Fascination Street

five : what goes up must come down

I stared from behind the bars of the cell they had thrown me in. They had put me there after I stopped thrashing and screaming over cockroaches and spiders and mad scientists slicing up my stomach. Ripping out my organs. Tearing out my soul.

My soul wasn't black. It wasn't damaged or rotten; it had been a vibrant red, redder than even my hair.

But the man had eaten it. Devoured it. "Like an apple," the man had said with spiders crawling out of his mouth.

That was how I knew I had been hallucinating. I didn't have a soul to begin with. And that's when it all stopped. That was when I was actually back, back in reality.

I squeezed my eyes shut tight. I wanted the nightmares back. They were better than reality.

I wrapped my hands around the bars of my cell. Mom wouldn't be here to get me this time. Mike wouldn't either. No one would be here to take me home. To take me away.

I started to sob and, slowly, my body failed me. I fell to the ground with a thud, my head smacking against the concrete floor. I screamed and cried harder.

"Derik!" I tried to scream, but it just came out as a sob. "Why!?" I hadn't been hurting anyone. Mom hadn't been hurting anyone. Mike hadn't either. Why us? Out of all the whores and pimps and crack addicts this city had, why us?

I sobbed into the floor, one of my hands resting outside this cell. There would be no freedom.

There was no one.