Kick (Songs of Perdition #1)(2)

There were people around me, but I felt more than saw them. Intuited their presence. How long had I been walking through plasma? Where was the other side?

The last thing I remembered… What was the last thing I remembered? It was Deacon in the kitchen of number three, sweatpants and no shirt, with his arms out. He was saying something. Pleading. He was telling me I had to kick. Kick? What did that mean? And was it the kitchen or the stables? Whatever space he was in was plagued by his raw pain. He was mad and resigned at the same time, two things I’d never seen from him.

Was that the last thing I remembered? Whatever it was must have landed me here.

There had been a dream with red and blue lights.

There had been a party, possibly before the lights, maybe after. I was on my hands and knees. I was high, so high, flooded with endorphins and knocking around subspace. My ache was dulled to pleasure, and I wanted something desperately.

I couldn’t put it all together. Maybe I’d gone just a little heavy on the flake. Deacon would be pissed. I’d apologize. We’d do a knotting, and I’d get better.

The last thing… Deacon had gone away. He’d put his face in my neck, and I was surrounded by peppermint and sandalwood. He’d gotten in the limo, and I watched it glide down the hill and past the gate of the private road, splashing in the rushing water of the drainage dip. Maundy Street. Left turn past Debbie and Martin’s place, and away.

Christmas. He said he’d be back for Christmas.

The house had seemed big, and I’d thought about spending the week at home in Bel-Air. Avoid Debbie. Avoid Martin. Their eyes and their temptations pressed against me. I could handle it. I could handle anything. I was strong.

Was that decision even worth remembering? What was the last thing that had happened?

I only remembered stuff from long ago. A knotting, the last one, my favorite. Deacon had laced me to hooks in the ceiling with patterns of knotted rope, turning my body into a work of art. I was upside down, naked, falling from the sky, and he crouched on the floor, caressing my head and shoulders. I always felt at peace when he knotted me, but that time, when he became part of the work, my very identity and all the anxiety that came with it melted away.

Something about a horse, but I must have been dreaming. I hadn’t touched a horse in months. Years, maybe.

And the last party. The knots of skin and fluid.

A stinging drip in my nose.

When? Yesterday? Last month? Never?

Now. Here. In Westonwood.

Fuck.

two.

Having eaten a meal in a tiny pale grey room, and walked down wide, pale grey hallway, showered in a white-tiled stall, and gotten into a stainless steel elevator, I found the office jarring. It could have been my headache that grew more potent by the moment, or it could have been the presence of actual colors.

Pale blue curtains drawn against the rain pounding the window. Green lantern. Rich brown wainscoting and desk. Burgundy carpets. I squinted. Even the light from the desk lamp felt intentionally painful.

“Thanks, Bernie,” Dr. Chapman said from the corner of the room.

He wore a grey jacket and a sage-green sweater over a white shirt. His voice didn’t hurt my head, though when Bernie, the orderly, clicked the door behind him, I felt as if someone had hit my temple with a crowbar.

“Headache?” the doctor asked. I nodded, and he sighed. “For what you pay to be here, you think they’d be on the ball with the analgesics.” He slid open a desk drawer and removed a bottle of over-the-counter medicine. “Let me get you some water.”

I held out my hand. “Don’t need it.”

He shook two into my palm. I kept my hand out then spread my fingers wider. He shook out two more. I kept my hand out.

“That’s plenty,” he said.

I threw them to the back of my throat and swallowed. One caught on the back of my tongue, releasing a wave of sour and bitter, but I took it all.

“Would you like to sit?” He put the bottle back and slid the drawer closed.

“Is that a question? About what I like?”

“It’s a suggestion phrased as a question.”

A padded leather chair in soft green and worn dark wood sat to my left. I touched the brass studs that kept the leather attached and sat down. Doctor Chapman sat behind the desk, settling his right elbow on the arm of the chair. I didn’t know if I was supposed to start with questions about what had happened or why I was there. I didn’t know if I should rattle off a list of what I remembered and didn’t, or ask just how much trouble I was in, or when Deacon was coming to get me out.

But he saved me the trouble. “Can you tell me the last thing you remember?”

I stiffened. My mouth locked up. I couldn’t tell him. “When can I leave?”

“Do you think you should leave?”

“Do you think I should leave?”

“It’s more important to know what you think,” he said.

“It’s more important for you to know what I think, and it’s more important for me to know what you think. So you first.”

He rubbed his upper lip with his middle finger, an odd gesture, then dropped his hand. “You’re here for your own protection, at the great expense and effort of your family. I have seventy-two hours to report on whether or not you’re a danger to yourself or others.”

“How am I a danger?”