J. Salsbury - Fighting to Forget

I pop my head into the kitchen. “Who fights for a living?”

Trix awkwardly pulls a box of cold pizza from the fridge while trying to keep her body covered with the blanket. “UFL guy. He’s huge, rides a dirt bike . . .”

My heart speeds and my head gets light.

“Covered in tattoos.” She snaps her fingers. “Oh, his band plays at your bar.”

“Rex?”

They both turn toward me at the same time.

“You know the fruit-tart?” Hatch crosses the room with a look in his eye that I see frequently when I look in the mirror. He wants vengeance.

I square off with him. “Fruit-tart? He beat your ass.”

“You know where I can find him?”

“If I did, I’d never tell you. Wouldn’t want to be an accessory to your murder.”

He smiles, or at least it looks as if it’s supposed to be a smile, but the way his upper lip curls back from his teeth looks more like a snarl. “Don’t worry, Snow White. I won’t hurt your boy. I’ll leave him breathing.”

“He’s not my boy.” He’s my brother! “And don’t call me that.”

We stare off for a few seconds before Trix tugs on his arm. “Come on, Grumpy. Time for you to get home. I’m sure Sneezy and Doc are worried sick about you.”

He yanks his arm out of her hold. “I’ll find him. We’ve got some unfinished business. Had a few too many beers last night, so he got the jump.” Trix drags him down the hallway toward her room. He points at me over her head. “That shit won’t happen again.”

I almost want to laugh at how ridiculous he sounds. Rex is six feet of pure muscle. He’d render Hatch unconscious before he even realized what happened. He’d have to be an idiot to go after Rex.

Knowing all that, my stomach still churns with anxiety. I hate the idea that someone is out for him. If they only knew what he’s been through . . .?

From what I can tell he’s managed to keep his past a secret. I don’t blame him. But Rex doesn’t know everything, not the most important thing. If I can just get close enough to him to form a friendship, then I can fill him in on the part of his past he doesn’t know. The one thing that could change everything.

It’d give him someone to blame for what he’s been through—everything he endured at the hands of monsters—what his tiny body was put through and the unimaginable horrors he lived. I break out in a sweat. The walls start to close in and my skin feels too tight.

Locked away. Helpless.

I race to my room and lock the door behind me. Claustrophobia knocks against my nerves. My eyes scan the windows. Open. Always open.

I take a deep breath of the fresh air and remind myself he’s free. I’m free. I drop to all fours near my bed and swipe my hand beneath it, reaching for the box.

The rusted metal scrapes against my palms. I climb up on my bed, cross-legged, and flip back the lid.

Inside are scraps of yellowed paper covered in the frantic handwriting of a boy—a boy who endured things that horror stories are made from—evidence of an existence far worse than anything hell could threaten.

I had the power to stop it.

But I didn’t.

My eyes move over each word for what feels like the thousandth time. I memorize his handwriting, relive his story, and reignite my purpose.

I can give him what he never had.

Answers.

I stare unseeing as flashes of my nightmares play out behind my eyes: the blood, so much blood; the bright blue of his eyes imploring mine; the grunted words that I’ll never forget.

The box. Our secret.

My hands, tiny and insignificant, shook for hours after they loaded him into the ambulance and sped off. The sirens blared in my head long after they took him away. I still see it all, hear it in my nightmares.

Bile crawls up my throat and my body revolts against the images. I slam closed the box and shove it under my bed. The shadows creep in, reminding me that I’m walking the edge of my sanity.

I snag my iPod off my bedside table and pop on my ear buds. With tremors wracking my fingers, I scroll through a list of songs and hit play. It’s a bootleg recording, crackly and distorted, but it doesn’t matter. The music soothes and his voice chases away the dark.

Maybe after a few hours of sleep, I’ll go see him. He never knows I’m there, but it’s enough to set my eyes on him, remind myself that he’s alive.

Seeing him never fails to do the job, clear away the cobwebs from the life I’m forced to live, and remind me of the one I promised to redeem.

Rex

It’s ten a.m. by the time I wake up enough to get my shit together. After the late night and the drama in the desert, I couldn’t sleep. That biker dick calling me a cocksucker was bad enough, but not getting the satisfaction of beating him unconscious itches like a rash.

Restless and eager for a fight, I finally had to succumb and take the pills my shrink gave me to calm my ass down enough to sleep. I went down hard and slept through my alarm.

I’m groggy as hell, moving through my condo like a zombie. Fuck, I hate those pills. The few times I’ve taken them I wake up with a hangover so intense I swear I’ll never touch another one again. But here I am.

As I’m forcing down my morning protein shake, the doorbell rings. I don’t get visitors often because I refuse to have people over. Other than a door-to-door salesman, there’s only one other person it could be.

“Hold up.” I head to the door and swing it open.

It’s my neighbor, Emma.

“Hey there.” She’s smiling and shifts a large duffel bag from her shoulder to the ground.

I reach up to the door frame, stretching out my sore shoulder. “You’re heading out this early?”

“Early?” She giggles and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s ten in the morning.” Her big green eyes travel from my face to my neck and down. “Um . . . thanks, ah, again for helping me out.”

She stares at the ink on my chest and tilts her head to read the writing tattooed on my ribcage. I fight the urge to shift uncomfortably at her blatant ogling.

“Em . . .”

Her eyes move up toward my face but snag on one silver barbell through my right nipple then glide across to the one in my left.

“Emma.”

Her eyes are wide and dart to mine. “Oh, yeah, yes. I’m leaving now.” Pink colors her cheeks.

“Let me grab a shirt and I’ll walk you down.”

“No need. I got it.” She reaches in her pocket and pulls out her keys. “Here ya go. Twice a day would be great, but if you can only get over there once, that should be okay too.”

I tuck the keys into the pocket of my track pants. “Shitty’s food in the same place?”

Her jaw drops open with a big smile. “Oh my gosh, don’t call her that. And yeah, Miss Kitty’s food is under the sink.” Reaching down, she hefts the duffle onto her shoulder. She pulls long strands of her chestnut hair out from under the strap with a wince.

“Let me get that.” I don’t give her a chance to argue and take the bag, cringing slightly as pain twists behind my collarbone. I set the bag down. “Give me a sec.”

I leave the door open, knowing that Emma won’t come in. She knows how things work with me and respects my boundaries.

The first day she moved in she came by to introduce herself. I knew by her jeans, flannel shirt, and hiking boots that she wasn’t from around here. That and transplants are always friendlier than natives.

And that’s Emma. Friendly, beautiful, and naïve to a fault. Small town girl in the City of Sin. When she goes home to visit her family, I take care of her cat, Miss Kitty.

Leaving her at the door, I go to my closet to grab a T-shirt and a pair of shoes. I pull the shirt over my head, but carry the shoes to the door, popping them on while standing on the doormat, then grab her duffel with my uninjured arm.

“Thanks again, Rex. I owe you.”

“Yeah?” I close the door behind me. “Bring back some of those cookies your mom makes.”

She giggles and the sound of it makes me smile. I’ve never met a more open, bubbly, and all around happy person in all my life. She’s light, comfortable to hang out with, a good girl.

She puts on her sunglasses as we make our way through the courtyard and into the bright late morning sun. “You playing a show tonight?”

“Yep. Usual Sunday night gig.”

Emma has never been to one of my shows. She asks about them and I’ve invited her, but she stays separate from that part of my life, the band and the fighting. I like that. With her, I get to just be me, not T-Rex or the lead singer of Ataxia. Just Rex. Simple.

Once at her Jeep Cherokee, she opens the back and I put in the bag, stepping aside for her to drop the hatch. “Drive safely. I’ll take good care of Miss Shitty.”

“Stop calling her that.” She smacks my chest.

I laugh and feign injury. “What? That’s her name.”

“Miss Kitty. Not Shitty.”

“That’s what I said.” I chuckle.

She shakes her head then looks up at me and uses her hand to shield her face from the overhead sun. “I should be back Tuesday, but if not, I’ll give you a call.”

I hook her around the back of her neck and pull her in for a hug. Her arms go around my waist in a quick, chaste embrace.

“Break a leg tonight.” She hoists her tiny frame into the driver’s seat and fires up the engine.

I nod and stand back as she pulls out of her parking spot and leaves the lot. Yeah, she’s a good girl. She doesn’t belong here in Vegas. I thought for sure that the city would corrupt her, but after two years she’s still the same. She goes to school, studies hard, works harder, and always keeps that smile on her face.

There’s a voice deep down that whispers I should date her, ask her out and see where things go. She’s pretty in a way that screams purity. White. Clean. Something that needs to be protected, not dirtied.

And I’m nothing if not dirty.

After her car is long gone, I turn to head back when I get the feeling someone’s watching me. It’s been happening a lot these last few months. One minute nothing, and then it’s as if the air pressure changes. A weight, thick and dense settles in around me.

I crank my neck to the left and right, but keep walking, knowing that eventually the feeling goes away. It seems stupid to care about being looked at. I’ve been in the public eye for years, but this is different somehow.

“Fuck, I’m losing my damn mind.” I’d tell my shrink at our next meeting, but the last thing I want added to my list of syndromes and afflictions is motherfucking paranoia. “At this rate they’ll throw my ass in a straightjacket.”

Since I started seeing my therapist at seventeen, he’s been trying to figure out where my compulsions stem from. I’ve heard phrases like repressed memories, abandonment issues, and post-traumatic stress disorder ever since I was hospitalized as a kid.

That’s my earliest vivid memory: waking up in a hospital bed. It’s funny. I don’t remember wanting to die. I don’t even remember why I did it other than the satisfaction of marking my skin and watching my blood pool. The visions I have of that day only come in flashes and specific colors: bright red blood against my pale skin. Surprisingly, the thoughts don’t evoke much feeling.

But then there are the others, two very specific flashes: fire-orange hair and light gray eyes. And with those visions comes the warmth, the peace.

There are sounds that accompany the soft orange waves and the misty gray eyes—humming—soothing, rhythmic melodies that calm my inner turmoil.

Those two things are the memories I hold on to. They’re the ones that keep me sane at night when the insomnia won’t let up.

That sounds so fucking insane. The best explanation my therapist can come up with is some shit about coping mechanisms and self-soothing. But what is there to cope with, to soothe, if I don’t remember?

Not at all in the mood to take this ride down no-memory lane, I grab my cell from my pocket just as I hit my front door. Scrolling through my contacts, I find the one I’m looking for and hit send. I kick off my shoes and carry them to my closet.

“Rex,” Blake answers the phone sounding as if he just rolled out of bed. “What’s up?”