bury me anywhere (but hawkins, indiana) | harringrove

chapter ten: waves break

JUNE 30TH, 1985

BILLY | NOW

The sound of the belt sliding against crisp beltloops is still ringing in Billy's ears. It flattens him out, inside: the fear, the pain, the burning anger and humiliation, all thinning into papery sheets. In his head, he'll methodically tear them apart piece by piece; placing them on his tongue one by one like the stale god wafers of his childhood, melting them straight past the brain-blood-barrier to pump his veins with pulped poison.

By then, it's usually over. It always stops eventually.

This... is different, though.

Not just that he's still in the same clothes he's been in since the warehouse, or the sand still under his nails, gritting into his knees through his torn jeans - but this time was different, this particular beating.

Most blurred together after a while - the belt, the fists, the words... Neil was a shitty creature of shittier habits, and not all that creative.

But Billy knows this one.

It's burned behind his eyelids, beyond humiliating. It was the first time Max saw.

She'd spoken up, for a second; Billy still remembers the fleeting, completely insane stab of hope- like maybe it'd make a difference.

But Neil, he hadn't skipped a beat. He didn't even look away; Billy was sure he could feel his eyes burning into his skull.

Worthless. You need a little girl to protect you?

And, like Billy should've realized to begin with, nothing changed.

Max's eyes stayed on him the entire endless fucking time.

Even after Neil had left, polished shoes disappearing from the edges of Billy's vision without a word, Max had still been there. He could hear her staggered breathing, feel her disgust and shock, a fucking kid no doubt sneering at his weakness-

But it's out of time, out of sync, the visceral brand of this memory and the now.

Right now, Billy's nails are still bloody from scraping and scratching free of a warehouse a thousand miles and months away from this broken kitchen. Pacific sand that clung to his saltwater-wet legs more than a decade ago digs into his knees . The shoes on the floor may be a blur, but the belt still comes down on him just the same.

And, just the same, Billy freezes. He cowers.

But this time? It doesn't end.

Not the way it had, anyway.

There's racing footsteps, a feral blur of motion, and Susan's kitchen suddenly sits empty around Billy and the girl, air between them slowly glittering with motes of thick, ashy dust. There is no salt to it, though, just- flat air, chemical and sour at the edges, overcycled. It smells the same as the factory, acid rain and blood lightning.

It's still the same nightmare. Just in a sunny new skin.

He's still trapped. Is this going to be it now? The belt coming down, over and over-

Then, new shoes, childish and unfamiliar, enter the edge of the vision. Not Max's skater shoes, scribbled and drawn over on the whites, but Jesus Christ, just as fucking unwelcome. Billy lets his forehead thump once against the linoleum with a growl.

"Get out," he rasps, shortly.

"Let me help y-"

And at that he raises his head with a jerk, a firestorm sparking in his chest and burning into his eyes.