Page 16 of The Triangle

I take off my clothes, start the water, and get in before it fills. I like the feeling of buoyancy a tub offers. I like feeling heavy like stone and then, as the water level rises, the feeling of weightlessness. So I lie there, my body pressing down on the cold porcelain, close my eyes, and wait for it.

Gunshots make me sit up, water splashing around my body and spilling over the side of the deep tub.

Shit.

I think I fell asleep.

Were those gunshots real? Or was I dreaming?

I grip the side of the tub—forcing myself not to move—and listen.

There’s nothing. But the feeling… that feeling that I’m in danger… it doesn’t quite fade with the realization that I’m alone, I was dreaming, and no one is shooting.

I reach over and turn the water off, then sink back down into the liquid heat.

Alec.

Christine.

Danny.

This is how you say our names. In this order. We are Alec, and Christine, and Danny. I don’t know why that matters, I just know that’s how it’s done.

I’m in the middle. They surround me.

I know this. I feel this. But I have no memory of it.

There’s a bar of white soap waiting for my fingertips when I reach over to the marble tile insert on the wall. There’s a black bottle of shampoo too. I wash, breathing in the thick steam, and then reluctantly pull the plug and get out before the buoyancy feeling fades and the weight of the world comes back.

The towels are scratchy and for some reason that makes me smile. Is it a memory? Are cheap towels some little quirk of his that feels like home? Some kind of rebellious stand he took once, long ago?

Shit. What the fuck is wrong with me? I don’t know much about who I am, but I have a pretty strong feeling that a towel’s softness factor isn’t something I give two shits about.

I wrap the second towel around my head, swipe my hand across the fogged-up mirror, and stare into unfamiliar eyes.

What happened to you?

There’s this moment when I feel something floating up to the surface the way my body floated up in the tub with the rising water—the soft thoomp of the bullet leaving the suppressed barrel of the rifle. The recoil of a powerful weapon pulsing through my body. The kill shot exploding his head—what was his name?

It’s on the tip of my tongue when it disappears.

Shit.

I throw the bathroom door open, slamming it against the wall so hard, a picture tilts on the wall revealing a…

Holy fuck. What is that?

I walk over to it, take it off the wall and smile.

A safe.

Not just any safe. A Starling HC900. A 1999 model that everyone said was uncrackable back in the day. It’s still a good safe today. Not like the digital ones lazy people keep. An old steel dial with barely visible black-inked numbers carved into the metal stares back at me as all this comes back.

This safe…

LONG TIME AGO

He sticks a gun into the waistband of my jeans, the cold metal pressing against my lower back. “What’s that for?” I ask, looking up into his bright eyes. They’re the eyes of a privileged boy who has everything and doesn’t even know it. A boy with a family, and a home, and a history that doesn’t involve pretend relationships you gather up and discard every time opportunity knocks and then, sure as shit, slams the door in your face.