Not very many people knew about Luke's past and he intended to keep it that way. Luke was never going to have a normal life, especially after choosing to be with Damien, but he could at least pretend to have a normal upbringing.

Sometimes it was difficult to pretend though. Sometimes his past snuck up on him like a tightened noose around his neck. That's why he had a therapist. And unfortunately, he didn't have one anymore.

He considered talking about it with Damien. He probably wasn't the best person to talk to about personal issues, but he was the only person he trusted. And yet, he couldn't bring himself to talk to him because trusting him wasn't the problem; it was finding the right time. Or perhaps finding the courage.

"Hey Damien?"

Damien looked at him with a steady gaze and open ears.

I should tell him, I could tell him, I would tell him.

But he choked.

"Do you think we could survive a zombie apocalypse?"

Damien blinked slowly but did not change his expression. "If the zombies decomposed at a normal rate, then yes."

Luke scoffed, seemingly disappointed in Damien's answer, but mostly disappointed in himself.

***

It took a while for Luke to build up the courage to stop asking stupid questions, but just when he was ready to talk to him, Damien decided to get one motel room. And there was no way in hell he was going to talk with Helen in the same room.

They were going to spend a few nights in that single motel room and one night he discovered the fucked up origins of Helen and Damien's relationship.

He couldn't even remember the context of the conversation. But he clearly remembered what she said so frankly, so simply to him.

"Yeah, I asked Damien to kill some of my ex-friends."

She didn't even look up from her magazine. She didn't even blink her eyes.

He felt his heart sink when he glanced at Helen. She was just as fucked up as Damien but she simply lacked the portfolio.

Then he felt his heart press further into his stomach when he glanced at Damien. He wasn't just fucked up, he was also a liar. Somehow Luke had deluded himself into thinking that Damien would never lie to him, but of course he did. Maybe he never directly lied to him, but he always, always omitted the truth.

He never told him about how he and Helen met, he never told him about that guy in the woods, he never told him about that girl that disappeared after the soccer game.

Luke had been ignoring it for so long, distancing it so far from himself, pretending that it had nothing to do with him, but he couldn't do that anymore. If he kept running from it, it would crush him.

***

Luke never had problems with falling asleep. He had problems with nightmares.

The night his uncle died, he dreamt about watching him die over, and over, and over again. He dreamt about standing there, just fucking standing there, as he watched his uncle die again and again and again.

His nightmares were always like this. He would dream of something terrible happening over and over again and he would do nothing to prevent it from happening again and again. His nightmares were constant cycles of terror until he woke up.

But this nightmare was different.

He was at home, his childhood home, watching t.v. with his parents sitting beside him. He looked up to smile at them, but when they smiled back, their faces began to melt, then their bodies began to melt, until there was nothing left but a brown, soupy mess, pouring off the couch. He tried to jump away, but their mess was already beginning to flood the room. He tried to run towards the door, but he tripped and fell into the flood that had already reached his knees.

It began to pull him down. It wrapped around his arms and legs as he struggled to get back up. He tried to reach up but it pulled him back even further until he was completely submerged. Then it slipped inside of him, filling up his mouth, rushing down his throat, until he could only breathe the mess that his parents made.

***

He woke up screaming.

His chest heaving for air, his arms flailing around.

He stopped flailing around once he felt Damien beside him. He stopped screaming once he saw that Helen was staring at him from across the room.

"Bad dream?" Helen muttered, still staring, but already nodding off.

"Terrible dream," he sighed out, his breath still heavy and ragged.

Helen responded with a drowsy hum and almost instantly fell back to sleep.

Damien, on the other hand, pulled Luke closer and started stroking his cheek with his thumb. Luke matched his breaths to the same rhythm of these strokes until his entire body was slightly more relaxed.

"Do you have bad dreams too?" Luke eventually whispered.

"I don't dream."

"You don't dream?"

"I rarely do."

"What do you dream about?"

"Very menial, boring things."

"Like what?"

"Like hitting you for asking me about my boring dreams."

Luke grinned tightly at him. "Do you want to know about my dream?"

"If you want to talk about it."

Luke needed to talk about it. He needed to tell him everything.

"I do," Luke sighed. "I watched my parents melt and I drowned in their mess."

"Did your parents drown in real life?"

"No they didn't," he replied with a sad, half-hearted chuckle. "Drowning would've been more pleasant, to be honest."

Damien leaned back to look at him better. "An unpleasant story, huh?"

"I don't have to tell it."

"No, tell me."

***

When Luke was a young boy, his dad was funny and his mom was nice. But at some point, his dad started going out a lot and his mom fell into a constant state of worry. One day, his dad didn't come back. Another day, his mom was gone. It didn't take him too long to connect their deaths but it took him a few years to realize why they were connected.

His parents were insane, but on entirely different scales. His father was a serial rapist with violent tendencies. His mother was a depressed alcoholic with a suicide ideation. His father got caught, thrown in jail, and killed by his bunkmate. His mother couldn't handle the onslaught of shocking news too well so she sat in her garage with her car engine on and fell asleep permanently.

Luke lived with his aunt and uncle after that. They were good to him, not that his parents were bad to him, but at least they weren't insane. But living with them didn't make his life much better. His aunt got sick and died several months later. His uncle got distant and mean, but instead of getting it over with, he killed himself slowly.

***

"That's fucked up."

That was Damien's response.

They were outside, leaning against the door of their motel room, staring at the dark, empty horizon ahead.

Luke didn't even bother looking at him to confirm if he meant it because it was the only response he wanted.

The next morning, sometime after Damien had left, Helen approached Luke.

She was oddly quiet, and obviously uncomfortable, but she didn't leave. After several minutes of this odd silence, she finally spoke up.

"Can I tell you something personal?"

His initial answer was no. He didn't want to relive that revealing conversation they had previously. But if Helen had built up the courage to tell him something personal, it would be incredibly hypocritical for him to say no.

"Sure."

She sighed out heavily and picked at her nails momentarily before finally tell her story. "So not too long ago, I was really depressed. My so-called friends were treating me so badly that I just wanted to kill myself. But after a failed attempt, I realized that I didn't want to kill myself. I wanted to kill my friends."

He should've said no.

"Why are you telling me this?" he asked.

"I just wanted to tell you a little about myself."

"You mean, you wanted to justify your friends' deaths?"

"No! Even though they deserved to die."

"Nobody deserves to die." The words slipped out of his mouth before he could stop them, but once they left, he realized that he actually believed them.

Helen threw her arms into the air and let out an irritated groan. "Fine! I just wanted to tell you about my life after hearing about yours!"

"What?"

Helen sighed. "I heard you story last night."

"You what?"

"I heard you screaming and then I heard you leaving and I was concerned! So I looked out the window and I just so happened to hear your story."

Luke huffed with frustration. "You just 'so happened' to hear my story? You could've just gone back to bed and not hear it!"

"I'm sorry! I couldn't help it! It was interesting!"

"Well, I'm glad you found my tragic life story to be interesting," he spat out.

Helen stilled for a moment. "Is that how you see it? A tragic life story?"

"I don't see it as a happy one."

"A tragic story is a Shakespearean play, or a Dickens novel, or fucking Twilight—"

"Twilight?"

"The whole damn series is a tragedy." She sent him an irritated glare and continued. "Anyway, your life isn't a tragedy. Yeah, your life is sad, yeah, you've been through a lot of shit, but even after all that, you're still standing, you're still alive, and you can move on. You should see that as a victory."

"You're awfully optimistic for someone who wanted to kill herself," Luke mumbled.

"I want-ed to kill myself. Not anymore."

Luke glanced away, mulling over her words. "Maybe you're right—"

"Of course I'm right."

He frowned. "But next time, don't eavesdrop on me."

"Next time, don't scream so loudly."

He finally looked at her and she was grinning at him like a maniac. He couldn't help but to grin back.

Maybe Helen wasn't too bad. She was crazy, definitely crazy, but when has that ever stopped Luke from liking someone?