Eluding Nirvana (The Dark Evoke Series Book 2)

by Brock, V. L.

  Flipping the pack open, I took out a stick, pressed it between my lips as I tossed the remnants onto the table, probably getting lost to the pile of chaos spread across it. The smell of gasoline escaped the Zippo lighter as I flipped it open, struck it against the material of my thigh and lifted it to light the cigarette.

  Like a fucking saboteur in WWII France, I lurked around the corner listening to the vile things he told his coworker inside the office. The vicious and toxic words haunted me as I sucked back and held the chemicals in my lungs, while helplessness mocked me. I hadn’t felt that level of weakness since I was seventeen and watched my ma as she gave up the fight. The one thing I needed her to keep doing, she fell to. And after this last stunt Liam had organized, I knew without a shadow of fucking doubt, this would be what Kady finally fell to.

  Well, fuck you, Liam DeLaney you fucked up bastard.

  Kady needs someone to protect her, that should fall under her partner’s responsibilities, but that was never meant to be. How can the one person you spend your life with find pleasure in crushing the life and soul of someone so heartened and beautiful? How can a man find pleasure in abusing his woman?

  I paced again, taking drag after drag of the cigarette, my thumb instinctively flicking the butt as I felt both agitation and rage simmering in my blood. No man should lay an abusive hand on a woman for his own liking. And no man should purposely cause their woman to question their own sanity.

  My hand balled into a tight fist as I passed the door, the hasty thumping on the opposite side ricocheted around my cold bare walls, making me jolt. All I wanted was to punch something or do something to take this shitty feeling away. With the amount of anger festering inside of my body, I wouldn’t doubt for a moment that I could send the already cracked wall crumbling to its end.

  “About fucking time,” I complained under a weighted sigh after yanking the door open, then resumed with my wild pacing, taking another draw from my Marlboro.

  “Sorry it took me so long,” she apologized, closing the door behind her with more poise than I could ever muster at that point. “What the fuck has happened?”

  The floorboards turned into cement, causing me to pause mid-stride. On shaky legs I turned to face the woman who had been there for me in my time of need, the woman who never once judged me for my escapism, but was there to help clear me up afterward. Letting my head drop, I outted the cigarette in the glass ashtray. My warm, smoky hand met my mouth as though I was going to be sick, still she didn’t once touch me. She knew beyond all reason not to.

  “Walker? Talk to me. What’s happened?”

  “He…he…” My thumbnail scoured down the center of my upper lip as I tried desperately to find my voice beyond the lump in my throat. This kind of shite you expect to see in some sick thriller movie, not in actual life, and certainly not to someone you know. Shaking my head, I drew my hand away and lifted my gaze to meet red block-dyed bangs. “He’s had her put into Pinewood.”

  “What?!” her eyes widened, and even I could notice her jaw tighten as the shriek rang loudly in my ears. “So that’s why she hasn’t been taking my calls.”

  Motionless, I could just find the energy through the resentment and anger…anger, no, this wasn’t anger––this was fucking fury, and shook my head. “I knew something wasn’t right, I could feel it in my damn bones.”

  I fished for the pack not giving a flying fuck about the stack of papers being knocked from the table in the process. For a blinding moment, those papers were Liam DeLaney’s head and the table was his shoulders. I drew out another cigarette and lit it. The silver smoke danced and swirled weightless and aimlessly into the air as I took a deep draws and blew it out between tight lips.

  “How the Hell did you find this out?” Laurie asked, taking up the brown chair and dropping her purse to the floor.

  The floorboards were wearing with how frantic my pacing was growing, but I couldn’t stop myself. I needed to try and burn out the adrenaline along with the ball of mixed emotions which were wreaking havoc on my body. “I went to his office to ask about my paycheck. He wasn’t in a meeting because the door was open, but he was talking to another one of the architects. I was going to leave it, check back later but the guy asked if Kady was getting better now that she was in Pinewood, and I couldn’t move.” The tip of the cigarette glowed ruby red as I took another draw.

  “Better?”

  Under my fucked up exterior I felt every organ attempting to escape my body. I didn’t blame them, I wanted to fucking escape it, too. “He’s saying she attacked him with a knife, Laurie. A FUCKING KNIFE!” I shouted, and regardless of how hard I tried, I just couldn’t breathe. I wanted to protect her, but despite that ever growing need, I realized that I couldn’t. And that ripped the heart from my chest and shredded it into a million pieces. I can’t protect her, without make it worse for her.

  FUCK!

  The boiling of my blood was the hottest I’d ever felt, the thumping in my head, the ache in my heart; the helpless and sickening twist of my gut was going to kill me. I tried distraction. The smoking stick between my lips was evidence of that, but it wasn’t helping in the slightest. Nothing was helping. It may have been years, but once again, I felt the weight of that label, the one which screamed ‘failure’, smothering me. I failed my Ma when I left, and now I was failing Kady, too.

  Dragging it from my lips, I muttered, “I can’t do this,” more to myself as I quickly outted the cigarette in the ashtray. I didn’t care that the glowing cherry separated from the stick and was a potential fire hazard as I reared up, and like a startled charger, I hurtled down the hallway, booting the leg of the table as I did so. “I can’t fucking do this, Laurie!” I yelled.

  “Walker, come on. We can do this together. You’ve been doing so well. We knew these moments would come, remember just breathe. You need to breathe,” The sound of Laurie’s footsteps trailing me down the hallway came to a sudden end when I slammed the bedroom door closed behind me, then twisted the lock. “Okay,” she said, reluctant. “Five minutes, Walker. If you’re not out by then, then I’m coming in. I’ll kick the door down, so help me God, Walker.”

  I didn’t bother answering. As a matter of fact, the selfish part of me, the part that I’d been trying for months get under control since pulling myself out of the fighting scene, wasn’t even listening to what she’d said. For a while, those fights were my back-up, they gave me what I needed, without the need of myself adding to the canvas of my self-mutilation.

  When I sat my arse on the edge of the bed, the old iron springs groaned and squealed, while a black candle was taken from the beside unit drawer, the lighter pulled from the back pocket of my jeans. Once the wick was set alight, I doubled over and scrambled to find my safe box from under the bed. The moment I held that box in my hands, although my heart was jittering and my arms shook, I felt safe, I felt control.

  Placing it on the bed beside me, I flipped open the lid. Razor blades, penknife, glass shards and a broken porcelain ornament with a deadly pointed edge stared back at me. I stopped falling. The items that lay in that box were my safety net, catching me from the lumbering feelings that I was desperate to rid myself of. The ones I urgently need to escape from.

  It’s strange how something like this can be named a safety box. I think only people who function in this way can understand the reason why it has such an inapt name.

  The objects in the box shuffled as I drew the small, sharpened knife and set the case onto the planks of my floor, before yanking the white T-shirt from my body. Have you ever been so angry that all you want to do is cry but just can’t? That’s how it feels every time, and each time that need grows more powerful than the last. Nothing makes sense when your head is cram packed full of rage. You need something to shock you into thinking clearly before you lose utter control. And losing control to this is the only way to stay one step ahead. It’s the only way to stay somewhat in charge.

  Fuck that saying; never make a permanent decision
based on a temporary emotion; this was the quickest route to stability for me.

  Absorbed on the implement, I watched its edge glow a burnish orange from inside the flickering flame, before lying back onto the bed. I watched the man in the mirror above me as my head sank into the pillow. A man filled with so much hurt and so much grief that all he can do is mutilate his body to feel a measure of normalcy.

  Silver stripes, blemishes and the hideous weathered flesh mocked me from the mirror. I hated looking at myself. I hated having to watch as I caused my own destruction. But there was no other choice. I’d lost complete control already in my life; this was my way––the only way––to ensure I didn’t push those boundaries and lose it again. Focusing on that permanent reminder, the damaging result that the lack of control could cause, was the only way I could keep myself focused, and remain on that very edge instead of hurling myself from it, in a brief second of desperation.

  A deep breath was sucked into and held in my lungs while the heat of the blade was felt as I paused idle a hairsbreadth from a section of unmarked flesh. Clamping my teeth together, I lowered the blade. Slowly slicing the cutting edge down the hideously marred flesh, my face screwed tightly as I breathed through the pain while the sharp burn spread on each side of the growing laceration.

  Only when the pain struck was I able to free myself, my mind and body of the rage and helplessness I was being strangled by. I wasn’t only slicing through my flesh; I was slicing through that overwhelming surge of adrenaline, and allowing myself to be carried back to my body’s natural balance. It was a way to feel control in a situation where control was nonexistent.

  The warmth of the blade, the burning of the scored wound alongside the seeping of lifeblood had me steadied, numb. Watching and feeling the fury bleed from me brought a form of life––of inner peace, and as the clouds shadowing my judgment began to dissolve, I could focus on the most important problem: how to get Kady home.

  Sitting on the old chair with wooden arms opposite the sofa with a green medical kit resting in her lap, her warning tone hit me like a brick wall as I surfaced topless from the opening. “You’re lucky; I was just about to kick down the damn door.” Laurie may be a foot shorter than me, but Jesus Christ could she give me a telling off.

  She looked up at me as I ran my hand through my hair and rubbed my neck.

  That was another thing I loved about Laurie, she never stared. She never just looked at what was standing in front of her. She saw it––she saw me as a man, and each time she was totally unfazed by the tales of pain and release that stood in her presence. Had it be anyone else, they would’ve stared at the train wreck in front of them with cold, assessing stares, completely repulsed by the spreading of chaos over my body.

  “Come on,” she tapped her thigh as though summoning a canine as she often did. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

  I didn’t care about the blood oozing from the gash or the fact that it trickled down my skin as I walked toward her, swiping my cigarette pack along the way. I was sparking one up while Laurie carefully slipped her hands into a pair of latex gloves and ripped open the antiseptic wipe.

  “Fuck,” I hissed, the smoke leaving my mouth in a rushed cloud. That wipe stung like a bitch.

  “Really?” she peeked up from the seat. “You can handle doing that, but a wipe is painful?” her directness of the situation amused us both, and with a look of concentration, she went back to cleaning the stream of blood oozing down my torso as I held my head back to the ceiling. “So have you got any ideas about how we’re going to get Kady back home?”

  I wish I did. Short of coming up with a prison break plan and helping her escape, I had no idea how to move forward with this one. What I did know with undeniable fact was I had to see her. Kady meant everything to me, and knowing what he was doing to her and that I was powerless to stop it, was killing me. No way on this God’s green Earth would she ever attack him, I’d bet my fucking life on it.

  “I need to see her. That’s the only thing I can think of right now. I need to make sure that she’s alright.”

  The largest Band-Aid in the box was torn open and placed over the four inch laceration, with Laurie’s gentle fingers smoothing down the edges. “I knew all along something wasn’t right. I’ve had a bad feeling about that man for months,” she said softly, her attention still directed at dressing yet another one of my self-inflicted wounds. “You could try calling the institute, maybe they could help. Other than that, you know whatever you need, I’m always here,” hazel eyes peeked up at me from the seat.

  “That’s why I fucking love you. Where’s my phone?”

  She made a disapproving, whinnying noise as I stepped back from her touch and grabbed for the cellphone on the table. Holding the handset to my ear, I shushed Laurie with a wave of my hand and asked the operator to put me through to Pinewood Institute.

  “Good morning, Pinewood Institution,” the depressed voice greeted me after several rings. By that point, Laurie was standing on tiptoe with her ear against the phone, eavesdropping.

  “Hi, I wonder if you can help me. I have a friend that has been admitted. Her name is Kady Jenson. I was wondering if I could come and visit her.”

  “Are you on the approved visitation list, sir?”

  Pulling away, Laurie mouthed, “Visitation list?” with a frown.

  “Um…no, I’m not––”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but there’s no way I can authorize the visit unless you’re on the list…”

  A small hand came up to cover the speaker, “Ask them to ask Kady if she will see you.”

  I nodded and licked my lips.

  “Couldn’t you ask Kady yourself if she’d see me? I really need to see her. Please…Just tell her that Walker wants to see her.”

  Seconds, that felt more like fucking minutes, passed before the voice muttered, “If you’ll hold for a moment, sir. I’ll see what I can do.” Then the line went silent. “Hello, sir––”

  “Yes.”

  “Kady has agreed, but the visit will have to be supervised.”

  I heard my sigh of relief crackle down the speaker. I didn’t care how many people would have to be in that room. All that mattered was that I got see her. “That’s fine. Can I come in this afternoon?

  “You can come by at 3:00 p.m., and please bring identification with you otherwise I can’t let you in.”

  “Thank you. I’ll be there,” I sighed before ending the call. I could feel my face falling and a scowl spreading when I looked down at Laurie. Was I being selfish? I knew I had to see Kady, and make sure she was alright. After everything that had happened, it seemed only Laurie and I were the ones in her corner, attempting to support and comfort her from within the shadows. Going to see her that day was really only going to benefit me. It was for my own peace of mind that I could help her keep fighting through this. But what would the consequences be for her if Liam discovered I’d been there to see her…

  “Hey, wipe that look off your face. She agreed to see you. And I can promise one thing: we’ll find out what’s going on, Walker. You know we will.”

  I put the truck into park and stared up at Pinewood Institute. My heart feeling as though it was going to explode in my chest at any second, knowing that my Kady was in there, somewhere where she didn’t need to be, being force fed medication that didn’t need to be administered.

  Dropping from behind the wheel, I slammed the door shut and made my way through the silent grounds, passing the small garden which was situated beyond the entrance steps, with a colorful array of flowers and benches. It had that contrasting peaceful quality which screamed that this was a garden of an institute, and that alone was enough to cause a fire in my blood.

  How the fuck he could put her in here, I have no idea.

  “Good Afternoon, may I help you?” the woman behind the registration desk asked, looking up at me with uncertainty.

  “I’m here to see Kady Jenson. I called in this morning.”

  Her sk
eptical look deepened.

  “If you check on your systems you’ll see that she agreed to see me.”

  Fixing her glasses into place, she focused on the computer screen and clicked on the mouse a few times before asking for my name and identification. My wallet was pulled from my navy pants pocket, and I tapped my foot impatiently as the woman behind the desk studied my driver’s license. Finally, she smiled back at me.

  “Perfect, if I could ask you to sign in please, Mr. Walker,” she muttered and twisted the visitor’s book around for me to sign. Mr. Walker…that was enough to send a chill across my flesh and up my spine. Still, I did as I was bid. This wasn’t about me and my issues. This was all for Kady. “And for the patient’s safety, can you hand over your wallet, cellphone, any shoelaces and your belt please. You can collect it all when you leave.”

  With everything dropped into the tray at the desk, I was buzzed through the door and escorted down the corridor, past a large room with ranting patients until I was outside a visitation room. The camera above the door watched my every move.

  When the door opened, I felt my heart plummet to my stomach when my gaze traveled from the female orderly sitting in the corner with her hair pulled into a tight bun, to Kady.

  Clothed in white pajamas, she was sitting at the far end of the room, gazing out of the window like a grounded child watching her friends playing in the fresh air, while she was forced to stay indoors. Lost to a world of her own, she didn’t even acknowledge my being there as I stepped across the checkered flooring. So when I set my hand on her shoulder, only to have her jolt so forceful at my touch, that the chair scraped across the flooring and the orderly shifted to make her way toward us, my heart shattered. Offering a soft gesture to the woman in scrubs, I muttered, “It’s okay,” before focusing back on Kady, and the woman cautiously dropped back to her seat.