Page 22 of Ripple Effect: Ep. 1

“Move along now. Come back when you can cover the fees.”

* * *

Numbness is a strange sensation.

Not feeling anything on the outside, while feeling everything on the inside.

I sit on the curb of the Animal Control building, knowing that asshole clerk is watching me from his window, waiting for me to move.

My mind is blank. As if everything that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours completely wiped out my ability to think. I stare down at an ant, wandering the asphalt, looking like a lost soul crossing the desert. But even that ant has a better idea of what the hell he’s doing right now.

I don’t know what to do. I’m drifting through territory I’ve not explored before. I’m only seventeen, but the weight of the world presses down on me and I’m on the verge of cracking, breaking in two.

I’ll never survive these streets without Charlie. How many times has she scared off some creeper? Her very presence, as menacing as she looks, was enough to keep me safeguarded.

Now I’m alone. Truly alone, for the first time in my life.

And hungry.

When my pills run out, I’ll be as desperate as my mother, looking for her next high. With the heel of my hands, I smack my temples and rock back and forth. No, I won’t do it. I won’t end up like her. I refuse to become some death-bound junkie.

Can’t. Can’t do that. Need a plan. I need money.

I’ve no idea where I’ll get the money, though, and my stomach gurgles just thinking about it. I’d have to rob a fucking bank to find that kind of cash, and with surveillance and technology as tight as it is these days, not to mention my absolute lack of skills, I’d get caught.

A flash of memory hits my skull. The bag of money. Taken by the stranger at the abandoned factory. There had to be at least ten times that much in the bag. I pull the fifty in cash he left me, remembering the bag held stacks of hundreds.

Rob a serial killer?

That can’t end well. The guy spared my life, but that doesn’t mean he’d let me go twice. And he probably doesn’t even have the cash on him now.

But if he did …

I could get Charlie back. Maybe together, we could find Layla and lie low for a couple of months until I can get a job.

Do I want to have my stomach cut open? Burned alive with sulphuric acid? Is that worth it?

And what would Charlie suffer? They’d probably euthanize her for biting the guard.

Living on the streets doesn’t guarantee my safety, either. I could suffer worse things than that once the withdrawals kick in.

Maybe without the haze of the pills this would all make less sense, but at the moment, it’s a fantastic idea.

Because I know more about this guy than he thinks.

I’ve studied his routine for weeks and I know he’ll be at the diner in three days at approximately ten o’clock. I’ll have an hour to get in, look for the cash, and get out. Even if he no longer has it, he’ll never know I was there.

In and out.

The stranger’s words from before pop into my head.

Every decision you make affects every moment that follows, Dylan. Choose wisely.

Except this doesn’t feel like a choice. It feels like my only option.

I have to eat or risk starving to death.

I’ll need my pills or risk falling into a hellish nightmare that’d make me do something twice as desperate as robbing a killer.