Carissa Lynch - Like, Follow, Kill

Wiggling my jaw, I tried to ease the phantom tooth pains as I pulled myself out of my twin-sized bed. The sheets and comforter lay tangled at my feet. Angry red numbers blinked at me from the clock on my bedside table. It was 12:30 in the afternoon, the time when most normal people were working.

Everything hurt: my arms, legs, chest, and back. My teeth.

Traces of the dream still lingered and would stay there for most of the day, the way they always did.

My nightstand was covered in pill bottles. I twisted the caps off, one by one, and swiped out two pills of each. Pain pills. Anxiety meds. Leftover antibiotics. Another med to counter the side-effects of the first two. I washed them down with an ashy can of Mountain Dew. Grimaced.

Every night, the same thing: the car accident reenacted, but the details were always fuzzy, always evolving … whether the actual memories of that night were becoming lucid or more convoluted, was unclear.

I just wish they’d go away. Period.

It’s not that I don’t want to think about Chris. I miss him … I love him … but I can’t.

I can’t let myself go back to that place. I’m Hannah’s sinking ship, and Chris … well, Chris is mine.

No, dear husband, I will not come aboard.

Because if I do, if I let myself go there … that ship will suck me down, down, down, and never let me loose.

During my wakeful hours, I’d become an expert at burying my feelings. But these dreams—these warped flashbacks of the accident—were trying to remedy that all on their own. I could push away the memories and the horrors while I was awake, but when I closed my eyes … the dreaming side of myself took control. That side of myself wouldn’t allow me to forget, no matter how much I wanted to.

Maybe it’s payback for what I did.

Karma.

What goes around comes around—isn’t that how the saying goes?

For the rest of my life, will I have to relive those awful, ticking moments in that crushed-up Buick?

Of all the things about me that needed fixing, the sleep/dream issue was my priority. But my doctor wouldn’t prescribe sleep medication, or any other downers. They didn’t mix well with my other meds.

I want to be reassembled. Scrapped for parts. My memories wiped clean.

I padded down the hallway to the bathroom, leaving my buzzing phone behind. Without turning on the bathroom light, I began my lonely morning ritual in the dark—brushing my teeth, gargling mouthwash, combing the knots from my hair.

The dream snaked its way back into my brain while I brushed.

Cringing, I recalled the gummy taste of my own teeth. The teeth that I had initially—and strangely—believed to be my husband’s teeth.

I can still taste blood in my mouth. But whose blood is it?

It’s like sucking on a battery dipped in sugar.

Taking a deep breath, I flicked the light switch on before giving myself a chance to change my mind.

My toothbrush fell from my mouth, bouncing in the sink, as I studied my reflection in the bathroom mirror. No matter how many times I saw my face, I’d never get used to it now.

I look worse than the last time I checked.

It looked like someone was pinching my nose, the bridge a hard knot in the center of my face, the nostrils squished flat on both sides. The plastic surgeon had done the best possible job.

There’s only so much we can do, Camilla …

The skin on my nose was darker, which made sense—it didn’t belong to me. Ten surgeries and counting. So far—two to “repair” my nose using someone else’s skin and cartilage, four to fix my broken teeth with mostly false ones, and another four to fix my legs. My hips hadn’t been pulled from their sockets, but it sure had felt that way at the time. But both legs had been broken, one worse than the other, and now two metal rods and countless screws resided inside me, extending from my shin bones all the way to the top of my thighs. My wrist had been sprained. My elbow shattered.

My heart smashed to bits.

I was beautiful once. Chris used to say so. Until my reckless driving had led us to the backend of a flatbed truck. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to hear the gravelly shake of his voice … to see that one eyebrow flexing playfully as he tucked my always-messy brown hair behind my ears …

You’re the most beautiful girl I ever did see: his words.

We hadn’t been upside down either, like the dream implied—another figment of my twisty reinterpretation of what actually happened that night. The car was crushed beneath the semi’s trailer, my whole world spinning like a top because that’s what happens when you have a concussion.

A big chunk of my nose was severed by windshield glass. And Chris … he’d lost more than his nose. His death was horrific. He didn’t deserve to die that way.

Splashing icy cold water on my face, I forced myself not to think of him. Deep down, I knew that if I gave in to that craving … to think about Chris, to go back in my mind to how things used to be … that it would become an obsession.

If I think too long and hard about Chris, I may never stop.

The anxiety pills helped with the flashbacks while I was awake.

It’s like there’s this version of me, living inside my head, and once the meds kick in, I can hear her in the corner, her voice murky and low … she’s scared, she’s worried, she’s ashamed … but then the pills flood my bloodstream and her voice gets drowned out completely. I imagine her in there somewhere, floating in the lazy river of my bloodstream, wondering when I’ll let her back out. The numbness never lasts—drugs help, but they can’t alleviate my misery. They can’t cure loneliness, either.

Sometimes that girl drifts so far downstream, I don’t think I’ll ever reach her again …

I flipped the light switch back off, the sudden change in lighting causing a sharp twinge in my right temple. The head pains often came and went so quickly, almost like they were a figment of my imagination.

I liked leaving every light in the house off and the shutters closed until darkness came, and I was forced to illuminate myself and my surroundings.

But one light in the house was always shining—the glare from my laptop computer. It beckoned me from my desktop in the living room.

Now, here is an addiction I can handle, and sometimes, control.

I turned on the coffee pot in the kitchen then sat down in front of my computer, a rushing wave of relief rolling through me. This was my life now—the internet, my only window to the outside world.

Lucky for me, it’s a pretty large window.

A lonely window, but a window, nevertheless …

“I wonder where we’re going today?”

I refreshed my browser from where it had frozen last night and Valerie Hutchens’ shiny face blossomed like a milky-white flower across my home screen.

_TheWorldIsMine_26 had over 2,000 posts and nearly 10,000 followers, and like Valerie herself, the Instagram account was growing and improving daily.

“Where are you now, Valerie?” I clicked on her newest Instagram story.

Branson, Missouri.

Straddling this world and the next. #livingmybestlife, her caption told me.

Valerie’s hair was different today—her sunny blonde bob had skinny curtains of pale pink on either side of her face. Maroon lips. Kohl-rimmed eyes. A body that was neither fat nor walking-stick thin, just perfect.

Valerie Hutchens is perfect.

In this latest story, she was straddling two train rails, arms spread wide in a V. Her palms were open, fingertips reaching for the sky. Dusty sunlight shimmered through her pale white dress. She had on brown leather boots—the boots she’d bought in Texas three weeks ago, I remembered—so tall they almost reached the hem of her dress.