I couldn’t get the fireworks night out of my head as I drove up to Greystone. I kept imagining Fran and Betsy making out in front of me while colored fire skyrocketed and exploded in the air. Until one big rocket would lose control and veer straight for my head. I couldn’t move and suddenly it slammed into my skull, killing me instantly. Fran, Betsy, and Shirley stood over me smirking, saying I was an idiot for not knowing something all along. But now it was too late, because I lay dead on the Santa Monica Pier with fluorescent blood flowing like a river from head, draining into the Pacific Ocean.

Four police cars were parked outside Greystone when I arrived and I had no doubt in my mind that it had something to do with Steve. One of the gossipy receptionists accosted me as soon as I entered the door, “They want to talk to you about Steve, the cops, they’re in your office waiting.” She seemed so thrilled to say this, as if this was the highlight of her year.

After they explained to me how Steve had taken apart a speculum in his plan to escape, I told the police I thought Lily had to be involved somehow. They asked where I thought he would be. I suggested Hillary’s grave, but realized he would never go there, even though deep down on a guttural level I knew he probably desired seeing her. The cops strangely asked me how I felt about his escape, which caught me off card, “How do I feel?” I asked, uncertain.

“Yeah,” grunted the bald cop with a tiny nose.

“What does that matter?” I asked.

“Seems we got reports from some of the guards here that you had an intense relationship with the wacko.”

“Wacko?”

“Whatever, you get my meaning.”

“We had a relationship outside of the hospital because I knew his mother.”

“Oh yeah, the mother who was once the father.” He laughed and turned to his partner, “No wonder he’s a sociopath.” I wanted to disagree with him, but I couldn’t.

Hours and interviews later I got to leave the hospital. I wanted to go home, take some aspirin and think this through.

As I opened my front door, I knew I was in trouble.

He grabbed my shoulders from behind and threw me face first to the floor. My nose slammed hard and ached immediately. Even before I turned over, I knew who it was. Perhaps my vision of lying dead early was not so innocuous. I heard him laughing as I pushed myself up turning my head. “Steve.”

“Get up and sit in that chair.” He pointed toward a kitchen chair that had been placed by the fireplace. The fireplace that usually stood empty, but was now filled with wood and kindling. In Steve's hand, rope. Before I got my balance, he pushed me towards the chair and I sat asking what he had in mind. “You idiot. You can’t figure anything out, can you?”

“Steve, if we go back now, it won’t make a difference. We can resume where we were, nothing real bad has happened yet.”

With no response, he looped the rope around my feet and hands and pulled hard, but I refrained from screaming, not because I was embarrassed, but because I was feeling something else. The pressure of the rope wrapping around my skin, restricting me in this dangerous situation, was…surprisingly…on some primal level getting me excited. I kept my mouth shut for fear in some way that my desire would be revealed to him and if that happened, I knew he would kill me instantly.