Hitchhikers (Wolf Point #1)

-19-

"Why is this happening now?" I ask Lila after Bobby has begun snoring in the bedroom. My fingers scratch her velvety ears. "I'm safe here. I shouldn't be freaking out like this."

Lila looks at me. She's just a dog. She doesn't have any answers for me. I roll onto my side to stare at the television.

I shouldn't be afraid of those memories. My father is dead. I killed him. There was no way he could have lived through what I did, any more than that old man and his wife, or Paul the pervert, or any of the countless others I've woken up to find dead. I shouldn't still be afraid of my father.

I should be afraid of myself.

I still don't know what triggers it. I always had a feeling it was hunger, or anger. But it wasn't always. And it was only less likely to happen when I was feeling full and safe and warm. And it hasn't happened once since I've been with Lila, or this whole time I've been living here with Bobby.

It would be helpful to know what "it" is. Am I a psychopath? A multiple personality? Is a secret CIA program controlling my brain?

None of the late night reruns of Dr. Phil have cleared this up at all.

All I know is that it doesn't feel like a part of me that does that,

(the killing ripping apart eating thing)

more like a psychotic hitchhiker in my brain.

If I go home, and they are looking for me as a murderer, maybe I don't go to jail. Maybe my lawyer can plead insanity and I'll be in a mental hospital for the criminally insane.

I think I'd prefer jail.

It's not that I'm denying I have a mental disorder. It's more that I don't trust people. Especially doctors who'd want to drug me up and who'd probably only make it worse. I'd rather be in a cage than a straightjacket.

My two options – jail or hospital. Probably why I chose the open road instead.

***

This time when I begin dreaming I know it is a dream. My cousin Kayla stands before me in the white dress she wore to church on Sundays. We always went to church, my mother, Aunt Julie, Kayla, and me. My father and Uncle Red never came. Sundays were their hunting days, but even if they didn't go hunting they stayed at home rather than come to church with us. I hated those days. My father would see me in the suit and tie my mom made me wear to church and say things like, "One day you'll see dressing like a sissy ain't gonna make God love you."

Kayla's white dress has puffy sleeves and a white ribbon around the waist. Now that I see it on her, standing in the moonlight, looking fifteen instead of twelve, I realize that she hadn't worn that white dress for a least a few years before I left. It's a dress for a third grader, not the teenager wearing it now.

She's even wearing lacy ankle socks and black Mary Janes.

I stare at her from where I lay on the couch. I know she is a dream, so why bother getting up?

"There are things you don't remember, Danny," Kayla says. "Things you don't remember because you don't understand."

"Like what?"

She smiles at me. "Like what you are."

"And what am I?"

"You are a part of me," she replies. "As I am a part of you."

"What does that mean?"

"You need to come back," she says, not smiling anymore. She is starting to glow.

"Why? Why do I need to come back?" I cover my eyes with my arm. Her glow is becoming painfully bright. "The police will get me. They'll lock me up. I'm safe here. Why can't I stay here? I don't want the police to catch me."

"Then you will need to avoid the police. We need you back home."

"Why? Why?"

Because I can't see, I barely realize she is so close to my face until her lips are on mine. "You can save us all."

How? How can I save anyone, when I can barely take care of myself?