Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 98992 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 495(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98992 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 495(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
We aren’t fucking exhibits at the zoo.
We’re just human beings who need some help.
Or in other cases…just some fucking compassion.
The petite guide uses an access code to get us through the sliding door that will grant us access to The Lodge. There are security guards at both ends protecting patients from escaping and seeing their cold, soulless eyes judging me, daring me to make a wrong move, stirs the unfed monster inside.
Maybe I should.
Maybe I make to attack one and end this whole chess game charade shit.
Afterall, the PI caught me on a night where I had been staring at a single bullet in my motel room for what had to have been hours.
Maybe I should’ve ended it then.
Maybe I should end it now.
The next set of doors open on another whoosh sound redirecting my suicidal thoughts to the new exposed area. Unlike the rest of the property, it’s filled with colors and life. A fucking pulse beating and pounding and flowing freely from person to person. Tables contain people playing boardgames like Backgammon and Sorry. Hot orange and yellow couches contain individuals gathered together, sharing smoothies or milkshakes or frozen custard. Oversized beanbags are angled towards one another, allowing people to lean into each other as they laugh loudly. The entire room feels like a snapshot from an out-of-date sitcom trying too hard.
It’s fucking frightening.
And fucking infuriating.
This facade they’ve created to give the misleading impression that the visitors actually want you to feel as if you still matter to them, that you’re not some stigma in their otherwise healthy life, reminds me of the one my mother tried to create for me when I was younger.
This entire scene is an ode to my adolescence.
Ending it all is starting to sound really nice again.
The jittery brunette waves a hand at the table upon our arrival prior to silently dismissing herself.
Much like coming down here at all, I hesitate to sit.
To act.
To give a fuck when I am out of fucks to give.
In the months that I’ve been here, this is the first fucking time someone has come to visit me.
Honestly?
It’s the shit I expected.
My father, of course, pays the bill – just like he paid someone to travel across the country and hunt me like they were the second fucking coming of Liam Neesson from Taken. The bastard pays for things so that he doesn’t have to speak to me or interact with me or acknowledge that some of my shitty choices are because of his shitty actions while my mother insists that once her own life is back together that she’ll find the time to rehabilitate mine.
Ha.
There’s the type of bullshit tearjerker lines you find in the Real Housewives of Uselessville TV promo spots.
Once upon a time, I actually bought into that idea.
I mean…I really fucking did.
I even went so far as to believe her when she said she would do whatever she could to help get my feet back on steady ground because that’s what a mother should do. I believed her because I wanted something – fuck, anything – to hold onto at that point.
Back when I made the mistake of tangling myself up with the Dread MC for the cash as much as the fix.
Back when I was crashing college parties up north in Wisconsin at Vlasta University – a school I was never actually enrolled in – to sell prescription pills and pretend I was trying out for the hockey team to get my cock sucked by puck bunnies.
Back when I spent more time contemplating getting sober rather than slitting my wrists to never worry about getting high again.
Hasn’t been quite a decade since her rehearsed sob show she gave me, but we’re only shy a couple years of it.
Against my bitterness, I force myself to sit down at the table across from him. My eyes examine the different card games displayed on it yet struggle to ignore the aching memories of Pres’s love for them.
That girl loved playing cards.
I never knew if it was because her immediate family had a habit of getting together to play them once a week or because they played them at family reunions or if because she knew the likelihood of getting a bruise on her poor anemic body was slim to none, making it safer than playing sports. Hell, it could’ve been something else entirely. All I really knew about it back then was that she loved them, and they brought out a competitive side I got turned on to see. When she flexed her confidence, there was no keeping my cock from coming.
Cutting my eyes back to him is also done in silence.
Fuck, I’m not sure what I should say.
I didn’t ask him to come to see me.
And absolutely have no fucking clue why he would ever want to.