Helena Hunting - Inked Armour

“It used to be that I couldn’t get to you. Now I can, but when I get close enough to touch you, you disappear. Then there are other dreams that are more memories than anything. I can’t get them out of my head; not when I’m sleeping, not when I’m awake. I feel like I can’t get away from it anymore.”

I stroked his cheek with the back of my hand. It was awful to see his subconscious playing on his fears.

He was silent for a moment before he said softly, “What if something happens to you? What if there’s nothing I can do to stop it? What if someone takes you away from me again?”

I snuggled deeper into his arms, trying to comfort him with closeness. “No one’s going to take me away from you.”

“But you can’t know that. Even if you promise you’re going to stay, even if I believe that, something could happen to you, and then where would I be? Alone again. I’ll be alone and all I’ll have left are these fucking nightmares. My head is too full. I can’t—I can’t—” His panic took over.

During the initial months after the plane crash, panic plagued me like a ghost. That helpless, out-of-control feeling that at any moment the thing I needed most would disappear. Back then, it had been the medication. Now it was him.

I peeled his fingers from the glass in his hand before he shattered it with the force of his grip. Then I straddled his lap to wrap myself around him. He clung to me as I whispered reassuring words. We were so similar in our pain. If only we could cancel each other’s out.

Five days. That was how long the sleepover boycott lasted. Yet even with Tenley in my bed, I couldn’t shake the nightmares. They were worse than ever, but at least with her next to me the content of the dreams didn’t include her.

Something in me had snapped. The wall I’d erected had come crumbling down, and I couldn’t get it back up. All the things I never wanted to remember about my parents’ deaths were resurfacing with a clarity that woke me in the night, leaving me sweaty and shaking.

It was six in the morning. Tenley was asleep in my bed. I should have been there, too, but it was pointless when all I did was toss and turn. Instead, I sat on my couch in the living room. The Christmas tree Tenley and I had put up earlier in the week blinked cheerily from across the room. We’d decorated it together with the ornaments she brought over, and the predawn glow of the flashing white lights was a bitter counterpoint to my somber mood. My laptop was open on the coffee table. I’d been scanning the same articles over and over, looking for some seed of information. Anything to help make sense of the memories I couldn’t reshelve in the Do Not Enter section of my brain.

I couldn’t ignore them anymore; the memories had holes I wanted to fill. So much about that time was vague, except for the week prior to my parents’ murder. My actions then set the wheels in motion.

My mom knocked on the door to my bedroom. I shoved the porn mag under my covers and touched the mouse on my laptop. The banal essay I’d finished three days earlier for my Man and Society class popped up on the screen.

“You can come in.”

She poked her head in the door. “We’re on our way out.”

“Okay, cool. You look nice.” I said it not just to suck up, but because she did. She was wearing a red dress. Her dark hair was pulled up, away from the delicate features of her face.

“You don’t think it’s too much?”

“Did Dad say something?” Leave it to him to make her second-guess her choice minutes before they had to leave.

“No, no. I just wondered if I should have gone with black.”

“Red is better. Makes more of a statement.”

I grinned, and a genuine smile lit up her face as she smoothed her hands over the skirt. She was soft around the edges, the way a mom should be. Not like those over-liposuctioned Stepford types she’d be with tonight. Guaranteed they would all be in black, or some animal-print monstrosity. Thank Christ I was too old to be dragged out to those boring events.

“Are you guys gonna be late?”

“We’ll be back around midnight. No friends in the house while we’re gone.”

“Sure thing, Mom.”

“I’m serious, Hayden. No friends. Your father will sell that car, and you’ll be taking the bus until you can afford to buy your own.”

“Okay. No friends in the house. Promise,” I said to fend off the coming lecture.

“If you’re going out, lock the doors and be home by ten thirty. No later.”

“Sure. Have fun.” I hit a couple of keys on my laptop to make it look as if I needed to get back to work.

She glanced around my room. “I’d tell you to clean your room, but that would be pointless.”

Dad called for her from the bottom of the stairs, and her heels clipped on the hardwood floor as she turned to leave.

“Hayden?”

I looked up.

“I love you. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah. Of course. I love you, too, Mom.”

My father called for her again, impatient this time.

I waited until the car pulled out of the driveway before I called Damen to pick me up. I’d lost the keys to my car two weeks ago when some chick I picked up puked all over the backseat. The keys would be mine again when I coughed up the cash for the detail job. While I waited for Damen to arrive, I downed half the mickey of vodka a girl from my part-time job had bought for me.

My dad had long ago locked up his liquor cabinet due to the number of times I’d raided it. I checked my wallet. I’d already burned through my paycheck and was down to my last ten bucks. I headed to my parents’ room and lifted the painting from the wall to access the safe hidden behind it.

I punched in the code and smiled as the release latch gave way. My mom’s best jewelry and my dad’s rainy-day money were stashed inside, along with some bank shit. I lifted a couple of twenties, shoved them in my wallet, and locked the safe. I only felt a little bad about taking the money. I’d put it back when I got paid at the end of the week.

“Look at you, Mission: Impossible,” Damen said from the doorway.

I dropped the painting on the floor. The corner of the frame dented the hardwood. “You scared the shit out of me! How the fuck did you get in here?”

“The front door. I knocked first.”

I frowned. My parents usually locked up when they went out. I hung the painting on the wall, tapping the edge until it was perfectly aligned. A scuff mark marred the edge of the frame that hit the floor. I rubbed at it, but the mark remained. Hopefully my dad wouldn’t notice.

“What the hell is that supposed to be, an angel of death?” Damen asked, eyeing the painting. It was an angel rendered in shades of red.

“Shut it. My mom painted it.”

“It’s pretty fucking weird.” He picked up a diamond earring my mom had left on the dresser, rolling it between his fingers.

I grabbed it out of his hand and put it back. “Don’t touch anything. My dad will notice if something’s been moved.”

“You need to chill out. Come on, the bitches are in the car.”

“Oh, yeah?” I scanned the room to make sure nothing else was out of place. “Who’d you bring this time?”

“Some randoms. Don’t worry, there’s one for you.”

I grinned. “Let’s roll.”

Damen grabbed the mickey from my hand and polished it off as we booked it down the stairs. I locked the door and checked the planter for the spare key before I followed him to the SUV parked down the street.

Damen was a few years older than me. He ran a tattoo shop call Art Addicts downtown where I got my eyebrow pierced. I’d gone back a few times with friends and discovered he had a side business of the less-than-legal persuasion. He had hookups and seemed to know a lot of skanky girls. Those traits made him an appealing acquaintance.

Some loser I didn’t know was sitting in the front seat, staring out the windshield. I opened the back door and a cloud of smoke poured out. Two guys who looked vaguely familiar were in the middle with a chick I’d seen at the tattoo shop squeezed between them. She looked at me and then over her shoulder at the two girls in the very back. I didn’t recognize either one. They both had on too much eye makeup. The fake blonde was busy hauling on a joint. The real blonde was putting on lip gloss. I climbed back between them.

“One of those is for me,” Damen said as he pulled away from the curb.

“Is that right?” I put an arm around both of them. “Which one is mine?”

“Me,” they said at the same time.

“I’ll just keep them entertained until you’re ready then, yeah?” I called up to the front.

“Not too entertained. I’m not into sloppy seconds.”

Music blared through the speaker system, making further conversation impossible. Not that talk was necessary.

It was twelve thirty by the time I got home. I was wasted. And high as a kite. My parents’ car wasn’t in the driveway so I assumed they weren’t home. I was wrong. They’d parked in the garage. My dad was sitting on the stairs when I came in, his tie loose around his neck, his shirt untucked, the top two buttons undone. He was calm. Which meant he was really fucking mad.