Stray Fears - Gregory Ashe Page 0,14

the flashbacks: explosions of sensory information, there and then vanished, going on and on. The light of the clock radio, neon green. The smell of fried catfish. The hand over my mouth. The hand around my neck. The pressure building in my head. Forever. That was the problem with this kind of nightmare: it was real, it was now, it never faded or got any easier. The dumbass I’d picked up at the club just kept plowing into me, drilling, and I whimpered into his hand as each thrust carried me closer to climax. A little sound. Something soft. A thud. Dripping. The taste of grass in my mouth. All of it happening somewhere else. The light of the clock radio. The smell of fried catfish. The hand over my mouth. The hand around my neck. The light of the clock radio. Drilling into me. My pathetic moaning into his hand. The smell of something foul and corrupted. A hand on my arm, grabbing me, dragging me forward. The light of the clock radio.

The light of the clock radio.

Not green anymore. A soft, firefly blue.

I sat up, gasping for breath, covered in sweat. I was shaking. My legs were tangled in the sheet. For a moment, I had to press a hand over my mouth, rocking back and forth as I sucked air through my nose. And then, bit by bit, the nightmare pulled back. I kicked my way free of the bedding, only now noticing that Richard was still in his bathroom, that less than half an hour had passed since I’d dozed off. I stumbled into my bathroom and splashed water on my face. I grabbed the towel, still wet from my shower, and dried off my sweat. When I was getting back into bed, Richard’s door opened. He was an outline against the grayscale darkness behind him.

“How are you?” he asked quietly as he got into bed. “Are you still angry at me?”

I focused on the folds of the sheet, tracing them, trying to disappear into their pattern.

He kissed my shoulder, and I shivered, and then I started to cry.

“Come here,” he whispered, pulling me against him, his arms wrapping around me. “It’s ok. Things are going to be ok.”

DAG (8)

At end of shift, I cornered Mason in the locker room.

“Nelly’s,” I said.

“Man, I’m beat. I just want to go home and see Mary Ann.”

“This isn’t optional.”

He didn’t meet my gaze; he was staring at one of the changing benches. Then he sucked his teeth, shrugged, and said, “Yeah, ok.”

Nelly’s was a cop bar just off the Quartier, the docks district. Bragg didn’t have any major industries that still operated on the lake; by this point, the docks were purely a tourist attraction. Sometime in the 90s, someone had gotten the grand idea to “revive the Quartier” and “stimulate local businesses,” which was a fancy way of saying they wanted to sell most of the Quartier to a St. Tammany Parish developer. It happened the way a lot of Louisiana business still happened, and most of the original architecture was bulldozed and replaced with chain restaurants and boutiques, all of it housed in a faux Creole style. Kind of the Disneyland version of Moulinbas or the French Quarter.

Because Nelly’s wasn’t on a major thoroughfare, it was spared. Inside, it consisted of a chain of smoke-filled rooms, the plaster walls yellow with cigarette tar and nicotine, small tables crammed into every available inch. City cops tended to take the back room; deputies stayed near the front. I attributed this to the fact that the deputies had to handle just about everything on their own; we might as well have an easy exit.

Mason had already gotten a table in the front room, and I sat opposite him. When Amanda patted my shoulder, I asked for Sugarfield on the rocks. Mason had already placed an order, I figured, because he just nodded when she asked if he was ok.

“Look, Mary Ann’s waiting—”

“Mary Ann can’t be bothered to drive you to your support group,” I said. “She can wait a fucking minute while I talk to you.”

“What the fuck did you just say?”

“What the hell happened today?”

“Don’t ever talk about her like that again, do you hear me?”

“Mason, Jesus, we had a civilian call for a wellness check, and you treated that guy like he was robbing a bank.”

“He’s fine.”

“He was scared. Really scared. And he was worried about his friend, and—”

“Christ, if I have to hear one more person worship