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I round the corner of the small house and tip on my toes to stare through the glass windows, trying to find their location in the house. And I see them, all seated at the table like a proper little fucking family. The kitchen is lit in fluorescent lights turning the room slightly orange. The kids are clueless. Unaware of the monster that sits before them. Or have they been exposed to who he truly is? They seem happy as they play with their food on the table while smiling. The young lady leans over to kiss him on the lips and I dry heave, a bit too loudly, quickly clasping my hand over my mouth and ducking. I listen to gauge whether I’ve been caught, but hear nothing, so I slowly bring myself up to stare at the window again.
I burn within at the picture before me wondering if I’ve somehow entered some alternate universe and perhaps I imagined my childhood and none of it truly happened. And I hate that fucking feeling of self-doubt because Father Abraham, saint of saints, decided to play pretend. I want to smash his fucking windows in with a rock. I’m this close. I could do it and run. But there’s no point upsetting the children. Fuck him.
My senses are telling me that everything isn’t as it seems yet my mind is echoing my counselor’s words back at me, all of her explanations about trauma and whatever the fuck. But I don’t want to accept that he can change and perhaps turn his life around. There’s something about this picture that I just can’t put my finger on that’s just not adding up. And even if he fucking changed, this man sold me! Fuck forgiveness and letting him just get on with his life, start anew. He should not just be able to do that, walk around a free man. He deserves to pay for what he did. He deserves to suffer. I’m sweating as the pulses in my body run a mile a minute.
I try to fucking calm myself down since all I keep thinking about is how easy it would be to wait until he steps outside and fuck him up. And I’m waiting for something to jump out at me to give me a justified reason to. But I can’t. I can’t get any more blood on my hands. Fuck you, Harry Burns. Of all the fucking places, you had to be here?! Why couldn’t you have been in Vegas three months ago, huh? Why couldn’t I have seen your fucking baggy face when I was wreaking havoc on them fuckers, huh? Why couldn’t you have stepped in my line of fire?
It feels like there’s some cruel joke being played on me. I run to start a new life, get a shot at normalcy only to run into half of the reason I’m fucked up, I’m guessing the other half of their demonic duo must be dead somewhere. Honestly wouldn’t be surprised if he sold her too. And I wouldn’t care because they were equally as bad as each other.
Anyway, I run into his fucking sorry ass here which is bad enough but now I can’t do anything to him? I have to keep my distance. What kind of fucked up game is this?
As fire rages within me, I try to keep it in, not wanting to act on impulse which is hard as fuck. But I don’t want to hit something or break something and give him even a hint of my presence. No, I like lurking and stalking him like prey. Even if that’s all I can fucking do. I’m so frustrated that I know I should walk away and go back home, but I can’t pull myself away, not yet. I feel the need to prove to myself that he’s still the same old piece of shit.
I watch the kids and immediately I am taken back to my life when I was their age. It certainly was nothing like this. I can still smell the couch soaked in bodily fluids, feel the ick of the floor, the smell of the men, the people that resembled otherworldly creatures, fucking out of their minds looming over me like monsters. Their pupils were so dilated their eyes appeared black and they were always wide opened, even as the fucking men pressed themselves against me. I smell their unshowered bodies, their unbrushed breaths.
Tears well up in my eyes now as I grab at my head, feeling dizzy, almost folding over to throw up as I try to steady myself with breaths just as therapy taught me, looking at the grass and the house and even fucking flowering bushes. Can you believe this fucker has flowering bushes? Him?! I press my palm against everything in sight, trying hard to not make a sound and bring myself back to the reality before me.
These kids have a life I never had and I guess that’s my proof that they’re safe. They’re not in danger. Thankfully, they were fucking spared. That’s what I want to believe anyway, the turning in my stomach is telling me that’s bullshit.
And this woman… girl… I don’t fucking know how old she is and that’s also driving me up a wall. I want to pull her aside and ask her age. Can I do that? Maybe one day, if I run into her. No, that would be way too close. No, I can’t risk him recognizing me. Man, I wish I knew her age. A part of me is telling me I need to fucking let it go but the bead of sweat that’s running down the side of my face is telling me that I need to know, how can I walk away without knowing? But I fucking have to walk away. I don’t have a choice. So I find myself trying to find a star to wish on, hoping and dreaming that she’s of age and this pisses me off, making the idea of smashing all the fucking windows all the more appealing.
But even thinking that she may be of age still doesn’t erase the feelings of discomfort within me, because as I look at his no teeth and droopy-ass face, I can’t tell for the life of me what she could see in him. And fuck, okay, sure he’s doing a hell of a lot better but I doubt it’s because of his money. So why would a young lady like her with two kids choose to be with him? My brain tries to rationalize it with the assumption that perhaps she had a worse life and at least he has a house and provides food. Because I still can’t bring myself to think that she’s with this asshole because of his personality.
Fuck, he’s laughing. What for? What’s so funny? Man, I hate this fucker so much. I hate his fucking face. I hate his damn hollow gapped smile, the darkness in the depth of his mouth resembling the sinking hole that he is. The man who kills spirits and turns people into walking zombies. I hate everything about him as I look at him and I wish I could rid him of any joy he has found in his life. I’m tempted to burst their fucking little bubble and save them from the soul-sucking entity that lurks beneath his skin. They don’t know him, and I want to be the one to make the introduction. But that would be cruel of me. Not because of him. Fuck him. If I could right now, I’d ruin his life in the blink of an eye without giving it a second thought. But it’s the kids, the woman who has never done me any wrong.
And I can’t sound any alarms by reporting him to the police, because the only good experience I’ve ever had with the police is running into Mikhail. I don’t trust them with doing the right thing, and I don’t need to bring unnecessary attention to myself.
Thinking of Mikhail, I glance at my phone, sheltering the light with my hand, and notice the time. It’s about to be midnight. Fuck. Shit. They’re all gonna be mad, I know it. Fuck. I should’ve called, but I wouldn’t know what to say. I had no clue this much time had passed. As much as I’d like to camp out here, I can’t. But I also can’t just walk away tonight feeling satisfied that everything is alright. Even if it’s just to do with that girl’s age and not knowing for sure that she’s able to consent.
I need to figure out a way to get the information I need without risking the safety of my men and me and without alerting the police. I’m not sure how but I’m positive that if I let them know about this, they’ll help me. They’ve proven to me that they’re truly committed to me so perhaps, the four of us together can think of something. I was reluctant to leave but with this realization, I’m almost too excited to get home.
I head back into the forest and grab my bike, silently walking it out of the woods and past his house, waiting until I’m a safe distance away before I jump on the bike, albeit a bit wobbly from the weight of today, and start riding through the darkness of the dirt road back onto the familiar asphalt with streetlights to guide me. I’m not quite sure of the route to get back but I don’t panic as I use the time to let the strange out-of-body experience settle and allow my mind to process the shock of everything that happened today.
What had started as a day that I had come to perceive as regular, just got a wrench thrown into the mix of it. I feel dirty and almost as if I could ride this bike away, far from this town, and never look back. The thought of breathing the same air as him is suffocating. I am almost consciously choosing not to breathe as the wind hits me in the face.
I’m a rollercoaster of emotions; hopeful, torn apart, desperate, and defeated. A coolness brushes against my face making me aware that tears are running down my cheeks. Damn it. I don’t want to fucking cry because of him but I can’t help it. I don’t get to win. I don’t get to be happy. Here I am, trying to be and he manages to screw up my life again?!
My vision is blurred making everything worse since I already didn’t know where I was going, to begin with. I feel my chest start to rattle and the bicycle starts to weave and bob. I’m still pedaling, trying to push on, getting pissed at the fact that I can’t focus and toppling the bike over, jumping off it, slumping down to the sidewalk where I cry, unable to fucking stop it no matter how hard I try. But the more I try to suppress it, the more tears pour from me.
What makes this all worse is the restraint I have to place on myself. This fucking hurts, and I could ease my pain by punishing him but I can’t because he would’ve managed to steal the first people I’ve ever found love with from me, seeing that I would be fucking things up for all of us. I find myself weighing whether choosing to get rid of him would be worth losing them. And it wouldn’t be. It wouldn’t be worth having him ruin something else for me. But isn’t he already doing that? His mere presence is already causing it to shatter. This town is no longer a potential haven to hide from the past. It’s now automatically my personal hell.
Maybe I’m just not meant to be happy. At least not in the conventional sense since what makes me happy is making people pay for unforgivable things they’ve done. So perhaps I’m not cut out for this life.
I take my phone out again and unlock it because I need to pull up directions to our place. I see tons of missed calls and text messages. Everyone’s concerned about where I am. I scroll through all the messages and it becomes clear to me that I’m allowing someone who doesn’t care a fucking shit about me to control my actions right now, have me crying on the street, questioning whether I deserve the love of the men I have waiting back at home for me. No, he doesn’t get to do this to me.
I’m not saying he’s off the hook. I’m just saying that I won’t just fuck him up for my revenge. If he’s an actual fucking changed man, great. I’ll just pretend he doesn’t exist and try to move forward with my life. But if I find out that he’s still dangerous, well then, that changes everything.
Chapter 6
Mikhail
“Okay,okay.”Ipausetaking a deep breath trying to reduce the pressure in my chest that’s making it impossible to speak. “Okay, we always knew this day would come, didn’t we? Or at least we hoped it wouldn’t but we kind of expected it, didn’t we?” I’m rambling on.
“Bro, sit down, you’re driving me nuts,” Calder says, referring to my pacing up and down our living room. It suddenly feels much too small, and I fight the impulse to kick one of these black leather couches out of my way.
“Sit down? How the fuck are you so calm?” I shoot back at him.
“I’m not calm, but I’m trying not to lose my fucking mind if that’s alright with you. I don’t think we’ll get much done worrying ourselves to death,” he responds.
