Page 18 of Shrapnel

“Anyway,” Jamie shook himself. “I’m off.”

Jackson watched as he buttoned three buttons before grabbing his shoulder holster, swinging it on, and buckling it into place. It was easy to forget just how deadly this kid was.

Jamie swung a leg out the open window and peered down.

“Don’t forget your head,” Jackson reminded him.

“Oh!” Jamie smiled bashfully, retracting his leg and swiping the black garbage bag. He shook it. “Thanks. That would have been embarrassing.”

And then he disappeared out the third-story window.

Jackson flopped back on the mattress, hissing as his wounds caught on the sheets.

4

A Wall So Big I Feel Small

South America followed him home.

Jamie was standing in the stairwell of his apartment building staring at the stairs as if they were his own personal Mt. Everest. Had they always been so tall? Just the thought of ascending the two stories was too much. He debated curling up and falling asleep on the first floor, but he wanted a shower.

He inhaled, breathing through his mouth because he couldn’t stand his smell. If he sniffed his skin, he knew the tang of spicy foods and humidity would be clinging to him. Somewhere in there would be the smell of blood and sweat. A faint chemical smell of the antibiotic cream that was still under his fingernails.

Jackson had been fun. Disappointing, but fun.

He was gorgeous and the sex was good. But Jamie hadn’t been looking for good sex. Jackson had been an experiment, and while the results were not unpleasant, they were disappointing.

Jackson was a bomb. A fragile unexploded piece of ordinance with a hairpin trigger. The moment Jamie had seen him, he knew. He knew he had to pull that trigger. Like a giant shiny button withdo not pushwritten all over it. He had to push it. Had to see what would happen when the volatile forces inside Jackson finally exploded.

And it had been right there. With the smoke clogging their lungs and the scent of death flaming testosterone to deadly levels. Jamie had pushed and Jackson crumpled. His meaty hand squeezed the air from Jamie’s lungs, and he thought…finally.

Finally, Jamie found the force he needed. Something strong enough to destroy the walls he put up. The walls he had thrown up as a child in a fit of desperation. In a time when he was drowning in the horrors of everything just beingtoo much,he had chosen the lesser of two evils. He had chosen to create walls to keep out everything he couldn’t handle.

On the outside of his sanctuary was the cacophony of feelings and emotions he couldn’t process—all the terror, love, guilt, horror, and loathing his tiny shoulders couldn’t handle. And on the inside was peace. A quiet that finally gave him a moment to breathe.

It was all he needed. Until it wasn’t.

Until that peace turned to a deafening silence. And that moment to breathe stretched into an endless blackness that threatened to consume him. Inside the walls was a void of nothingness, a darkness of his own creation.

Those walls he built took on a life of their own. They sprouted roots and grew taller and taller until Jamie didn’t recognize them. Or himself. But by then it was too late. Jamie was lost.

Over the years he found that occasionally he could get glimpses of life outside the walls. Brief windows between the bricks that splashed against him like sunlight. When he killed when the excitement of purpose was stronger than the mortar holding the bricks together. Times when the pleasure pain of life pierced through the wall and for split seconds all the noise hit him, and he couldfeelagain.

But the walls were too strong. And Jamie was trapped. He tried to build a safe place but inadvertently created a prison.

Jackson was supposed to be the answer. His rage was supposed to be strong enough to tear through the walls. It would burn hot enough that it could sear right through Jamie. The walls would come down and everything else would just be collateral damage.

But Jackson wasn’t the napalm Jamie needed. The man thought he was too far gone—thought all traces of his humanity had long since fled. But he had a lifeline. Ironically, Jamie thought that lifeline might be the very thing that drove Jackson to the depths of his pain. Jackson was clinging to the thing he swore he was running from, dragging it with him like a ball and chain. He probably didn’t even know he was doing it.

People tended to miss the obvious. Staring them right in the face and they looked past it, unable and unwilling to face the things that were in front of them.

Jamie was willing to look. He had seen depravity. Had seen a monster and learned to laugh in its face.

Once he’d done that, everything else was easy.

Stairs though, stairs were hard.

With a groan, he lifted his leg and began the climb. Jamie had been gone for a month. The days had blurred into one long streak of no sleep, and he was dead on his feet. His phone was buzzing with death threats from his latest unfinished fanfic. His loyal readers were displeased with the last cliffhanger and Jamie didn’t know how to explain that he was too busy toppling South American governments to write the climax of his romantic Barney/Bowser fic.