Chapter 2 - prologue (part 2)

She took two sharp turns in a row. “I figured; nothing says ‘I love you’ like a charge of obstruction of justice.”

He gasped. “They charged you? You didn’t have to do any hard time, did you?”

“Nah. Zeke got me off. And without you, if you hadn’t said what you said, I’d have been charged with a lot worse.”

“That’s right, Zeke’s a whole lawyer now, isn’t he?”

She didn’t answer, just drove for a while. “I’ve always loved you,” she finally said. Her words melted him inside, gave him an aching satisfaction, like sitting down to a warm meal after being starved, but he heard a ‘but’ in her tone of voice.

“You want to know why I’ve never said it back? Because I was always holding my breath, waiting for the next disaster to strike. I guess I was scared to bear my heart, in case we got ripped apart again, and get left in a vulnerable position. We always seemed to be two of those good people that terrible things happened to. But I’ve solved that problem now. I realized that in order to make it in the world, I had to become one of the terrible things.”

“What do you mean?”



She didn’t answer. “You know, if you want some real food, one of my roommates made chicken sandwiches and macaroni salad for lunch today, and there was a ton of leftovers when I left for work. There’s probably still some in the fridge.”

“So, you want to pick up where we left off, then?” he said. Then, “Exactly how many roommates you got, now?”

The car abruptly stopped. Damian felt the door open, felt the soap box lifted off his legs, felt Christyn take him around the arm and lead him out of the car, down this way, down that way, then straight down a path. “Hey, it’s me,” she said.

“I know--”

“Shh, I’m on the phone,” she hissed, and he bit his tongue. “Yeah, I’m back. I have company, but he’s a friend, there’s no reason to be alarmed. Tell everybody, hold your fire.”

“Hold your...what?” Damian murmured.

Christyn ripped off the blindfold then, and Damian’s jaw dropped. Before him was the mansion Christyn had inherited from her uncle, except it was a lot different than he remembered it. Where there once stood a towering beacon of affluence in an otherwise empty field undisturbed by neighbors for miles in every direction, there now was a noisy, lit up behemoth of activity and sound and chaos. The once pristine white brick facade was vandalized, the grass was unkempt, and the lawn was strewn with all manner of cups, bottles, and evidence of depravity. From a couple windows, he could make out fires burning. In the not-so-distant distance, he thought he heard the dull thud of a human-sized weight hitting the ground. The outlines of people came and went, to and from the house, to the yard, to beyond--to the mailboxes, maybe? To the dumpsters? He couldn’t say for certain how many went in and how many went out. “Welcome to the Server House,” said Christyn.

“Are those...all servers?”

“A few cooks, a few bussers and barbacks, but mostly front of house staff.”

“How many people are there?”

“Ninety, including me. Ninety-one, now, if you want a cot and a roof."

From somewhere nearby, a scream reached his ears.

The front door opened, and though he was apprehensive, he squared his shoulders, not wanting to give away his fear. “You said you got chicken sandwiches?"