Reasonable Doubt ✔ | Open Novella Contest 2020 | Complete

Twenty - Colt

I jolt awake. Penetrating agony tears through my torso, crumpling me where I fight to stand. I need to run. Get away. I can't be here. I ain't letting him touch me again.

Collapsed back on what I realize is a bed roll I pant, quivering. Between the thundering of my heart and the fire in my chest, I can't get a full breath in. My surroundings come in slow and fuzzy, like adjusting the dial for a radio.

I'm in my apartment, on the mattress in the corner. Thin blankets tangle around my legs where I thrashed. The t-shirt is damp on my chest, sweat prickling on the nape of my neck.

Breathe.

I can't. Christ, it hurts. Ratchets my panic higher.

A jolly chiming comes from the milk crate serving as a bedside table. Half-comatose, I reach for my brick of a cell phone. Did an alarm wake me up?

No, a call. I poke the screen with shaking fingers. "H-hello?"

An automated voice. "Inmate Rios, Alejandro, ID r789670 is calling from Lebanon Correctional Institution. Press '1'or say -"

"Accept," I wheeze a bark.

"Connecting you with: Rios, Alejandro."

Breathe. Get it together. At this point, I ain't sure if I'll pass out from pain or hypoxia.

"Colt!" Alex's excited tenor comes through.

"Hey," I try for calm, don't want him fretting.

It doesn't work. He hears my harrowed breaths. "You okay?"

"Yeah." It's a lie. I feel like I'm about to crawl out of my skin. "I just - fuck."

"Colt, you're hurting." He knows just from my voice. "What happened?"

"I sat up too quickly. Broken ribs. I'm fine," I bite.

Alex doesn't believe me. I imagine those dark brows forming a scowl, lip between teeth. The look that says he knows something more is going on.

Rather than press, he murmurs softly. "How can I help?"

The tenderness in his tone mollifies some of the ache. I try to deep breathe, like the therapist taught me so long ago. Only I can't. Not without flaring the fractures. I need something other than agony to ground me.

"Talk to me," I grit. "Anything. I don't care."

He does, Latin lilt expressive and musical even through his concern. It's nonsense, jabbering about some soap opera character and their latest escapades. I focus on the tone, heedless of the words.

He's here. He's real. Not the monster.

Slowly, I'm able to breathe The apprehension eases. My heart ain't splintering my ribs further.

"...so now Maribel pregnant with Juanito's twin-brother's baby and is debating about telling him, since the genes are identical."

"Why do you watch that?" I manage to laugh.

"Because as fucked up as my life is, at least it's not that fucked up." He pauses for a moment before, "Colt, what happened?"

Convulsively, I rub my arms. Then scratch and dig them raw. Like I can somehow remove the blood on my hands.

"Colt?" He prompts again at my silence.

I remember how ashamed he'd looked, thinking he'd surfaced those memories. I can't admit that the wounds dehisce. That I have to sew them shut once more.