Barbed Boys

Chapter 12

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The only thing I could focus on as I made my down the hall that Bomber had showed me was the warm sensation of blood running down the shell of my ear. He'd cut me. He'd made me bleed and it stung, but the sting of shame hurt more. It burned my cheeks and my eyes as the realization of how stupid I was sank in. Because Bomber was right. I had begun to trust him, trust that he wouldn't hurt me, that he could protect me. At some point I had come to separate the man who plagued my nightmares from the man who smiled at me with lips of ballet flesh and spoke with he prose of poet. Except they were the same man and I was not his main priority in life or in less. I was a means to an end, a way to get paperwork of some kind from a guy I knew next to nothing about.

The trail of red that traced the column of my neck proved that. Still. A part of me couldn't help but be grateful for him. I'd needed that dose of reality. I'd needed the tremble of fear to fill my veins. Bomber was not my bullet proof vest against the bullet of his brother. He was just as scary, just as dark even if his features were lighter and he flashed his teeth more.

I came to a stop outside the door. It was worn and the paint was flaky, just like everything else in this dump of a house. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. It didn't take long for the images to wash over me. I remembered waking up nauseous and disoriented, handcuffed to a dead radiator. The way my mouth was dry and cottony and the burn of the vomit as it came up and contaminated the already sullied room. The fear I had felt at the site of Bomber standing in the doorway and my distrust at the water he offered me. It made my hands shake and my heart race, but it was grounding and it forced my embarrassment and shame to the back of my mind to replace it with cold hard terror.

Deep breath. In, out. In out.

This was it. I was going to really meet Lethal. So far, most of my interactions had been with Bomber and he had always suggested that I should be more afraid of his brother than of him. From what I understood, Lethal thought of me as expendable, untrustworthy. I needed to change that if I had any hope of ensuring that they wouldn't dispose of me the moment I helped them get what they wanted. Despite my most recent realization, and slap of reality, I wasn't stupid. I knew whatever they said, there was no real guarantee that I wasn't some loose end they'd have no problem tying up once this was all over.

Just as I was about to open my eyes and knock I heard the click and switch of the door opening. The soft brush of displaced air against my face. And then darkness. It pushed at me from all angles like a malignant embrace. It was my imagination, the personification of the aura of the man I knew stood in from of me.

Slowly I opened my eyes and looked up into cool, black depths of unexplored oceans.

"I thought you might stand there all day." Even his voice was different than Bomber's. Harsher, deeper, as though he used it less. Or perhaps he'd just been born with gravel in his throat.

When I didn't say anything in return he sampled turned and made his way over to the lonely desk in center of the room. Like everything else it was old and worn, but at least it looked clean. There was a laptop open on it and a few files stacked up on one side, a cup with pencils and pens on the other side. The walls were stripped of wallpaper leaving nothing but yellowed glue and exposed moisture stains on the cracking plaster. Over in the corner, where a floor lamp was plugged in I noticed the dewdrop shape of an air freshener. So Bomber had scattered them around the house...

"Sit." he nodded towards the two chairs that were placed in front of the desk. Besides the lamp and a small bookcase to left of the door they were the only other pieces of furniture in the room.

Slowly I made my through the doorway, bringing the door shut behind me, and reluctantly perched upon the cold plastic of one of the chairs. I locked my fingers together and placed them in lap, swallowing the lump in my throat and met his sharp gaze.