"Get outta here kid." He turned back to her.
"Leave her alone."
"Oh, yeah?" He had a fedora on his head, and a nasty looking scar on his neck.
"Yeah," I said with feigned confidence. He was a bear of a man and I was just a lamb. I didn't have a chance in hell. I ran at him anyway. I didn't have a plan, a weapon, or a clue.
The black blood on her face was enough - enough for me to know that this was worth it. She shouldn't have to hurt. She should smile.
Before long, it was my blood that coated the cement behind the old fine arts building.
"You ever heard of Indians kid?" He had me by the neck. Blood dripped from my face. I hurt all over. "Who am I kidding, you don't know shit about shit, I bet. Fucking homeless piece of shit." He pulled out a knife, through blurry vision, I watched it click into place. "Them Indians used to cut the scalps off their enemies. Do you know what they did with them?" I didn't answer. "They kept them as souvenirs." That's when I felt the burn, the sting against the side of my head, against my ear.
"No!" I flailed. My hands slipped along coarse fabric, but the pain wouldn't stop. He wouldn't stop. My mouth filled with copper, hot copper. I kicked my legs.
Suddenly he let me go, his arms going slack. I pushed away from him and looked around through a haze of red. She stood over him and I, holding a long piece of construction wood. Her red curls stuck to her face, in the blood.
The man moaned and started to get up – but I was quicker. I snatched the wood from her hands and swung it at him.
Over and over and over and over.
I hit him long after he was dead, until I was dizzy – but that may have been from the wound on my head.
"Thank you," she said.
I gazed at her. We were both red. Red all over. Inside and out. It covered us.
"They call me Ruby." She wrapped her arms around me and we were red together.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Psychiatry had been a passion of mine since I was old enough to understand what it meant. My mother always told me these sorts of pursuits were no good.
"Adeline, to try and understand the mind is to be disappointed."
I disagreed with her. The mind was the most beautiful instrument to ever exist. As one of the most adaptive organs in the human body it had the ability to create and do all things imaginable with its unlimited storage capacity. Even more interesting, each mind was unique to that of its owner, with brain activity as unique as a fingerprint, no one's exactly the same. The brain contained more different types of cells than any other tissue in the body and in spite of age or anything else, new information had the power to change the make up of the mind. Learning was literally power for everyone and anyone of any age or place. The mind, even more than our looks, made us different from everyone else. The composite features of a person were defined by the mind itself. Outer looks grabbed the mind's attention, but it was the connection of knowledge and learned behavior that brought people together.
To understand the mind, consciousness, the ability of humanity to evolve and create new breeds of people with manufactured truths of right and wrong were anything but disappointing. My mother was wrong – and I was glad. There had been moments after I had moved away, hundreds of miles in between her and I, that I had allowed fear to creep in. The fear of being wrong, of hitting a brick wall and realizing that my life's work, my passion, was indeed a disappointment.
Those fears had dissipated though, evaporating into thin air, just like breath in cold air. The closer I came to understanding the mind, the farther away it seemed to drift. I could almost see it some days. The answers, the truths, the meaning of everything. It would be just within my grasp, but then it would slip away. Gone, and I was left chasing after it, desperate to know.
I often wondered what I would do with that knowledge if I was ever able to fully grasp it – the answers to all the whys I asked myself everyday. But I didn't have an answer for that either. Lately answers seemed to be few and far between, the questions louder than ever.
Time seemed to float, waft, drift by. There was no sense of it. I didn't care to make sense of it. Something inside me changed that day when I touched Aaron Whitman. When I felt his pulse through the inked Love with a capital L in his skin. Since then I was someone else. Someone new. Someone different.
The weather outside had grown cold. Snow had settled over Silent River, a white cloud over the moss. Bright. Illuminating. The frosty sun beat down on my walk each day. It guided me toward Ward Z.
Toward Aaron Whitman.
"Do you think there's a reason for everything, Aaron?" He sat in front of me, his hands shackled to the table as normal.
He furrowed his brow. His fingers tapped. "What do you mean by that?"
"Do you think there is a set path for everyone? A destination we are all working toward in our lifetime – where things happen that may not make sense at the time, but are part of something bigger? A larger plan for life in general."
"Like when people die?" he asked.
I nodded. "Yes. Death, sure. Other things too—"
"Like when Bobby Quarterback cheats on his girlfriend with the pretty cheerleader and her mom tells her she shouldn't worry, because everything happens for a reason, right?"
I blinked and then chuckled. "That seems awfully specific and cliché."
"It's what you mean though, right? It's what people say to make them feel better about the shitty thing going on in their life at that moment in time."
"So you don't believe it," I said.
"Believe what?" He cocked his head. "That everything happens for a reason?" He paused, but his fingers continued to tap. "No."
"No?" I raised my eyebrows surprised at his answer.
I could feel myself slipping, though who was I kidding? I slipped and slid all the way down a long time ago when it came to Aaron Whitman. He enraptured me with his words. His psyche. He snared me with his whit, with his depth. The first day I walked into his room and looked into those intelligent gray eyes, I had no way of knowing just how deep and brilliant the mind that dwelled behind them was.
I still didn't know. The very idea of that, thrilled me down to my bones. It made the intimate places inside me throb and ache with want.
"I do believe that everything happens for a reason, Violet." He lips spread over his white teeth. My heart swooned inside my chest. "There's no real need for me to believe it, because it's a fact. Everything does happen for one reason or another, though it's almost always something less exciting than the reason we hope it is."
"How so?" I looked down at the blank page of Aaron's folder. I should have been writing notes, meticulously keeping track of the things he said, but I hadn't written anything in his file in weeks. What would I write? What could I say? Words, my words, scribbled in black ink on a page could do no justice to the man who sat before me now.
"The reason people die is because we are mortal beings with an expiration date. We live and then we die. It's that simple. The circle of life. That is the reason. Grandma didn't die because it was her time—her special moment in the grand scheme of life—she died because she was a hundred years old and her liver just couldn't keep up anymore, especially with all the wear and tear she put on it before she started attending AA two decades ago."
I snorted, giggles rippling out of my chest. "Whoa, Aaron, are you making a joke?"
He smiled again, though this time it was different. There was something soft about it, something achingly warm, but it disappeared as quickly as it came.
"Maybe," he paused considering his words. "But mostly no. These things are true, no matter what kind of spin we put on them. The same goes for Bobby Quarterback, he cheated on his girlfriend because he was young and inexperienced. He had an opportunity and he took it with the cheerleader. He made a choice – and that's the reason. Simple. Easy. It works both ways too, with the cheating girlfriend. They made choices that hurt people. There's no supreme pre-written story full of reasons, guiding us
down a path without our own control. We are in control of everything. We just don't know it."
"Why do you think that is?"
"Because we are led to believe our entire lives that there is some sort of special, fantastic reason for these things, when there just isn't. We're stupid, Violet. We allow ourselves to believe that the people who hurt us are just a part of our journey into becoming who we were meant to be." He stopped talking, averting his gaze away from mine, he started humming again.
I considered his words. "You don't think the people who hurt us throughout our lives have a hand in shaping who we are and how we think about things?" The thought was curious, but I didn't know if I could agree with it.
"Our society is programmed to create people of like minds. We're manufactured, systematically placed on a threshold where we make the same decisions over and over. Bobby Quarterback cheats on his girlfriend because our society has programmed him to think that way. Grandma dies because she is old and we make a shrine to her in our memory because of just that – she's gone, and yet no one ever went to visit her when she was alive. Bobby Quarterback's girlfriend didn't really like him until he showed interest in someone else." He leaned toward me. "It's ironic."
"But that's the opposite of what you said before." I frowned and tapped my pen on the table. "If society programs people to think a certain way, then society itself is the reason, the larger Truth we're all led to believe. That means we're not in control of our choices. We aren't the reason. Society is." I smirked. "You're contradicting yourself." I couldn't keep the smile off my face. It was silly, really. But I liked this. This back and forth between Aaron and I, the depth of his thinking. It pressed me to the edge of some sort of unknown precipice that I desperately wanted to plunge face first into.
"Ah, but I didn't, Violet. I said, we are in control of everything. We just don't know it. We follow society's rules by choice. We believe what we are told and we keep our mouths shut perpetuating the lies. We choose this, we allow ourselves to be the very thing we wish not to be. By choosing to believe society, we choose to believe that there is indeed a greater, awe-inspiring reason for the shit parts of life."
"Are you part of programmed society, then? A member of the masses?"
"Nope." He stared at me with his twitchy gray eyes. I stared back.
"Why not?"
There was something so mesmerizing about them. They were unlike any other eyes I had ever seen. It wasn't their coloring, their size, none of those basic descriptive understandings. It was the way they seemed to know and understand all things, especially me.
"I wouldn't be here if I was, Violet."
A hint of disappointment snaked its way through me. I tried to squash it, but I lost control and it seized me from the inside. "So you don't think you're here, in Ward Z, for any special reason?"
Really, Adeline? I cringed at my own words. What did I really expect out of Aaron? Some sort of sentimental confession?
"I'm here for a lot reasons, Violet. We both are."
"You think so?" I asked, rubbing my fingertips along the edge of his file. I itched to touch him again. His skin had been so smooth under my fingertips. Would he be soft all over? No. I knew that wouldn't be the case. I'd seen his body on the surveillance cameras night after night. The tight ropy muscles under sinewy, inked skin. What would it feel like, all of him?
"I know so." He slammed his fist down on the table causing me to jump, but before I could say anything, he leaned in. "I know who you are Violet. Just one letter away. I can see the darkness in you. It calls to me." His words were like a purr on the end. "You're like no one I've ever met."
Part of me didn't believe him. I was average. Regular. Just another woman when it came to looks. I had never been the popular beauty queen. I hadn't been voted best eyes, best hair, or most attractive in high school. I'd been quiet, kept to myself. I went through a phase where I wore a lot of black and too much eyeliner, until college where didn't have time for excessive clothing statements, but instead immersed myself in my work. Spending hours with my nose inside textbooks with my hair a matted mess on my head. I never stood out in a crowd and I'd never been sorry about that. Until today, though reality proved that there was no crowd here. No other women to compete for Aaron's attention.
And here I am.
"That's not true," I said.
He cocked his head, his brows shooting up to his hairline. "You don't think you have a darkness in you?"
"No, I mean, I'm not unlike other people you've met. You just haven't been around a woman in a long time." This very sentence had floated around in my head since the moment I realized I felt something for Aaron – whatever it was – I couldn't be sure that it was truly mutual. Aaron hadn't been around another woman in years. Maybe I was special to him, but only for that reason alone.
"You think I've forgotten?"
"I think it's been more than three years and anything with legs would be acceptable." The words were emotionless, bland as they exited my mouth, but on the inside they clawed to be free.
"This is the problem with society, Violet. Men are taught from birth that we are powerless to our bodies, to the call of our cocks. We're taught that we are incapable of control when it comes to our sexuality. That we are mere beasts in cages without locks – and that this behavior is acceptable – that when we rattle the cage –and we will because if we didn't we wouldn't be a man – society blinks and smiles with a wave of its hand and says 'boys will be boys' and then moves on." Aaron paused, his fingers tapping harder, faster on the table. "It's bullshit, Violet. And it's bullshit that you would even consider buying into it at all. I may be a man, but I'm not a beast without control. I may be a monster, but I know who I am and I know who you are. You're not a piece of meat. You aren't just legs and a vagina. I'm not salivating at the bit to be inside you because I can't control myself, Violet. I can control myself, but with you I just don't want to."
The room seemed to close in on the two of us. He sucked me in with his words, with the deep tenor of his voice. My panties seemed to fit too tightly. I wanted to take them off. I wanted him inside me. Admitting it to myself in the surveillance room was easy, safe. Aaron was far away from me in those moments when I opened myself up and desired him from the deepest most intimate places, but here, now. He was too close.
"You – you want…me?" My words were a desperate whisper.
"I want you. I want that darkness inside you. I can see it in there, festering, desperate to get out." He licked his lips. "I want to taste that obscurity more than anything."
"Me." I said.
"You," he repeated.
I didn't know what he meant. There wasn't darkness in me. He saw only what he wanted to see, but I wasn't going to tell him any different. I didn't want to. I wanted to be something special to Aaron Whitman – to be the darkness he'd never seen in anyone else. I wanted his complicated mind to be fixated on me.
Only me.
I wanted to consume him and his sinister thoughts until I was all he could think about - under his skin, in his veins, in his soul.
Everywhere.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ice clicked against my teeth as I swallowed the last bit of water in my cup. The cold water did nothing to squelch the warmth inside my body. I could still feel the heat of Aaron's gaze, the weight of his words, even now hours later after my walk home through the cold. Christopher had pulled me out of Z15 and away from Aaron sooner than I wanted, though now I knew it was for the best.
I would have done something I regretted. Though even as I thought the words they felt like a lie. The only regret I had now, was that I'd been pulled away when I had. That I hadn't been able to stay with Aaron. I realized now that I never wanted to leave his presence. He consumed me, all of me, like I was some sort of first meal for a starving victim. I wanted to run my hands all over him, to feel the ink all over his body. I wanted to memorize the words with my hands, with my eyes. I needed to learn him, understand him. I—
"Do you like this show?" Richard's voice pulled me from my thoughts.
"Hmmm?" I glanced over at him. He sat on the other side of my couch, just feet away. His long body stretched out comfortably.
He'd found me just as I was packing up my stuff for the day, right in the middle of debating whether or not I should see Aaron before I left. My skin had still been flushed, my clothes feeling too warm from my earlier encounter cut short. Richard had stood in the doorframe of my office, his deep blue eyes kind and friendly. When he asked if I wanted to hang out since we were both off, I'd found myself in a precarious predicament. He'd asked me to hang out several times over the last few months, and I'd always turned him down. I didn't have time to hang out with him or anyone else. I was too busy.
Yeah, too busy obsessing over Aaron Whitman.
My own thoughts had won out and convinced me to have Richard over. I knew I stood before something potentially disastrous for my life. I teetered on the edge of a career-crushing decision. Really, I'd already gone too far, with the way I watched him each night, but I didn't acknowledge that, not outright.
"It's one of my favorites. It's pretty messed up, but good, for sure."
I blinked at the television.
"Adeline?"
"Yes?" I glanced back at him.
"Are you okay?"
"Oh, yeah, sure. I'm fine." I shrugged and smiled. "Sorry. I guess I'm just a little tired."
He nodded and smiled back at me. Richard was someone special, he was one of those people who never seemed to meet a stranger. It was like we'd known each other forever. I didn't feel awkward or uncomfortable around him. He was a nice presence to have at work. I couldn't deny that, but I already wanted him to leave so I could get lost in my thoughts about Aaron. So I could pick apart every single word he spoke in our session today and visit him in our safe place: the surveillance room.
"I can understand that. This place is something else." He gestured in the direction of the hospital.
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