All the Dark Corners by Emerald O'Brien

Author:Emerald O'Brien [O'Brien, Emerald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-04-10T16:00:00+00:00

With the highway up ahead, I feel hope for the first time since coming back to Crimson Falls. I’m getting out of here before they can hurt me, or I hurt anyone else.

I haven’t thought about Perry in a long time. I can’t face the memory of him—no, not him—of what I did for him.

With my minimal job experience, I knew I couldn’t support myself when I finally escaped the town. I needed a good, normal job. Something that good, normal people did.

I set my sights on being a nurse, and after being rejected from the colleges I applied to, a harsh dose of reality hit. I didn’t have the grades. I wasn’t smart enough.

I decided health care administration would do just as well. A respectable job, still helping people, and keeping me on the straight and narrow. I needed college credits, and when I was accepted into an administration program in a city several hours away, I knew it was my way out.

My way to be a better person.

I was desperate, and my parents had no money for me to go. Even if they did, they’d never have given it to me. They wanted me to stay and rot in this town, just like they were. In their delusional minds, they thought this town with all its crime was no match for us. For our neighbors. I knew they were wrong. I was already scarred from the damage.

I worked at The Crooked Crow for two years as a server and sometimes illegal bartender, saving most of my pay just to come up hundreds short for school. I needed money, and Perry needed someone stupid enough to come along and borrow it from him at a high interest rate I couldn’t even understand at the time.

But it was more than that. He wanted more.

A vision comes back to me as I pass Gilbert Road. Giving him a lap dance after work.

He made me beg for the money for months and asked me to do things I wasn’t willing to do. The lap dances were payment enough for me, and they ought to be for him too.

I take the curve off Main Street, leading to the highway as a car pulls up beside me in the wrong lane.

I squint to make out who it is, but the sun’s in my eyes.

Is that Albert? Has he come to run me off the road?

There’s more than one person in there. They aren’t passing me.

I step on the gas pedal hard and jerk back, ready to merge onto the highway, but the car keeps up beside me and veers into my lane.

I turn the wheel, and the tires crunch over the bumpy gravel as the other car speeds ahead.

“Asshole!” I shout as it races down the ramp toward the exit sign for the town. “Drunken asshole.”

The car skids to a stop in front of me, blocking the road, and I brake hard, jerking myself forward as my car squeals to a stop, squeezing my eyes shut as the seatbelt flings me back against my seat, knocking the breath from my lungs.

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