D-dead…
“Walker—”
“Oh my God…”
Everything goes gray and dizzying with white noise static. Everything except for the red. There should be more of it, like the man was already mostly… drained. His body is ashen and stiff. He’s been dead for at least two hours. There is red on his shirt, where he looks to have been stabbed in the heart, and a long, clean, thin cut is sliced across his throat. His collar is caked in brownish red too. Flaky. Drying. There is too much of it but still not enough.
Where did the rest of all that red and brown go?
Theblood…
Darkness seeps into the static and I’m falling, unable to stand, unable to breathe. Something catches me, sits me down, lays me against a solid surface at my back, but I can’t see anything but the darkness now. I’m detached from my body, and I can’t… I can’t fuckingbreathe.
My inhaler is forced past my lips and a puff expelled. I try to gulp it down, to let it ease open my air passage. It helps, but I still… I-I still can’t… Ican’t—
“Walker, it’s okay. You’re safe. Just breathe. No harm will come to you, I promise.”
Trey’s voice is deep. Steady. Comforting.
But he’s lying. He lied to me.
He killed that man.
“Shh… you are only harming yourself by panicking.Breathe. I am not going to hurt you.”
But he could. He could. He could so easily hurt me with me half-passed out on his hotel room floor, in the little hall between bedroom and bathroom, with a closet he stuffed a dead body into!
I know I need to calm down. I haven’t had a panic attack like this in so long, and the last time it meant an ER visit. I can’t risk that. I can’t trust that Trey will call an ambulance when his hotel room is a murder scene.
Oh fuck.
Oh fuck, fuck,fuck!
I love and hate how the mostly inaudible whispers from Trey and the slow soothing circles of his hand tucked behind my back help bring my vision into focus again. Colors return. The presence of his other hand gently cradling my neck helps too. My chest is still tight, but the more I force myself to breathe in and out, the easier it becomes to feel normal.
Except that I’m naked. And Trey is naked, kneeling beside me. And there is a dead body in the first stages of rigor mortis staring blankly at me from half a foot away!
I try to scramble away from it, but not yet able to get to my feet, my only option is moving closer to Trey. He wraps me in his arms and pulls me against him. It helps but itdoesn’tbecause he is what I need to escape.
I look past the body out the hallway toward the front door.
“Don’t try to run,” Trey says, his voice different with those words, emptier and cold. Oh, fucking just get me out of here! “You have seen dead bodies before. This is no different.”
This is vastly different! A dead body at work, while always tragic, is expected. That is normal! It isn’t murder! Even seeing attempted murder victims in the ER isn’t the same because then I hadn’t just slept with their killer!
“Walker…” Trey says my name in a low rumble that should ratchet my terror, but it is somehow sweet again and soothing. He is being so gentle with me like always, but I’m not immune to how being toldnot to runis a threat. “Do you need another puff from your inhaler?”
I hesitate, because I can’t think right now, not clearly, but as the panic tries to creep up again, I know the answer is yes. I nod.
Trey helps me to do so, and this puff is easier to swallow, to breathe it in properly so it can do its job. My head is throbbing from how close I came to losing consciousness. I maybe was unconscious for a few seconds. But if I can’t get my shit together and escape whatever nightmare I willingly walked into, what the fuck do I do?
“Would it help to know why I killed that man?”
For the first time since finding the body, I allow myself to look at Trey. He appears as calm as his voice sounds. Detached? Completely unaffected by what he did? “Wh-why?” I ask, notanswering if the knowledge will help this current FUBAR of my life, but I need to know.
“Because he deserved it. He is an abuser. An alcoholic. A philanderer. He doesn’t care about his illegitimate child other than how her existence might ruin his image if she is discovered. He has been this way for years, and he will not change. He very easily, however, could have gotten worse over the years. Now, he won’t. Now, his wife can move on, his mistress can find another pocket to pilfer from, and his daughter will grow up safer. Do you understand?”
Most of that was obvious from the little I saw of the man. If Trey stalked him since our first encounter, he must have learned the rest. But why? It still doesn’t answerwhy? “Why… why did you kill him for that?”
