Page 4 of What’s Left of You (What Left #2)

Porscha grumbles under her breath, but I’ve distanced myself from the situation, not paying much attention to her.

“Maybe I should play the video again,” she growls. “See what Jo is up to with her husband. You liked him too, didn’t you? We could get off together while they fuck each other.”

“I’d rather peel off my skin,” I tell her, but my voice doesn’t sound snappy. It should be snappy. I want to snap at her to stop touching me.

“You should think of them,” Fake Porscha says, her voice carrying to me. When I look she’s floating above me, hanging in the air, and I know there’s got to be drugs surging through my system again. “Think of how pretty they looked when they would fuck each other.”

Did my mind just come up with that?

“You’re useless,” Porscha growls, stepping back from me. Fake Porscha remains in the same place, and I can’t decide which one to focus on. “Useless! Just like your father.”

She’s said that a few times now, and I haven’t figured out if it’s for me or something else. I’m a foster kid, and I don’t even know who my father is. But she also said it in the van after she took me from the penitentiary…

“You’re so pretty,” she tells me, reaching over to stroke my chin.

I’ve still got the ties from before wrapped around my wrists and arms, and she’s banded the same ties around my legs in two spots so I’m nothing but dead weight the moment she needs me to get out of the car.

Porscha’s driving errors on the side of terrifying as she weaves haphazardly along the road, and even if I could escape the sharp turns she’s making would make exiting the vehicle highly dangerous.

Porscha is out of her damn mind, driving like she’s in a race with Death.

“We’re going to be great, Alastair,” she goes on, placing her hand back on the steering wheel. Even with both hands she still drives like crap. “I’ll make a man out of you yet.”

“Don’t,” I snap in return. “Remember, you’ve tried that before. How did that go for you?”

“Let’s not talk about my daughter,” she growls. “Jo is nothing to you anymore. She can’t have you, and you did so much for me.”

I stare at her profile, positive that she’s lost her damn mind. I did what I had to in the end, because Jo deserved some sort of happiness in her life. Not because I had some sort of misplaced love for Porscha.

“Your father…” she begins, her voice trailing off. “Oh, wait until your father hears about this!”

“You mean my foster father? Robert?” I ask, confused. My birth father isn’t on my birth certificate. How does Porscha know anything about him?

She waves a hand, nearly bouncing out of the driver’s seat. We’re definitely going to hit something at this rate. “Never mind. Don’t trouble yourself, boy. We’re going to disappear for a little while.”

I look around the backwoods dirt road we’re chaotically driving down.

The tire tracks this van will leave have to be deep enough to follow, and right now I’m concerned she’s going to drive us into the swamp or something.

She keeps weaving, humming to herself, and the water all around us looks deep enough to swallow the van whole.

If drowning in this thing doesn’t kill us, the gators around here surely will.

“There it is!” Porscha says excitedly, pointing ahead. I follow her gaze, but it’s just another car. Are we meeting someone?

There’s no time to vocalize my question. One moment we’re swerving about, the next my head snaps forward and cracks into the dash. Porscha didn’t think we needed seatbelts, and at the time, being even more restrained didn’t sound like a good time.

Something stabs into my arm as I’m trying to regain my senses, and I twist around until I can see her again. My head hurts, and there’s something warm sliding down it. I imagine it’s blood, and that just worries me for any damage done to my damn head.

“Come on!” I hear Porscha but I don’t see her. She’s not in the driver’s seat anymore. The way my body is tilted into the dashboard, there’s no easy way to get out of the van to see her. “It’s time to get out.”

A loud slamming sound cuts through the jumbled memory, and I blink as the low ceiling comes back into focus above me.

Without looking, I know it’s the heavy door to my room.

It’s obviously been modified from a regular household door to a prison door, outfitted with thick bars.

It’s like being back in my cell in a different type of cage.

Craning my neck I look around the room but Porscha isn’t there; both the real and the fake have left me alone.

She’s no longer touching me, and had the decency to yank my boxers back into place at some point before leaving. I suppose that was nice of her.

“Think about what you’ve done!” Porscha suddenly screams from outside the door. I’m not entirely sure what she’s talking about. I don’t remember doing anything. Or maybe that’s the problem. “I’ll be back soon boy!”

Blinking, I force my gaze down and flex my fingers.

There’s a slash across my chest, the blood bubbling along the cut, but I don’t feel any pain.

I’m not feeling much of anything really.

My whole body feels like it’s numb. Looking closer at the cut, I realize it’s not deep, more of a surface wound, more of a strike because she’s mad at me for not getting hard so she could find a new way to abuse me.

Dropping my head back to the table, I twist my neck again. There’s no Fake Porscha to keep me company now that the real one is gone, and no one’s found me thus far either.

I’m alone with nothing but my thoughts, and that’s the scariest place to be.