Flesh and Blood

Chapter 12 - The Truth Never Hurt Anybody

Not very many people knew about Luke's past and he intended to keep it that way. Luke was never going to have a normal life, especially after choosing to be with Damien, but he could at least pretend to have a normal upbringing.

Sometimes it was difficult to pretend though. Sometimes his past snuck up on him like a tightened noose around his neck. That's why he had a therapist. And unfortunately, he didn't have one anymore.

He considered talking about it with Damien. He probably wasn't the best person to talk to about personal issues, but he was the only person he trusted. And yet, he couldn't bring himself to talk to him because trusting him wasn't the problem; it was finding the right time. Or perhaps finding the courage.

"Hey Damien?"

Damien looked at him with a steady gaze and open ears.

I should tell him, I could tell him, I would tell him.

But he choked.

"Do you think we could survive a zombie apocalypse?"

Damien blinked slowly but did not change his expression. "If the zombies decomposed at a normal rate, then yes."

Luke scoffed, seemingly disappointed in Damien's answer, but mostly disappointed in himself.

***

It took a while for Luke to build up the courage to stop asking stupid questions, but just when he was ready to talk to him, Damien decided to get one motel room. And there was no way in hell he was going to talk with Helen in the same room.

They were going to spend a few nights in that single motel room and one night he discovered the fucked up origins of Helen and Damien's relationship.

He couldn't even remember the context of the conversation. But he clearly remembered what she said so frankly, so simply to him.

"Yeah, I asked Damien to kill some of my ex-friends."

She didn't even look up from her magazine. She didn't even blink her eyes.

He felt his heart sink when he glanced at Helen. She was just as fucked up as Damien but she simply lacked the portfolio.

Then he felt his heart press further into his stomach when he glanced at Damien. He wasn't just fucked up, he was also a liar. Somehow Luke had deluded himself into thinking that Damien would never lie to him, but of course he did. Maybe he never directly lied to him, but he always, always omitted the truth.

He never told him about how he and Helen met, he never told him about that guy in the woods, he never told him about that girl that disappeared after the soccer game.

Luke had been ignoring it for so long, distancing it so far from himself, pretending that it had nothing to do with him, but he couldn't do that anymore. If he kept running from it, it would crush him.

***

Luke never had problems with falling asleep. He had problems with nightmares.

The night his uncle died, he dreamt about watching him die over, and over, and over again. He dreamt about standing there, just fucking standing there, as he watched his uncle die again and again and again.

His nightmares were always like this. He would dream of something terrible happening over and over again and he would do nothing to prevent it from happening again and again. His nightmares were constant cycles of terror until he woke up.

But this nightmare was different.

He was at home, his childhood home, watching t.v. with his parents sitting beside him. He looked up to smile at them, but when they smiled back, their faces began to melt, then their bodies began to melt, until there was nothing left but a brown, soupy mess, pouring off the couch. He tried to jump away, but their mess was already beginning to flood the room. He tried to run towards the door, but he tripped and fell into the flood that had already reached his knees.