by Bea Paige
“Stop right there. Anton, I’m not a fool, and neither are Erik and Ivan. You’re injecting heroin and it needs to stop. Soon you’ll be coming down hard and fast. I will be with you when that happens, but it will be the only time. This ends now.”
“It isn’t as easy as that. I need it.”
“I won’t watch you kill yourself,” she says fiercely, grasping hold of my hand. This time I’m unable to pull away from her touch. I need it to anchor me. I already feel myself dispersing.
“I can’t do this without something.”
“Do what?”
“Live.”
“It’s really that bad?” she asks, her own voice troubled now.
“It really is,” I admit. It really fucking is. “I’ve tried to exist without drugs, Rose. Sometimes I can go months without needing anything, and then the darkness rolls in and I can’t get out from beneath it. I can only dull the pain. I’m not proud of myself.”
She squeezes my hand, her fingertips edging into the space between my palm and curled fingers. Her touch should be a comfort, but it makes me want to own her, to take everything I can get. It also makes me want to curl up in her arms and sink into her skin.
“Then I’m going to find a way to help you. I won’t watch you destroy yourself.”
Her words make me want to throw up, because I know I will destroy her before she ever gets a chance to help me. It’s an inevitable fate that neither of us can escape.
Pulling my hand from her grasp, I fold my arms across my chest.
“Ivan wants me to tell you my story. I’m not going to lie, Rose. It’s fucking ugly. He has good reason to feel afraid for you and even more reason to want to protect you.”
She looks at me for a long time, long enough for me to worry about whether I’ll need to act now despite Ivan’s threats. The thing is, it doesn’t really matter because by the time he needs to act I will have already taken what I needed, and Rose will be fucked.
Rose tips her head to the side, observing me. If I wasn’t feeling so sick to my stomach, I would’ve appreciated her efforts at trying to uncover me with her gaze. The thing is, no one has ever been able to peel back all the layers. No one, not my best friends, my father, Ms Hadley, Amber.
No-fucking-one.
I hope Rose is as strong as she appears because this time, I feel my sanity dispersing as quickly as I try to hold it together.
She breathes in deeply, inhaling the billowing smoke that is my soul. I let her take it, holding me within the expanse of her lungs. That first breath she takes is easy, natural, the rest won’t be. Eventually, she’ll suffocate.
Rose shifts on the sofa, attempting to make herself comfortable. I watch as she runs a hand over the swollen knuckles of her fingers. She knows I’m watching her, she accepts that from me. Rose allows me to see the twisted pain, somehow knowing that it helps feed my need to absorb everything about her, even the parts that are raw and wild. Ugly.
My fingers itch to draw her. Even here, sitting in the dull half-light of my bedroom, I want to immortalise her on canvas.
I want to paint her.
I want to run my brush over her skin, drawing lines of colour over every inch until she’s covered.
Until I can see.
The need burns in my chest, and I must swallow the urge to yank her to her feet and drag her to my studio and the hidden room beyond.
“Anton?” she questions. Her hands still on her lap, her long fingers stretching over her thighs as she waits.
I absorb her flaws and they excite me. I see the deep grooves of pain in the lines about her eyes, and the stiff way she holds herself despite trying her best to remain graceful. I see the way her fingers have begun to bend unnaturally, deformed by the swollen joints. I remember how it felt to touch the hot skin of her knee in my studio a couple of weeks ago as though fire lived beneath her skin. Her own demon burning her from the inside out.
She doesn’t hide anything from me, at least not what I can see on the surface.
“Does the swelling cause you much discomfort?” I ask her. It’s an innocuous question, but she flinches anyway as though I’ve struck her.
“Every day, yes.”
I reach out, unable to stop myself from touching her. My finger grazes against one of the swollen knuckles. She flinches, about to draw her hand away, but I grip hold of it.
She sucks a breath through her teeth, hissing from the pain I’ve inflicted, but her hand settles beneath my own despite it.
“This condition you suffer from has no cure?” I ask, unfurling my fingers a little. The tightness around her mouth eases.
“It doesn’t, no. At best, I will keep the pain at bay with drugs that have the ability to harm me in other ways. At worst, I will end up a cripple in a wheelchair. I don’t suppose any of you will be interested in me then.”
She sighs. It isn’t an accusation, just acceptance of a reality she already believes is in her future. What she’s failed to factor into her assumption is me, and what I’m capable off. She may never get to the point when her life is lived in the confines of a wheelchair. I will have ruined her way before then.
“What?” she accuses, daring me to object.
I don’t. Instead I ask her a question that I’m suddenly desperate to hear her response to.
“Would you rather be mentally well and confined to a wheelchair?” I ask, tapping my head. “Or would you rather be fit and pain free but haunted by your demons and lost to the world?”
“Why do you ask? Where are you going with this?”
I shrug, pretending I have no reason, that it’s all hypothetical. Just a response to her earlier assumption, when really I’m already searching for absolution where there is none.
“Can’t I have both? Can’t I be fit and mentally capable?”
My hand clasps hers tightly again. “No, the world never works that way. You can’t have both. No one ever gets both.”
“Sure they do,” she responds, but even I hear the lie she tells herself.
I shake my head. “No, they don’t. You’re either betrayed by your body or your mind, eventually.”
She laughs, but it’s a hollow laugh, bitter. It comes from a place of understanding and suffering. “You’re right, you can’t have both.”
“So, what’s it to be?”
Her answer is immediate, certain.
“Mentally well.”
She grasps my hand, wincing through the pain she’s inflicted on herself now.
“The human body is capable of enduring huge amounts of physical pain. Women in childbirth do it every second of every day. People suffer with a multitude of conditions that cause indescribable pain but live a life despite it. It’s torturous, yes, but there can still be happiness. In my opinion, mental suffering is a pain that isn’t so easily fixed. It’s darker, impossibly cruel. So, in answer to your question, I’d rather be free from the pain up here,” she says tapping her head, mirroring the movement I made earlier.
She stares at me a long time. Observing me, as much as I observe her.
“But my answer is moot, Anton, given I already suffer both. There isn’t anything that can hurt me now.”
I withdraw my hand, her words stinging. Another rush of nausea rises up my throat and I lean forward in my seat, clasping my head in my hands.
Her voice softens in sympathy and it fucking guts me.
“Pain is relative, Anton. Do I wish to be free from the pain I endure? Yes, of course I do,” she says, misunderstanding my reaction, believing me to be a better man than I am.
I feel for her, yes. But my sudden need to empty my guts isn’t because of that, it’s because I’m knowingly going to inflict more.
“You don’t understand, Rose,” I say eventually, raising my head to meet her gaze.
“That’s why I’m still here. I need you to tell me your story, Anton.”
And so, I do.
Chapter Six
Anton - two years ago
Sitting in my usu
al spot under the shade of a small apple tree in the furthest meadow from the manor, I prop my sketch pad against my knee, sliding the pencil I’m holding behind my ear. It’s May and far hotter than it has any right to be at this time of year in Cornwall. Sweat slides down my back, sticking my t-shirt to my skin. I have a baseball cap pulled low over my head blocking the sun’s most powerful rays that find their way through the gaps between the tree’s canopy above me.
It’s the first time I’ve left the manor, the first time I’ve left Luka on his own since I arrived here a month ago. Well, he’s not on his own really, given Ms Hadley and Erik are with him. But Erik has his own shit to deal with and though Ms Hadley is doing her best, nothing she’s done so far has been able to ease Luka’s grief.
This is a waiting game. He’ll either come out the other side or he won’t.
Guilt eats away at me, but as much as I love Luka, I need a fucking moment to catch my breath because his guilt is all-consuming. It’s like a wildfire, and none of us have got away without feeling the burn.
Svetlana’s suicide has left a stain far darker than any of us could’ve foreseen because Luka is changing, or perhaps he already has. Either way, I needed to escape today.
Pulling out the joint I’d already pre-rolled from my t-shirt pocket, I place it between my lips, lighting it.
Even on the first draw, I already feel the effects. Holding the smoke in my lungs, I lean my head back against the rough bark and look up into the tangled branches trying to envision what it would be like to really see the colour there. Imagining what the different shades of green would look like. A colour many people have tried to describe to me but failed miserably at.
“Can I have a toke on that joint?” a sing-song voice asks.
Slowly, I lower my gaze to find an attractive young woman standing in front of me. She’s no more than a teenager really, early twenties at a push and far too young for me. She’s wearing cut off denim shorts, flip-flops and a t-shirt that sits above her belly button. Her hair is pulled up into a messy bun and she’s giving me a look that says she’s more than happy to ask a complete stranger to give up his joint. I allow the smoke to wind its way out of my mouth, making her appear ghostlike behind the sweet smelling veil.
“Did you know you’re on private land?” I ask, responding to her question with a question. I take another deep lungful, the end of the joint sizzling as I wait for her answer.
“Did you?” she retorts, plopping down beside me and holding her hand out.
I smile at her forthrightness, handing over the joint. She grins, placing the wet tip between her lips before practically inhaling the whole joint on one intake of breath.
“Man, this shit is good,” she says, smoke curling up around her head as she talks.
She shuffles closer, her bare arm grazing against mine as she hands back the joint. “So, are you out here hiding from life too?”
“You could say that,” I respond taking another pull then passing it back to her.
She simply nods her head, not bothering to press the point further, instead she snatches up my art pad.
“Wow, this is great. You an artist?”
“It depends.”
“On what?” she asks.
“On the eye of the beholder, I suppose,” I respond with a shrug.
Or the opinion of a disinterested father.
She pulls a face. “Like that, is it?
“Like what?”
“Daddy never tell you how good you are?”
She’s right on the money, I wince at that. I didn’t think I was so transparent.
“Thought so,” she says, breathing in more marijuana and exhaling slowly. “You know, someone your age really shouldn’t give a crap about the opinions of others. You’re good. Really good.”
“Someone my age?”
She cocks her head watching me as much as I watch her. “Yeah, a thirty something year old man should know better than to let what some old bastard thinks affect them.”
“You’re quite confident for a kid barely out of their teens.”
“I’m well past my teens, and confidence is a state of mind. Maybe you should try it on for size, might turn that frown the right way up,” she shrugs.
I let out a laugh. It almost surprises me as it bursts from my lips. I haven’t laughed for a long time. She winks at me through the haze of smoke curling at out of her mouth, then turns her attention back to my sketch. Something about the way she stares at it with a look of appreciation has my interest piqued. I watch her as she runs a finger over my drawing, as though needing to touch it to see if it’s real.
“Okay, then…?”
“Amber,” she responds filling in the gap.
“Okay then, Amber. Tell me what you like about this sketch.”
Frankly, it’s nothing more than a few lines and a bit of shading making up Luka’s face. I’ve drawn it from memory. It’s the look he gave me when I’d arrived at the mansion the day after he called and asked me to come. I’ve tried to capture it a million times before now, but honestly, it’s a steaming pile of shit.
I won’t forget the look he gave me for a very long time, but what’s on paper pales in comparison to the memory I hold. Grief is one of the hardest emotions to capture because it’s all in the eyes. Luka hasn’t cried, but I don’t need to see tears to know he’s hurting.
He’s fucking dying inside, and I have absolutely no idea how to help him.
Amber thinks for a while, staring at the sketch. Then she looks up at me, her own eyes rimmed with the tears Ivan isn’t able to shed.
“I like the rawness, the sadness he’s drowning in. I see it. I feel it.”
Her words are both like a punch to the gut and a balm to my soul. How it is possible that she can see that in this half-arsed sketch is beyond me, but she does.
“You don’t believe me?” she questions batting away at an invisible gnat.
“It’s not that I don’t believe you. I’m surprised that’s all. You appreciate art then?”
She twists her head to face me. “I appreciate lots of things,” she smiles, a small giggle escaping her lips like a bubble from champagne. Looks like the effects of the marijuana are setting in as the giggle becomes laughter.
She laughs like someone free from burden, I envy her. To just be happy for happiness’ sake is something I’ve never been able to feel. She looks upwards, her body moulding into my side as she adjusts her position. On any other occasion I would find this kind of closeness uncomfortable, but this girl fascinates me, and I can’t seem to move. Her hair tickles my cheek as she points upwards.
“Look at this beautiful tree we’re sitting under and the light filtering through the leaves. They look like miniature stained glass windows with all the tiny veins illuminated like that,” she says her arm waving above us.
I follow her pointed finger, observing through a monochrome lens. My heart squeezes at what I’ll never be able to see, never be able to enjoy. And fuck if it doesn’t make me want to scream out loud at the unfairness of it all.
I stand abruptly, so abruptly that she falls to the side. Her reflexes are slow, and she falls onto her elbow rather than her hand. I don’t try to help her. I don’t do anything other than walk away.
Running is what I do and if it weren’t for Luka, I’d pack my bags and run from the girl named Amber who has stirred up feelings deep within me. Feelings that are dangerous. Feelings that could get a person hurt.
“Hey! Hey, what’s your problem?” she calls after me.
But I refuse to stop, intent on getting back to Browlace Manor with its dark hallways and even darker hearts that live within its brittle walls. I feel at home there with the sadness and the grief. Out here with Amber, I feel like a ship lost at sea.
“Wait!”
Amber it would seem, can’t take a hint. She falls into stride beside me.
“Well, that was rude!” she remarks, totally unperturbed by my sudden change of attitude. “Just as well I’m not ea
sily put off.” Her smile widens showing a row of perfect teeth.
Her kindness and the ease with which she deals with my crap irks me. I stop abruptly.
“Look, Amber, I came out here for peace and quiet, not to make friends with a girl who thinks that kind of shit is art,” I say, pointing to my sketch pad she’s clutching against her chest. I’d left it behind purposefully. Not because I wanted her to have it, but because I didn’t.
She frowns at me, cocking her head to the side. “Firstly, I’m not a girl, I’m twenty-two. Secondly, I like your shit. What’s the big deal? Are you always this rude to people?”
I shake my head and start walking again. “Pretty much.”
She laughs, keeping up.
“So what’s your deal? A dad that hates your artwork, an aversion to young pretty women who actually appreciate your art and a hate for leaves, or trees, or perhaps it’s stained glass windows? I’m not sure what part of that sentence poked the beast, but I’m sorry for it. I was just making conversation.”
Fuck. Who is this girl?
I don’t answer her. Honestly, I don’t think she expects me too, but she keeps up with my long strides nethertheless. By the time we get to the edge of the field and the turnstile that leads to the meadow just beyond the edge of the formal gardens surrounding the manor, my anger has dissipated somewhat. I stand on the plank of wood, straddling the turnstile. From this height I can see Browlace Manor in the distance. Even though it’s a bright day, the manor looks as melancholy as it always has. Or perhaps that’s just how it looks to me, given everything has a melancholy edge when all you see is shades of grey.
“Same time tomorrow?” Amber asks.
I add presumptuous to her personality flaws. That and an innate ability to read a person.
“After what I just said, you want to see me again?”
She shrugs. “I like you.”
I frown, lifting my leg over and jumping down behind the turnstile. With Amber on the other side, I feel a little safer. Which is ridiculous given I’m the one she should fear.
“I’d like to see more of your artwork. Besides, you’re interesting, even if a little rude.”