Page 2 of The Sound of Him

Nolan is touching his throat again, stroking the place where his collar used to rest. I don’t do the same. My own body became my collar a long time ago, worse than anything our masters could have scrounged up. It has spikes that dig and electricity that shocks and a latch that tightens until I choke. It’s all in my head, but that doesn’t change anything. It just means that taking off the piece of leather didn’t free me.

Free. So many people have tossed around versions of that word tonight. Promises of freedom. Declarations that we're free.

Maybe it’s fitting that I can’t say it. Maybe freedom is only for the others - the ones who escaped from that world tonight withthemselves intact. The ones who aren't broken or hollow or dead inside.

Freeis a word for real people. It belongs to someone who feels alive. Someone fully human.

Maybe I’m something else now. My body doesn’t work like it used to.

Idon’t work like I used to.

But if they’re all free, then what am I?

Nolan holds me close in his bed, both of us ignoring the other one across the room. We’ve always preferred to stick together. It feels familiar and safe in a way nothing else about this experience has. He’s plucking absentmindedly at the tag of his stuffed frog that was in his welcome bag. I have my own stuffed animal tucked beneath my chin, a blue bunny that’s so, so soft. The softest thing I’ve been allowed to feel in years.

The house falls quiet slowly, like the noise is trickling out the way water leaks from a faulty pipe, or like the way my words always seem to slip between my fingers when I reach for them.

It’s a while after the silence settles in that I manage to work my fingers into the shape of one of the few ASL signs he taught me from his childhood memory. I jumble it with some of the letters from the alphabet too, trying my best to make my mind and my fingers cooperate long enough to get the gist of my question across. We’ve done this enough times by now for Nolan to understand what I’m asking. I want to know if he believes this is real. If he believes we’re actually safe.

He says, “Yes, I do,” but his voice trembles just as badly as my fingers had.

I don’t ask him anything else after that. Not about the future, or if we can ever truly escape the horrors we’ve been existing in, or if happiness is even a possibility for us. I don’t think his answers would be the same as mine. I think for someone like him, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. He might be hauntedby the horrors of his past, but he’ll be able to stay in front of them. He hasn’t been infected like I have. He doesn’t have horror deep in his bones, ingrained in him forever. He isn’t broken. He isn't less than.

Nolan is one of the real people. He’s one of the ones who get to be free.

Nolan may be haunted, but not me.

I think maybe I’m just one of the ghosts now.

Maybe I'm the one doing the haunting after all.

The morning brings breakfast in bed from Nolan and gossip about one of the men in charge - Maison. He’s the older brother of Carter, the slave that our owner Nathan -or I guess… Travis?- had purchased all for himself not long ago. It had supposedly been for revenge. Turns out it was to save him, a favor for Maison because of their friendship. Because they’re teammates on the very same undercover operation that has us safely tucked away in some safehouse.

Because my life is apparently not just a horror show, now, but also some sort of whacky American version of a telenovela from 1983.

My mamá would be heartbroken.

Well, heartbroken and riveted, of course. She never could give up her telenovelas. Tuned in every night if she could. Recorded the ones she had to miss.

Nolan fills me in on what’s happened so far. There’s something about him and Maison and the kitchen. I try to concentrate, but his words start to spiral to mirror his own emotions and I can’t get a good hold on them. I can’t slow them down. They get tangled up in my head, wrap around my throat, pierce into my chest. The food I was trying to eat for him has turned to cement in my stomach. I can’t keep what he’s saying straight inside my head. I try to make him feel better, but I don’t think it’s working.

Nolan is falling apart and I’m useless.

I am so fucking useless.

“I don’t know how to be this person,” he admits.

Neither do I,I want to tell him.You’re not alone.

It feels important that I give him those words, at the very least. They’re right there in the front of my mind. I should grab them, share them, before they fade into the buzzing chaos. I know enough signs to get the point across. I know I do. I just need to find them where they’re lost among the rest of the mess, hiding, shadowed and afraid in the darker corners of my mind.

I manage to grab two and cling to them, forcing my fingers into the right shapes to sign,learn, then,together.

It doesn’t feel like enough, even as he smiles at me. Even as he agrees.

I wonder if it ever will.

Our welcome bags didn’t just have cute stuffed animals and snacks, but information about the safehouse, extra clothes, and appointment notices. Some of the overwhelming words last night were about appointments. About how they’d be scheduled in order of necessity. I don’t know when they evaluated us - before we arrived, obviously, since the cards were in the bags already.Maybe the agent who traveled with us sent in a report?I guess it doesn’t matter.