Page 50 of Hold Me Down
What have you done?
Golden light flashes, bringing me back to that house… What will she think of me?
Ashia.
She’s home, unprotected and vulnerable.
My men’s screams fill my head once again, followed by hers. Something bad always happens when I’m away, and I’m not there… I scramble for my phone, squeezing my eyes shut to force the images away. The device slips from my hands, and I rake at the ground frantically, desperate to find it. Dirt and grass pierce under my nails, feeling like splinters from the wooden floors. It hurts. It all fucking hurts. I claw to find my lifeline as my head pounds behind my eyes.
Once the weight is in my hand again, I open my eyes to find her contact and yank the phone up to my ear. Everything stills around me as the phone rings once, threatening to play my death toll. When the line clicks, and her voice breaks through the fog, my heart stops.
“Hey, baby.” I gasp at her voice. My surroundings come back to life. The lights begin to flash again, the breeze whisps across my now drenched forehead, and the carnival sounds rush in my ears—bringing me to the surface once again. “You’re okay, Damien. Just breathe,” her soothing voice calls.
My chest heaves up and down, and my vision throbs with my pulse. I’m gripping the phone for dear life, unwilling to let it slip from my bloody grasp. I’m fucking losing it. It’s too much. The bodies lie in front of me completely still and unmoving, yet everything else is running at twice the speed.
“Tell me something you can feel with your hands right now,” she commands in the sweetest tone.
“What?” I can’t tell her. She doesn’t want to know of the blood on my hands or the men lying in front of me. Her mind doesn’t need to be troubled with my ghosts. Not yet.
“Tell me something you canfeel,” she requests again, a little softer this time. I can feel my fucking heart jumping out of my chest, my mind rolling, and the blood on my palms, but I don’t think that’s what she means. I throw my other hand up to run it through my hair, but the bottom is too short to grasp, and thatonly makes it worse. There are no fucking strands to pull. I claw at my scalp instead, desperate to feel the sensation, and the grit under my nails digs in further.
“Dirt. It’s cold and grainy.” I settle for that instead.
“Okay, good. What else?”
I shake my head and drop my hand, trying to focus on her voice. My hand rubs the ground, needing to wipe the blood away, but it only sends a tickling sensation through my limb. Blades of grass tickle the insides of my fingers, sending pinpricks along my arm and making me cringe.
“The grass. It’s long and cool to the touch… I’m trying to wipe my hand on it, but it’s not—”
“That’s great, baby,” she interrupts confidently and sighs, like she knew what I was going to say but didn’t want me to finish. “Now what’s something you can taste?”
Why is she asking me all of these questions? Does shewantto know what I just did? Is she trying to stir memories back up? She sounds so sincere. I don’t believe that she would ask if it didn’t have some purpose, but I can’t focus.
Taste. What can I taste? I run my tongue along the roof of my mouth, realizing how dry my throat has become. Saliva coats it as I swallow harshly, taking the rolling sensation down to my stomach.
“The air is thick and heavy, kind of like it’s about to rain. It’s almost salty, but I think that’s from my sweat,” I admit. She giggles, and that sound alone makes it easier to breathe. I take a full breath in, letting the humidity settle in my lungs as her humor dies down.
“Yeah, I think they were calling for storms tonight.” Her voice is plain, like we’re having any normal conversation and I’m not on the verge of passing out. “What’s something you can smell?”
“Besides the rain?” I inhale through my nose to pick something out, the most obvious hitting me first. “Blood…”
“What else?” she asks quickly, like flipping a page in a book. I inhale again, shakier than the last.
“Carnival food. Popcorn, maybe? No, definitely popcorn, and something sweet, like funnel cakes or fried Oreos.”
“Okay, just focus on that for a second. You like those.”
“You do, too,” I counter, but do as she says when she doesn’t respond. As long as this woman keeps commanding me, I'll do anything she asks. I continue smelling the air, trying to pick everything out and appease her. We saw a lot of different food trucks here, as well as the usual snack stands. Grilling meat permeates its way in, then a heavier scent of oil. “Yeah, there’s definitely a lot of deep-fried things here.” She laughs again, and I finally feel the whirling in my head start to slow down.
“What about something you can hear?”
“You mean besides your beautiful voice?” I ask bashfully, and I swear I can feel her blush through the phone.
“Yes, goofball. Besides that.” Her tone alone tells me there’s a smile on her face. I want to keep it there. Even if I can’t see it right now, I know it’s beaming. My chest warms just imagining it, easing the tension in my shoulders.
“I can hear screams—happy ones, though, like from the people on the rides. And there’s music, but not the good kind. It’s the creepy, stalker-clown, fair music.”
“Well, I would say that’s good, but I'm not so sure about that one.” She laughs,actuallylaughs. It’s real, coming from deep in her belly, and my eyes sting at the sound.
