Wait Until Dawn by Bailey Bradford (book club suggestions .txt) 📕

experience at the hands of a mad man, lines smooth and jagged etched forever into his flesh. He’d never forget, never have peace, never be who and what he was before.

Another wave of images streamed through his head, more screams and agony, more sick delight from the one inflicting the torture.

“No more, you fucking evil bastard,” Rich muttered. He grabbed the nightstand with one hand to steady himself and pulled the top drawer open with his other. Even in the darkened room, a sliver of moonlight slipped through the curtains and caressed the cold steel, giving off a subtle glow that seemed to promise salvation, if not respite. Rich picked up the gun, his hand steady despite the rapid beat of his heart. He’d had enough, couldn’t deal with it any more. If he went to Hell, it couldn’t be any worse. He wasn’t sure he’d want to go to Heaven anyway, if such a place existed, not if God was real and let shit like this happen to people.

Flick-flick-flick. Images skipped and sputtered like a film reel misaligned in its projector. Memories or fantasies that weren’t his own, would never be his no matter how deeply branded into his mind they were, faded in and out.

“Enough,” Rich rasped, flinching only a little when he pressed the barrel under his chin. It wasn’t fear of death that made him twitch, only the shock of how very cold the steel felt against his skin. Rich closed his eyes and took a deep breath, already feeling a sense of peace at having found a way to escape. He slipped the safety off and tucked his finger against the trigger before remembering that finger wouldn’t work. He shifted his hand a bit until his middle finger touched the trigger.

Mocking laughter, so loud in his head as to seem audible, caused him to hesitate. The invader wasn’t afraid of being vanquished. It egged Rich on, which in turn made him doubt the wisdom of such a final course of action. “Do it, pull the trigger, blow your goddamned brains out! You’re useless, pathetic, you scarred waste! No one will give a shit, no one will even come looking for you—”

Except now Rich didn’t know if it was the voice of his tormentor or his own thoughts pushing him to end his life. He’d thought of suicide many times since he’d woken up in the hospital in McKinton, his body and face bearing the marks of a mad man. It wasn’t only during these darkest moments that death seemed the only solution for his misery. He’d had to quit the job he loved, had shoved away his family—what there was of it—and his friends.

Despite the drugs he’d been given for pain while in the hospital, he’d been cognizant of Deputy Matt Nixon sitting by his bed, talking to him, encouraging him to wake, to fight, to give them a chance. As soon as Rich had been able to speak, he’d spewed cruel words at the man, unable to even consider letting anyone touch him, look at him… Rich had wanted to die, but each time his heart had stopped while he was in the hospital, the determined staff had brought him back.

Rich had seen himself lying in the hospital bed, his eyes wide and lifeless, bandages on his cheek and brow, on his chest, arms and stomach as the defibrillator was fired up and pressed to his chest. Twice Rich had hovered above his dead body and screamed silently at the nurses and doctors to stop, to let him die. He’d have rather been swallowed by the endless darkness he sensed waiting for him than be returned to the damaged body and mind lying on that bed. Better to spend eternity in black nothingness than to live with what remained of the man he’d once been.

He could fix it all now, with one pull of the trigger. “Do it!” the voice ordered, and Rich decided he would, but not because the invader wanted him to, but because he wanted to. If that made the presence that seemed to have become a part of him win, then fuck it. Rich would win, too.

“Yes, come on, fucking pussy! What are you waiting for? Pull the goddamned trigger, do it do it do it, you know you want to—”

“Yes,” Rich agreed. Then all hell broke loose in his head as his body was shoved backwards by a cold gust of wind. The gun was jerked from his hand despite Rich’s efforts to hold on to it. His desperation to escape what his life had become, to finally sleep, drove a cry of protest from his numb lips. The hope for release was receding rapidly, chased off by the painful shards of ice that began spreading from the bones in his toes, melding with marrow, freezing it, deepening the ache. Rich gasped as the frigid feeling intensified, working up his legs, to his hips, through his pelvis and into the base of his spine. It seemed to pool there for a long moment, then rocketed up his spine, slamming into the bottom of his skull and demolishing the invader’s voice, at least for now. Splintered strips of light filled his vision, dagger-sharp icicles chasing away the last of the curses from the twisted presence that often shared Rich’s mind.

Rich curled into a ball on his side, gripping the back of his head and pulling it down until his chin pressed against his chest. The gun lay forgotten as he tried to think. What had just happened? His bones still ached with cold. His head felt as if it were packed with snow. The invader wasn’t gone permanently, that much he knew, though he couldn’t say how he knew it. This reprieve was temporary, an opportunity for him to find a way to free himself from the demon or whatever it was that made his life hell. But how?

Or maybe this was just another sick game the invader was playing,