Free Depths by C.S. Burkhart Page A

nothing bad I hope, ” chuckling as he said it.
    She laughed with him and looked back to me.
    “ Well, what were you going to
say? ” she asked, looking me in the eye as
she said so.
    “ Oops, hang on a second. I left
something in my car, ” Charles said
standing back up and walking to my door, “hold that thought! ”
    He shut the door behind him and I looked at her in
pure confusion.
    “ What's he doing here? ”
    “ Well, you wanted to know about
him so I invited him over. ”
    The door opened up before I had a chance to ask her
what the hell was going on.
    “ I found what I was looking
for! ” He announced, holding a baseball bat
over his shoulder with one hand, in his other, several feet of
chain.
    I stood
up , startled, and backed away, tripping
over the coffee table. She didn't even have a chance to scream as
he butted her in the forehead with the end of the bat, knocking her
backwards over the coffee table and landing at my feet. Blood
seeped from a knot, already forming, just above her right
eye.
    He smiled as he walked towards me, raising the bat
above his head. Gone was the meek looking old man. The figure in
front of me was the very definition of sinister.
    “ Now pay attention! ”
    He swung the bat down with one arm, connecting
squarely on the top of my head.
    I fell to a heap immediately. The room spun and my
ears rang. I saw doubles of him bending over and binding her feet
with chains.
    “ No, ” I
murmured, clawing out for his legs but missing by a mile. The words
sounded fuzzy as they left my lips. My head throbbed, pulsing in
pain and my thoughts were jumbled. He just flashed his toothy
smile.
    After he finished binding her legs
up, he stood and dragg ed her lifeless body away
from me by the other end of the chain.
    “ Now you just sit here like a good
boy while we have a nice little chat. ”
    The words hit my ears through a haze and didn't
register for a second. He dragged her behind the sofa and down the
halls towards my room.
    “ Don't worry, I'll take better
care of her than you did, ” he spat, slamming my bed room door
shut.

Chapter
14
    It was late. I wasn't sure quite what time, maybe
eight or nine o' clock. I had just got home and I felt drained,
exhausted to the point of collapsing. Tear stains streaked my
face.
    I needed … I actually needed … A
friend. A companion. Someone . I needed someone. Just a
human connection, a real one, just for a little while.
    What was I doing here? I stood at my front
door , suddenly not remembering why I was
outside in the first place. A chill in the air nipped at me and I
didn ’ t have a jacket.
    Keys, I needed my keys. I dug
around my pant pockets until I found my keys and unlocked the
door, stagger ing past the entryway and
slumping over my sofa, legs hanging off the edge of the arm
rest.
    The adrenaline was wearing off and
I felt my body crashing. I've never felt more exhausted in my life.
I just lay there on the couch for a while, not sure for how
long. My muscles ached and screamed at me and I was panting, out of
breath for some reason. I just stared at the patterns on my sofa
until the morphed and molded into shapes, faces and … Other things.
    I rolled my face over towards the coffee table. It
was cluttered with magazines, a plate with a few crumbs on it and a
red cup were on the left corner. I should probably take those to
the sink and wash them. I wasn't sure how long they had been
there.
    Forcing myself to stand, I bent
over and picked up the plate and cup and walked into the kitchen,
but when I got there, I couldn ’ t remember
why.
    Oh yeah, sink.
    I sat them both in the sink, noticing the other
dishes that had piled up on the counter. I should probably wash
those too. I put the plug in the drain, opened the cabinet under
the sink to grab the dish soap and poured some into the sink.
    I watched the water fill up the sink, suds foaming
up so that I couldn't see through them. I picked up the sponge from
behind the faucet and dunked