The Darkness Within Read online

  “I’m nobody’s girl!” I snap back at him. He stares at me with his brow furrowed and looking all kinds of stupid. “I will never be Matt’s girl but if that’s how you feel, you can leave!”

  Bowie

  Millie slams the door as soon as she retreats to her bathroom, so I waste no time whipping back the covers to reveal the true horror of the situation. When I see it, it hits me full force in the face. The small patches of blood on the sheet confirm the suspicion that just entered my head when I saw a small, red mark in between her thighs just now.

  “Millie!” I shout. “Millie, get out here!” I demand, jumping up and pacing over this epically fucked up situation playing out before me. As I could have predicted from Millie Thomas, the girl takes her damn sweet time before coming out wrapped in a towel and sporting a thunderous scowl. “Is there something you weren’t telling me last night?”

  I whip the cover back to reveal the stains on the bed, which she immediately glances to, but with little change to her features. She merely crosses her arms defiantly and remains tight-lipped, looking just as severely pissed-off with me as before. I grant you I shouldn’t have said she was Matt’s girl after what we just did. Especially after the asshole practically molested her last night. It wasn’t the smartest thing to say and I’m pretty horrified at myself for being so callous. It’s not my usual go-to after a night with a girl, but Millie Thomas has always defied the term ‘girl’ with me. Still, she has always been honest about her feelings towards my best mate, so it must have been like waving a red flag to a bull.

  “I thought you had been with that guy? With Gabe?” I ask, though her answer isn’t going to change anything. I still took something I shouldn’t have last night.

  “Gabe is my brother’s friend from football camp,” she confesses without a hint of remorse, “he was here to look out for me at Grant’s request. He pretended we were an item so bullies, like you, might leave me alone.”

  “You were a virgin?” I cry out in horror, with my hands automatically reaching up into my hair and my pacing becoming more vigorous.

  “It doesn’t matter!” she snaps and begins collecting up my clothes which are still lying all over her room from where we both threw caution to the wind last night.

  “Fridge, why didn’t you say something?” I ask her in some sort of outrage, though I don’t know if I’m aiming it at her or at me. “Why did you do it…with me? Fuck me!”

  I run my hands all through my hair as this all sinks in, throwing my ass back down onto the bed because the blood is rushing from my brain, just like it did last night!

  “Did that last night, so here,” she chucks my clothes at me, “you can get dressed and get out!”

  “Fridge?” I plead with her, knowing full well that I’m not handling this well at all but still cannot convince my brain to get back into the game.

  “No!” she shouts and points venomously my way. “You don’t get to call me that anymore. Now please, don’t be here when I come out.”

  She then hauls herself back into her bathroom, her hideout for one, slamming the door once again in the process. My stunned brain takes another moment or two to kick into gear, deciding that she is not going to come out until I leave and take my size eleven army boots with me. I’m reluctant to follow her orders, to leave her so angry after I just took her virginity, but it seems I have very little choice in the matter.

  It’s not my first walk of shame but as I pace slowly down her corridor, towards the stairs, I feel a heaviness resting on my shoulders. To make matters worse, her crazy friend, Mercy, appears in front of me with her red hair all over the place. Her sleepy yawn morphs into a horrified gape when she finally looks up into my face, with her eyes staring at me so judgmentally, I duck my head towards the floor.

  To my relief and utter surprise, given what a mouthy kind of chick she is, she says nothing. Instead, she pushes past and rushes towards Millie’s room with little grace or apology for it. I emit a long sigh, thinking how God awful I must still come across to people. However, this time, I’ll admit my reputation with Millie Thomas is very much warranted. With that said, I find myself creeping back to her room, peeking inside the crack of light where the door was only half closed in Mercy’s haste.

  “Millie!” Mercy gasps and lunges for her friend who is now lying fetal on top of her bed. My only saving grace is she isn’t crying, something I silently thank God for. No one wants to hear a girl crying after you’ve left her in the morning unless they have some perverted fetish for it.

  “Did you…?” Mercy asks suggestively, to which her friend cuts her off by nodding before she can even finish that question. “Oh, Millie! Why would you do that with him? He’s bullied you for years! He didn’t force himself onto you, did he?”

  After all our history, the mere suggestion that I would do such a thing has my hands balled into tight, angry fists, and my jaw locked painfully in fury. Fortunately, Millie shakes her head quickly but then lets out a long, heavy sigh, telling me she’s no happier about it.

  “Then why?”

  “I don’t know…because I wanted to,” she answers quietly, completely at odds over herself with it. The fact that she says she wanted to makes me feel a little better, though I have no idea why. “Because he made me feel things I’ve never felt before. Because I like him.”

  Her dams finally burst over her confession to liking the monster and I feel a clusterfuck of emotions. This wasn’t something I pre-planned or thought logically about; it just happened. A split-second decision to follow her through that fence panel last night, turning my frustration with her into something else. And now I’m left wondering how the hell I feel about Amelia Thomas, my little victim who I’ve been playing like a puppet for years. I thought finding out about Matt’s lies on Wednesday had fucked with my head, but now I’ve gone and multiplied it by about a billion.

  “Oh, Babe,” Mercy whispers, taking hold of her again. “I shouldn’t have left you! I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s not lost on me that the guy who has all these feelings for me, who is my best friend, does nothing for me, but the guy who has set out to hurt me over and over again…who hates me, is the one person who makes me tingle all over. Maybe I’m just fucked up! Self-harming or some bullshit.”

  She properly begins to cry, gut-wrenching sobs which travel right through my already muddled train of thought. All I do know is that I feel like the biggest douche alive. Everything she’s just said about me is right; I have always set out to hurt Amelia Thomas. I had my reasons back then, but now? I don’t know what I feel now.

  “Listen, I heard what Matt did to you,” Mercy says with caution in her voice, bringing back a whole new set of mixed emotions to the forefront of my mind. “That wasn’t right Millie. You do know that, don’t you?” Millie doesn’t respond, but her lower lip wobbles and she ends up sobbing against Mercy’s shoulder while her friend strokes her hair in slow, soothing motions. “You ok now?”

  “Yes, no…” she shrugs, “I’m sore.”

  She forces a laugh through her tears, but now I’m panicking that I was too rough on her. If I had known she had never done it before, I would’ve done things so differently. Hell, I probably wouldn’t have done anything in the first place…wouldn’t I? I can’t say I wouldn’t have because I remember wanting her so badly, it hurt.

  “I know I was just a warm hole to fill,” she mutters bitterly, staring into space as if caught in a trance of just as many fucked up emotions as I am. “I have no illusions that I meant anything more to Bowie Phillips. I just hope he doesn’t use this against me.”

  Her final words have me moving away, silently escaping the walls which are threatening to close in on me if I stay listening for any longer. It’s nothing more than my own form of self-harming. As soon as I hit the back yard, I high tail it out of there, cutting across the lawn and hoping neither of them is looking out through the window at my retreating figure. Thank God I’m heading over to Sam’s place for the weekend. I
need distance between everything and everyone in this place, especially Amelia Thomas.

  Chapter 16

  Bowie

  Matt’s already up, stalking around his living room like an angry bear, growling at anyone or anything that manages to get in his way. I make no attempts to walk in quietly, so I’m promptly met with a rage-fuelled set of eyes, a tightly clenched jaw, and all of his muscles set to fight mode. If looks could kill, I’d be ten feet under, battered, bloody, and very much dead.

  “Where the hell have you been?!” he scowls at me. “I got up and you were nowhere to be seen and now I see you coming back from Millie’s place?!”

  Mr Golden Balls doesn’t intimidate me in the slightest and his little temper tantrum only serves to make me feel a little less guilty for bedding his obsession last night. However, there’s no need to bring that sort of indiscretion into the public arena, so I deflect it with my usual couldn’t-give-a-shit attitude, one I wear so well.

  “Cut out the sulking, assface,” I mumble on a shrug, “I just went to see Mercy to get some info on how your girl was. You know, after you forced yourself on her?”

  Calling Millie ‘his girl’ brings an unsettling taste of bile to my mouth, as well as clasping for a nearby empty cup and crushing it with venom before throwing it into a bag. It’s the only thing I can think of doing to disguise erratic behavior.

  “Oh,” he says, sounding less surly and looking ashamed as he walks away to get hold of his coffee. “And did she tell you anything?”

  “Not really. Millie went to bed as soon as she got home.”

  Yeah, with me in it!

  “I gotta get over there,” he says gulping back his drink with renewed determination. “I have to explain, make her see-“

  “I wouldn’t do that just yet,” I head him off at the living room door, warning him with my hands held up in the air. “I’d give her some space Matt; you were way out of line!”

  By his angry expression, I can’t tell if he’s contemplating beating me to a pulp just to get me out of his way. However, his rage soon morphs into a look of sad defeat and he eventually nods with his whole upper body slumping in agreement. Knowing I’ve won, I pat him sympathetically on the back as he moves round to sink onto his sofa, clearly brooding over his stupidity last night.

  “I’ll help you clear up, but then I gotta shoot,” I tell him with a sigh while continuing to bag up the debris, which is literally scattered everywhere. “I’m driving up to see Sam today.”

  “Yeah, thanks man,” he mumbles, even though he’s not really listening. He’s lost in his own guilty thoughts, staring out before him with a multitude of questions over how the hell he’s going to handle what’s happened. It makes two of us.

  Bowie, Sam’s Apartment

  That evening, after hours of driving, with the music turned up high to try and zone out the never-ending cycle of Amelia, Matt, and me, I finally allowed myself to relax inside of Sam’s two-bed apartment. Her tiny sofa barely manages to hold my tall, broad frame, and I swear a spring pops every time I sit on it, but she never says a thing about my clumsy ass. The décor is eclectic, a mixture of Sam’s girly crap and her roommate’s hippie chick stuff, making the place look like something my grandmother would have been proud of back in the seventies.

  Trixie is Sam’s roommate and has been her best friend since the day she moved in, back when she was still getting over a violent attack and nursing a broken heart, all at the same shitty time. She’s one of those hipster chicks with purple hair, a few piercings, and the odd tattoo, which all mean something in various different cultures. She’s frequently tried to explain to me what they all represent, but I pretty much forget straight away.

  I like her though; she treats me like her own kid brother. I usually lap it all up, having Sam and Trixie looking after me like I’m a little boy again. We flirt playfully but it’s only to wind Sam up. She must be out today because it usually only takes minutes before I hear her loud, raucous laughter hitting my ears. Today, however, the place is distinctively quiet.

  Sam treats me to homemade soup and my favorite chocolate cake before we lazily move over to the sofa to talk about school, college, and what the parentals have been up to. I avoid any subjects that might prove to be suspicious and end up limiting my responses to monosyllabic grunts, which of course does exactly what I was afraid of; kick-start Sam’s sixth sense. Normally I can banter like the best of them, especially with Sam. We’re well known for our back-and-forth chatter that leaves others far behind, wondering what the hell we’re talking about.

  “Spill!” she orders, and I try looking at her like she’s bat shit crazy. When that doesn’t work, I simply shrug before beginning to throw a stress ball up and down in the air. “Don’t even try and say nothing is wrong, because I know there is.”

  “Ok genius, what is it then?” I continue with my usual, aggravating, avoidance strategy.

  “Come on, Bowie,” she says with her cut-the-shit expression, “don’t freeze me out. You know I tell you everything!”

  Nicely played, big sister!

  I was the only one she had opened up to about her attack. That and the guilty feeling of what happened to her, on my watch, in my friend’s house, returns to force me into submission. I still sigh in an irritated fashion, making it abundantly clear I would rather be sticking forks in my eyes than opening up to anyone right now, but she simply continues to stare at me with expectation.

  “I kind of did something I shouldn’t have,” I confess, “with someone I shouldn’t of.”

  “Tell me something new, brother dearest,” she scoffs. “Who?”

  “You’re not going to like it,” I admit and begin rubbing at the back of my neck awkwardly with an already guilty expression.

  “Please tell me you didn’t go near the one person I asked you to stay away from!” she gasps with horror already spreading over her face. “Please tell me you didn’t go near Amelia Thomas?! You promised me, Bowie!”

  “I know,” I look guiltily to the floor, neither confirming nor denying her assumption.

  “Have you slept with her?” she asks quietly but with desperation in her voice. It’s so despairing, I can’t even answer her with words, so I just look sheepishly in her direction before staring straight down to the floor again. “Bowie! How could you do that? You had no right to go near that sweet, innocent girl!”

  I brace myself for the eruption that’s already building inside of that tiny little frame of hers. The one that would fool you into thinking she’s nothing but meek and mild, even though I know she’s now definitely mad. Fuming; might rip-me-into-tiny-pieces, angry. She has every right to be, but I still want to put her straight, to tell her that I didn’t do it to be a jerk.

  “I didn’t plan it and it wasn’t malicious…” I begin, but she’s already rubbing her temples in hard, frantic circles, sighing loudly over my predictability to screw things up.

  “This is nuts! You can have any girl you want, and you choose her?! She doesn’t deserve your shit, Bowie. I told you she was like a sister to me, but you went ahead and did it anyway! You know she’s going to tell her brother, right?!”

  “As if I give a shit about him! One, she hasn’t seen him since he went down, and two…” I continue counting off on my fingers and looking at her like she’s just started licking the windows, being both nuts and fragile, “he went down!” I cry out in exasperation.

  “Exactly, Bowie! She lost everything!” she glares at me for a few moments as if trying to let that sink in. “You already know her parents are never there. Grant was her only parental type figure-”

  “Yeah, a rapist!” My hackles are up and I’m quickly getting irritated by this ridiculous conversation. One that, that raping motherfucker has managed to infiltrate without even trying. “She already had a shit deal having him as some sort of guardian!”

  “So, you thought, ‘hmmm I know, I’ll breeze in and make things a shit load harder for her!’” She jumps out of her chair, clearly
getting just as infuriated as I am. “And isn’t Matt like your best friend or something?”

  “Yeah, well, he practically molested her the night it happened, so he should be on the shit list too!” I argue, though it didn’t sound quite as good as it had in my head.

  “What?” she asks quietly, then sinks into a saddened heap back onto her chair. I am such a shit sometimes; I didn’t even think before I blurted that one out. “W-What did he do?”

  “He convinced her to kiss him and when she tried to pull away, he wouldn’t let her, held her down, but I stopped it. He was broken afterward. He just lost control, that’s all.”

  “No, that’s not all!” she suddenly shouts, with a rage brewing up inside of her again. “You of all people should know that’s not all! Don’t you ever say that to me, or her for that matter!”