Thanks for the reviews and encouragement!
"A handful of dream dust for my pirate;
He can hear the pacific singing.
The sea meets the light in his salt water eyes,
Icy pictures of the water are captured in his frame."
-Ocean Night Song, Laura Veirs
Borrowed Time
It was dark outside. Not just the regular kind of dark; the night air was thick and heavy like a blanket of water that separates your lungs from air. Or, to Nora, more like the thick snot-like consistency of okra goo when you stir it too much.
Yuck.
She was curled up on the living room couch covered by a thick wool blanket. A bowl of chili-from-the-can warmed her subarctic hands, but coincidentally burned her mouth. She had turned off all the lights and popped in Saw. She couldn't remember which one it was, but she did remember the maggoty pigs being obliterated into maggoty-pig-milkshakes, or something like that.
Maybe that wasn't the best thing for her to watch with a bowl of chili in her hands.
The Lionsgate cogs spun across the screen, and of course the first sounds of the movie would be screams. There was a man on the screen, she couldn't even remember who he was anymore, trying to reach for his gun in a pitch-black room.
Nora's phone lit up. It vibrated so violently that it spun across the table in quick little circles. Vee, read the caller ID.
Nora sighed. She didn't even make it five minutes into the movie. "Yes, ma'am?"
Vee was laughing obnoxiously on the other end. "Rixon!" she was squealing, her mouth away from the receiver.
Nora felt a squeeze of jealousy. She immediately felt guilty for it. This was her best friend, for crying out loud! But still, she wanted to be squealing someone's name too.
Well, not just someone.
"Oh. Hey, babe!" Vee chirped into the phone, practically radiating joy. She said it like Nora had called her instead of the other way around. "Where the hell have you been hiding? I haven't seen you in, like, three days! I'm having withdrawal symptoms over here. Geez!"
Nora laughed, hoping that it didn't sound as fake as it felt. "Sorry."
Where had she been? She had been here. Watching horrific movies that made her feel better about her life. At least she wasn't getting tortured by Jigsaw, right? She had been hiding. Hiding from Patch and Marcie, and inevitably Vee and Rixon because they only reminded her of the other two.
"Sooo! Where have you been, Nora?" Vee pressed.
"Um," Nora stuttered. "I went to watch Scott play pool last night."
"Scotty the Hottie?" Vee screeched. "Oh, you have been a busy girl."
If Vee only knew the truth. What was Nora supposed to say? Yeah, and then he pretty much tore my clothes off behind the place. And I'm pretty sure Patch broke his junk off.
No. Way. Better to just leave it be.
"Not as busy as you apparently are," Nora changed the subject.
"So come to the movies with us! Rixon's treat? Or, hey, bring Scott-O the Hott-O! Even better."
Nora totally didn't feel like being the third wheel at the moment.
"I think I'll pass this time. I just put in a movie and put some lasagna in the oven." A lie. "I talked to him earlier and he said he was busy tonight, anyways." Another lie.
When had she become such a terrible liar?
"Well, alright," muttered Vee, eating up all the untruths. "We have to eat lunch tomorrow, then. Just me and you, so we can catch up on gossip!"
Nora smiled. "Definitely. Bye, Vee. Have fun."
They both hung up.
Last night had sucked. The whole thing reeked. Her pettiness had put her into real danger, and Patch was right; he wasn't always going to be there to save her when she did something dangerous just to piss him off. But she was so desperate to have his attention away from Marcie that she would have done just about anything.
So Patch had kissed her. So he had touched her. So what? He was a guy, that didn't mean anything. So he had taken her home, walked her inside. Scott could have been there, Patch was just being safe. So he had lingered, then snatched her up and propped her against the island bar in the kitchen, spreading her long legs like the front and back cover of a book. He was just—Well, she didn't exactly have an explanation for that one.
In the end, he had left. Patch left her. That was all that mattered.
The movie had come to a suspenseful quiet part. There was a creak from the back of the house.
Now, Nora knew the house was old, but she had also lived in it for a long, long time. That specific creak sounded like a misplaced footstep.
Fear spiked in her chest. She snatched the remote from the lamp table and pushed the mute button.
"Hello?" she whispered, glancing furtively into the pitch-black entryway of the kitchen.
Silence. She felt a tremble creep up her spine. Someone was watching her, she could feel it.
"Patch?" she called, louder this time.
"Not hardly," said a cold voice.
Nora shrieked, but choked on it as large, rough hands wrapped around her frail neck. Her breath jumped out of her body as she was thrown against the wall, hitting the window and making the venetian blinds collapse on her already aching head.
"Look what he did to my nose!" shrieked the voice, which she now recognized to be Scott's. He ripped the blinds away from her and held her face up in a bruising grasp.
"Mmf," she moaned, trying to pull away. Sure enough, his nose was crooked as Owen Wilson's, sitting on his face at a seventy degree angle.
His grip on her face loosened and he pushed her head back into the wall forcefully. He backed off and she scrambled away from him.
Ever since her incident with Elliot, Nora kept a can of pepper spray around the house. At the moment, it was in the kitchen, in the odds and ends drawer.
Nora bolted, feeling in her bones exactly where she was headed and what she was headed for, and knowing that if she could make it there she would be alright.
She ran for her life, sliding across the kitchen floor and pulling the drawer out. Her heart thundered in her ears, followed closely by the pounding of Scott's shoes as he chased her. He caught her by the leg and dragged her back. The drawer clattered to the floor, pens and prescription pill bottles flying out. She fumbled around in it as he dragged her, but she had already found what she needed.
She lifted the tab up and pressed down the button. The particles fell against her skin too, and it burned, God did it burn. It felt like smoldering ashes falling on her skin, and she wondered what it felt like for Scott to be caught directly in the line of fire. The smell was horrible, like spicy bug killer.
He roared, releasing her ankles and writhing, trying to pull his soaked clothes off.
Nora scrambled up, coughing out the specks that burned her lungs and running from the quickly spreading smell. She grabbed a knife from a drawer and ran into the living room, shakily searching for her misplaced phone.
The lamp table was turned over. It had been on the lamp table. She patted the floor blindly in the dark. She found it after a few seconds; it had skidded halfway across the room towards the TV, a few feet past the coffee table. She snatched it up, looking under recent calls and tapping on Patch's name.
Ring. Ring. Ring. "This is Patch. Leave a message." Beep.
She knew she would sound terrible. She had just been choked and half-way pepper sprayed, not to mention that she was scared out of her mind right now. "Patch—"
"You fucking bitch," Scott said from behind her. He didn't scream it. He wasn't insanely irate. He was calm. Deadly calm. Calm like now he was going to kill her. He grabbed the phone from her hand and clicked End.
How had he recovered that fast? Her thighs were still on fire from the spray.
Scott leaned back. Nora lashed out with the knife, feeling it drag across flesh. She didn't even feel the pain when he hit her, and she didn't see stars either. Her whole world was just black.
She didn't know how long it had been. She knew it was still dark out, but the sky was beginning to lighten. It made her feel sick. Were her eyes open or weren't they?
She wasn't even really awake when she drunkenly reached for her phone, knowing that she should be calling somebody—911, her mother, Vee, anybody. She stared at the screen for a long time, the haze of unconsciousness making her brain slow to comprehend things.
2 new messages.
11:04 p.m.
Patch:
You okay, Angel?
12:38 a.m.
Patch:
Nora, are you okay?
She wanted to answer, to say anything. Type, she urged her fingers. Please, type. Slowly, barely, her thumb touched the letters. Just two, the only ones she could manage.
1:31 a.m.
Nora:
No
To Nora, it seemed like she had been out for days. Weeks, even. But when the sound of the front door closing woke her and she glanced at the clock, it only read 2:02. She closed her eyes again, drifting, and couldn't remember what she had just seen.
She heard footsteps approaching. Heard a sigh just before warm hands pulled her up. Her head? Her whole body? She couldn't tell. She was being laid on something soft. Ah, so she had been picked up, put on the couch, she assumed.
The same hands brushed hair from her face, touching broken skin and making her brows twist together in pain.
Footsteps. Water running in the kitchen. More footsteps.
It was morning. It was breakfast time. Dad was making breakfast for her.
"Dad?" Nora called.
"No, Angel," said a very sad voice.
There was a warm washcloth against her head, rubbing raw, bruised flesh. It brought the pain back, and at the moment she was associating pain with Scott, so it brought back her memories of the night before.
She punched and flailed and fought. Against what, she didn't know, but she was going to kick its butt before it did the same to her. "No!" she screamed.
He had come back. Come back to torture her some more.
Hands restrained her. "Nora!" called the person. "It's okay, Angel, it's going to be okay."
Nora opened her eyes. Correction—eye. One of them was so bruised and swollen that there was no possible way she could open it.
"Patch?" Her voice was hoarse, probably from being choked. It hurt to swallow.
"Oh," Patch groaned, pity thick in his voice, "Angel. What happened?"
Nora closed her eye and buried her head in her arms. She wanted him to leave. She wanted to be left alone. She wanted Scott to come back and finish her off.
Patch was playing her. I mean, obviously, right? She wanted to ask him, scream at him, where he had been. Where was he when she needed him? Somehow that tapered off into wondering what Scott had done to her after he knocked her unconscious. Kicking her was probably involved, because her ribs hurt like a mug.
She started crying, because she was embarrassed and she was ashamed. And then her ribs hurt even worse, if possible, and she started heaving her tearless sobs wheezily.
She didn't want to see what he would do when she told him, either.
"You know," she squeaked through her hands.
She felt Patch stiffen, rage roiling off of him. "Is this blood yours?" he asked.
She hadn't noticed before, but there were small, slick dark pools spattered across the floor. She had some smeared across her too. Mostly in the most inconvenient places below her waist.
She felt heat rising to her face, hoping he wasn't asking what she thought he was asking.
"I don't think so," she told him quietly. "I think I might have cut him before he—before he hit me."
Patch was silent. He usually was. She couldn't tell what he was thinking. She didn't want to know. She just knew that she was tired. So tired.
"Can we go to sleep?" She asked. "Please don't go."
He nodded, his eyes unreadable, dark enigmas.
Never, Angel.
Hm. What will Patch do to Scott, I wonder?
Yesss, the last few pages of Crescendo were wonderful. When Patch told Nora that he loved her I was like "Squeeeee." And then there was the big cliffy. I hate cliff-hangers. I always read the last pages first because I hate not knowing.
By the way, that song by Laura Veirs, Ocean Night Song, listen to it. Now. It changed my life.
Review please? Review and you get dirty, smutty sex? Huh, huh?