Starlight

16. Needle Full of NyQuil

"What do you mean, she's gone?" Jamie asks. Ben sits on the coffee table and faces her on the adjacent chair.

"I mean, I come home from my job, and she was gone. Her phone and everything are still there, she didn't just go to a friends house. I let a day go by, but yesterday she just wasn't there." He looks concerned. Whatever concern I would've had is gone with his accusation. "I saw a loose dog running around. Looked like a wolf or something. Probably terrorizi-"

"What does that have to do with anything?" I spit. Chase was out yesterday.

"Just the fact that there was a possibly man eating beast running rampid, and now we're in the middle of a mini blizzard. Bit worried," he says.

'You didn't see her while you were out yesterday, did you?' I ask Chase, looking at him expectantly.

He shifts his weight next to me. 'No, I didn't see anything,' he says. "Why would you think we know anything?"

"You," Ben stands up to be taller than Chase, "you shut your face. I need help, you're the only ones I can turn to," Ben looks at me.

"We don't have to do anything to help you, so I suggest you watch yourself," I spit. "Why do I even care?"

"Because you care about me." I stare him down. Yeah.

"What gives you that impression?" I ask, feeling my face heat up. I don't think I do?

"Because you let me in. If you didn't care, knowing you, you would have let me freeze. You asked what the dog had to do with it, you showed interest in someone I care about, for my sake. You don't want me to suffer." Is it just me or did he just tell me something I didn't already know? Didn't I want to make him suffer?

"No, I don't want you to suffer; just like I hate to see homeless puppies-" Homeless wolf puppies. Rose. Kenai. Sure, I saw bloodied dead bodies, they hadn't meant much to me. But what if they made an escape plan too....

°°°

Rose and Kenai had made a plan the night Chase and I had made ours. Kill the nurse, spill the blood and smear it over themselves. They knew that the lab had list experiments before, Rose's girlfriend being one of them. They didn't bury the bodies for risk they would be dug up and used to expose them and their experiments.

Stress balls pressed against the arm will slow a pulse just enough to be undetectable, not enough to kill you. Almost everyone knows that. The mortified doctors at the cremation morgue got murdered. They made it out alive. Must be living as dogs out on the street and terrorizing people for food, and soon enough, shelter.

Things are going to get difficult.

°°°

"If you care or not, it dosnt bother me. Do it." Ben is on very thin ice with me.

"We don't have to do anything. Well keep an eye out, but we won't do anything. Its not my problem."

"As of right now," he says moving over to me,"it is your problem." He lurches toward me, catching me by surprise. His hands close on my throat, and flings me on the coffee table. "You'll do this, or I swear to god, I will ruin you." He hovers over me, no pure intentions.