Chapter 66

word count 1169

Jake Leichtenstein was in a nightmare one minute, one where he was being chased by ghouls, and in the next instant he woke up, totally aware of himself. Awake but in a dead weight sort of way. His eyelids didn't want to lift up as though they weighed a ton apiece, and his extremities were numb and only vaguely connected to his brain. His mind was sharp and clicking, but the rest of him, not so much. With a groan he managed to drag open his eyes and look.

With all the tubes and needles pasted to him, and an oxygen mask, it was difficult to turn his head. He ripped off the mask with one hand and managed to shift around enough to confirm he was in a hospital and being dominated by machines. He closed his eyes and tried to think. How did he get here? Then he remembered Sadie, and the image of that trollish woman brought everything back. She did this, beat him to a pulp. He struggled, tearing an IV off his wrist to get both hands free and felt his face, swollen and warm, and painful to touch. The bitch! She did this. He needed a shiny object to look in. He had to see his face.

Grunting, he threw off all the probes and tubes holding him back, and sat up to swing his legs around to hang over the edge of bed. Taking a deep breath, next he dropped his feet until they touched the cold tile floor. Then he lifted his body off the bed to stand upright. An attack of vertigo sent his head spinning. Leaning back on the bed, he took another deep breath and gathered what resources he had to try another step. Success! Taking a few more small advances, he made his way to the bathroom doorway. Leaning against the door frame, he propelled himself forward to grab onto the sink to keep from falling. Once there, he could see his face in the mirror.

The image looking back chased the next breath right out of him. Good Lord! Two tiny dark eyes glared back at him, terrified eyes, nested in mounds of red, raw flesh and blue-black bruises. The bitch! What had she done? He didn't even look human, more like some kind of blobby alien thing in two-bit horror flick.

It was then a realization hit. That day crazy Sadie had the blond kid in her cart. While yours truly had ended up in the hospital, there was a chance cops came along with the medics and had put two and two together and were onto him. He couldn't afford to wait around to find out. He hobbled out of the bathroom to find his street clothes. The sooner he was out of there, the better.

By the time the nurse made her rounds, he was gone.

***
Adam Miller was unhappy at home. Since his mother died and his house burned up, everything was tinged in a strange nervous energy. He felt like he couldn't get sound footing anymore. Everything that had been normal was gone. He didn't know what to do in the new house with the new housekeeper and his same, old mean dad who was now more moody than ever. That, and he smelled beer on his dad's breath a lot lately. That frightened him even more. If there was one thing worse than a violent man, it was a violent drunk. Who knows what could happen when a drunken fool started swinging? Could there be any controlling him? How could a drunk know when to stop, or could he even see who he was swinging at? It was with great relief he came for a sleepover at Elliot's house, to get away from it all. He finally felt safe.

He found Elliot to be the same as always. They'd hardly closed the bedroom door before the kid had a razor blade out, fixing to cut himself.

"Dude, aren't you afraid you're gonna hurt yourself? Or maybe someone will notice the scars?" Adam asked, eyes wide while he watched another slice go down across creamy flesh making rich, red blood spurt up from the wound.

"I don't care."

"What do you mean? If your mom or dad see this, I doubt they're gonna like it. I'm just sayin'..."

"They're too busy yellin' at one another to notice me."

"I wish I had two parents around even if they did yell at one another. I miss my mom."

"I'm sorry, Adam. I didn't mean to make ya sad." Elliot turned his attention back to another slit in his skin. "Man, this is a rush." he murmured. Satisfied, he finally laid the blade aside and blotting away the latest squirts of blood, he rolled down his sleeve.

Adam had noticed Elliot always wore long sleeves now, even in summer.

"Did you ever think of running away?" Elliot asked, wiping the blade clean.

"Yeah, I hate it at home." Truth be told, he thought about how he would like to run away all the time.

"Me, too. Remember I showed you my mum running to your dad at the funeral. I think they may be a lot more than friends, or at least my dad thinks so. He yelled at her about your dad the other day. He yelled about that undercover guy, too. I think my mom is what they call a whore, whatever that is. My dad called her that, a whore."

"Geez, I didn't know something was going on with my dad!" Reflecting on it, Adam realized it provided even more reason to hate his father, liking other women too much. His poor mom. Adam was more glad than ever he ground up that oleander and put it in his dad's mayonnaise jar. He did it again when they moved to the new place. It gave him a lot of pleasure to do harm to his father, to make him sick. Maybe he would die.

"So, let's run away! We don't have to take it anymore!"

"Where would we go?"

"Anywhere we want," Elliott said. He got up and rushed to his dresser. Pulling open a drawer, he extracted a box, next reaching into his pants to produce a tiny key. He stuck the key in the lock and lifted the lid to reveal a stack of bills, mostly 10's and 20's.

"I've been saving my allowance. And sometimes I swipe money from my parents' wallets when I think they won't notice. My mom is drunk a lot, so she doesn't know."

"Wow! We're rich!" Adam said.

"Listen to that!" Elliot said. "They're at it again!" Raised voices emanated up from downstairs. "They're fighting! After that, my dad will storm out of the house, and my mom will get drunk as a skunk. That's when we make our getaway!"

The next morning when John called the boys for pancakes, no one came.