Cold-Blooded Beautiful

by Christine Zolendz

  My hand touched the knob of my office, such a peculiar thing to remember, the icy smooth coldness of the metal handle and the metallic, yet floral smell of it. That acidic, aromatic scent was what confused me, citrus and sandalwood. It muddled strange sensations in my brain. The odor was so strong that I could almost taste it, like bitter rust and roses along my tongue. A strange wave of flutters rolled through my belly, but I dismissed it instantly, and I pushed through the door, thoughtlessly slinging my coat on the back of my chair, and my bag on the desk. For some ungodly reason, the slats of my window were closed, and I moved to open them, craving the brightness.

  The mirror that ran the length of my office wall echoed my reflection. For a moment, I paused, confused, and disoriented. The pale-faced woman in the mirror stared back at me, eyes wide, mouth slightly opened.

  My chest tensed, muscles tightened and coiled, ready for something, anything to jump out at me. My belly fluttered again when I noticed an enormous beautiful bouquet of red roses surfacing from the veil of shadows of the corner.

  I knew I smelt flowers.

  Oh, my God, did Kade get me flowers?

  My heart thudded faster.

  He texted me he loved me and got me flowers?

  A dark velvet jewelry box sat in the middle of the arrangement, exactly like one an engagement ring would come in. That instant was like pure electric surging through my chest.

  Oh, my God.

  Was Kade going to ask me to marry him? My pulse sped up, my breathing accelerated, and I wanted to scream, YES, YES, YES, at the top of my lungs before I took another breath.

  I stepped forward, eyes stinging with joyous tears, heart pounding with excitement.

  Then I saw the man behind the flowers, standing larger than life, in that darkness full of shadows and emptiness.

  David.

  Chapter 7

  Everything was set up perfectly.

  Okay, well, I didn’t know anything about proposal shit, but it was perfect to me. I ran through the halls of the hospital, nurses and visitors flying out of the way just to get to her. My fingers tingled to sweep the hair that always hung against her cheeks, to watch her smile when I asked her to become my wife. There was no doubt in my mind, not one ounce of apprehension as I flung the door open to her office and stepped inside. I knew her answer was going to be yes, because she knew me, she knew I would give her everything she ever wanted. I’d give her everything that was taken from her, everything.

  The room was empty, save for the bright afternoon sunlight filtering in from the window. Damn, she must be in with a patient.

  My eyes quickly scanned the room. Her coat is neatly hung on a hook and her bag lay on her desk.

  One of the clinic nurses came in behind me and cleared her throat, “May I help you, sir?”

  I spun around, smiling like a bloody kid at Christmas; a huge Mt. Everest sized diamond, hiding deep within my pocket. “Hey, Evelyn. Where’s Sam?”

  “Oh, Kade. I didn’t recognize you. Um, Samantha hasn’t come in yet. I tried calling her cell, but I can’t reach her. She missed all of her appointments today. I’ve been rescheduling them all day.”

  What the hell was she going on about?

  How could that be? The stuff she left from home with this morning was laying on her desk, her coat hanging on the hook. She had to come here this morning. Fuck me sideways; this tart must be stupid. They must give nursing degrees to anybody.

  Yet, she stood there. Stern. Serious.

  My jaw tightened. Fists clenched. Somebody was bloody lying to me. Something was wrong.

  “Bollocks. She has to be here, Evelyn. All her bloody belongings are here. Her coat. Her pocketbook. Stop messing with me,” I snapped.

  “I’m not, Kade. I’m being serious. I haven’t seen her all day,” she said, raising her brows, and handed me her phone. “Look at all the texts and calls I’ve sent her. She’s replied to none of them.”

  Assumptions can kill you. They are the devil in disguise of a normal everyday moment. Assumptions are never really considered; they are just the reality you believe as truth. I assumed that Samantha was at the family clinic. Safe. I never doubted her whereabouts. I never considered that anything could go wrong. Not until it was too late.

  I called her cell, but there was no answer, so I left a message.

  Then I left five more.

  Her coat was on her desk. Her pocketbook too, but I couldn’t find her.

  She never showed up to the clinic that morning. No one had seen her. The words kept announcing themselves in my head. She’s gone, they taunted.

  I called Jen.

  Jen hadn’t seen her, and Dylan had been with me all day. They dropped everything and were on their way, just as worried as I was.

  I left another message on her voice mail and looked at the time. It was three o’clock in the afternoon. That meant she had been missing for at least five hours.

  Blood rushed past my ear, throbbed in my veins. Panic.

  A few minutes before, I assumed Samantha was fine, didn’t even consider anything could go wrong. Just as tomorrow, I assumed the sun would rise and another new day would begin, but not for me, not if Samantha was gone. If she were gone, my world would forever be plunged into darkness.

  Just bloody calm down. Think.

  The question to answer, was did she leave on her own, or was she in trouble? Was there an accident? Couldn’t be, her stuff was there. Did she get locked in a closet somewhere? If she was in a bloody closet with someone else, I will rip every inch of his skin off, and make myself a suit.

  Grabbing her purse, I looked through her stuff. Her wallet was still inside, so she couldn’t have gone far. She had to be in the hospital somewhere. Maybe there was a trauma, and she was needed in emergency? We’re a bunch of bloody morons, that’s got to be what happened!

  My eyes dropped to her desk.

  A small pale pink Post-It note was stuck dead center on her desk.

  A small note; addressed to me.

  Kade,

  Sorry. This is too much for me. I’m suffocating here.

  Everyone will be better off if I leave.

  Samantha

  Holding the note up to my face, I crushed it silently into my fist. Complete self-destruction in 3, 2, 1.

  The edge of my vision exploded in reds and oranges; licks of heat and flame. Quick and savage, my fist holding the note slammed into the mirror that ran along her office wall, shattering it into webbed strands that traveled to every edge. My reflection was broken, fractured into thousands of pieces, completely fucking destroyed. Just. Like. Me.

  Crushing my hands against the sharp splintered mirror, I slid them down harshly, taking in the burn of pain as the uneven edges sliced through my palms. Dr. Jekyll, meet Mr. Hyde.

  I’m going to destroy this room.

  Every bloody inch of it.

  And I did, until Dylan and Jen found me on the verge of smashing Samantha’s desk through the window, crumpled up letter still balled up in my bloodied fist. Dylan tackled me. It wasn’t hard, because I didn’t fight him, just sort of sunk onto the ground and handed Jen the letter.

  Her eyes scanned over it, hand to her mouth. She wiped my blood off her hands onto her pants, disgusted. Fuck you, bitch, this is how I deal with shit.

  “I have to get out of here before I destroy this hospital. Need to be alone,” I growled.

  People gave me a wide-open path to leave the hospital. Nobody stopped me, detained me, or even called security. They just let me tear the place up behind her office door. Being thought of as dangerous and savage, does have its fucking advantages, doesn’t it? Not one person thought twice about provoking me, stopping me, or calling for fucking help. Everyone there was a stupid, pathetic sheep, because all they did was make my brutal tendencies feel bloody liberating. As if I had every right to explode so violently, because of feeling wronged. The sheep just fed the wolf.

  The drive home was almost lethal, as I never once touched my foot to
the brake, not until I slammed on it in front of my house, and lunged out of the truck. There were no deputies to stop me, no soft smooth voices to lure me to calmness, there was nothing; nothing but blurs of movements and hazy moments. And rage.

  Disconnecting from the world, I closed myself in my den, just watching the dark crimson blood seep out of the wounds on my hand, as I obsessively opened and closed them. Open and closed them.

  When the outside skies grew dark, I heard Jen tiptoe into the room, “I am so sorry, Kade. I had no idea she was planning this.” She held a bat in one hand, most likely for her own protection. Smart. I wanted to beg her to hit me with it.

  “It is because of that woman I’m still fucking breathing. There are too different Kades, there’s the before Sam one, and since Sam one. I’m going to die going back to the first one,” I seethed.

  She lowered herself to the floor next to me, leaning her back along side mine, against the stone of the fireplace, and laid the bat across her legs. Looking down into my hands, she asked, “What is that?”

  I held it up, a small lilac ribbon on a clip, twirling it between two fingers. “Her ribbon.”

  “That’s the one you found in the crash…you kept that?”

  “Hold it in my pocket wherever I go.”

  “Why?”

  “Smells like apples and cinnamon, smells like her. She wore it the first night I saw her, and I can’t let her go just yet. You need to leave me alone, Jen. Not at a good place right now. I feel like I could climb a bloody bell tower and start shooting.”

  “When I found her and David that day, freaking bloodied and…God, it was horrible, Kade. She didn’t want me to help her. She didn’t want me to come with her. The only reason I knew what happened was because I was at the hospital. Then we got her out of there, and she asked me to drive her home to get some stuff while David was working, and pick her up when she was done to take her to the airport – she was going to start over alone. But when I got there, they were physically fighting, and he grabbed me and punched me…Anyway, she never wanted to drag anyone into this…Maybe she…”

  “What happened that day? She’s fucking gone, so just bloody fucking tell me. How the bloody hell did she end up in my hiding place?” I snapped viciously. “And don’t waste my time by telling me about what you felt and what you went through. All I want to know about is her.”

  Puffy, tear filled eyes looked back to mine. Strands of hair were plastered to her face from the tears that streamed down her cheeks. Haunted eyes shifted down, not able to look into mine a minute more. “She wanted to take her aid packs and some clothes, so I dropped her off. She…uh…told me to give her an hour…so I did. I ran back to my little place and packed a bag. I wasn’t going to let her leave alone. She was the only family I had, so I couldn’t let her go alone.” Her attention turned to her hands, picking and playing with her nails as she continued. “When I got there and she wasn’t out front, I ran up. And he…he was dragging her by her hair across the rug. He was trying to get to the surgical knife that was full of blood on the floor. I threw a picture frame at him, and when let her go, he turned to punch me and she…well…she…ah…”

  “Tell me, or use the bat,” I hissed.

  “STOP IT, Kade! She stabbed him in the back. Over and over, okay. She wouldn’t stop. She just grabbed the knife, and instead of running, she went back after him until he was lying still on the floor, and she had blood all over her. I grabbed her off him. God, Kade, he looked dead. He looked so dead, I wanted her away from him. She tried to go back to the hospital and get her father, but I got her in the car and told her to drive. She just focused on the driving and that was it…we hardly spoke for like seven hours, and she was just bleeding and bleeding, but she wouldn’t stop. She was screaming at me to leave her, and just let her hide, but I couldn’t. She didn’t want me to be involved. She doesn’t want anyone else hurt by them, Kade. Don’t you get that? She left because she fucking loves you,” she cried. Wiping at her tears, she whispered, “She left because she didn’t want you to be hurt.”

  “Whatever, Jen. Now, she’s bloody running around, hiding, with the whole of her life probably packed in the trunk of her car. Fucking alone. Thank you for telling me she stabbed someone in the back. Completely makes me understand how she could just walk out and leave me, too. Please get the fuck out.”

  She broke down then, sobbing and whining. “It’s just not fair to you. I just can’t believe she’d do this.” I could see myself wrapping my hands around her little pathetic neck, and shaking her fucking brain against her skull until it looked like dull, pink, gelatinous Jell-O.

  “Life’s not bloody fair, princess. She did what she wanted to do. The end,” I whispered, harshly. Getting up, I walked out, slamming the door behind me and stormed into my room, locking the door. Fuck everybody.

  I ripped through my closets for brandy. Found four motherfucking bottles and poured them straight down my throat. Double-stuff-fuck-everybody.

  I think two days blurred by, where I was sick with gut wrenching pains and fucking agonizing aches in my chest. Gravely, I clung to my desolation, reveled in its bitter coldness. But those fucking two arses that lived with me, were relentless in trying to ‘get me to talk through my feelings’ or ‘put to practice my anger management strategies.’ Which led me to theatrically cursing out my therapist and threatening to ‘chain him to the back of my bloody truck and drag him around town until his flesh scraped itself to the bone.’ I also somehow started a small fire in the master bedroom. Who knew apple and cinnamon soap was so bloody flammable. They should label that shit. I guessed Dylan and Jen were almost reaching their boiling point, when they invited their pussy of a friend, Francis, over to ‘talk to me.’

  As soon as I saw Fran’s face at the door, I punched it. I was left alone after that.

  Obsessions grew.

  My mind filled with ghosts. The rooms in my house became haunted by her. Her phantom hand still held mine. All I saw was her apparition and nothing else. The stone walls, the bed where we fucked, the counter, the bath, everything, everywhere was closing in on me, not one surface was free of her spirit’s possession. I fucking missed her. I turned off every light in the house and locked myself in my bedroom, and in the darkness, I stayed. It was comfortable and easy. Yet, her specter still visited, making me remember every single touch, and each beautiful whisper.

  I thought about what would have fucking happened if I’d never met her, if I never walked into my brother’s bar that night, if I never asked Dylan her name. What would I have been? Still alone, sitting in the den, fingers on the keyboard pretending I knew what the world was like on the outside. Drunk. Hiding. Angry. I’m better for knowing her.

  Yet, this pain…this emptiness…this hole in my chest, not letting me gasp in enough air to breathe, was going to kill me. Her being gone was going to kill me. How do normal bloody people deal with heartache? Because the way I felt, so bloody gutted, I was shocked that more people didn’t go on rampages daily. The bloody way I felt, the bloody things I thought of doing, bloody hell, I was definitely going to Hell in every religion.

  Another day blurred past when Dylan stood in front of me and said, “I just got off the phone with Mrs. Heldist.”

  “Who’s that?” I hadn’t showered. Or changed my clothes. I stunk. I hoped it would offend him enough to leave ME ALONE.

  “Your personal assistant,” he said, jerking his head back and pinching his thumb and index finger over the bridge of his nose.

  “Oh,” I answered flatly.

  “She’s worked for you for ten bloody years, so how can you not know who I was talking about?” he stammered, shaking his head.

  “Never met her. I just call her Help Desk, when we talk on the phone.”

  “Bloody hell, you must have been a pleasure to work for. She just booked you a flight to see Mum. You need to get away from things that remind you of her. You need to realize it’s over. You need to accept this.” His arms crossed over his che
st, waiting for my retort.

  “Sod off! Psych 101. There are five stages of grief and I’m owning that shit. They ARE my bitches.”

  “What are you…?”

  “Sod off!” I roared baring my teeth at him. My face heated, fists pounded against the tabletop, and my chest tightened and panged sharply. “You don’t get to tell me I have to accept shit! You and Jen, won’t even fucking allow me to deal with stage one! Leave me the fuck alone. I don’t want to believe she would gut me like this, because that shitty thought makes me go to the next fucking stage. And now I’m at stage fucking two. ANGER. I’m livid. I’m outraged! I’m so bloody fucking angry, I want to kill someone!” I screamed in his face. Visions of explosions and burning walls appeared in rapid moving slide shows through my mind. I gritted my teeth trying to make them disappear, heat flushed through my chest, I wanted to hurt something, someone. “I can’t believe she would do this to me.”

  “I know, mate. I know,” he murmured. His eyes were soft and gentle. I wished he wasn’t my brother, so I could have punched him.

  God, this storyline of a life you wrote for me is a sick twisted fucking joke.

  Pulling out my phone, I checked for messages, again. My chest ached when I saw not even one. My once loud and obnoxious phone was heartbreakingly silent. No whispered messages with her perfect voice, no more funny texts, and no more silly selfies. I leaned my head against the wall and slid down the coolness of it, crumpling down until my arse hit the floor. Somewhere out there in the world, was my Samantha, erasing me. Forgetting me. Writing me off. Deleting my chapter.

  I pressed my hand to my chest, trying to rub away the ache.

  Without another word, Dylan pulled out one of my small suitcases and packed it with an armful of clothing.

  I could hear my own breathing, heavy and harsh. The anger took a toll on my body. My mind. I squeezed my eyes tightly against the flashbacks and violent images that always took over. I didn’t want to go back to the way I was, I didn’t want to only feel how brutal and savage life was, so I fought to clear my head of the violence. It was much easier to face my demons with Samantha. She always had this calm tender way to redirect them. Maybe it was her voice, or the warm feel of her skin, I didn’t know. Maybe if I didn’t push her to talk to me, she would still be here.