Free Tormented by Robert J. Crane

this driveway earlier and had sat slumped down, figuring he’d be out of sight. He wanted to go home, wanted to clean up. He’d had to dress from the dirty clothes in his suitcase, and it felt … filthy. He was wearing a green dress shirt with khakis, and the wrinkles alone were driving him mad. He’d had black smudges from the soot on his face and had stopped in St. Paul to mop them up. His stomach was unsettled. He’d drunk an iced tea in silence, staring at the cream-colored walls of the fast food restaurant. He didn’t even remember which restaurant it was now.
    Sitting here was not going to be a valid strategy long-term. Sooner or later someone would realize that he was parked in front of the Snyder house while they were up north at their cabin for the week. A law enforcement officer would realize he was in the car, would realize that the car possessed license plates that could be traced back to him. No, sitting here was not a valid option for long.
    But Benjamin didn’t know what else to do.
    What he really wanted to do was go back to work, go home, to wake up tomorrow in Amsterdam to find that this whole day had been one long, nightmarish fever dream that had never actually happened. He’d gladly sit through the nine-hour flight, even the allergies again and all that followed, to take the day back. He could replay the events at the airport in his mind, but only from a distance, as though they were happening to someone else.
    Yes, Amsterdam. That was where it had all gone wrong, wasn’t it? Everything before that had been fine.
    He could remember what it looked like as the blast hit, as the skin melted off the face of the man behind him who’d been so unkind. He watched it happen in his mind, over and over, revolted, afraid, disgusted. What kind of monster could do such a thing to other people?
    Benjamin stared at his hands. They shook for no apparent reason, and he clamped them on the steering wheel, watched the plastic leather bend under the strength of his grip in a way he’d never seen happen before.
    But this day was not a dream, was it? He’d done … what he’d done—but it wasn’t his fault, was it? This wasn’t something he’d known about; he’d never had powers before. Now the government was after him. He’d seen the lead man, remembered his face, even with the beard. He was Sienna Nealon’s brother.
    Benjamin was stuck in a loop of needing to do something, anything, but feeling absolutely like he couldn’t. “I have to leave,” he said, “but I can’t. If I do, they’ll catch me. But if I sit here, they’ll catch me.” And it had played in his head exactly like that for the last several hours.
    “Where else can I even go?” he asked. “Where they won’t see me? Where they won’t …” He took a breath. Maybe it all was a dream, after all, and it was culminating in him losing his damned mind. Metahumans may have existed in the world, but he thought of them the same way he thought of Hollywood celebrities—they were out there, but he never saw them, so they might as well not have existed. Seeing Sienna Nealon’s brother in real life, in front of his own house …
    It finally let the train on the loop jump the track.
    “They’re coming for me,” he said. “Looking for me. I have to leave.” He looked up in the mirror, saw fearful eyes. “I don’t want to be caught by them.” He’d read the articles about what happened to metas—or what was suspected, in any case. No one knew for sure, after all. There were no trials, no word, and those people never saw the light of day again.
    Whatever happened to them, it wasn’t for him , that was certain. After all, he hadn’t meant to. It just … happened. It was an accident.
    “I want my life back,” he said, leaning back against the cloth seat in his tiny car. “I just want … my life back. I just want …”
    He opened his eyes. He was still in the Snyders’ driveway.
    Benjamin took one last mournful breath and started