Page 20

20

Nash

As I hurry back to my cabin, I see Micah standing on his porch waving me over to him. My heart sinks, but I have to make it seem like I’m not up to anything but helping him. I just hope he buys the act.

When I get closer to him, he flatly says, “Come inside, Nash. Let’s talk.”

Damn. I know that tone of voice. I’ve heard it many times when he’s upset about something Nadine has done, and most recently, I heard it when he found out what Adam did to Maren.

Knowing he may be able to see my face even though I can barely make him out, I force a smile and pick up my pace to get to his cabin quickly. He doesn’t speak when I join him on the porch, but anger practically radiates off him in waves.

I bow, even though I shouldn’t until we go inside, and he turns on his heel to walk into the building without saying a word to me. That’s not a good sign. I follow him into his cabin, and see he’s already sitting on his chair by the time I close the door behind me.

The temperature in here is far more comfortable than my room or outside since the air conditioning keeps it at a very pleasant sixty-eight degrees. As usual, he wears only a pair of dark pants as he reclines against the back of his favorite chair.

Bowing again just in case he didn’t see me do that outside on the porch, I wait for him to tell me to rise. He takes his time, but finally he says, “I want to talk to you, Nash. Stand and look at me.”

I do as he orders, and when my gaze meets his, I see pure rage in his eyes. Even after all this time here, I still have to stop myself from asking what’s wrong. I guess it’s a normal defense mechanism.

He frowns and folds his arms across his naked chest. “James told me he saw you with that new recruit I told you to watch. How do you explain that when she was supposed to be in her bed for the past few hours?”

Knowing he’s watching every tiny move I make, I smile and hope my voice stays level as I answer, “You told me to keep an eye on her. I was. When she and the rest of the new girls came out after they heard the screaming, I could tell Nadine and her men had a problem with her. I was afraid they might go too far and kill her, and I know you don’t want any more deaths, so I got her away from them before anything could happen.”

I don’t take a breath the entire time I’m explaining myself, and I have to fight the urge to inhale deeply when I finally get all the words out because I’m sure it will make me look guilty. Technically, I am, so there’s that. Micah ordered me to watch Lara, not protect her, but something’s changed around here.

And I’m not okay with it, even if I don’t know what’s going on.

He silently studies me while all of this runs through my mind, manipulating the empty space to do what he always does. Make people uncomfortable so he has the upper hand.

At first, that skill terrified me. I’d never been someone who could control himself completely either in speech or actions. Whatever I’d ever felt came out of me with a force I couldn’t deny.

Then as I got used to life within The Golden Light, I admired that skill. The way he’d stare at someone and practically squeeze the truth out of them simply by staying quiet impressed the hell out of me. I wanted to be like him. I loved the idea of having that much power over people.

And myself.

Now I know it’s more a trick than a skill, and I can see how hard he has to work at not saying anything during those silences. He’s barely containing his curiosity at this moment because he likely thinks I was with Lara.

Micah takes a deep breath in and lets the air out slowly through his nose. His arms still folded across his chest, he purses his lips but still says nothing. Finally, he gives me a smile, but every muscle in my body tenses as I wait to hear what he has to say to my lie.

“Nadine definitely has a problem with her. There’s no doubt about that. You know how much I trust her, don’t you? The Golden Light wouldn’t be what it is today without her love and support, Nash.”

When he stops, I wish I could ask if he means himself or this group. I’m a little hazy on what Nadine should get credit for, especially since she’s become little more than The Golden Light’s gestapo.

I don’t ask, of course. Whatever I may feel about the changes that have occurred here in the past few months, I still know my place in Micah’s world. I rank just above new recruits and nobodies. For the present, I’m one of his favorites, but that can change at any moment.

It may change tonight if he decides I’ve broken one of his rules, especially the one that forbids us guards from being with any of the women in the group.

The tension between us builds until I find myself holding my breath out of fear that if I dare breathe, I might admit the truth of how I feel and what I’m planning to do for Lara. Micah looks up toward the ceiling and then slowly lowers his arms to his side. I want to take the change in body language as a hint that he believes me, but I can’t tell.

“You were right to be concerned about another death here, Nash. For that, I’m thankful. However, it doesn’t look right that you were alone in your cabin with a woman. That’s forbidden, as you well know.”

I nod, still wanting to speak but unsure I can lie well enough to fool him a second time.

“You look worried, Nash. Unburden yourself. Tell me what’s wrong,” Micah says, sitting up in his chair and looking like he’s actually interested in what may be bothering me.

Finally, I exhale but only little by little so he doesn’t think something’s off. As my lungs empty, I feel my mouth turn down in a frown and know those two lines my mother used to call elevens between my eyebrows have appeared. I’m sure I wear the look of a man troubled by something, but I can’t tell him what’s really on my mind.

So I do the only thing I can.

“I knew it was wrong to take her to my room, but I didn’t want another death and you having to deal with it. I’m worried that there are some people here who’ve forgotten your teachings, and I don’t know how to handle that.”

Most of that is not so much a lie as a half-truth. He nods as I speak, but I know from experience with that too that it may be merely the precursor to Micah unleashing a torrent of anger because I’ve stepped out of line.

I wait for him to respond, my body on alert for whatever reaction he may have to my concerns. The Micah I met that first day would care that one of his flock is worried about what’s happening around him. This version of him I’m not so sure.

His expression turns dark, and he lowers his head but says nothing. I wish he would recognize that whatever Nadine may have been to him in the past, now she’s basically creating a police state here in his name. I don’t doubt Adam has always enjoyed hurting others, but because she’s made it okay to punish and kill people, he believed he was in the right shooting Maren.

Nadine’s poison will only make things uglier here. I know it, but I can’t say a word about it because Micah is practically blind to her faults.

He sighs heavily and then lifts his head to look up at me. Sadness fills his expression, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look so miserable. I hate that I had to be the one to say those things that made him so unhappy, but someone had to or things would only get worse.

“You’ll spend two hours in the box, Nash. I’m sorry to have to do that, but rules are rules.”

And with that out of the way, he stands up and walks into the other room.

I look around for any guards to come take me away to serve my punishment, but no one comes. After five minutes or so, I walk out of his cabin expecting someone to take me to the box. It never happens.

My feet seem to have a mind of their own, and I walk straight across the compound to where I know I must pay for my crime. I could just walk back to my room and go to bed. There’s no one around to force me to go into the box.

Still, I know the rules. I deserve what’s about to happen to me.

In the darkness, I see a light flicker on in the cabin directly in front of me where I’ll serve my two hours. No doubt, Harker is preparing the box for me. I look around one last time before I make my way up the five steps to the front door, still confused why there’s no one here to make sure I do as I must.

That’s the thing, though, isn’t it? I’ve always been a good solider, the kind of group member who doesn’t deviate from what I know is right for myself and the rest of The Golden Light. So, of course, Micah doesn’t think he needs to rouse anyone from their cozy bed to escort me to the box.

But what does it say about me that I’ve not only agreed to help Lara but also lied to the one person I’ve believed in and trusted above all others long before she arrived the other day? If Micah had even a hint about all of that, he’d know although I appear to be the same Nash I’ve always been since he saved me that night, something’s changed in me.

I stop at the front door of the cabin and look down at the doorknob barely visible in the darkness of the night. I’ve only experienced the box once before when I got into it with one of Nadine’s men. That time I needed to be punished for pride. Now I’m being punished for what appears to be a wrongdoing.

As I walk inside and see Harker, I know that’s not the truth. I’m being punished for going against everything I believe in. Micah may not know that, but I do, and two hours isn’t enough to pay for my sins.

“Where’s your guard?” Harker asks as he waves me toward the six foot by six foot metal container at the back of the building.

I shake my head as I wonder if the man in charge of enforcing punishments for The Golden Light has lost weight. Always a thin man, he looks emaciated now.

“None needed. I know what I have to do.”

He nods, and I see the skin around his chin dangle like it doesn’t want to stay connected to his bones. It reminds me of that movie where a monster was wearing a man’s skin. They called it a meat suit, I think.

Best not to think of anything like that as I go to spend two hours sealed in the box. The mind has a terrible way of taking a thought like that meat suit one and running with it. And two hours is a long time to be stuck with something like that filling your head.

“Two hours, Nash. Anything you want me to know before I lock you in?” Harker asks and then chuckles.

I shrug, not understanding the joke. He’s always been an odd guy, but I’m thinking having to punish people all the time might be getting to him. He’s forced to sit in this place every hour, day and night. He’s brought his meals, and he sleeps in a back room just feet away from where people scream out in agony when the darkness and silence of the box become too much for them. That has to affect a person.

“Okay. Then see you in two hours,” he says without a hint of care for what I’m about to go through. “Have a good time.”

He jerks the steel handle on the door and opens the box for me to walk in. The stench of urine hits my nose immediately, but I don’t hesitate to keep moving toward the center of the container. Maybe he should focus more on cleaning this thing instead of making lame jokes. It can’t be that hard to hose the place down every so often.

The faint hint of shit passes by my nose for the briefest second before I turn my head to look back at the door as he slams it shut. For a long moment, I stand perfectly still in the complete darkness, but then I hear the bolt slam across the metal beneath it, locking me in. The memory of how terrified that simple sound made me the last time I was in here flashes through my mind, but I push it out, replacing it with a thought I’ve used since I was a kid and something bad happened.

Me sitting on the front steps of my childhood house watching the sun set with my father. He called them the stoop, and he took great pride in those red brick steps leading up to the brick porch. Whenever he sat with me there, he’d pat the bricks and smile. “It took me three weeks to build this, and it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

That time I use whenever I need to distract myself included the most beautiful sunset I’ve ever seen. The reds and yellows mixing together to form the most perfect orange color no human could ever reproduce and the purples that joined in just before dusk rolled in made me happy. It was the kind of happy that just thinking about it can get you through anything bad that happens in your life.

I concentrate on that memory as my stomach wants to purge my dinner because of the smell of urine all around me. It threatens to ruin my beautiful sunset thought, but I won’t let that happen. I don’t blame the people who couldn’t help but piss themselves in here. This place is scary. It’s dark, and many people fear darkness, but worse, it’s just you in here, and the mind can play some pretty nasty tricks when there’s nothing but the blackness of this box to occupy your thoughts.

My father’s boasting about his work on the brick porch and steps echoes in my head, an amusing reminder of a time long gone from my life. We left that house a few years later when he died and my mother couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage and feed three children plus herself. The apartment we moved to had none of the sweetness of that house, and I quickly try to stop myself from thinking of what our lives turned into in that place.

But it’s no use.

She went from a happy wife and mother to a depressed single woman with three kids to take care of, morphing into an alcoholic by the time I was twelve. My two younger sisters and I survived the best we could, but that’s all about we could do.

Survive.

Not thrive like our teachers kept telling us was important for children. No, we barely got by, eating as little as possible so we could hopefully have more for a future meal. My mother couldn’t care for us. Hell, she couldn’t even care for herself, so how could she do it for three kids who seemed to need so much?

Without my father, our lives descended into hell of poverty and sadness. Every day was filled with want. We wanted more to eat. We wanted clean clothes that the kids at school wouldn’t make fun of. We wanted a mother who could pay attention to us.

We wanted all of that and more, but we didn’t get any of it. What we got was growing up faster than we should have. What we got was a parent who barely noticed we were even in the same room with her most days.

I shake my head to make those memories disappear, but this is what the box does. I try so hard to bring that moment back with my father, those brick steps, and that incredible sunset, but the image of my mother sitting on that secondhand brown and yellow couch stained with piss and shit from when she was too drunk to even manage getting up to go to the toilet fills my head.

She was barely recognizable by that time after nearly a year of drinking herself into oblivion every damn day. Her beautiful brown hair that I loved to touch because it was so soft turned into a dry, gray, tangled mess that framed the face of a stranger. Gone was the sparkle in her green eyes that my father used to say reminded him of a cat’s. In its place, a gloom settled in, joined by dark circles that made her look so old.

The woman I knew disappeared when he died, and a shell of a human being came into our lives. Hollow and unable to care for anyone, including herself, she let her misery dim that sweetness in her until all she became was an angry stranger who resented the entire world, including us.

As I wallow in those terrible thoughts, questions creep into my mind. Is she still alive? Or has the booze killed her? She was barely hanging on the last time I saw her, and that was years ago. Still planted on that awful couch, she pointed her bony finger at me and cursed me out for wanting to leave to find a place of my own. “You’re an ungrateful bastard, Nash!” she screamed.

I left that day without saying goodbye, so angry she couldn’t be happy for me and want me to succeed in this world. My sisters couldn’t come with me, but I hoped they’d be safe and they’d learned enough in the years I was there that they could survive.

Macy didn’t last long. Drugs and an abusive boyfriend drove her to an early death before she was even sixteen. I’ll never forget standing at her grave with that cheap marker that had grass already growing over it, making her and everything she was slowly disappear from this world.

My younger sister Jenny was left alone with my mother and all her demons, and even though she graduated high school and moved away, the last time I saw her I knew that time she’d spent as the only soul responsible for my mother had scarred her. She was the oldest nineteen year old I’d ever seen. Her eyes showed how much she’d endured. In them, the ugliness of her life shone through, even when she smiled.

I don’t want to think about any of this, but I can’t stop myself. It’s what the box does to you. That’s the true punishment. It isn’t being alone in the darkness. It’s being alone with the thoughts you’ve tried so hard to push down to that place you don’t want to ever think about so they never appear again that gets you.

That terrible brown and yellow geometric pattern from that hideous couch fills the space around me until it’s all I can see in the pitch black. I know it’s not real, but I slap the air in front of me to make it go away.

I’m surprised when it disappears, but then a low sound that reminds me of something metal scraping off another piece of metal begins to fill my ears. I try to decipher what it could be. I have no idea. There shouldn’t be any sounds in the box.

There isn’t. It’s all in my head. What is that sound? Where have I heard that before?

Those questions occupy me for a minute or two as the noise grows louder and louder until it’s all I can hear. I can’t make it go away like I did with the vision of that terrible couch of my mother’s. I shake my head and then cover my ears, but it keeps getting louder.

“Stop!” I silently scream, hoping that will make it disappear.

That only makes it get louder, if that’s even possible. I thrash my arms around me in a desperate hope I can make it stop. But it doesn’t.

I open my mouth to scream, but if anything comes out, I can’t hear it over the metallic noise all around me. It can’t just be in my head. That makes no sense. I thought it could, but it’s not possible.

Is Harker making that noise? He must be, but why? Did Micah instruct him to torture me with this sound? Is that why he only gave me two hours in the box?

Finally, I can actually scream, and I bellow as loudly as I can to drown out that horrible sound. It isn’t loud enough, so I redouble my effort, but I can’t scream loud enough because every time I try, the noise gets louder.

Over and over, I let out an agonizing sound until my throat gets hoarse. I can’t stop, though. If I do, the sound will drive me insane.

I don’t know how long before I fall to the floor and curl up in a ball, still screaming as I lay on a piss-stained floor. This is nothing like the other time I was in the box. This time, Micah is truly punishing me.

And all I can think is I must deserve it.