Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 125465 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 627(@200wpm)___ 502(@250wpm)___ 418(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125465 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 627(@200wpm)___ 502(@250wpm)___ 418(@300wpm)
I can’t get out of my room this time to help him. I try the door and jiggle the handle as hard as I can, but it’s useless. The door is locked.
Fear pounds at the back of my mind. Dread. I can barely move. I’m so scared. I wish I hadn’t woken up—but the baby. The baby is so loud and louder all the time. There was no sleeping through it. I can imagine the red face and the tear-streaked cheeks.
Why so much screaming?
It doesn’t take long to get an answer.
Because there are more screams—so many more—and from grown-ups. There are heavy footfalls outside the locked door—people running and voices raised in shouts. Angry, scared shouting, too.
Now I don’t know if I want to go out there or not. Except the baby needs help, and I’m the only one who ever cares.
It’s dark and cold, and why is there so much screaming?
The floor shakes, and dust drifts down from the ceiling. Now I’m really scared. Scared enough that it feels like I might pee my pajamas. I scramble back to my bed and dive under the covers, but they don’t help. I don’t feel safe.
Why won’t somebody help me?
The bed’s shaking when I open my eyes to find myself in darkness again. Still. It’s shaking because I shook it. I am trembling, and there’s a cold sheen of sweat covering my skin. But it’s not the cold that leaves me shaking.
It’s always so damn clear. Vivid. That dream, which I now realize, was indeed a dream. How much is a memory, and how much is a figment of my imagination? I’ve never found out for sure, and I doubt I ever will.
My heart thuds in an alarming rhythm, my blood racing, my breathing hard and fast. My skin’s about to split open so I can crawl out of it. That’s how it feels. Like I have to go, get away, get out of here. Like I can outrun what’s tearing me apart.
Remember. River’s voice rises above the fading screams from the nightmare I can’t escape. Remember what they did to us. Remember where this all started.
Normally, I’d shrink away from the sound of him speaking in my head. It’s bad enough my brother plagues my waking hours, constantly pushing and more intense every time we speak because we’re coming close to the final phase of the plan. I feel it. I know it.
And I don’t need to be reminded since I already have enough on my mind, like the girl still sleeping soundly beside me. She hasn’t so much as flinched since I woke up.
The sight of her and the sound of her soft breathing goes a long way toward calming what’s left of the lingering aftereffects of my nightmare. The tension eases, and the dread quiets.
She shifts a little, one hand sliding up until it’s beside her face on the pillow. The angry welts on her wrist are a grim reminder of what happens when I’m not careful. My temper is too easily lost. I’m embarrassed by how little it took to spark frenzy in my gut.
Usually, I can control it or at least hold it back until the storm passes. It’s become a habit over the years. A very necessary one.
But never more necessary than it is now. When she’s here. I can’t risk hurting her—the thought alone is enough to leave my heart aching. Because I have hurt her. The evidence is in front of me. The marks on her wrist tell me I left the restraints on her too long. I have to be more careful.
I reach out, longing to touch her, but stop short at the last second and pull my hand away. I’d risk waking her, but I don’t know if I can stand what I’m sure I’ll find when she looks at me.
Wariness. She’ll try her best to move past my shameful actions, the way she did before we went to sleep, but I see it in her eyes. A flicker of worry. The impulse to shrink away from my touch.
I did that. It’s my fault. Can I undo it?
One thing is for certain: I can’t lie here anymore, beating myself up. I know better than to think I’ll get back to sleep. I’m lucky if I catch a few hours at a time.
And when I do manage to sleep, I end up in the nightmare again. The dark room. The locked door. The screaming baby I can’t reach no matter how I try.
By the time I’m in the living room, with the reminders of real life all around me, the dream has faded completely. I can pretend it wasn’t such a big deal now, distracting myself by checking my email. Immersing myself in anything I can to avoid remembering the cold dread of knowing something terrible is happening and being powerless to stop it.