Lynn spoke with more caring intentions. “What do we have to do to win this?”
Brian smiled. “Just follow my lead. You just have to trust me.”
Lynn grasped his hand as they both sat on the couch. “Okay.”
Brian left, closing the door behind him. His face harden unusually quickly, like that was all an act. He walked along the street and headed down back to his home. Brian spoke to himself as he walked alone the street, repeating what he told Lynn. “Just follow my lead.”
Victor had walked back upstairs and outside to Kyra that was caught in some trance, focusing on a few blades of grass blowing in the wind.
“Are you okay?” Asked Victor.
“Yeah.” Kyra numbly replied. “I just need to go get something to drink.”
“Okay.” Victor said as he watched her walk back indoors.
She goes into the fridge and picks out a bottle of water. She took a sip and leaned against the counter. She didn’t feel well. She felt unusual and as she walk back to the door she was weakened so much that she couldn’t speak. She collapsed down to her knees and her body followed flat to the ground. Unable to move or speak, and breathing rapidly she laid on the verge of passing out. She closed her eyes and unconscious she lied.
She awakened lying back on a Chase back in her office.
“Kyra. How do you feel?”
Kyra looked to her left and saw a replicate her sitting wearing glasses looking down at her note pad, writing.
“I don’t know how to feel.” She said. “I feel a crazy.”
“You know something wrong with Victor?” The replicate said. “You feel like something is not right with Victor.”
Kyra didn’t speak.
“You silence only say a thousand more words than just saying yes.”
“He has changed.” Kyra said. “He is not the man I married.”
“Then who is he?” The replicated asked.
“I don’t know…”
“Do you think that he is doing more than cheating on you?” There was a pause. “Do you think he had something to do with the murder of that girl?”
“He couldn’t have. He was with me that night she was murdered.” Kyra said.
“No he wasn’t.”
“Yes he was I remember.” Kyra argued. “You are nothing but a hallucination. I am just imagining all of this and you are just trying to make me doubtful in Victor because of our last argument.”
“If this is all a hallucination, then I cannot know more than what you know. Cannot make up a story unless you want me too. You are in control here. You had every choice to pick wherever you want to go. You had the choice to pick who you want to see who you wanted to see and you chose to see yourself! Now why are you here? Do you think your husband had something to do with Lisa Balmore’s murder?”
“I don’t know!”
“It’s either a yes or no!” The replicate spoke agitated.
“I don’t know what to think! Okay!” She said hopping to her feet yelling.
“Or are you making a false fantasy to live. You know what the answer is and you choose to overlook it. Let me ask how long will you be able to keep it up, before you end up killing yourself again?”
Kyra looked at her puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“You stopped breathing, the moment you arrived here. You are dying each minute you are sitting here with me.”
Kyra looked up at the clock that tick sound like her heart rhythm.
Victor proceeded to give Kyra CPR and her rescue breaths. She was unresponsive but her heart continued to beat slowly to almost a complete stop. The paramedic barged in and took control while she still laid on the ground.
Kyra’s replicate sat watching Kyra look at the clock on the verge of a nuclear meltdown.
“So, is this it? Do I just die! It can’t just end this way.”
The replicate just sat scribbling in her note pad. “You just need to breathe.”
“Breathe!” Kyra exclaimed. “Oh wow, I didn’t think of that. Please give me more of your insightful wisdom, because I never would have thought to breathe, while I am sitting here dying!”
“Just breathe, Kyra. That’s all you have to do is breathe.” The replicate said.
“I can’t.”
“Just breathe. If you don’t I can promise you that you will die. I need you to listen to me.” She paused. “I need you to breathe.”
“But I am breathing. Don’t you see me? I am breathing.” Kyra said with tears filling her eyes as she focused on the distant beating that filled the air softly. “Why do you keep telling me to breathe?”
“Because aren’t. Put your hand up to your mouth.”
Kyra lifted hand and held it a few inches from her mouth and felt nothing. Her eyes pulsed with shock. She really wasn’t breathing at all.
“I need you to breathe Kyra. You won’t die, if you just breathe.”
“I am trying. I don’t know how. I don’t know what you want me to do.” Kyra said crying. The beating had went from softly mixing with the still air, to a loud thump as it slowed. The room that she was in began to darken and the beat slowed so much that the rhythm had gone. She had closed her eyes and everything surrounding her was falling to pieces.
“Please don’t let me die…Not like this…” She breathed like it was in her instinct. All the damaged reverse and she ended up back in the chase lying down on the chase closing her eyes and breathing once again.
She convulsed upward from the stretcher, gasping. She laid back taken each breath even more deeply than the previous.
Chapter XIV
“Is she okay?” A rushed Kyle. Kyra turned towards him.
“Yeah—I’m fine.” She said a little weakly
“Who is this?” Said a little angered.
“I would ask the same, but that wouldn’t be my spot.” Kyle said as he approach my wife.
“I am her husband, this my wife. I was going to come here if she got hurt. Why are you here?”
“For the same purpose. She is a friend and I heard she was hurt.” Kyle said rubbing her hair.
Victor stared with dead stillness in his eyes and left the room.
“One in a million.” Kyle said under his breath after he had left the room. “That’s the night and shining armor that swept you off your feet.
“Yeah. I need you just place nice.” Kyra said lying dazed.
“Don’t worry. I won’t let my fist speak for me this time.”
“You’re just a really feisty type of guy, huh?” Kyra asked jokingly. “You look like a complete gentleman the first time I saw you.”
“Every gentlemen has there bad side.” They both began laughing but then everything mended with the solemnness of the hospital environment.
“Are you okay?” Kyle asked.
“Yeah.” Kyra responded with unsureness masked in her voice.
“You don’t know.” Kyra looked at him with her glassy eyes and tear forming at the waterline on the tip of overflowing.
“Everything is not what it used to be. This case brought the bad in all of us” Kyra said. “It like every day is another dream and I can close my eye and pinch myself but there is no escaping this nightmare, because I am awake. This is all—real.”
Kyle felt the shock of her pain. He watch as the tears rolled down her cheek and off of her chin.
“I’m tired of trying to imagine a better life. A life where there is no deceit, no cheating. No life where someone has the power to take someone’s life. Not like that girl.” Kyra swiped away her tears and stopped her crying. “I’m sorry.”
“Why?” Kyle asked. “Why are you sorry? You did what any sane person would do. You stayed strong for as long as you could. You pushed yourself beyond the limitation and risked your own life.” He paused. “You can’t keep doing this. You can’t keep putting yourself through this.”
The doctor had walked in with a clipboard in her hand.
“Are doing better?” She asked.
“Yea
h.” Kyra spoke.
“That’s good.” She skimmed over the paper and looked confused.
“Is there something wrong, Doctor?”
“You have no history of dizzy spells, asthma, heart disease, nothing.” She looked up at her. “Then what happen to you?”
Kyra hesitated to speak but Kyle pushed her with his stare to tell what happen before she was found.
“I was standing in this kitchen a drinking water—I was thinking about everything that was going on, and while I was standing there I felt weird. It was like my heart kept skipping beats and then the next thing I knew, I was on the ground, and I couldn’t breathe.”
The doctor sat down her clipboard and had a look like she knew what had happened.
“You seemed to have had a panic attack.” She spoke. “Think of your brain as a computer. You had all this information flowing through your mind but it was all coming too fast for you to process all at once. So the only thing that your body could have done was crash. It made you mind go clear so that you could stabilize.”
“A panic attack?” Kyra said in disbelief. “That’s what nearly killed me?”
Kyle left to go get Kyra something to drink.
“Sometimes, you are your own enemy. I will prescribe you some medicine that will delay all of the stress and worry from your mind.”
Kyra grabbed her hand as she was going to write down her prescription.
“Why, do I feel so crazy? Should I feel like I’m losing my mind every time I wake up? Every time I go outside, should I have to worry, what’s next?”
“Sometimes life become too much. That doesn’t make you crazy, to feel this way. This makes you sane. The crazy thing to do is to go on, and repeat the same thing here and expect different results. You are never going to get what you want if you keep this up—it’s just a fight you will have to be willing to lose. This medicine that I am giving you doesn’t make you a weak person for taking it, it make you stronger than ever. Everyone needs support no matter how self-sufficient you think you are.”
The doctor’s monologue worked on swaying Kyra toward her prescription. The doctor finished her note and walked out the door going to get her first dosage. She sat still and quiet staring at the wall. She breathed in, and then closed her eye exhaling swiftly with idiosyncratic pairing.
Kyra got arrived home, just beginning to feel the effects of the medication. She sat down on the couch as Victor had went upstairs to check on Lily, assuming that she had been left unattended. Christian was in the room holding her with a bottle in hand smiling as he looked down on her.
“I thought I told you to leave?” Victor said.
“Leave? I thought I made you fully aware that your intimidation game don’t work. You don’t scare me. I have been doing this for a while. I’ve gained so many enemies that I could care less about having another one.”
Victor laughed maniacally. “I guess you didn’t find out yet?”
Christian face changed. “What are you talking about?”
“You will find out soon enough.” He continued to snicker to himself.
“I don’t have time for your mind games. You’re just using a scare tactic and you know what you can do. You can go for one of you midday drives and crash into to the nearest pole—and when you die, you can go to hell and do us all a favor and stay there.” Christian said taking Lily down stair and sitting her in the play pin. Victor follow with each step.
“You kiss your mother with that mouth?” He said as a smile still rested across his face.
“No, because you were too busy kissing her yourself.” Victor turned dead silent and his face straightened straighter that Christian’s tie he was wearing. “By the look on your face you thought I didn’t know. You though all these years that I wouldn’t recognize you.” Christian laughed. “And let me guess… Kyra don’t even know too. How long have you been with her? Two, three, years? Oh yeah, that’s right. Around the same time you were screwing my mother. Or shall I say the same time she was screwing you. You though I was the one you had all the dirt on but forgot I have enough dirt on you, I can bury you in it without ever picking up a shovel.”
“If you tell her I swear I-.”
“You swear what? I also know you had visited the morgue. See if you was smart you would have burned the papers in the like you did my book.”
Victor staggered back. He thought he was two steps ahead of Christian when Christian was always one step ahead.
“See, when you burn things in a fireplace parts of paper and ash fly up into the chimney and sometime is caught along the walls. The report you burned had a seal on it that didn’t burn like the rest of the paper. It survived the blaze and I knew when I saw that seal in the fireplace the next day that you were hiding something. That was irrelevant but it match up perfectly with my notes disappearance. You thought you destroy crucial evidence.” He laughed then return back his grave seriousness. “I photographed all my remaining note right after our little talk because I knew then that you were scared. Scared that your secrets would exposed, scared that someone would find out, your dirty little secret. And at the risk of repeating myself, I can ruin your life because I have enough evidence to have you locked up for the murder. But I won’t because I know that you didn’t kill her.” He began to walk away but then stopped after two steps and turned around. “But don’t underestimate me because I spared you this time. One day I might just get bored play this game along with you, just for the hell of it. And then I will win.”
Christian left Victor standing at the entrance to the living room. He walked in to see that Kyra had went to sleep, possibly from the side effect of the medicine. He sat down in pitching his nose bridge, sighing deeply.
Evelyn sat down drinking from her glass. She sat down watching television but was focused on the mirror. Her husband slouched over his secretary’s desk with flirtatious intent and constantly laughed with her. Filled with complete annoyance she consumed her drink. She stood going to get her another drink. She sat back down and grabbed the remote turning the volume up to a loud forty five. The laughter stopped.
“Hun.” Her husband called. “Can turn the T.V down a bit.”
“I’m trying to hear what she was saying. I missed this episode last week.”
“Thank.” Said as if his order has been done.
She turned it off and walked upstairs with her glass in hand. He watched as she walked up the stairs and continued on with his conversation as she reached the top floor. She watched down on him with disgust in her eyes. She took another sip from her glass as she walked away to her room.
It was dark now. The sky was black with no stars in sight. It was breezy outside and Kyra was just waking up from her sleep feeling well rested. She had walked in to find the house quiet. She walked upstairs to her room from the couch and saw that Victor wasn’t there again. She didn’t fret. She decided to pick up her phone and dial Kyle. He answer.
“Are you busy? I feel like just getting out.”
“No not at all. I can pick you up in fifteen.”
“Okay, that fine.”
“Okay, see you then.” Kyle said before hanging up his phone.
She put on some of her makeup and put her hair up and smiled as she grew to like her new relaxed self.
There was knocking at the door.
“Christian if you are down there can you get that for me.”
Christian walked to open the door.
“Hi.” Kyle said. “Is Kyra home?”
“Yeah she upstairs.”
The clicking of shoes met the staircase.
“Hello, boys.” Christian turned around seeing her in a crimson jumpsuit, with matching lipstick and heels. Her hair straightened and half of it flowed across her face.
“Oh my—you look stunning.” Kyle said.
Christian stood with his words stolen by her appearance.
“Thank you. Are you ready?”
“Ready when you are?”
Kyra turned towards Christian.
“Have you seen Victor?” She asked.
“No, he hasn’t been here all day. Did you need him?”
Kyra smiled. “No, not at all.”
It seemed as Kyra didn’t care and she didn’t. But as Kyra left, with her nonchalant mind set and careless look, Christian grew worried about Victor’s sudden disappearance. It was obviously no good to come to out of this, at least that what his superstition supposed.
Brian had sat in his dark study drinking like he did before. He kept having glimpse of a small girl standing in a robe. He image skipped and shuttered as Brain looked across the room. He went from standing to sitting down and skipped along with the fading image, in a warped reality, until that both stood next to the fire.
“Why are you doing this?” The little girl ask.
“Why am I doing what?” Brian said sipping from his.
“You are making my mommy do bad things?” She said. “Why? Why are you making my mommy do these things?”
The scenery skipped to a field with a swing set in the middle of it. No buildings for miles, and there was not one bird that filled the air.
“I don’t make your mommy do bad things. I am just doing my job.” Brian said as he sat in a swing.
“The mean man said the same thing after…” She stopped.
Brian looked over at her for the first time. “After, what?”
“After I went to sleep. Mommy was crying, and yelling at the doctor. I was just sleepy and I just fell asleep.” She began swinging, slowly rocking back and forth. Struggling to kick her feet out so that she could soar, Brian got up to assist her. “I don’t want her to be sad again.”
“It’s not going to be like that. She won’t be hurt again.”
“Can you promise me that?” The little girl said.
Brian stayed silent. “I wish I could.”
His surrounding changed back to the room. He sat on the floor with his drink in his hand.
She handed him something balled up in his hand. “Take this.”
Brian grasped what felt like a coin. “What’s this?”
“Don’t look! It’s a surprise for my mommy.” She stopped and retracted her hands from his. “Tell my mommy I love her.”
A Murder Of Our Own (Inevitable Darkness) Page 10