naturally sadistic. Skye looked down and straightened out her shirt. It was my shirt. She looked great in it. She had this habit of messing with the hem of her shirt whenever she was nervous.

“When we were… in… well, when you were kissing my neck,” Skye began. She looked so flustered that if I wasn’t feeling so shitty, I would have been amused. Her cheeks grew bright red. “I wasn’t about to say stop. I was about to say, ‘Deck, please don’t stop’.” I’m pretty sure my jaw became unhinged and fell through the floor into the ninth circle of Hell. That had been what she was about to say?

“But I walked in on you naked! I just started kissing your back!” I protested.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing. If I didn’t want you in my room I would have screamed or something,” she pressed. She shrugged.

“Jesus help me,” I muttered, falling backwards onto my bed.

“I feel like we’re going in circles,” Skye mumbled. She came to sit at the edge of my bed. She was picking at the edge of her sweatshirt. Her pink and blonde hair was askew, and her eyes were bright. I knew she wanted to talk about something serious when she gave me that pensive, lip biting expression.

“Whaddo you mean?” I asked. I combined my words slightly. I wasn’t sure why.

“You kiss me or you touch me, and then you push me away and we aren’t friends anymore because you assume things. Then we become friends again through some extreme effort on my part and then we touch again and the cycle starts all over,” she huffed, crossing her arms indignantly. The movement made heat rush to my cheeks, remembering her half naked in her room… I shook the thought out of my head. Bad Deck! Bad dog! I nodded slowly.

                “So what do we do about it?”