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It's the next chapter!

Exciting isn't it? Even more exciting . . . this one is in NICK'S P/O/V. Read on . . .

…Warning: "Boy" Language. i.e: the repetitive mention of balls.

-20) Standing Ovation

Nick's P(oint)O(f)V(iew) - LOL

"What a – " I wheezed, "Mother – fucking – joke."

"Nick, please," Keith spluttered, speech made a little difficult by my hands around his thick throat. I ignored him and grunted as I heaved the fat fucker higher in the air.

"You have to listen to me, I'm not —"

I tightened my hold so his flesh pulsed unhealthily for a few seconds and interrupted whatever show pony shit he was about to spin me; before I used all of my upper body strength to hurl him through the air, slamming his doughy ass into one of the Astral Plane doors.

It fucking pulled my back like a bitch, but I would bet a large sum of money that it hurt him more.

"Aw," I huffed, patronising. "Poor little rapist."

Keith moaned a little bit as he tried to pull himself into a sitting position, but scrapped together a retort: "Sarcasm," then there was a pause as he, sniffing, tried to slow the blood flow from his nose, "does not become you."

"Maybe not. But choking on your own blood becomes you really well."

I just couldn't stop myself. I was beating the shit out of him.

I thought of what this cunt had planned for Melinda's beautiful body, and I would just see red. I literally want to kill him. No; I wanted to burn the first couple of layers of skin off his entire body, beat him into a coma, and then kill him.

I'm not playing for shits and giggles. If the dead fucker had a real head, I would have had a bullet in it by now.

I just couldn't shake from my head the image of Melinda; as Stacy and I had found her just before; semi-catatonic (I don't think she really knew what was going on,) lolling in that little wicker school chair as Keith – with a visible hard on – held her upright by the hair; while that demented bitch Lisa began to touch Melinda where only my hands had ever been allowed . . .

It was driving me out of my mind with anger; that image pounding behind my eyes as I landed punch after punch.

Yet still, I hadn't had enough. The urge to smash Keith's nose through his forehead wouldn't abate.

Psychotic, I know.

Therapeutic though.

"Please Nick," it wheezed, daring to speak again; somehow his balls must have dislodged themselves from his fat ass. "You have to believe me—"

"You ask me to believe you?!" I shouted down at the repulsive lump, welcoming the fire simmering just behind my conscious. "To TRUST you? To treat you with human compassion?"

". . . well a little less bodily harm would be nice . . ." it grumbled.

I was yelling again before I even realised it. "You mean like YOU'RE inclined to treat people? Like MELINDA? Don't think I don't what you've done to her. What you wanted to do to her . . . You've hurt her," I could taste bile in my mouth, and hear the revulsion in my voice.

Now, I don't reckon I really know how much humans are capable of when it comes to love, (God knows my father's not much of a role model,) but there was nothing that I wouldn't do for Melinda, just to have her safe and happy with me. There was just a deep roaring right in my chest; an urge to kick the ass of anyone who threaten to hurt her—

. . .Yeah, I'll go find my balls now.

Then Keith he did something strange, and it was enough to make me pause.

He smiled at me. A genuine, heartfelt smile. "You LOVE her, don't you?" His voice was practically shrill with excitement, and I blinked.

He sounded like a fucking lovesick Edward Cullen groupie. "OMG!" and shit.

"Don't you!?" He- and I wish there was another word for it - gushed.

I pulled myself together. "You fucking know it," I spat, "That's why you were so ready to fuck her and leave me the findings. You were going to tear her apart with my knife –" my voice escalated to a out of control roar, "AND YOU WERE GOING TO ENJOY IT, YOU SADISTIC CUNT!"

The words reverberated around the foggy corridor, my voice yelling at him again and again and again.

I brought my face in close to his and hissed into Keith's surprised face. "I know all about you Keith Ringwald. I know about what you did to Hoyaki Shenio's little sister . . . and she's waiting for you Keith." I promised with a sneer. "She'll find you, no matter how well you thought you'd cleaned up after you."

And with that, I pulled back and smashed my elbow into the side of his face.

"OW!!" came a sqeal. "Nick! You dork!

Dork? DORK? . . . Pretty words for a fifty-plus fire-hazard . . .

". . . Stacy?" I asked, incredulous.

"Well DUH," she intoned, pissed by my tone. "That's only what I've been trying to tell you for the last ten arse kicking minutes!"

Is Aston Kutcher (the king) anywhere on the premises? Am I being punked . . .?

"I hate to be a dick about this," I said to the shrouded ghost of Melinda's friend, using Melinda's favourite term for myself in the process – and incredibly, that's her idea of a term of endearment. "But if you're going to mess around with aesthetic substitution, it's probably not the choicest of ideas to choose a fucking MASS RAPIST."

I really was just being a dick. She wouldn't have chosen this.

I just felt like a pussy for beating up a girl.

In my defence though, it doesn't LOOK like a girl. It looks like 100 something kilograms of rapist to both me and the casual bystander – not that the astral plane gets a lot of those.

But.

I offered a hand to the indignantly spluttering ghost and hauled her to her feet.

"Thanks." She grumbled. "And, btw, you suck Slater."

I winced, but accepted that. "Sorry," I muttered.

Then, three days too late, I began to get it. "Where's Keith!?" I demanded of his aesthetic form – which was a trip.

"Well I don't know!" She defended. "He didn't exactly say, 'hey can I borrow your body! I want to go get freaky with your mum the lesbian way!'"

I raised my eyebrows. Melinda's friend all right. I only understood about a quater of that.

"Grab my arm," I instructed. "Come on!" I griped when she hesitated.

"Well it's WEIRD, ok!? You just—"

"Fucking chicks," I complained, cutting her off. Why do they always have to think too much?

. . . Talk too much.

. . . Love me too little.

—Oh, did I say chicks? I apologise for the generalising . . .

FUCK THIS, you know?

Also, while you're (down) there, please disregard the pathetic nature of acting so heroically for a chick who wants nothing to do with the man in question.

I am.

Well, I was trying. But I couldn't shake the knowledge that this whole thing was pretty fucked up on my part: considering that Melinda had made it abundantly clear that she wanted nothing to do with me; so my big hero-to-the-rescue thing was all just show pony shit.

But there you go.

"Just do it, alright?" I snap. Stacy grumbled, but Keith's clammy hands closed around my arm and I resisted the urge to shove my fist down his throat. Only just.

Then I shifted us back.

T h e D a u g h t e r O f

They were gone.

"Melinda!" I shouted, my voice bouncing back to me in the empty concrete room. "MELINDA!"

"Oh, yeah, because THAT'S subtle," Stacy (who still looked like Keith,) hissed at me. "You might as well just truss yourself up and slit your own throat."

I blinked at her brashness.

"I watched Sweeny Todd the other day," she admitted, looking at her feet.

I almost snorted. Chicks. Watch a scary movie without squealing and then think they're hard. Melinda's the same. She thought she could take on a serial rapist and murderer and a psychotic maniac housewife, with nothing but the right frame of mind.

And look where that got us.

"Stacy," I said urgently, grabbing her arm in a grip that was probably too tight. "Can you find them?" I didn't wait for her assent before plunging on. "Send your thoughts to the astral plane." I knew I sounded like a hocus Gypsy, but she didn't question me. "Close your eyes and focus. Focus on seeing Melinda's energy . . . It's kind of a light orange colour . . . like seeing the sun filtered through a window . . . A warm and comfortable light . . ."

Stacy nodded.

"Now reach past it. Search for it. Stare at the energy and watch it narrow, pinpointing itself . . . "

"Wood . . ." She murmured, to herself.

Wood? I wondered. Like a forest? A cellar? A coffin?

Stacy's eyes flew open. "A box!"

Or that. "A box? That's fucking cardboard." This ghost is broken—

"No! A telephone box! She's by herself . . .?"

I didn't let myself feel relief. That didn't necessarily guarantee her wellbeing.

"Where?"

"Down the harbour. In that paint chipped telephone box about twenty meters from the dock. How the hell would she get there?"

I didn't know.

"Look, Stacy, I need you shift to my place – " I had to raise my voice over her spluttered objections. "LISTEN TO ME!! Right now, we know where at least half of Keith is; and I need it to stay that way. I can't get Melinda—"

"No freaking way Romeo--!"

"Stacy, PLEASE. Please listen to me. You'll be safe there. Tell my father everything; he's supposed to be working on something that might help us get rid of Keith ."

"Nick . . ."

My patience was just about shot. Melinda was God knows where, and God knows what was happening to her . . . "LISTEN TO ME! You can either stay and get yourself tortured and exorcised, or you can go to dad's and help find a fucking way out of this!"

She stared at my fixed expression, then nodded, and Keith's hulking frame shimmered into nothing.

Then, for once wishing I'd had the misfortune to be born a FULL shifter; (so that I could shift to places other than the astral plane,) I headed out to where I'd hidden the car, and fishing my keys out of my left pocket, got in and began the drive to Valentine Harbour – about a 10k away from Valentine meatworks: which was where Lisa and Keith had brought Melinda to freeze and torture with the intent of killing her.

I guess it was ironic, but it just made me so mad I could not stop shaking.

Valentine harbour – a three-hour drive from Carmel – got its name for being, supposedly, the most romantic holiday destination in California. It would have appealed to Lisa's psychotic nature for me to find my girlfriend's body with visible signs of traumatic rape and torture in the Valentine Harbour meatworks.

Blood pumped as if ice through my veins and I pushed my foot down harder on the accelerator.

I might hate Melinda with one eighth of my heart; but I love her unreservedly with the rest. And there was nothing I wouldn't do to have her safe.

. . . A little corner of my mind whispered to me that this was all getting a little bit gay, and I was starting to think like a fag; but I don't care if Melinda loves me or not. I love her.

After what seemed like an indeterminable length of time I pulled up at the harbour, and got out to scour the place for the old wooden telephone box. Eventually I spotted it, its light blue paint flaked and fading.

I took off sprinting, not bothering to contemplate the likelihood of either Keith or Lisa being nearby. Which was remarkably dense.

I made it to the box without any of Lisa's bullets hollowing me out though, which I considered a real victory, and I tore the door of the slight structure open.

Melinda was huddled awkwardly in the far corner on the ground, and my knee's buckled as I reached out to her. I saw that there was blood smeared on her forehead. I reached out and gently touched her and she weakly turned her head to see me. She tried to say something, but it just came out as unintelligible garble.

"Shh, shh" I tired to sooth her as I scooped her up and with some effort, straightened up in the tiny booth – accidentally, I knocked her feet against the telephone receiver, but she didn't seem too worried about that, she was too busy looking blearily at me. "It's OK, you're OK now."

I said the word OK too many times for my statement to be plausible, but she didn't notice that either.

"Nick," she managed to gasp out, "What are you doing here?"

Stupidly, I tried a joke. "I hear this is a great place to pick up chicks." As soon as I said it; I wanted to kick myself. Time and place you fucking Skux!

"No, no!" Melinda heaved, kind of thumping her palms on my arms. "You have to leave, you have to get out before they come back—!"

I ignored her, and focused on trying to get her to stand upright – which was difficult, considering both the limited space a phone booth affords and Melinda's somewhat fragile state.

And all of a sudden she was crying.

She seemed to give up on trying to push me out the phone booth (attempts I'd almost not noticed her trying to execute, they were too feeble,) and instead collapsed her weight into me, forcing me into the wall – the one adjacent to the phone. She cried into my chest, and I could feel the cool mixture of nose snot and tears through my shirt.

Honestly? I peaked.

Melinda doesn't get like this. I've never once seen her want to be, or allow herself to be, held for long periods of time. She usually rejects all demonstrations of comfort because she thinks it implies inferiority on her part.

I did what I could think of – which, admittedly, wasn't much. I pushed her hair out of her face (because I know how she is about hair in her lipstick stuff – I guessed she'd be worse about hair in her tears,) and stroked her back and talked softly to her.

I was scared shitless about how out of it she was. She was almost like a hallucinatory religious fanatic – and we all know how fragile their senses of reality are. She had no strength in her bones – my arms gripping her waist was all that was holding her up and she was utterly incoherent.

I gently cupped her face and made her look at me. I had to ask, even though I was scared of the answer and there was a good chance that she wouldn't know it anyway. "Melinda . . . did-did they make you take something . . .?"

"No . . . No!" She gasped, sounding delirious. "I'm OK, I'm just, I'm just . . ."

"What?" I insisted, honestly scared out of my mind.

"I was just – but you –" She stopped for a second, and when she continued, her words were perfectly formulated and clear, despite the tears still running down her face. "I love you. Nick, I love you so much – I was lying on the beach. I love you more than anything and I just can believe – after everything I did to you, everything I said you still came to save me. And you wont even leave me now."

I stared down at her, stunned.

"I love you," she repeated. "I'm shitting bricks because there's a good chance that the psycho's with their knives are on their way back here right now to kill us both . . . but still, I love you."

Silence swallowed us, before tentatively, she broke it.

"Awesome timing, right?" she asked sheepishly.

I didn't have the right words. I didn't have any words.

I hoisted her feet off the ground and forced her mouth onto mine.

She loved me.

She loved me.

—Fucking ace . . .

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