Hot Starry Nights

4:3 ~ Howard

                  . . . We should play a game . . .

           . . . Do you like guys . . .

                                 . . . What kind of question is that . . .

                                      . . . I like guys . . .

. . . Yes, actually . . .

                           . . . You always look so scared . . .

           . . . I would kiss you . . .

                                                      . . . Would you kiss me . . .

    . . . Tomorrow, let's talk, yeah . . .

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  I wake up to Nat thrashing next to me. I try to wake him up, but it doesn't do anything to help. I grab his hands in mine and squeeze them. Nothing is happening and it's only getting worse. There's sweat all over his body and his hands start slipping from mine. I sit up and pull his body to mine, grabbing his hands again and calling Blake into the room for help. She bursts into the room, looking frazzled and wasted. She holds his shoulders down and tries to wake him up, but has no luck. She leaves the room and comes back with a cool towel. She places it on his forehead and he finally wakes up. She removes her hands from his shoulders as I barrel into Nat, pulling him into my arms for the tightest hug I can manage. A few moments later, he finally snaps out of the blank stare he had adopted when he woke up. He hugs me back, just as tightly as I had hugged him.

  "Ward, I think we should talk."

  "Y'all do that. I'm gonna head to my house for a bit. I'll be back later." Blake backs out of the room, and as soon as I hear the door close, I speak up.

  "So, um. Do you want to talk about your dream first? Or is there something else? Is there more?" Nat backs out of the hug and gets up to leave the room. I follow him and he opens a familiar looking box laying on the living room floor. He pulls a White Claw out of it and I begin to remember some of last nights events, but Nat's more important right now.

  "Nat, no. Put that back, we need this conversation to be sober, and we should remember it." He drops it from his hand; luckily, it lands on the couch.

  "Can we go to the treehouse?"

  "Yes. I'm gonna need the whole story. I want to be able to help you, so I need to know everything." I pick him up and he wraps his legs around my waist, hugging me with his arms as well. I walk through the woods and when we get to the treehouse, I let him down so he can climb up. When I climb up, he's already leaning against the trunk of the tree. I sit across from him, but he crawls into my lap as soon as I've sat down.

  "Do you want to start with your dream this morning?"

  "No, but it's easiest, I think." I hear Nat take a deep breath, preparing himself.

  "It started out with someone screaming, calling for help. It was my sister. I ran to her. She sounded like she needed help. All of the doors closed behind me. I stared at her, searching for a wound of some sort. She began smiling. It was demonic. Like, someone call the exorcist, y'know?" He smiles, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes. "She, uh. She grabbed my hand. Iris popped up and grabbed my right. They had pipes. Like the one Iris had when you beat the shit out of her. They were playing with me, they raped and beat me. You don't want the details. The last bit of the dream was my sister yelling at me."

  "What did she say?"

  "'I killed her. I KILLED HER WITH THIS FUCKING PIPE, YOU SAW AND SAID NOTHING! YOU'RE HORRIBLE!' She yelled over half of it."

  "Do you know what she meant?"

  "No. I have no clue. I wish I knew, but also don't. I feel it may haunt me."

  "Was any of the dream true?"

  "The dream was a rendition of Iris and my sister, when they assaulted me. When I was thirteen, almost fourteen, my sister started screaming, calling for help. No one was home. I ran to her aid, a bathroom. The door shut behind me. She was naked. She began hitting me, and raped me, leaving the mess for me to clean up. She was my father's favorite, so I would be blamed and beaten for the mess." I feel tears fall onto my hands. How long has he been crying? I hug him tighter. "I hit my head on the counter while I was cleaning. I passed out, lying in the middle of the mess. I wake up to my father screaming at me. He beat me. Many of the scars on my body are from that night, some of them self-inflicted. I started self-harming that night, a few different ways. I figured out soon after that if you cut vertically instead of horizontally, they won't scar as bad." Does he still do it? He doesn't have to. He'll just talk to me, he hasn't done it, right?