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This won't do. This is nothing but a means of turbulence to my mind. I wonder who came up with the fucking idea thatalcohol can make you forget. And even if that were so, right now, forgetting is not what I need.
I plop on the seat behind the desk, pull out the lower drawer and there it is. What I truly need. I know by now it has lost almost forty-nine percent of its tetrahydrocannabinol because of how long it has been here but the remaining percentage will do more than any fucking alcohol in my system.
I pick the jar of weed and the pack of brown blunt wraps beside it, from inside the drawer and bring them up to the desk. They've been here four years . When I had lost my father, I'd come in here to smoke till I was calm before going out to face the influx of people who kept coming in daily to give their condolences.
While my father was a brute and a fierce person when it came to the underworld business, he had a warm side to him that lured people in. He knew how to preach about community service and I can't count the number of times he would force me to join him in going around to help mow the lawns of neighbors for free.
He was a man of the people and my mother was no different. She always had a smile on and would go out of her way to host galas and travel to help others in some way.
So when he died of a heart attack, at least that was what the autopsy result said, people wouldn’t stop showing up. Out of respect for him, care for his widow, and concern for his twenty-two-year-old son .
Thinking about it now, Claudio was in charge of that and played the part of a mourning brother who would stop at nothing to avenge his brother if his life had been cut short by any living human.
It feels like yesterday when he came bouncing into the manor, making promises to me and my mother just a few minutes after my father was announced dead. He promised to rain hell on whoever was responsible for his brother’s death, he promised to take care of the two things his brother cherished the most, which were my mother and I. He made so many promises.
I pull out a protruding wrap from the pack. The same one I was pulling out just a few weeks after my father’s death, when my mother came to request an audience with me and gave me the acrid announcement that she would be marrying Claudio.
When she came into this study to discuss her decision to marry him, I swear to fucking God I was so close to burning down the manor.
I take a useless deep breath to try to calm myself, drop the letter on the desk, and roll myself a blunt. This is when I need my curse to take a full course of my mind but in a calculative, more put-together way. Not blinded by the end alone but by the process that will give me that much-desired end.
A few drags later, with my head now thrown back on the headrest and my eyes burning into the varnished wooden ceiling, which happens to be the floor of my quarters, the ragingstorm in mind is quieted, and the fury in my loins now has a streamlined focus.
The strong wood scent from the burning weed mixed subtly with the tobacco from the wrap is pungent, blanketing my nostrils as each drag cloaks my lungs.
My mind has been sprinting through possible plans and I am slowly getting closer to what I want to do and hopefully how I will do it.
I move to take another drag when I hear the soft knock on the door. It's so soft I almost miss it.
If whoever it is cannot knock properly, then they can go to hell for all I care.
I continue smoking, puckering my lips to blow out the smoke with my tongue slightly out, in a way that makes the smoke come out in circles.
The knock comes again, just as I take the weed between my lips for another drag.
Fuck it. This person is a certified killjoy.
I'm up and about the business of seeing who the hell is deciding to be so obnoxious and won't take a hint that my silence means I don't want to be fucking disturbed.
I throw the door open, not sure who I am expecting to find, but not in the least disappointed to find my mother now in a scarlet jumpsuit, looking more put together but barefoot. It's one of the things we have in common that I have intentionally tried to stop for the past four years because of how much hate she channeled into me when she married Claudio.
“Benedetto,” she gives a weak smile, looking at me from the weed between my lips to my eyes.
“Yes,” I take the weed between my fingers now and rest my free hand on the door frame.
“Breakfast…” she points over her shoulder like it's behind her, “If you want to…” she clears her throat, “I mean I want you to come to eat something, your eyes look sunken and…” She moves in closer, both hands reaching out to my face but I move back a little, “it's your favorite,” she swallows and nods, fighting the pinch of my rejection from her physical touch.
“I am good,” I look away from her face to the wall behind her.
I can't stand to look at her face one more second or let those now lifeless eyes, that were once full of vibrancy and had been my undoing when I was a child, trick me into allowing the longing in my heart for her and her touch.
She was a safe place, her lap was a place of refuge on the days I couldn't get my shit together.
But it pains me so much that now when I look at her, all I see is Claudio. And it's even more painful that she is bedding the killer of her husband. Does she know this? Was she in on it?
No, she wasn't. And she did say something about wanting to protect me when she announced the news. Although I have never stopped to ask her what she meant, and I won't be doing that now.
“Did you hear me?” She is in my face now and her frail fingers are holding onto my forearm.
