Aced

THIS CAN’T BE REAL. I know it can’t be.

She’s dead.

Kelly proved it to me. So why is she calling to me from inside that room? The one that fills me with such a vile, visceral reaction. Bile’s in my throat. My mouth feels like the morning after I’ve drunk a fifth of Jack. My stomach a bath of acid.

Run, Colton. Put one foot in front of the fucking other and escape while you can.

“Colty, Colty. Sweet little Colty,” she says in a singsong voice. One I’ve never heard her use before. It calls to me. Draws me in. Makes me want to see and fear to know.

Goddamn ghosts. Even sound asleep they come back to haunt me.

I clear the doorway, the smell of mildew and must hits my nose and pulls the nightmares I thought were dead and gone from my mind. The problem: they’re not nightmares. They were reality. My reality.

And when I look up I’m knocked back a step to see the woman in the rocking chair. I know her but don’t remember her looking like this at all: dark hair pulled back, a pink tank top on, and the softest expression on her face as she looks down at the baby cradled in her arms. She’s sitting in the stream of moonlight, a smile on her face, and the baby’s hand is wrapped around one of her fingers.

“Colty, Colty. Sweet little Colty,” she sings again and all I can do is blink and wonder if what I’m seeing is really real, if it really happened, or is just a figment of my imagination.

That’s not me. Can’t be.

This is me.

I pat my chest. See the glint of my wedding ring against the light. And yet I can’t help but stare at my mother looking so real and normal and . . . nice. Not the strung-out, crazy-haired, high monster who used to trick me, trade me, and starve me for her own benefit.

“Stop calling him that. He’ll get a complex.” A deep voice to my right startles me. I catch a glimpse of the man in the shadows: tall, broad-shouldered, dark hair, jeans hanging low on a shirtless torso.

But I can’t see his face.

My heart races. Is it my dad or the monster?

Is he one and the same?

The bile comes up—fast and furious—and I throw up all over the carpet as the thought rips me apart in a way I never thought possible. Was the monster my dad?

I throw up again. My body rejecting the idea over and over, dry heaves of disbelief, but no one in the room moves or notices me.

It’s a dream, Colton. A goddamn fucking dream. It’s not real. It is not.

And yet when I look up again, the man coming out of the shadows seems different, more familiar than moments ago, but it’s my mother’s voice that whips my head her way.

“Acey, Acey. Sweet little Acey.”

No! I scream but no sound comes out as she looks up at me. Her eyes are bloodshot and ragged now. Her mouth painted red like a twisted clown. She starts to lift the baby, my son, up and out to the man in the room.

“No!” I yell again. I can’t move, can’t save him. My feet are stuck to the floor. The darkness of the room is slowly swallowing me whole.

“Yes,” the man growls as his meaty fingers reach out to take Ace from her.

The hands. Those hands. The ones that fill my fucking nightmares. The ones that stained my soul.

I fight against the invisible hands holding me in place. Need to get to him. Have to save him.

And then he steps out of the darkness and into the light. My shout fills the room and hurts my ears. But no one looks. No one stops. It’s the monster from my childhood’s life taking my son, but he has my face.

My face.

My hands.

I’m going to abuse my son.

Spiderman. Batman. Superman. Ironman.

I’m shocked awake from my struggle when my ass hits the floor as I fall out of the hospital recliner. I lie where I am for a few seconds in the room’s silence. My breathing harsh. My mind fucked. My heart racing out of control.

Fucking Christ.

I close my eyes and let my head fall back onto the floor. My body tense, mind reeling. Thoughts, images, emotions crash together like the rubber debris scattered on the topside of the track: always where you’re afraid to touch them for fear you’ll spin out of control.

But this time I need to touch them. Need to know what has scared the fuck out of me more than the normal nightmare.

It doesn’t matter because I’m already spun. Crazed. There’s only one thing I remember and it’s the one I wish I could forget: I’m the one who hurt Ace.

Or rather, I’m the one who will hurt Ace.

Get a fucking grip, Donavan.

Shake it off.

It was just a dream.

Then why does the fear feel more real than anything I’ve ever felt before in my life?