Playing for keeps

Epilogue

E A S T O N

I think I'm dead. Not really, but close to it.

There's nothing but darkness. I think my eyes are closed, but I'm not sure. Everything hurts, and that's when I'm sure that I'm not dead because you can't feel pain when you're dead, right?

My eyes are too heavy to open.

Come on, Easton. Open your eyes!

It takes me a second, or was it a minute? It could have been an hour. But when I do force my eyes open, I wish I hadn't, because thinking I was dead was much less scary than what I open my eyes to.

The room is cold. That's what I notice first. The second thing I notice is the chains around my wrists and ankles, chaining me to the bed I'm on.

Fuck.

The room is dimly lit by the lamp on the bedside table. The shadow of a bug flying near the lightbulb is cast onto the dirty wall. The walls have all different kinds of stains on them, a dark splatter on the wall to my right looks like blood, and it makes my stomach drop and my throat close up.

During my short training with Zach, in a hypothetical situation, he asked what I would do if I was ever kidnapped. I said panic. He said to never panic because it causes you to think about anything and everything else instead of finding a way out. Never panic.

So I panic.

A cry gets caught in my throat as I try pulling at the chains around me. The pain in my head starts to get worse, a pounding at the back of my skull, from where whoever took me hit me.

"It's not going to work," a calm, but familiar voice says from the corner of the room, the part of the room that's cast in shadows.

I freeze, muscles tightening as my throat grows dry. My eyes are locked on that corner of shadows, willing that taunting figure from a nightmare to go back to whatever hole he crawled out of.

A tall, lean body steps out of the shadows, clutching the collar of a golden retriever by his side. The pounding in my head gets worse as I struggle to process the guy in front of me and a sliver of a smirk on his face.

"Luca?" It comes out barely a whisper. My eyes start to sting as I stare at him, my friend, or who I thought was my friend.

"You really shouldn't be so trusting, Easton," he smiles casually, stepping forward and letting go of his dog, Murphy. "I mean, look where it's gotten you." He comes to stand next to the bed, and I struggle to shift away, the metal of the chains clanging together an indication that I have nowhere to go.

Luca reaches into his pants pocket and pulls out a needle, a clear liquid inside.

"No," I beg, the tears starting to fall as I pull against the chains at my wrists, but it's no use. "No, please! Don't do this," my voice trembled as I struggled to get away just an inch.

Luca reaches out and grabs my arm closest to him, bringing the tip of the needle to my forearm. "Sorry, Sunshine," is all he says for the sharp tip of the need jabs into my arm.

"P-please," I'm panting now, my mind growing fuzzy again. Unlike last time, instead of darkness, it feels like a cloud I'm drifting away on and I relax into the bed, Luca's familiar, smiling face above me. "Wh-w...Why," I manage to get past my lips, lips that feel slack. My arms feel heavy, but also numb, like they aren't my own but somebody else's.

I feel Luca's hand brush through my hair, and it's soothing. I close my eyes and revel in the cloud that I'm lying on. It's like I'm drifting away on a river, calmly listening to the birds chirp and the leaves in the trees rustle in the breeze.

A voice echoes in my mind, around the river I'm drifting along. "You'll find out soon."

My body falls into the softness of the clouds, drifting along the river among the chirp of birds, and at the end of the river?

I think I'm going to meet my end.