Experiment in Terror 09 Dust to Dust(10)

In the end, it was all my fault and I was to take Ada back to Portland. I promised them I would when we got Dex. I told them they could reach us if they we’re worried about us and gave them the hotel name too, but that this was our call and we’d come back when we could.

Obviously that didn’t go over very well and I was quickly forced to put my phone on silent, knowing that they would call again and again and again. I couldn’t be distracted by that, not now.

“All righty,” I said, fighting the urge to clap my hands together, as if this could be trivial. “Let’s get started. Let’s find him.”

“I reckon you may want to put pants on,” Maximus said. “I know anything goes in New York but that might be pushing it.” He added, with a smirk, “Not that I’m complaining.”

I gave him a look but quickly got changed in the bathroom. While I was in there, staring at the retro medicine cabinet above the sink, I was reminded of what I had done to my mother. How I had taken the pills. I wondered if she was starting to unravel a bit without them, if she’d already made an appointment to have them replaced, if she knew it was me.

I wondered if she was going to start feeling like her daughters any time soon.

But, like all thoughts that weren’t related to Dex, I couldn’t even let myself think about it. Each moment I was away from him was a moment that my heart sank deeper into my chest. I felt there would be nothing left of me if we didn’t find him soon.

It was too bad then, that even with Maximus there, we still had no idea where to start looking.

Somewhere a clock was counting down to something none of us wanted to understand.





CHAPTER THREE


Dex


I’ve woken up in some fucked up places before. Once, on a bench in some park in Bellevue, a ritzy Seattle suburb, with happy squirrels bouncing all around me like over-caffeinated rats. Still not sure how I ended up there. Another time I was on the roof of a Vancouver hotel, rain pelting me on the face and an empty bottle of Jack Daniels beside me. I remember how I ended up there – damn stripper led me astray and stole all my money. At least I had Jack for company.

But I have never woken up in my old bedroom of my childhood home, a home I tried to erase from my memory until I was certain it no longer existed.

And yet it did exist. More than that, I was lying on my puny old bed, legs hanging off the weak frame, and the room was exactly the same as I had remembered as a child.

Which was, you know, pretty much fucking impossible. But there you had it.

I lay back on the bed for a few drawn-out moments, blinking first at the ceiling at the stick-on stars that I had affixed on it back when I was a little shit. My eyes slowly trailed down the walls, pausing on the Alice in Chains and Nirvana posters and cut-outs from Spin and Rolling Stone magazine I had placed haphazardly on the greying wallpaper. I bet if I peeled back the corners, I would see the Blu-tack I used to put them up. God forbid I put a pin or thumbtack into the wall without my father slaughtering me.

Suddenly memories flooded my mind and I could barely contain them, feeling like a thirsty alcoholic with an undersized bladder. Holy shit. This wasn’t some crazy fucking dream. I really was here, in my old room. Everything was the same, everything except me. I was Dex Foray, not Declan O’Shea, yet the essence of who I was clung to the carpet like mildew, just as the fear used to.

But there was nothing to fear now, was there?

I slowly sat up and stared at my feet, at the toes of my boots, tapping them together loudly. The sound was hollow, peculiar. It didn’t quite feel real. But this was real. Right? Every breath I took in made me second guess it, every breath I exhaled told me the truth.

I reached up and pinched the tip of my ear. It hurt like hell. It had healed since it had been sliced off in New Orleans, but it was currently the most sensitive part of my body (other than my dick, but that seemed unnecessarily cruel). Anyway, point is, I was alive and well and this was no nightmare manifested of unresolved issues from my childhood. This was real.

I was motherfucking Dr. Who.

Outside the window, the light was starting to fade. I eased myself out of bed and looked out of it. The view was the same as I had remembered. The neighbor was so close, you could touch their brick wall– well, I couldn’t because I was never tall enough, but my friend Joey once did. He nearly fell out the window and crashed into the garbage cans below, which would have really ruined his drumming skills. After that, I made a rope ladder for emergencies.

Craning my neck, I could see the street out front. 78th or 88th or 98th, I couldn’t remember. It was framed by leafy trees and busy with passerbys going about their business. The Upper West Side. A place completely and totally removed from my life and everything that I was.