Scream All Night by Derek Milman

Author:Derek Milman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-05-17T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

The Psychedelic Soldier

OREN DEMANDS A WHEELCHAIR EVEN THOUGH HE DOESN’T REALLY need it. All those flowers broke his fall, and he’s totally fine, but he’s limping around and insists he twisted his ankle, so a wheelchair is retrieved from the props department—the very same one used by Becky Staples in Tickle the Cripple. Then Oren shuts himself in his room.

Jude and I have dinner in the commissary, where the general mood is tense and uncertain. People are gossiping in hushed groups about the day’s events. Moldavia is already a pretty strange place, but I think today set a new precedent.

I can barely eat. I’m too upset. After dinner, I take a plate up to Oren. His door is open a crack, so I just shoulder it all the way open. “Hey, it’s me.” I walk inside.

Oren is lying on his bed, still in his monk’s outfit, his right leg raised on a stack of pillows, a frosty-blue ice pack resting on top of his ankle. He’s covered in Band-Aids from all the thorns he said “tore at his flesh like teeth from angry little devil babies.” Someone finished painting his room black and he changed all the light bulbs to red, which cast rivulets of unnerving light everywhere. Hexagons and other occult symbols are painted on the black walls in glowing ultraviolet. His room is now Satan chic.

Oren is watching Black Sunday, another classic Italian horror directed by Mario Bava. He’s always watching shit about witches. He eyes me as he sips a cup of tea.

“I brought you some grub,” I say. “Thought you might be hungry.”

He points at an empty plate on the floor: wadded-up napkins and chicken bones.

“Oh, okay. Can I sit down?”

He doesn’t object, so I sit on the edge of his bed, and since he’s not going to eat, and I’m really hungry all of a sudden, I start eating all the food I brought up for him.

I look around. “Why’d you paint your room black?”

“I wanted a change,” he says icily. “I find darker tones soothing.”

I finish eating and push the plate away. Oren ignores me, pretending to be engrossed in the movie. I can practically taste the bitterness in the air. But neither of us seems to want to be alone, or without each other. I feel sick about everything. But I’m also still kind of angry when I think about what just went down.

“After what happened to Hugo . . .”

Oren holds up his hand to stop me. “Don’t even—”

“How could you do that? How could you jump off the goddamn roof like that?”

He looks at me. When I see the hurt in his eyes, I feel heartbroken.

“Everyone thinks I’m a fool,” he says. “Today was the most humiliating experience of my life. I just wanted physical pain to replace the psychic pain. I wanted you to see that when you’re around . . . people seem to fall from great heights.”

I flinch. “That’s a fucked-up thing to say.”

“I have no future. You’re still young.

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