Vicious Minds

by J. J. McAvoy

  “What would you have me do, Calliope?” I asked honestly, and for the first time in my adult life, I was truly at a loss, with no plans. “Leave the woman I love while she is carrying my child, here in a hotel, and go back home as if nothing ever happened? Just keeping moving forward until I reach my goals?”

  “Yes.” She bit her lip and clenched her fist. “I told you everything I do…I do for you…for us. That includes this child. Neither it nor I are going to die. We are both young, some would argue too young. However, we are different from them because we will adapt and survive no matter what. Why should I be at your side now? So you can protect me? I feel like your line of work is a little more dangerous than mine, shockingly. And I can protect myself very well.”

  “You forget that child only stays in you for a few more months. Then what? It doesn’t have a father?”

  “Ethan, look at me. Will this baby come out with red hair? Chances are very slim. You will be in this child’s life, you will be its father. We will both be there. I will let you know everything that happens with me and it. Everything. Use this time, use me, and one by one we can get rid of your enemies. We will make it safe, so we don’t end up having to leave when our child is sixteen.”

  Right. I remembered that pain. Losing my mother. Not understanding how someone as strong as her could just die. Just leave me…leave us. It was cold and cruel and in many ways, it broke me so badly I wished I couldn’t remember her. I wished she had gone when I was child, so I wouldn’t have remembered so much of her.

  “Ethan,” she whispered as she sat on my lap. I hadn’t even noticed her move. She put her arms around my shoulders, resting her forehead on mine. “If you can tell me, with absolute certainty, that you will not regret it, that you will not feel burdened by it, that you won’t try to find someone else to replace me, I will go back with you.”

  “You’re not replaceable,” I whispered back, wrapping my arms around her. “There isn’t a woman insane enough.”

  She smacked my shoulder and I couldn’t help but smile.

  “Again, will you regret it if I go with you, Ethan?”

  “Yes, and now I realize I am a worse person than I thought.” I wanted her, but I knew she was right, and it bothered me. Why the fuck was she always right?

  “No, you are who I’ve known you to be.” She kissed the side of my lips. “A man who will let nothing stand in his way.”

  I undid the ties of her robe, opening it, and kissed her chest, kissing right under her breast, and then above her heart. “At any point, whenever you no longer want to do this, la mia anima (my soul), tell me, and I will bring you home, my plans or goals be damned.”

  “You are much more romantic than you give yourself credit for.” She bent down, kissing my lips and her hands ripped the robe from my shoulders.

  “Do you have your strength back yet?” I asked against her lips.

  “Overflowing with it,” she muttered between kisses. When her tongue entered my mouth, I stood up, lifting her, letting her legs wrap around me.

  So this what it felt like to be in love with someone.

  Happy, worried, confused, certain, passionate, insane, angry, joyful…so many emotions for just one word.

  It wasn’t logical at all.

  CALLIOPE - AGE 21

  Houston, Texas

  Saturday, September 8th

  I beamed when I saw my phone light up. Taking off my gloves, I answered. “Good morning. How did you sleep?”

  “Well. Where are you?”

  I glanced down at the man laying at my feet, tape over his mouth.

  “Mhhh! MHH!!” he screamed against it.

  “I’m at work.” I placed my foot over his mouth. “This has to be done on a deadline, so I left early.”

  “It’s 6 in the morning, we just went to bed two hours ago.” I heard him get up from the bed on his end. “You need to rest.”

  Ah…this concern again.

  “I will, don’t worry, and now you have this phone to contact me on if you are ever concerned and I can do the same.” He was silent for a moment, and the man under my feet struggled again, forcing me to stomp my foot down once more. “I swear I’ll rest once I’m finished.”

  “Be safe out there.”

  “Always and you too. Love you.” I hung up, placing the phone back on my tray and grabbing my gloves again. Kneeling down, I slapped his white, well, now red, cheek, as he cried. “That’s my boyfriend, no, that doesn’t sound strong enough. Fiancé? Well, he hasn’t proposed but we plan on getting married eventually so I guess the right term would be...baby daddy? No…well, it’s complicated. But whenever I think of him, I get these little butterflies in my stomach. Have you ever gotten that?”

  “Eahh…”

  “Sorry, hold on.” I tore the tape from his mouth. “Say again?”

  “Please…please….my father is rich…whatever you want—”

  “Who do you think is paying me to do this?” I asked him before I put the tape back over his mouth and patted it down carefully. His brown eyes widened, and he shook his head to the side, so I nodded. “Yeah, sorry. Some dads are shit. And your dad is tired of cleaning up after you. But I still have to wonder how terrible of a son must you have been to cause him to prefer your death? But in your defense, how terrible of a father must he have been for you to turn out like this? Or were you just broken from birth?”

  Again, he started to cry.

  I grabbed the syringe. I held his eyelids open, which only made him start to panic and struggle, but the other drugs were already working, so it was getting harder.

  “Normally I’m quick with this sort of thing, I get no real pleasure out of it. But you…you deserve to suffer. You deserve to know what it feels like when someone strips you of your autonomy. I have never been raped, but I find the act sickening,” I ranted as the needle met his eye and pressed down, injecting the liquid. “My…lets go with…man, says I rank rape worse than murder. I had never thought about that before but he’s right. Death doesn’t linger, once you die you are dead, gone. But to rape someone, you shatter them and leave the broken pieces inside. You kill their souls and leave it inside their bodies. That’s just wrong.”

  Pulling the needle out I put it on the tray, taking some gauze and wiping his eyes. “I want you to experience that before you die. I want you to know the terror of someone else pinning you down and destroying you. You will burn, it will feel as if you have been sunk into lava, like your skin is melting off your fucking bones. You will want to scream for mercy, but your mouth won’t open. You will feel death on the inside, until I am satisfied you have learned your lesson, then I will break the rest of you and you will beg me to end your life.”

  I got up and sat on the plastic covered chair, taking off my gloves again and lifting my mug of peppermint tea, dipping the tea bag in the water a few more times before sipping.

  “Oh…I miss wine.” I exhaled tiredly and leaned back in the chair, looking down at him. He couldn’t move, but tears ran down the side of his face and onto the plastic he lay on top of. “It’s starting, isn’t it? The fire…the pain. Good. I applaud your father. Some would say it is vicious and cruel, but it is just nature. If your child is weak, if it cannot survive in the world…you must leave it to die. I’m having a child of my own, so it is a lesson I appreciate and will remember; make them strong or the world will put them down.”

  He let out a small gasp of air, I think it might have been a silent scream, and I sipped on my tea.

  I think that was what provoked Ethan’s mother, that’s why she left. She had to make them strong or else someone like me would have done this to them. I understood. Which was also the reason why I needed to help trap them. That was nature too. Sometimes, the older ones must die because they prevent the younger ones from reaching their full potential and I wanted to see just how he would shake up this world…how we would.

  * * *

  ETHAN - AGE 24

  CALLAHAN FAMILY JET

  Sa
turday, September 8th

  “Boss,” Greyson approached my chair looking at the phone in his hands. “Remember that Chinese kid…the one trying to get in Killer Instant?”

  “The one with the tacky suit and women on his arm?” Tobias asked as he came from the back-jet, rubbing oil on his hand.

  “Yeah, that one! Turns out the kid was someone important. He was the—”

  “The Chinese ambassador’s son.” I interrupted and they both paused and focused on me. “What of him?”

  Greyson opened his mouth then closed it, shaking his head before he looked at his phone. “They said he died of blunt force trauma to…fuck…everywhere. The idiot was drunk or high and he fell off the rooftop of his apartment in the city this morning. 270 feet straight down.”

  “Drunk?” Tobias looked at his watch. “It’s 8:45 in the morning. Sure he didn’t throw himself off?”

  “Oh shit, it’s both. The security cam has already been leaked.” Greyson showed us and I watched as the man stumbled like a drunken man, and climbed on to the edge of the roof. He wiped his face, smiled, and then walked off the side of the building.

  “Fuckkkk.” They both grimaced as they heard the screams and the impact of his body hitting the ground.

  “That is some way to go.” Greyson observed.

  “My father had a saying, Il triste mietitore non sa pietà, vuole solo la tua anima.” Tobias snickered but Greyson just stared, as lost as a newborn calf.

  “And for us non-Italians that means?”

  “The grim reaper knows no mercy, she just wants your soul,” I translated. Their gaze shifted me but I focused on Tobias whose hair was pulled into a ridiculous bun I wanted to cut off. “But why is the grim reaper a woman?”

  “He said it’s because women have the same goal and that’s why they invented marriage.” Tobias couldn’t help but laugh, as did Greyson.

  “Interesting. Are you both finished?” I was tired of their conversation.

  “Uh, yes, just thought you might want to know,” Greyson replied.

  “Now I know.”

  They both nodded and walked back to their seats, but being the children they were, they couldn’t look away from the videos in their hands. I glanced out the window, staring at the white clouds over head. And it just made me think of her. I’m not sure how she did it. I heard the muffled screams coming from the other side of me, and yet it looked like suicide. Every time I met her, somebody ending up dead or dying.

  Il triste mietitore.

  She was the grim reaper. So was I getting closer to death or being spared from it?

  Chapter 10

  “Myth is much more important and true than history.”

  ~Joseph Campbell

  ETHAN - AGE 24

  Chicago, Illinois

  Thursday, November 22nd

  One by one they brought the food out, handing it to other members of my family to arrange around the table. None of them prepared it, but setting Thanksgiving dinner on the table was something my grandmother made sure we were all a part of. They spoke and laughed, while I sat watching in my chair at the head of the table. I glanced over to the chair beside me…the one my sister sat in. The one Calliope would someday take. This was still strange to me…this slight ache in my chest. Originally, I had settled on her because I knew she and I would be the most compatible with each other, I knew she would understand me, and I had dared hope she’d come to care about me…to love me. Instead I was the one who had fallen. I didn’t even see it. I didn’t even feel it, the fall. It was like I woke up on the ground and when I looked up, I realized, ‘Oh. I’m in love with her.’

  I didn’t like it.

  It felt like she was in my head. Like she was wrapped around me, and I couldn’t break free. But on the other hand, thinking of her made me want to smile. Who knew where she was, what she was doing, but it most likely would be something to make me concerned.

  Dear God, I feel like my father. He looked so sad and lonely when my mom wasn’t around, and then when he saw her again he was over the moon, like a dog waiting for its master.

  Is that how I look right now?

  Do they notice? I glanced over to my sister as she watched Tobias. Not wanting to deal with that, I looked to my brother, who was laughing with Helen. Sedric and Darcy were arguing over sports again. My uncles were speaking to their wives. Of course, they don’t notice. They are never looking. I exist in this chair separate from them. They don’t want to look for too long. They don’t know how to speak to me…not on that level. Power does that, even in family. We were all fine to argue with one another, hell, even yell at each other, but the causal, the conversational everyday things, those things they didn’t speak to me about. Maybe it was because they didn’t want to burden me. Or maybe my responses were not what they expected or wanted. Either way, the wall was up, and they stayed on their side and I on mine. The only difference was it had always just been me here…until her.

  I felt like just a man next to her.

  She made me feel human, a person in need of answers, advice, comfort, love, laughter, anger…all of that she so causally gave. Just the two of us. Well, almost three.

  She should be about four months now.

  She had to be showing by now.

  Was she still working?

  “Ethan?”

  I blinked and turned to my grandmother, who held a knife for me, and I stood up, moving to the center of the table. Staring at the glazed turkey with stuffing poking out of it, I began, “Dear Lord, we come together as a family today to say thanks for all the gifts and blessings you have given us, the most recent being Sedric not shooting his own eye out while hunting this turkey.”

  “Hey!” he hollered while everyone snickered.

  I went on as if I didn’t hear. “For the family who could not be here, I say thanks.”

  “Amen,” everyone else replied as I cut into the breast of the turkey, offering the first slice to my grandmother as always before handing my uncle the knife and sitting back down in my chair.

  “Now who wants the other drumstick?” Uncle Neal asked excitedly.

  “The other? What happened to the first?” Darcy pointed to it. “You can’t take it every year, Uncle Neal.”

  “Darcy, do not fight over things that existed well before you were born,” Uncle Neal replied.

  “It was a good prayer,” my grandmother said, placing her hand on my arm like she did every year. “I’m sure your parents are here in spirit.”

  I pulled my arm away, gently nodding even though I had only just realized what I had said…the family who wasn’t here. I wasn’t thinking of my parents. I was thinking of Calliope and our child. “Thank you, Nana.”

  “What is wrong with you? I am getting weird vibes,” Dona snapped, and for second I thought it was directed to me, however, it was Wyatt.

  “Yeah, Wyatt, why have you been so quiet?” Sedric questioned. “You almost kill yourself hunting a turkey?”

  “Not funny.” Aunt Mina glared at him before looking to Wyatt. “Are you all right?”

  One by one they all questioned him, showed their concern for him, and then my grandmother gave me a look that told me to say something. I was dealing with my own emotional issues, but I have to stop to coddle Wyatt?

  “Wyatt if there is something, staying silent doesn’t—”

  “I’m leaving,” he replied and all of us stopped what we were doing to look at him. He kept speaking. “I’m transferring to finish the rest of medical school in Boston. I leave after the new year, and I’m not sure if I’ll be coming back home as often.”

  “Are you walking out on this family?” I asked him.

  “I just need a break.” He sighed. “I need a damn break from the chaos. From all of this. I just want to be Wyatt…not Wyatt Callahan. I need space.”

  They all looked to me and I felt the space, the wall between us widening. He needed space? He did nothing. He got everything and now he wanted space.

  “Why don’t we ta
lk about this—”

  “Nana, I’m sorry, but I’m not talking about it. I’m going. Everything was finalized this morning.” He tossed his napkin on the table “I’m sorry I ruined the night. I’m going to—”

  “You stay,” I said, rising myself. “I’ll go. Enjoy your last Thanksgiving at home.”

  “Ethan.” My grandmother called my name, panicked.

  “What? Are you worried I’m going to kill him? Why would I do that? I don’t have proof he’s betrayed me. He’s free to live where he wishes, he’s not my slave,” I said to her and looked around the room. “You all will need new places soon as well. The house will be undergoing renovations. When it’s finished, you don’t have to return either if you don’t wish.”

  Walking around the table I approached the door, and before I closed it, I heard him speak once more.

  “What did I tell you? He cares only about the business. As long as we don’t die or embarrass the family, he doesn’t care…he’s not capable of it.”

  “Wyatt!”

  Ignoring them, I walked up the stairs, but I only took only a few steps when Tobias came out.

  “Boss.”

  “What is it?” I questioned, looking down.

  “Savino Moretti.” He came up the stairs and handed me a tablet. “He spent his day giving out turkeys and cash in the lower third.”

  “What about the celebration at the O.S.?”

  “It was still packed as always but, Moretti was talked about…a lot.”

  I wanted to laugh, but I didn’t have that much energy. Apparently, everyone was an ungrateful piece of shit. They eat from my hand and kiss another. What happened to loyalty? What happened to the family? The clans? Or was it just me? Was I not enough? Despite everything, despite the peace and wealth, what was it they lacked that made them so…fickle still?

  “Boss?”

  “Keep watching him for now, and report to me. Leave him be for now.” I handled him the tablet.