Dark Corners

Dark Corners

Chapter 1
David

“David . . . David, wake up!”

A hand squeezed my arm in the most annoying manner. Cold fingers gripped my flesh, shaking me over and over until rage quickly replaced the irritation I felt.

“Get the heck off me!” I yelled, shoving at whoever was touching me. I heard a gasp and then sobs.

I blinked against the darkness as my eyes tried to focus, but all I could see was my best friend’s lifeless body beside me. Whether my eyes were opened or closed, that was all I could see. Day or night, conscious or not, the image of his head lolling backward as he sat three feet away from me consumed my thoughts like an old 35mm movie stuck on one frame.

You know the kind that your grandparents made you watch when you were a kid? Grainy images flashing on a projector screen, no sound except for the noise that the film made as it circled the reel.

Flick . . . flick . . . flick . . . flick . . .

The sobs beside me increased, louder and louder, over and over.

In a terrifyingly calm voice, I said, “You need to leave.”

She looked at me dumbstruck. “What?”

“You need to go, now.”

“But, it’s the middle of the night. . . .” Her words halted the moment my eyes focused on hers. Her half-naked torso distorted each time I blinked. She modestly clutched the sheet to her frame as it molded over the outline of her breasts, the same ones I had sucked on a few hours ago. They shook beneath the fabric from those annoying sobs that continued to roll through her.

I could kill her . . . that would make her stop. The crying was what drove me nuts. I couldn’t take it. If I reached over with my callused hand to the smooth, pale skin of her neck and squeezed long and hard . . . silence.

I needed silence, no noise, just quiet.

But she had no clue that’s what I needed. They never did. No one knew that so many times as they droned on and on, all I thought of as I stared blankly were methods to silence them.

She gawked at me while panting and sobbing dramatically. Why the heck wasn’t she leaving?

I walked over to where my jeans lay in a pile on the floor. The condom wrapper beside them made me feel sick. Retrieving my wallet, I pulled out a twenty and tossed it on the bed. “I’m sorry. Please call yourself a cab, but I really need you to go . . . now,” I said bluntly, to leave no doubt what I was requesting . . . and mainly to stop the noise.

My words clicked, causing her concern to turn to anger. “I am not a whore!” she said through clenched teeth. My eyes tracked her as she scurried about the room, her long blond hair flying around while she grabbed clothes off the floor and hastily threw them on.

“I’m sorry,” I said before she slammed the door behind her.

Walking my naked self into the bathroom, I turned the water to cold and immediately stepped under its punishing stream. With each minute that went by, I waited for the icy pins and needles to wash away every torment I knew, both past and present. While under that shower, I could cancel out the pain that took hold of my insides like a cancer and revel in the pain that pounded on my skin until I went numb.

Transferring pain was my drug of choice.

Damn the therapists. Damn the prescriptions they peddled.

I controlled my pain, no one else but me.

How?

Distancing myself.

Me, David G. Cavello, Private First Class, U.S. Army, who successfully completed my deployment in Baghdad, Iraq—the closest place to hell on earth. The soldier who at one time considered making it his career; that is, until he watched his best friend die right beside him, triggering a mental breakdown of sorts.

I was considered a model citizen, a brave soldier, an American Hero.

What a joke.

If I was such a hero, then why was I plagued with tempting thoughts of strangling a hot blonde I was with, just because she wouldn’t stop crying?

Not until my skin was numb did I finally turn off the frigid water.

I draped a towel around my waist and stepped out of the shower to stare at myself in the mirror. I barely recognized the man who stared back.

There had to be something out there to bring me back to normal. Normal meant someone who wasn’t constantly thinking he was here one minute, the next gone . . . no warning, just gone. It happened that quickly, that senselessly . . . so what was the point of it all?

That was what it all came down to.

One moment that changed everything.

No soul on this planet had any idea that they balanced on any given moment, like a circus flea on the head of a pin. Was it luck, coincidence that kept them from falling off? Yet, during that one brief moment, someone else, somewhere else, lost their battle and plummeted to their death?

Barry’s moment could have easily been mine.