Save Me

When Does It End?

Peter felt a tingle in his chest, something that seemed to steal his breath and make his head pound with pain. Something was wrong and if it wasn’t him, then there was only one other possibility.

“Cass…”

He abandoned changing the sheets and ran out of the room, letting their unexplainable connection guide him forward. Peter knew more than likely she’d gone to find Bren. She did tell him that’s where she was going but the way she was feeling didn’t really correlate with a chat with Bren. Maybe she ran into someone on the way.

When he got to the bottom of the stairs, he heard a knocking coming from the kitchen followed by, “Open the door, lad. Please.”

Something serious had obviously happened and it had happened to Cass. As if also sensing something was wrong, his father came down the stairs, hot on his heels as Peter ran for the kitchen. There was a bathroom off the laundry room and that was where the knocking was coming from.

“What happened?” Carter called from behind him.

“I’m not certain,” Alma said as Peter brushed by her and knocked on the door. “They won’t open the door.”

“Who’s in there?”

“Cass?” Peter said, as if in answer to his father’s question. “Baby, what’s going on? Open the door.”

There was a sob from inside but it wasn’t feminine. It was clearly masculine. Peter reached for the doorknob, thinking something horrible had gone wrong. Without him needing to, it twisted and the door swung open.

The first thing he saw was Bren huddled by the toilet looking like a complete mess.

“Bren?” He walked over and touched his shoulder. “What’s going on?”

His friend just shrugged off his hand and looked up at him. There was no blue in his friend’s eyes, just black. He hadn’t seen that in months and thought he would never see it again. But apparently he’d relapsed and no one had seen it.

“Don’t worry about me.” He nodded his head behind Peter. “Worry about her. I think I might’ve hurt her. It was an accident…”

Peter’s head snapped to the side and he looked behind him.

And there was Cass, crumpled in a heap with a pill bottle in her hand.

“Oh lad…” Alma said from the doorway.

Peter abandoned his friend and scrambled his way over to Cass. He read over the pill bottle, not even recognizing the name on the prescription, and brushed some hair off of her face. Where the hell had she gotten those? There was a bruise blossoming across her left cheek from the hair line all the way down to her chin.

“What happened?” he asked, pulling up one of her eyelids to check her pupil dilation. “Bren…did she…”

“They’re not hers,” his friend whispered. “They’re mine.”

The room cooled considerably and he whirled to look at his friend. Peter didn’t think Cass would take any pills, not after what happened to her. But it was a question he had to ask before he went about helping her. As he thought over the situation he found them both in when the door opened…

“What’d you do, Bren?” his voice sounded chilly, colder than he’d ever used with his best friend. But it was Cass. Without giving him time to answer he looked back down at Cass as something flashed in her head, overtaking the dream she was having.

He tilted his head to the side, like a tick, and stared down at her. “What…”

“It’s a death truth,” Alma whispered, coming over and motioning for him to move away. “I’ll handle her. Take Brenden upstairs.”