of spit hanging from my mouth. It feels like my eyes are bulging out of my head, and my body feels like a bundle of exposed nerves. I put my forehead against the ground and through the fireworks in my head, I think, Please. I pray, please. Please God, Michael, whoever. Please. If not me, then please help Abe get out of here. Just make them stop. Please. Cal. Cal, please don’t be dead, please see my thread. God, please. Dad. Oh, Dad, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but it hurts. Oh my God, I hurt. Please let it be quick. If not for me, then for Abe. If we go, let it be quick for him.
The fireworks go off in my head again, all exploding in shades of such blue I almost cry out. The rain drips through the walls and down from the ceiling onto the burning skin of my neck and it’s one drop, then two, then three, and I count all the way to seven before I stop. There’s no answer. No one hears my prayer. No one is coming. We are alone. We’ve always been alone.
I sit back up with a groan.
“You know,” my aunt says, “I’m rather upset that it’s come to this, Benji.” There is something akin to sadness in her voice, and for an impossible moment, I almost believe it. “When we started this little… endeavor, I never thought it would come to this. But I guess like all things, choices had to be made. To take on something such as this, you have to be prepared to make sacrifices.”
“Why?” I gasp out, trying to buy more time, my aching hands scrabbling against the knife in Abe’s grip.
“Why?” she repeats.
“Why this? Why all of this?”
She laughs. “Benji, this isn’t going to be like some movie, where the villain gives a whole speech at the end about the hows and the whys. There’s no extraordinary meaning behind any of this. It’s simple really; I grew up poor. I didn’t want to be poor anymore. Meth is cheap to manufacture, easy to distribute, easy to collect on.”
I turn my head pointedly to look around the shack. “This? How can you make any money making it in here? It’s not big enough!”
She glances around, almost fondly. “This is where we started,” she says. “When we didn’t know what we were doing. We had some junkie chemist in here who we’d promised all the crystal he could smoke if he showed us how to make it. He was a strange man, but good at what he did. Money was tight at first, but the more we made, the more we sold. We watched his process as closely as we could, figured out we didn’t need the junkie anymore.” She smiled sadly. “He overdosed in a shitty apartment outside of Bandon. All the crystal he could smoke and he smoked it all at once. Such a terrible tragedy.”
The blade catches in my fingers again, but it slips. It isn’t working. My hands are covered in sweat and blood and water. I can’t get a good enough grip on it to pull it out. I don’t think there’s enough strength in my numb fingers to pull it out anyway. The zip ties are cutting into my flesh, cutting off the blood flow. I’m about to give up when I get another idea. Fuck, it’s going to hurt, but it’s the only option left.
“It still doesn’t explain how you could make meth in this little space,” I point out.
“Jesus, boy,” Griggs snaps. “What the fuck is it to you?”
“Curiosity,” I say, pinching the blade once more with two fingers. As soon as I feel it start to pull up, I slide, I curl my hand and fingers up toward my wrist, and slide the tip of the knife down through my knuckles to the webbing between the two fingers. It doesn’t cut, not yet. I grit my teeth, gathering my resolve.
“Curiosity killed the cat,” the sheriff singsongs.
“And satisfaction brought him back,” I growl.
“Caves,” my aunt says.
“What?”
“The cave system is quite extensive,” she says. “Back up in the hills right behind this little shack. It’s almost shocking how far they go into the mountains. How wide they get. How underground they are, perfect for hiding from any normal satellite imaging used by law enforcement. Little shafts that open up from the ground, perfect for ventilation. And since they’re a part of the incorporated township, it means this area is not