Devil on Your Back (7 page)

He gave me back my life and I’ll never forget that.

I PULL
up to the trailer park and set my booted feet down on the road. The place is unassuming enough, and the permanent dwellings are adorned with all manner of outdoor settings, kids toys, and tacky garden ornaments. The trailers which more than likely house pensioners are easy to spot, with their uniform red flower, yellow flower, red flower, yellow flower configurations and practical awnings.

I push off and idle the bike between the rows of homes, the engine chugging along nicely on the right side of stalling while I read the numbers. Two ‘roads’ in, I find the place I’m looking for and kick out the stand. The tweaker’s peering out from behind the broken blinds before I’ve as much as turned the engine off. He lets it slip closed when I approach, and pulls the door open a fraction.

“Name?”

“Yours?” I counter. I’m not stupid enough to be the first to give away information. For all I know, he’s snuffed the guy I’m looking for and hoping to get something outta me.

“Nathaniel.” He sniffs, and rubs the back of his hand under his nose. The kid may be looking to pedal some green stuff, but he sure as shit is shooting rock or worse.

“Yeah, I’m your guy,” I tell him, cautious of his jerky movements.

“Come in.”

I follow him into the trailer, watching with disgust as he kicks trash aside and pushes dirty dishes off the foldout table with his arm. They fall to the floor with a smash and quickly blend in with the rest of the filth.

“Sit down.” He tips his chin toward a seat.

I eye it up, undecided if it was originally blue or green. Either way, it’s a putrid shade of caramel now.

“I’d rather stand.”

He gets to business pretty efficiently. Watching his mannerisms and the tells, I’d say he’s a day past his last fix and ready to use whatever he can to ease the itch—including the goods I’m packing.

Where the fuck do our contacts find these low-lives?

Within the half-hour, I’m back out front of his trailer, straddling my bike and getting ready to go when my phone vibrates in my pocket. I pull it out and answer, watching the trailer in case our tweaker gets antsy at me hesitating.

“Hey, I’ve got info.” King slurps down the line. He’s probably on his tenth coffee already¸ knowing his habit of alternating coffee and smokes to make it through the daylight hours alive.

“What you find?”

“Funeral details. Friday at one P.M.”

“Noted.”

“You got the moolah to cover a week in a motel?”

“Yeah, I’m flush.” My eyes roam the rows of homes as I listen. I make a mental note to never come full circle and end up in a place like this—rundown, and way past its prime.

“I’ll sort you out when you get back, anyway. Sonya says hi.”

“Yeah?” I cringe at my blatant surprise.

King laughs—hard. “No! Just wanted to case you out, and damn man, you got it for her, haven’t you?”

“Fucker,” I growl. “That was
not
funny.”

“Totally was. Anyhow, I’ve got paperwork to complete if I want our boys doing their work this week without hassle, so I’ll catch you soon.”

“No problem. Can you text the details so I don’t forget by Friday?”

“On it.”

King ends the call and within seconds I feel the vibration in my pocket to say I have a message. I kick up the stand, and hightail it out of the place, uncomfortable with the chills it’s giving me. Too many memories in a place like that—memories of a childhood I’d rather forget.

The
M
on the motel sign flashes, and the
L
has died. I pull up beside the reception office of the ‘m-m-mote’, and take the keys from the bike. A fan drones beside the door as I push it open, the buzzer announcing my arrival. It sounds like it’s about as enthusiastic as the neon
M
outside to be there.

“Afternoon.” A middle-aged man appears from a door behind the counter and balances his reading glasses at the end of his nose. “What can I help you with today?”

I’m sorely tempted to ask for a haircut, just to be an ass after such a stupid question, but I bite my lip for now. “Four nights,” I reply.

“Cable?”

“Didn’t know it was optional.”

“Everything’s optional.”

Wish somebody had told me that sooner—may have opted not to have my wife die and my kid walk out on me. But you know, hindsight and all that.

“Cable.”

He tallies up my room and we complete the transaction; he gets money for a shithole in the wall, and I get a key that opens the door to my solitary confinement for the better part of a week. Winning all ’round.

I walk the bike to the parking space out front of my room—number thirteen, how nice—and head inside to rest. It’s been a long ride, a hell of a week, and I need sleep—lots of it. The room is adorned with the normal pastels and cream, square with a small bathroom in the back right corner and a bed built in to the left wall. Given the age of the wood-paneled television, I’m duly surprised it can even get cable.

I throw my jacket, cut and helmet down on the small armchair by the door, and kick my boots off on the way to the shower. The water runs hot over my back after I finally shirk my clothes and step in a few minutes later. It’s heaven on my aching muscles. I let the rivers run over me, soothing the pressure that originates deep from within my bones.

Refreshed and relaxed, I shirk the towel and dive under the sheets as stark as the day I came into the world. The crisp, white linens are cool against my hot skin, and within minutes I’m fast asleep, charging up my batteries for whatever shit-fight I’m about to walk into.

Because if I’ve learnt one thing, it’s that life never lets me have the easy option out.

• • • • •

WHEN I
wake some time later, it’s still light out—muted, but daylight nonetheless. Although, I’m not really awake at all. I’m still stuck in a dream state, suffering the same shit I’ve been putting up with for the better part of ten years now.

My eyes flick open, as robotic as a wind-up toy, and the visions start. That same cloaked figure, always there, so close to me, so ready to
get
me. My mind wars with itself, part knowing that what I see is a hallucination, and the other panicking that this
thing
is going to take me, touch me and send me to hell. It looms over me, always watching . . . never moving.

My heart races.

My skin slicks with sweat.

My head pounds.

I want to run, I want to speak, I want to do
something
, but I’m as useless as I was the day Alice walked out—I just lie there, frozen in my state of shock.

The panic only lasts a couple of minutes tops before my head clears. The vision goes, and I’m back where I went to sleep—in a bed in a shitty motel, in a whole mess of trouble.

Sleep paralysis, or as it’s sometimes referred to, the devil on your back. A doctor told me it’s perfectly normal when people suffer stress, or traumatic events in their life. I listened to that doc give her verdict eight years ago and walked out, determined that there was a way to shut it off, to stop it from happening.

Eight years later and I still see that fuckin’ cloaked figure coming for me when I wake.

Surely I’m a little bit loopy? That would be the most plausible explanation for me seeing things after Julia’s death. I mean, really? A doctor? A professional in the medical field tells me I’m not insane when I explain that I’m more-or-less waking up to the Grim Reaper every morning? It just doesn’t sit right with me. I’m not normal when I see that. Then again, is anybody normal?

I roll out of bed as soon as my limbs allow and stand to stretch. The old boy stands to attention and I frown down at him, jutting out from me like a fucking beacon to my biggest problem. I haven’t been laid in more than three months.

I spouted that shit to Sonya back at the club, simply because I wanted to see her reaction when I said I’d go sort my problems with a whore. It was perfect, just as I’d hoped: confused, and heartbroken. It told me all I needed to know about how she really feels toward me.

I snatch up my boxers and yank them on, tucking that traitorous fucker into the waistband to keep him out of the way. Retrieving my phone from my jacket, I check the time—almost dinner. Surely there’ll be at least half a dozen takeaway joints in an area like this. Deciding against wearing my cut to stay inconspicuous, I yank my T-shirt on and my jeans, then toe on my boots before heading out the door.

Ten minutes later, I’m seated at a booth in a small diner, waiting on my plate of heart-attack material to arrive. With nothing better to do with my time, I open the Facebook app and start searching out the first of two people I’m curious about—Alice.

As usual, his account is private. I get profile pictures and nothing else. Still, I sit at the table until the food comes out, staring at each photo in turn, watching him transform over the past few years. There are still glimpses of Julia in him, and if I can be honest, a little of me. But the kid is an adult, the boy a man, and nobody I truly recognize.

What happened to him in the years after he left? Where did he go?

I tried to search him out, but those first few years he fell off the grid. None of his friends knew a thing about him; they all said he’d disappeared off their radars, too. Every lead I found turned up a cold dead-end. After four years of searching I ran out of money, and I ran out of patience. The kid didn’t want to be found. I respected that, and in all honest truth, I settled for believing he was alive.

The funny thing about relationships is no matter how close you are to a person initially—blood, marriage, duty—after a certain amount of time, anybody can become a stranger. Ties are severed, contact lost, and when none of what you do day-to-day matters to them anymore, or vice versa, that person who was once a son, a wife, or a friend becomes yet another face in the crowd.

I know no more about my own son than I do the woman who just placed my all-day breakfast before me. And the disgusting part? I came to terms with that. I’m okay with it.

Nothing is okay about that.

I swipe my finger over the screen and send my phone into black again as I eat.

What I’d do to have a person who understood what this is like, a person who knew the answer. I’ve often thought about searching out groups, support lines, whatever I needed to find people who’d lived through what I had and come out the other side, somebody who had
reconnected
, just so they could tell me how to do it. Although, the better part of me knows it isn’t that simple. There’s no easy fix to this, no magic switch or golden words. Mending my broken relationship with Alice will take time, and lots of it.

Only I don’t have time anymore, do I?

If anything happens to him, I know I’ll blame myself. After all, if I’d tried harder, if I’d put more effort into finding Alice, working this out, then I wouldn’t be wasting time just trying to get him to talk to me. I wouldn’t be here wondering if he will ever listen, or if this trip is a complete waste of resources.

Scooping the runny part of the egg up with my remaining toast, I open the app again and search out Sonya. I’m hoping that because she’s going to be friends with a few of the same people, I won’t be hunting for too long.

Sure enough, several loose threads later and I’ve found her account—thanks to Bruiser having an open friends list. The profile picture is unmistakably her, and the thing that has me awakening in my jeans again? She’s sitting on a bike . . . in a bikini top.
Sweet, baby Jesus.

I shift in my seat, adjust my belt, and take a large gulp of water. Her profile is semi-private—a few photos, shared posts, nothing else. With the thin hope her relationship status is public, I go to tap the about tab, but the problem with small smart-phones and fat fingers? I hit the friend request button.

Fuck.

I didn’t mean to do that. I may as well take an advert out, declaring I’m curious about her. Instant heat sears the back of my neck. What a way to be busted stalking. Furiously, I try to retract the request, but before I can . . .
ping
. . . notification to say she’s accepted it.