I walk a lonely roadHe worked doggedly, stubbornly through the night, torches burning all around us in his efforts to pin me to the dark, to keep me right there in that place where he knows where I'll be but no one else can find me easily, if at all.
The only one that I have ever known
Don't know where it goes
But it's home to me and I walk alone
He steps back and wipes his forehead across the back of his arm and staggers slightly against the uneven ground. He takes a sip of his drink and points at me.
Now you don't move, Peanut. His eyes are so glassy, I can't even see the green, just the flames reflected in them. Flames and fear and rage. Don't you go anywhere. You stay right here where I can see you. Don't even move a hair's breath or I'll...I'll...
You'll what? I duck down out of the first set of ties. I'm smaller than he realizes and better at this than he remembers. This was part of the first act. Tie me up, close the doors and set the box on fire. Outside he's hoping to God I can get out. Inside I'm getting the fuck out and going through the door in the floor, dropping seven feet into a dusty crawlspace hoping to God he remembered to put the padding on the cement floor so I don't break my legs.
Here I'm hoping to God there's a fucking door in the floor so I can escape but when I hit the ground it's solid and the fire's getting so hot we're burning alive.
Read between the linesHe turns around to pick up the bottle and I duck behind the night and I wait. I hear him swear and the bottle smashes into the dark, shattering into a million stars, showering me with whiskey and tears, bathing me in his terror, breaking my hiding place wide open.
Of what's fucked up and everything's alright
Check my vital signs
To know I'm still alive and I walk alone
There you are. He says it but it isn't nice.
I nod. I'm afraid but I refuse to show it.
Come here.
I shake my head.
Now.
I shake my head again.
NOW, BRIDGET! He screams it and I take one step forward and the flames from the torch nearest me jump to my skin. I burst into flames and he smiles.
I'd kill you so they couldn't have you anymore.
No you wouldn't.
That's the sad part. I would. I would because I can't take it anymore.
I woke up screaming. I woke up screaming with the sound of that stupid ominous chugging guitar sound at the very beginning of Boulevard of Broken Dreams in my head. Loch said he would have woken up screaming too if he had Green Day stuck in his head and didn't take it seriously but underneath our easy dismissal is a slow moving river of pure dread.
Ten is a number I suddenly hate with everything I've got.