by Elena Monroe
GRIMM
Maybe death finally found a foolproof way of taking me out of my misery after all. Sitting in a hospital gown on the bed of the MRI machine gearing up wasn’t something I wanted to do; it was necessary. I needed to know when my fucked-up brain decided to snap and slip into full psycho mode. I needed that kind of control.
Every time I walked into Cedar Sinai, my ability to retain it as a memory would fog up. No part of me wanted to remember being here, getting scans done, just to keep how fucked up I am in check and then talk about it after when I clearly wasn’t listening.
The machine was loud, cold, and uncomfortable while it did whatever fucking magic it does to scan the inside of my brain. They even made me take out the nose rings, the gold chain I always wore, the studs in my ears, and the nipple piercings. I drew a line at the ones lining the length of my dick. This fucking machine could fight me for those.
After lying there for an hour, the tech walked me to a private room, where I could change back into my clothes and wait for the results.
Everything still shrouded in fog, I pulled up my joggers and pulled the strings before slipping back into my hoodie. I had all my piercings in my hand when I sat down on the tissue paper protecting me from contaminating the bed. My doctor breezed in like she was simply there to check up on things, and she sat down on the rolling stool.
She never sits down.
Fuck.
The minute you receive bad news something triggers your whole body to semi shut down, protecting yourself from hearing it with every sense you had. That was this moment.
My doctor sat down and stood up in what seemed like a montage sped forward, and all I heard was: “Jason, we have to talk about your options. We found a tumor… we can operate or hope it shrinks with medication. It’s up to you.”
My monster was a tumor? Or being a monster grew some karma upstairs in the form of a tumor?
Processing anything right now was a hard limit. I didn’t want the fucking scan, and now I was turning over stones that could have stay exactly where they were, hiding tumors. Standing up and leaving without a formal goodbye or giving her the opportunity to talk options was the safe bet.
I wanted to break things.
I wanted to scream.
I wanted to fuck and fight my way out of this haze.
There was only one place on earth that was going to make me forget my woes altogether: Chateau De Khaos. Yes, he named his house; it helped match the consistent energy that bred there.
The whole way there, stuck in stop-and-go traffic, I thought about the bad news I had been handed—not on a silver platter like the rest of my life, but on a brain scan lit up with colors and blacked out areas that I apparently needed.
Certified crazy.
I had the choice to either make friends with my monster or let them cut him out of me and hope he didn’t take the parts I don’t mind.
Restoring Jason wasn’t my idea of sane. It was controlled. It was a lamb to the slaughter, a poster boy for the Clave, because I didn’t have a voice back then. The only bright side to that would be out doing Vic for being better at sucking ass than he was.
Pulling into Khaos’s driveway, I could already hear the music, the water splashing, and the actual chaos following him around. He didn’t even have to try for this shit to happen; it was either a brawl or a party wherever he went. Coffee, the beach, the skate park… anywhere.
There was a rock path around the back of the house where the pool was and the source of all the noise. I passed kegs lined up along the iron gate closing in the property. It was still before noon, and there were kegs. Why was I not surprised?
His backyard looked like a frat party. The perfect place to forget that my parents picked the worst person for me to marry, Abigail being mad at me enough to ignore me for a few days, and my tumor laying waste to my sanity. There were girls in bikinis that didn’t leave much to the imagination, twerking, alcohol in the hands of the girls running around pouring it down people’s throats, and enough food to make it obvious people were eating edibles.
Xanax wasn’t helping right now; it hadn’t been since Abigail went radio silent. She was better than Xanax, and right now I was being weaned off her.
I found Khaos sitting in one of those cheap lawn chairs with the plaid mesh and fragile hollow metal frame with a white board. He was wearing a captain’s hat for whatever reason. I didn’t want to know honestly.
“Grimm! Buddy!” he shouted when standing up.
There were a row of girls bent over, their asses facing him and their legs through their connected arms. I was already disturbed and confused watching them try to push their linked hands up to their asses.
“What the fuck is this?”
“The big booty test, duh. If their hands make it behind them without struggle, then well… they don’t get an invite to stay. There’s an order to the chaos.”
My eyes went wide when he slapped some girl’s ass and made some comment about her being the clear winner. “And the captain’s hat?”
“When this many girls are wet around you, you have to navigate those rocky waters, bro.”
I watched him jump onto a big rock holding a fog light, trying to drive home how much he was steering his ship through a sea of wet women.
“What brings you here? You never come here unless shit is bad and you need an out.”
“We’ll talk about it later. Right now I feel like forgetting.” Crashing down onto the outdoor furniture he had, I tried to focus on anything else. I could see his mind working to figure it out—an impossible trick even for him.
“That sounds morbid. Clave or Abigail?”
At least he narrowed it down to the two things that generally have a way of pissing me off.
“Neither. Later. You got brownies?” I really wanted Oreos, but that only made me think of Abigail more.
“Pot brownies. Who was it… Daniella? She made the pot brownies.”
I meant regular brownies, since my body was already a fucking pharmacy, but I wasn’t in a state of mind to deny more downers. Maybe if I could get low enough, on the same level as my problems, I would be able to see straight or at least figure it out.
“Fuck it…” I shrugged, standing up again, only to search out the brownies. This was as safe as it gets if you want to trip. Snatching a brownie and going back to the lounger I was originally in, I laid back letting the sun warm up my body in my black sweats. Finally, I got so hot I pulled my hoodie right along with my shirt off, causing the girls to stop and notice.
“No piercings? Curious… one might think you have given up the dark side to seem more appealing to a certain assistant.” Giving him a stern look, I stayed silent when he sat in the lounge next to me, giving up his white trash lawn chair.
Oblivious to my harsh gaze, he continued, “Well, you know what they say, to get over a girl, you gotta let a new one climb aboard. Why don’t you let Tasha help you put those back in?”
Khaos liked to bend the rules until you broke, instead of the rules doing the breaking. He knew there was something happening between Abigail and I, and this was him forcing me to cop to it.
I didn’t bend or break, so I let Tasha climb on top of me as I dropped my pound of metal on my chest for her to pick through and try to put back in place. She was a caramel color that only made me compare her tan to Abigail’s. Her eyes weren’t almond shaped like Abigail’s either; they were more round with lash extensions that weighed her lids down. She smelled like coconut and tanning oil on top of me when she untangled my gold chain and started organizing my jewelry without any words, just a smile.
“She’s the closest thing I have to your girl. Quiet, polite, that docile shit you like. Anything you can control.”
I did like control, just not being controlled. Big difference.
A lesson my girl needed to learn.
I don’t know how I fell asleep with Tasha on top of me putting my piercings back in, but I did. When I woke up, the sky was in a state o
f sorbet dusk, and the party was still going strong, like before was just the pregame to the main event. It never ended.
Khaos laid down on the chaise lounge next to me with a worried look in his eye. Khaos never worried, so if you had the privilege of seeing that expression, something was wrong.
“You gonna tell me what’s going on? You just spent 8 hours at my house, and 7 of them were asleep—dead asleep, I might add. I had shit balancing on your nose, through your nose ring. I almost teabagged you.”
“If you put your balls anywhere near my face, I’m gonna to gut you.” Scrubbing my face, I sat up, shocked I slept through the DJ now producing music instead of someone’s iPhone and a speaker. The quality between night and day changed drastically.
“Tumor.” It spilled out of me.
Keeping my eyes forward, I refused to see him react.
“So you aren’t crazy after all? It’s a tumor?”
Scoring down, I flung my legs over the edges. “Guess so. That death rattle has a method to its madness. Nothing worse than thinking you’re nuts, when it’s a tumor.”
Khaos wanted me to make heads or tails of something I had barely begun to process. There was a tumor, pressing all the wrong buttons, making me feel like I had a monster living upstairs.
“What are you gonna do, bro?”
“Nothing. I’m not risking being Jason again…” Even saying my own name tasted weird in my mouth. The name alone felt like I was talking about some guy I wasn’t fond of.
“Are you fucking serious? All because you don't wanna risk going back to being Vic, the original?”
That was enough reason. I used to be exactly like Vic. Hard ass, suck up, perfect little Clave member. The only difference was I was ruthless and had a license to kill. Strategies didn’t even get his hands dirty, not like mine.
“Do you want me to go back to being that? All these fucking antics… on your own.”
I watched him pick up a bottle of spiced rum and tip it back into his mouth. He was already mourning me, and I wasn’t even dead.
“There’s a taco bar…” The light in his eyes now snuffed out, I groaned to myself at his words.
“Dude. That is so demeaning. Fuck, man… they’re women.”
Hiking a thumb over his shoulder, I followed it to see catering managing a legit taco bar. “Seriously. Del Taco is catering, but I’ve got every flavor topping too… Daniella, Tasha, Heidi, Kat, Ashlee, Brittany. You name it.”
Standing up, I let my open hand push him back. Shaking my head, I made my way toward the food. I used to be the better version of what Vic was trying to be, until something broke inside me. Reality settled in, or maybe I just got tired of being controlled. That’s when my nickname became something else entirely.
The old me wouldn’t have even hung out with Khaos unless I was forced. Vic was the only one of the four I deemed worthy of my time, because he was as blind as I was.
The blind leading the blind.
Now I was the sanity leading this crazy motherfucker.
“You gonna admit there’s something between you and Abigail yet? Wait… are you still a virgin?!” His voice dripped in sarcasm that he was fluent in.
“Do you always talk this much? It's just easier to ignore when we’re around other people?”
“Ohhh, you’ve got jokes now… cute. It’s okay to be a virgin, man. I can give you plenty of tips.”
Pushing him away from me, I focused on putting tacos on my plate. I never gave anyone the inside look to me or my life. They only got the surface, lacquered and mirrored to reflect whatever the fuck energy it was they brought to the table. It was all a parlor trick to keep people off my case.
“I’ve had sex, okay… Plenty... Abigail included.”
His hand clamped down on my shoulder and shook me in a silent celebration. “Okay, now I know something is going on between you two. Is Grimm, the dark and twisty killer for hire, in love?”
His words felt like a weight on my shoulders that could probably be abolished if I just admitted whatever I felt had well ran past the lines of a crush, but not yet touching that word. I didn't exchange that word with my parents. I felt protective of her, attracted to her, out of control with her in a way that was healthy instead of what that normally meant: my monster being on the loose.
“I don't love. We’re four horsemen. We have a job to do, and it doesn’t come with the luxury of falling in love with anyone they don’t choose for us.”
Khaos rolled his eyes so hard I saw the whites longer than I wanted to.
Fucking creep.
“We can do whatever the fuck we want, man! We’re horsemen. We are the fucking princes of the Clave. Fucking royalty!” He was all dramatics and shouting, like he was about to make a speech. “Their rules are fucking gold-plated. They wanted to control what shouldn’t be controlled. We were the apocalypse waiting to happen, but they had been trying to stave off with rules and bullshit elbow rubbing.”
His parents were the most liberal, hailing from Paris and having ties with the occult. He knew the reality of our situation because his parents trusted him enough to know. Meanwhile, the rest of us were in the dark, just trying to fill the roles we were given.
My parents were the top of the food chain and had the tightest lips you ever saw—straight lines across their mouths—a line you weren't crossing.
“Get down from the fucking table, you psycho.”
Standing between bottles of alcohol and ice buckets on the table, he jumped into the pool, blowing water everywhere. I felt the water dampen my back, still shirtless, thank god. I wanted an escape from my life, and it was getting my back wet, while I decided between fish or beef tacos.
Tasha, the same girl who shoved my metal back into me, came up alongside me with her hand landing on my forearm. “I didn’t get to introduce myself earlier… Tasha.”
“Not interested.” I didn’t even look up at her. The only girl I wanted threw a tantrum and ignored me all day, all because I spoke the truth sitting on her lips that she refused to admit to. Abigail looked at me in a way that felt like she could love me even if I was broken, in a cult of psychos, and not even promised to her. I knew how she looked at me, because I looked at her the same fucking way. If only I were different or she was less… perfect.
“You don’t have to be an asshole.”
Turning on her heel, she stomped away from me like a child who just got told she had a timeout to complete. Immature wasn’t my flavor. Obedient and quiet was.
I’m sure Khaos had one of every color, personality type, and walk of life. He was notorious for keeping one girl for every letter in the alphabet around. I’m sure the one name per letter was to keep him from forgetting or fucking up the names of the women actually consenting to whatever this was.
Taking out my phone, I glanced at the lit up screen without her name across it. No angry texts, no phone calls, and no hints to how I should proceed when I could tell stubborn came easily to both of us.
“You gonna ask me what I know or pretend you don’t care still?” His voice caught me off guard when I looked to my right to see Khaos standing there grinning ear to ear.
“About who?” I was pretending to not know when she ran circles upstairs around my monster.
His hand landed on my shoulder. “We both know you aren’t pretty enough to play dumb, bro. Let’s see… What do I know? Born and raised in Chicago. Super Catholic. Oh, she got kidnapped for a while when she was 12 and watched her dad get tortured. Her dad actually blamed her and made some priest at their church have one-on-one sessions with her to cleanse her from all the evil. Heard it got crazy abusive. Now she doesn’t talk to her family.”
And just like that, he reduced Abigail’s demons all down to a few sentences.
“What do you mean abusive?”
My skin crawled and pricked with sudden discomfort at the thought of Abigail having been abused by her own family. I knew Khaos was never wrong, so the anger I felt was justified.
“T
he priest was later convicted for doing some fucked up shit to kids. She was the only one who refused to go on the stand.”
I wanted to go to her and force her to admit the real truth when she only fed me half.
I wanted to go to her period, but I knew she’d confirm it and that would be all I needed to snap. If I went to her and got what I wanted, the world would be in trouble.
The world wasn’t my concern. The world produced parents who saw fit to turn me into a monster. My only concern was Abigail and preserving whatever the fuck was left of her sanity.
We only confessed to half our truths.
She had no idea I was a horseman or what that meant. I had no idea she was more tortured than the bland beige color she seemed to idolize.
Fuck it.
“Where are you going?” Khaos shouted, but I was already halfway to the exit. He knew exactly where I was going when he decided to share that fucking piece of news.
ABIGAIL
I was being a world class kind of immature when I made the silent treatment my priority. I just needed a break from our back and forth, a break to forget Jessica existed and let myself get over the aches he left me with.
He seemed to understand that when he let me have all the space I wanted.
More than I wanted.
Grimm was crowding my thoughts and bullying anything unrelated to him right out of the forefront of my mind.
Jus not being home as much wasn’t weird, but it was noteworthy. She hated people, loved a good protest, and loved to rant about both. She hadn’t even done that before leaving the house.
Sending her a text, I made sure to keep it light when I simply sent a random gif after typing protection.
Settling back into the couch, I surfed Netflix for anything worth my attention. Nothing looked appealing. Not even the pint of Ben and Jerry’s on the pillow sitting on my lap. Finally finding some show that looked promising only because it seemed to involve cults made me feel even more immature.
I literally couldn’t get away from him.
Engrossed in the show, the knock on my front door had me jumping out of my skin. Clutching my phone tightly in my palm, I stalked to the door on my tip toes.