Madness

by Kailee Reese Samuels

  How is this happening?

  I’m turned on, but I know she doesn’t like Dick. Maddy has admitted as much to me over the last weeks, but she seems to desire his tool for reasons which escape me. Tilting her head back, she opens her eyes. The bruises on her cheeks show the truth of the man. She sees me, but I feel no shame.

  With his filthy brown mop, Dick glares in my direction and flirtatiously baits, “… You like watching, don’t you, Lys? You can be next, little girl. I’ll take real good care of you.”

  Swinging open the door, I know he has no plans of stopping his assault. I’m going to split Dick’s head open for two reasons. And if I’m honest, they’re about equal.

  For one, the pain he has caused is unforgivable.

  And two, I never asked for his opinion on how I felt.

  A man like dick-cat-astrophe doesn’t get to know the welled-up heat between my thighs. Gripping the golf club, I repeatedly strike his head until the blood splatters onto Maddy and pools in the old, stained shag carpeting of the bedroom. I’m heaving as I mumble, “Fuck you.”

  “The party!” Maddy cries. “The party!”

  “… Excuse me?”

  “This afternoon, we’re throwing a barbecue!”

  My head sags as I close my eyes. I’m holding a bloody golf club, and my sister is worried about ribs. Figures. Playing along with her psychosis, I extend my hand and happily chime, “I just so happen to have the perfect party dress.”

  Wandering by the lazy flowing river, I let my eyes blur, staring through the crystalline haze one delightful afternoon in the summer. The calm dark waters bounce in my tearful puddles as I fall into a place of disintegration. My head is an unkempt mess with cobwebs winding around the gables as sandy dust sticks betwixt my toes. The uproarious party continues in the distance.

  Maddy’s ‘friends’ jump from the dock into the water, splashing around with a carefree innocence that bespoke of times past. They are high on the drugs I sold them—I raided Dick’s sack—his sack of drugs. He kept them stashed in the kitchen cupboards, behind the cans of carrots and corn. And the ‘friends’ failed to notice in their revelry, his absence after pushing things a little too far with Maddy.

  Or that I used his skull for practice swings...

  The boxed wine and kegs free-flowed as the wild abandon took over with the loud music, groping, and fornication. I was but an observer because my sister was a temperamental twit.

  Let’s clarify; I do not have an anger problem.

  I have a noise issue.

  And Maddy howling while Dick pillaged her conflicted mind and body was too much. I ended it. And him.

  Why we are even trying to cover our tracks and use the party as an alibi seems almost pointless. I’ll return to the place I call home—a cage, alone, where I can be free.

  I am darkness.

  And I lost all the light from my soul to the demons awakening inside of me.

  Maddy is guilty, too, having witnessed my heinous act—s, as I seem to have a bit of a habit with ending people’s heartbeat. They cause noise. I kill them.

  I am dangerous.

  But…not angry.

  We sit idly by watching the carnal feast. Again, the warm wave rises between my legs as I gawk with wide eyes at one young man laying claim to a girl against a tree.

  “Let’s go,” she declares, walking away. “Now, Lyssa.”

  We travel deep into the woods along the river behind the skanky trailer park as I think about the heartache left behind in those four walls of my childhood home. I try to come up with a plan to escape the inevitable incarceration I am due.

  I won’t get so lucky this time.

  Dr. Witter-Ratrow will miss me so.

  With a hopeless future, I acknowledge this is nothing new. We are the daughters of two, affluent warring families rivaling that of the Montagues and Capulets. We are the byproducts of their very damaged love.

  Very hopeless, indeed.

  I had no other choice but to relinquish them from this life and set their souls free so that silence could be found. I visualize the ‘Wanted for Murder’ posters on every street corner.

  Lyssa Kingsley.

  Extremely off her rocker. Use caution when approaching.

  All because I can’t handle the deafening cacophony of hatred, disgust, and misery. In my mind, I have been justified all three times.

  But perceptions may vary slightly.

  Underneath the canopy of large oak trees, I wait on the embankment. The light breeze laps the waves with rhythm onto the littered shores interspersed with sparkling minerals and broken pieces of shells. My sister pulls her math book from her satchel and gives a blank expression.

  Nothing is wrong here, and even if it is—why would we ever acknowledge such?

  Better to just ignore it and keep marching forward.

  Straightening her glorious emerald dress dotted with white ice cream stains, she asks, “Are you not going to study the digits for your exam?”

  And she is out of her mind, but I give her none of mine. I killed her boyfriend in cold blood while he was raping her, and she is—studying for a math test?

  I painfully pop my fingers, pull my box of chocolates from her satchel, and sink to her level of disrepair. “What digits, do you say? These numbers mean nothing!” I pull out my romance book and highlighter. “Words are all that matter!”

  “Words are for the weak!” she spitefully hisses. “You will never elevate in society with such poetic reaches. You need to understand the problems. The numbers matter, not your nouns and verbs!”

  “Clauses and phrases and gerunds galore?”

  “Precisely!” Maddy lifts a single finger in the air. “It is a waste of time!”

  “A waste of time?” I take another chocolate and squish it. Cherry, my favorite. “Do you know how to diagram a sentence? It is a problem, these words you decry. The source of all communication rests in the hands of conveying an understandable language.”

  “Shove it,” she sasses, returning to her digits. “Take your linguistic and etymological fetish elsewhere!”

  The girl was raped.

  … And she is doing math equations?

  I stick the chocolate in my mouth and leave Maddy by the riverbank. I don’t need her naysaying, negative bullshit. Double negative that.

  I meander to the edge of the tree line in my well-worn, comfortable periwinkle dress. I think it’s silk, designed by some French chateau. I wipe my sticky red fingers on the overlaying, white billowy skirt. I blink at the deep forest, tempted by the darkness.

  After I decide the woods are no place for a girl like me, I return to the water, pick up a rock, and toss it into the languid waves. The rock splashes into the water with a profound thud. The droplets are all that matter. They rise from the impact and return to the surface—they are survivors, just like me.

  “… Why would I ever need numbers?” I ask.

  “Because we have to become more than Mother and Father.”

  “Our parents are dead,” I deadpan, fluently nailing the situation at hand. “We’re already more than they ever were.”

  “They fought over funds.”

  “No, they fought because Mother was a lunatic, and Father was a drunk.”

  Her bugged out eyes zoomed in on me. “Lyssa!”

  My precious sister.

  I don’t have her numerical skills, her knowledge, or her ability to overlook the obvious—the disintegrating marriage, the lackluster love, and the inability to restrain themselves (any of them) from quibbling non-stop.

  The world we grew up in, my sister and I, held the template for which she based her relationship with Dick. “Our father was the madman, Lyssa! Our mother understood absolutes.”

  As we walk back to our spot, I remember their marriage and murder—all correctly, with explicit graphic detail.

  Our mother understood how to spend his money earned from his esoteric artistic endeavors. And we were expected to behave as her servants, like second
class citizens.

  Callous. Pained. Heartbroken.

  My poor father never stood a chance against my mother. She whittled any remaining masculinity he had down to nothingness. His mind flourished with irrational thoughts in his laboratory of words as he contended we were all crazy. The brilliant prose he wrote was a thing of beauty my mother could never understand, but how could she? She was too busy counting the dimes he made and spending every one.

  Shaking my head, I snicker as she continues working the problems. That is my sister, always doing what she perceives as the right thing. And she is always wrong.

  I glance at the symbols on the page before me and counter, “No amount of studying numbers is going to eliminate their hatred. We need to find love now more than ever before. We must have passion.”

  “Silly Lys! Like my friends at the party? You’ll end up with a round belly and a heart full of dread!”

  “Just like Mother,” I cattily reply, smirking. “Just like Mother. Father loved her so…”

  She hastily drops her pencil into the book. “… Really, Lys? Such whimsical notions you have about romance.”

  The gruff sigh escapes from between my lips. “Why are you such a downer, Mathison?”

  She hates it when I use her full name, almost as much as I hate mine. “Because the only way to true happiness is through yourself. You aren’t going to find it in the arms of a man. You need to be prim, proper, and studious to find an appropriate suitor to appreciate your intellectual ability.”

  “… My intellectual ability?” I lift my brow. “An appropriate suitor? I’ve been stuck in a room with four white walls for a decade! I have high scores on elimination.”

  “Why, yes…”

  “Are you saying there is no hope for respect within the tomes?”

  With a side-eyed, judgemental glare, she replies, “Never ever!”

  Tilting my head, I acknowledge she has no recollection of the misdeeds done today. No available brain space for the impulsive, reckless notions of the grim, fatalistic torture I just handed out like candy on Halloween.

  “Maddy, are you at all aware that I just murdered your boyfriend because he was raping you?”

  “Excuse me,” the man says, startling us. The enormous twitching rabbit ears arouse my curiosities as I tilt my head. “I was wondering if you might have a light?”

  “A light?” Maddy quizzes with a look of repugnance. His expensive, tattered clothes offer a perplexing notion, like a homeless man in haute couture. “Why for?”

  He irreverently cackles with a mischievous grin parking upon his lips. His snaggleteeth—all present but crooked as can be—shine in the moon as a hint of blood seeps from the corner of his mouth. Maddy is disgusted. I’m infatuated.

  With a sexy spark in his eyes, he strokes his chin and baits, “To light my… joint?”

  I wake, screaming and pulling at the leather cuffs attached to my bed. “Help me! Help me!” I bellow, tugging against the restraints and believing I’ve returned to Littleton. “Help!”

  In a panic, I glance up to see the spinning crystal chandelier dangling from a thick, burly limb of the massive oak tree as glitter drops like a sticky sap upon my nose. I remember…inhaling.

  Oops.

  “Help me out of this place!”

  “Ellison Kingsley!” The nurse in nothing but a white hat and bustier stumbles out from the briar brush…bush…brush…well, it is awful brushy for a bush.

  She cautiously approaches, removing my haggard teddy bear from the crook of my arm, and pulling a syringe from her boobs. “You must stop disturbing the other patients with your racket!”

  “… Other patients? In the forest?” My eyes swing from side-to-side as I assess I am—alone in the deep motherfucking dark woods. “You’re right,” I quip with a gleam. “It would be such a pity if they all ended up like Mother and Father! And Dick! I bet you do plenty of dick…fat dick, rippled dick, curled dick…overly eager dick…” I greatly exaggerate the roll my blue eyes, and with a nudge, I whisper, “I bet that really sucks for you.”

  “That’s quite enough, young lady!” she scolds, thumping my arm several times with her chubby knuckle. “It’s bad enough what you’ve done! You will not be causing any more grief with your malcontent.”

  Tugging at the straps, I snicker, “… Malcontent?”

  “Yes, disturbed and deranged,” she chastises, lifting a brow. “You’re a misfit to society, Ellison Kingsley!”

  “You mean, fucking dissatisfied and rebellious as hell?”

  She rebukes, “Stop your cursing!”

  Giving a sinister grin, I tilt my head back and forth. “Cursing, cussing, who is to say?”

  The very tall man with the flopping ears peers over her shoulder with a snarl. “That will be quite enough from you…nurse. You weren’t that good anyway.”

  With wide eyes, I grin at the man as he takes his timepiece and repeatedly smacks it into the back of her head. Blood spits onto my face as she slumps to the leaf-covered ground. “We’re going to be late, Ellison!”

  “You can call me Lyssa,” I correct.

  “But your given name is Ellison,” he states, while methodically undoing my cuffs and offering his white-gloved hand to me. “We’re going to be late!”

  “Where are we going?” I ask, grabbing my bear and sitting up. I’m uncertain if I want to take his hand. He seems a bit…peculiar. “I don’t even know where I am!”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he replies with a wolfish smile. I notice his blue eyes, the color of ocean water. “We’re going to be late! Very late, sovery late.”

  He sprints off to the edge of the suspicious tree line and spins around. “Are you coming, Ellison?”

  “Lyssa!” I demand again, sliding off of the high gurney. My knees hit the earth as he dashes away. I try to recollect the pieces of the day, but it is all such a jumbled mess in my short term memory.

  Long term is just fine. I killed my parents for their betrayal, and then I killed Dick because he didn’t understand the math of intercourse required two consenting adults. And my sister’s delusions will leave her heartbroken and forlorn.

  I did the world a favor by eliminating Dick.

  But now, I’m following a young man with twitching rabbit ears into a pitch black sea of trees. We’re running faster and faster. He never slows down to check if I am still trailing him. I guess he assumes I will be. Still, it is rather rude and unbecoming of a gentleman who cared enough to rescue me but not enough to wait for me.

  Why would I not follow?

  I have no place else to go.

  No family for which to turn; Maddy is a lost cause.

  And I am lost in the dark…The Darkland…where no one should ever go.

  Forever later, the rabbit-eared man inquires, “Why are you taking so long?”

  “… What is your name?” I huff and puff, trying to catch up with him, as I stumble to the ground.

  “Whitman!” He loudly boasts as a lantern swings upon his arm. “Whitman Dare!”

  “... Whit?”

  “Yes,” he hisses with an evil grin. “Will you take the dare?”

  I cock an eyebrow in disbelief, not quite sure what is real or unreal here in our magical tale. “I’m Lys.”

  “Yes, Ellison, so you’ve said,” he replies, rechecking his watch. His rugged stature draws my attention, and I shiver with the thought of his physique, claiming mine.

  “My name is Lys, but you don’t seem to care. Do you, Mr. Dare?”

  “Oh, I care very much,” he argues, glaring at his timepiece. “That’s why we’ll work fine as a pair.”

  I give a scrutinizing stare at the man dressed up like a hare. “Stop that,” I shout at my inner musings. The voices are taking over, and I fear unnecessarily hurting him. Slipping into my stream of nonstop garble, I offer a random thought, “I miss my cat.”

  His eyes catch my own. “Your pussy, you say?”

  “My pussy cat, Nida.”

  “Ahh!”
He acts genuinely concerned. “Perhaps I’ll find him.”

  “My pussy is a she,” I inform, fretting.

  “We’ll see. Shall we?” He grins, showing off his strangely appealing smile. I scan over his suit, focusing on his taut slacks and pronounced package, as I note the chill bumps rise on my flesh. He’s quite the looker, this rabbit man, especially if I ignore his pointy ears flopping in opposite directions. They’re the only limp part of this man.

  “You know, they say men with large feet…” I stare down at his average-sized feet tucked in black boots. “Perhaps I should rephrase that, they say men with overly sized, flopping ears have large…”

  Bending, he leans close to my face and slowly lures, “Yes…Ellison?”

  My skin is on fire, begging for his touch, as my lip trembles. “Yes.”

  “We’re there!” he instantly declares, not having moved nary an inch. I see nothing that would lead me to believe we are anywhere other than here. The portent woods surround with many glowing eyes set in the trees, watching and waiting. “I need to get back.”

  “There is no going back, sweet girl!” He stands upright and crosses his arms. His penetrating eyes scan over me until he tilts his head back and wildly roars, “Only forward momentum, my dear! Only forward!”

  Whitman is a bit off, but so is Maddy. And I am as well. Maybe Father was right. “Mr. Dare…”

  He quickly hunches down to brush his cheek against mine. His skin is warm and soft and…so tempting. “And do you dare, Ellison?”

  “Dare, Sir?” I blurt out, feeling fearful of his next move. “What do I dare?”

  “Do you dare yourself to follow the Dare?”

  “That’s a foolish notion! Why would I follow a daring hare?”

  His blue eyes widen as he lifts a solitary finger. “But you did!”

  “Because we’re going to be late!”

  Setting his lantern on the ground, he crouches low. He pulls off his white gloves, curling a calloused finger beneath my chin. He studies my eyes and closes the narrow space between us. We’re mere centimeters apart when his voice shifts to a seductive tone. “Do you trust me to take you, Ellison?”