My Kind Of Crazy

by Nadene Seiters

  “I thought they already caught the maniac. I practically had to bail his ass out of jail.” A small grin tugs at her lips and she tilts her head to the side as if she expects me to come up with something better than that, but I do my damnedest not to play into the game.

  “You haven’t seen crazy yet.” I see her open her mouth in an attempt to answer me when a noise upstairs has both of us looking up at the ceiling. Before she can scream, I reach across the table and put a hand to her lips gently so that she gets the hint. Then I put my finger to my lips and gently creep out of my chair without a sound. I pull off my boots so that they don’t make noise.

  Against my hushed order to sit back down, Anastasia pulls off her own sneakers and pads behind me to the bottom of the stairs in her white socks. We’re both crouched down as if that will actually help us if a crazy killer is up those steps. I turn around to tell Anastasia to go back to the kitchen and grab a knife, but her back is already disappearing around the entranceway. Shaking my head in disbelief that she just ditched me here, I take the first three steps gently and skip the further, it creaks.

  My heart is thudding in my chest as if it’s a beating out its own drum solo, and sweat has popped out on my forehead by the time I get to the top of the stairs. I should have told Anastasia to call the police, but it will take them too long to get here, and the sirens might alert the intruder. I can only pray that the man, or woman, doesn’t have a gun or some other type of weapon. Silently cursing my knee jerk reaction to investigating the noise, I creep down the carpeted hallway towards the scraping noise emitting from Mr. D’Salvatore’s bedroom.

  Something cool taps me on the back of my neck and I almost jump right out of my skin, but when I turn around it’s only Anastasia with her cellphone in hand and a knife in the other. She looks as if she’s ready to pee her pants, but the hand on the knife is as steady as a professional. This girl has guts, Tom whispers in the back of my mind, or maybe that was me.

  She pockets the cellphone, and I take her free hand so that she stays close to me. Even though her other hand is steady on the knife, I take it from her anyway. She’s never had to kill before, nor have I, but I think I’m prepared to do it more than she is right now. We inch our way down the hall and stop whenever the noise recedes, just in case someone comes bursting from the bedroom.

  Outside of the bedroom door, both of us look at the other. Then I gently ease open the door and pray that it doesn’t squeak, and I don’t see a thing. Feeling like a complete fool, I turn around to tell Anastasia that it was nothing when something large, gray, and furry comes barreling out of the room. The poor animal brushes past my legs while I’m turned around which makes me roar as I turn around to confront my attacker. Anastasia screams bloody murder, most likely because I’m screaming. And the poor, oversized raccoon scrambles down the steps to the first floor where it bangs through the dog door on the back door.

  All the while I’m trying to catch my breath, attempting to hold in nervous hysteria, and patting Anastasia on the back of the head while she clings to me like a piece of driftwood in a hurricane. She’s openly sobbing with panic, and I can feel her entire body trembling against mine as I lean against the wall. It takes about a minute for her to realize what she’s doing and pull away from me. I don’t say a word as I bend down to pick up the kitchen knife and the cellphone that fell out of her jeans pocket.

  “I don’t want to stay here anymore!” She throws her hands up in the air and throws her head back with a scream, and I feel my ears physically try to move away from the sound. Tom is standing at the end of the hallway with his arms crossed over his chest and a malevolent look on his face, and my head is pounding from the adrenaline rush.

  “Okay, okay, just clam down. It was just a raccoon.” I reach out my free hand to pat her on the shoulder, but Anastasia shrinks away from my touch and puts her forehead to the opposite wall. The way she’s dragging in deep breaths makes me think that she’s having a panic attack. I know exactly how she feels.

  “It wasn’t a raccoon that murdered my father!” She sounds like a fog horn as she tries to drag in breath after breath down her swollen throat, and I’m at a loss how to deal with this. Honesty is always the best policy, so I cross my arms over my chest with the knife against my side and puff up to make myself look bigger.

  “No, you’re right. It wasn’t a raccoon that killed your father. But if you don’t get it together right now, you’re going to end up in the psych ward. Believe me, it’s not a pretty place.” It’s full of drooling fools just like me, I think to myself. I see Tom grinning at the end of the hall and put my thumb and fingers over my eyes, pinching as I try to get his image to go away.

  “You wouldn’t understand, he wasn’t your father!” I would be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about punching her in the face for that one, but I suppose I deserved it a little bit. The knife slips from my fingers and thuds as it eats through the carpet and buries itself in the floorboards beneath. My jaw twitches while I try to keep the angry, hate-filled words from spilling out. My first therapist would have been proud of me in this moment because I manage to keep all of those words inside.

  “No, he wasn’t my father. Look, you’re upset, so I’m not going to take offense to that right now. Let’s just get out of this house and go find a motel room or something, okay? It’s obviously not safe here.” I’m not sure if she’s heard what I said because she’s currently staring at the knife in the carpeting with this odd look on her face.

  “I can’t believe I just egged on a crazy guy.” My eyes narrow as I lift up one lip in an angry, silent snarl. My fingers curl into fists, and I take a step towards her, enjoying the fear that clouds her face. Tom has been forgotten if he’s even standing there anymore. It’s nothing but Anastasia’s face drawing my attention now as I advance on her.

  “What did you call me?” She can say that her father didn’t love me as much as he loved her in so few words, and she can say that I could not have loved him just as much or more than her, but to call me crazy? Mentally unstable, okay, but crazy is a term that I’ve heard too many times over the years uttered from ignorant mouths. It’s the way that she muttered it as if she meant it in a negative way.

  “I’m s-sorry.” She definitely sounds sorry, but I’m not going to let her get away with that.

  “You didn’t answer me.” I whisper while I push my nose up against her. It’s an awkward position for me because I have to lean down to do it. So I reach down and pluck her off the floor with my hands on her waist and push her up against the wall so that we’re at eye level with one another.

  “C-crazy!” She turns her head to the side so that she doesn’t have to look me in the eyes, which makes me growl. This woman is more frustrating than a Chinese finger trap.

  My knee comes up to rest against the warmth of her crotch so that I can support her while I pull one hand away from her waist. I gently grip her jaw with my fingers and twist her head so that she’s looking at me again. “Don’t ever fucking forget it.” I tell her in a deadly calm whisper, and then I do something that neither one of us expected.

  My lips are crushing hers before she has time to move her face away, and God, they are the sweetest kind of taste! I let my hand fall away from her face and rest it on her waist again as I kiss her deeper with each passing second. She makes this guttural noise that sends shivers down my spine and awakens a part of me that hasn’t seen the light of day for a long time. I’m not talking about my manhood, but the part of me that has forgotten how to love a woman.

  The medication must be working because Tom hasn’t made an entrance thus far, and I’m Hell bent on passing out before I have to pull my lips away from hers. We both try to breathe through the kiss until I finally start to grow dizzy, and I have to move back for just half a second. It’s long enough for the both of us to realize what we’re doing, and I immediately let her slide down the wall and take a step back.

  Jesus, that was wrong. My subconscious scolds me, and I pu
t a nervous hand to the back of my neck as I look for an excuse for my behavior. Duh, the I’m crazy routine?

  “I, that was, I was just upset and-” Anastasia stumbles for something viable to say that will make it all less awkward, but she’s failing miserably.

  “It was the adrenaline rush. We’re both upset about the past week and a half, and we needed an outlet. I’m not stressed anymore, so let’s just go get a hotel room.” Her face pales and I roll my eyes as I look at the ceiling, trying to draw on a well of patience that has suddenly popped up. “Not like that. To sleep.”

  “Right, to sleep.” I try to ignore the fact that she sounds disappointed by the fact that I pointed out sleeping and not sex.

  There’s this awkward moment where she straightens her shirt, and I stare at the carpet while she does so. I still haven’t had a chance to grab a shower since being arrested, and I’m beginning to smell pretty raunchy. Just as I’m about to tell her I’m going to at least rinse off quick in the shower, there’s a knock on the front door. Anastasia gives me a once over and straightens her hair with one hand while she slinks down the hall for the stairs. I follow after her slowly, and stand halfway up the stairs where the person at the front door cannot see me. The knife feels heavy in my hand, but I’ll be light on my feet when I strike.

  “Yes?” Anastasia’s voice.

  “I was just swinging by to make sure that everything is alright. Someone will be by every two hours to make sure that you’re okay.” I recognize that man’s voice and the hair on the back of my neck rises. It’s the officer who interrogated me, but I can’t hold that against him. He was just doing his job after all while Anastasia was being drug through the woods like a rag doll.

  “Everything is fine. Jonah and I aren’t going to be staying here tonight, so you don’t have to do that.” They both exchange a pleasant ‘good evening’ while I remain on the stairs, waiting for the officer to leave. When she appears at the bottom of the stairs with a quirked eyebrow, I know that the man is gone.

  “So you’re going to hide from every police officer that comes by?” She has one hand on her hip, and I see a glint in her eyes. Part of me wonders if she’s thinking about calling me crazy again, but I pass that off as the part of me that is most like Tom.

  “No, I just wanted to be ready if it wasn’t a friendly. I’m going to go pack, and then we’re going to a hotel room so I can shower in peace.” Before she can say anything about not going, I descend the rest of the stairs and swing into the kitchen to get to my room. Anastasia tromps up the steps to her own room, and I feel Tom nagging at the back of my mind. I need to keep taking my medication at the right time to suppress him as much as possible, or life is going to be miserable.

  “I’m ready if you are!” Anastasia calls from the front of the house. I hear the front door open and close with a little bit of force, and grit my teeth as I pack a duffle bag full of clothes, bathroom necessities, and a book.

  In two weeks, both our lives have been turned upside down. I can attribute the mistake upstairs to that, can’t I? Shut up, get in the car, and drive to the hotel room so that you can just get this over with. Once you sleep with her, you won’t ever think about it again because she’s just like every other woman out there. She’ll look at you with pity afterwards.

  “You ready?” My entire body goes rigid at the voice, and I have to inhale twice very slowly to get my heart rate to decrease.

  “I didn’t hear you come back in. Yeah, I’m ready.” She’s leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed and her eyes narrowed as if she knows something was happening in that moment. I wonder if she knows I have an inner dialogue with myself when Tom isn’t even around.

  Neither one of us mention what happened in the D’Salvatore farmhouse upstairs as we’re on our way to the hotel in the middle of town. I’ve always liked this town because of the old style stone, brick, and even log homes scattered throughout the center. They show the progression of history since the first settlers arrived in the Americas, and they’re not afraid to let it shine.

  Anastasia books a room at the only modern hotel on the outskirts of the town while I wait, leaning against the hood of her rental car. Part of me wonders if she misses where she lived before, but I tell myself it doesn’t matter to me whether she stays or she goes back home. I just hope that she doesn’t try to push me into selling the farmhouse because I want to stay. Even if this entire town is afraid of me, I still feel like it’s my only home right now.

  “I got us a suite. Mrs. Evans says we can stay as long as we like.” The scowl on my face must be pretty amusing to Anastasia because I can see that same twinkle in her eyes. Her lips don’t have to move for her to smile. It’s all in the eyes.

  “Mrs. Evans is a busybody that will have the entire town talking about the fact that we’re staying together in a hotel room.” It’s not that I care about my own reputation, but I’m sure that Anastasia cares about hers. She told me so the first day she met me.

  “Worried about your status in town, Jonah?” The glint in her eyes has gone and been replaced with suspicion.

  “Are you serious? The entire town thinks I’m insane, hell, I am insane! It’s not me who has to worry.” I shrug one shoulder as if it means nothing to me and retrieve my bag and hers from the trunk. “Which room?” The glint from her eyes has disappeared by the time I get back around to the front of the car, and it’s been replaced with something I have never seen in a woman’s eyes. Is that anticipation? Before I can call her out on it, the glint is gone, and we’re walking up a flight of stairs to the second level decking.

  Even though this is the most modern hotel in town, it still uses actual keys instead of the swipe kind. The door is painted an ugly pale orange, and the exterior of the building is coated in stucco. However, on the inside is a totally different story.

  “Mrs. Evans has some taste!” I say in shock, dropping the bags on top of a dresser and taking in the scenery around me. Frilly, white bed sheets and a bright, tiled hardwood floor along with red curtains draped over the windows assault my senses. Anastasia idly fingers one of the satin pillows on the leather couch in the living area of the suite, and I inspect the granite countertops of the kitchenette. It’s no house, but if I were to stay here on vacation I wouldn’t have any qualms about the hotel suite.

  “I’m going to shower. Do you want to order pizza or something? My treat.” I’m pulling clothes out of my bag as I ask.

  “Yeah, sure. Pick a room then. I think there are two bathrooms.” She sidles up next to me and starts rummaging around in her own bag and then realizes what she’s doing. Our arms are almost touching, and the hairs on my own have risen. I can see the way her breathing catches in her throat when my elbow brushes against hers.

  Before I can get into any more trouble with Anastasia, I grab my bag and try not to look suspicious as I duck into a room, any room will do. My shower is long and cold, but it does nothing to help my brain slow down or any other parts of me calm. While I’m brushing my teeth, I try to think about anything but how good it felt to slam her against the wall and take what I wanted. That side of me is someone I have pushed down for too many years to let him surface again.

  I’m pulling on my pants when I hear the doorbell ring, and then it rings a second time. She must still be in the bathroom, so I grab some of the cash I found in the cabin with my other belongings and head for the door. Sure enough, it’s the pizza delivery guy with one large box in hand and several smaller bags. Did she order the entire appetizer menu? I wonder to myself as I fork over the cash and tell the guy to keep the tip.

  He’s a young man, most likely still in high school, and he has not been blessed with good genetics. I see the beat up Oldsmobile that he slides into and shake my head. The poor guy has not been blessed with wealth either. Well, at least he’s working towards something better. I gently close the door and set dinner on the countertop. It’s another fifteen minutes before Anastasia comes out of her room.

  She catch
es me red handed, a slice of pizza in one hand and a mozzarella stick in the other. I graciously put down the mozzarella stick and my slice of pizza as she slides onto a barstool at the breakfast counter next to me. I find it more than a bit odd that she’s wearing a pair of shorts, but a zip up sweatshirt over a tank top.

  “Is it cold in here?” I ask, fumbling around for another onion ring. Her cheeks turn a delicate shade of pink as she reaches for a slice of pizza. The right sleeve of her sweat shirt rides up as she reaches and I see the hint of a very thin, white line on her upper arm. Resisting the urge to grab her wrist and shove up the sleeve to see more, I try to focus on eating my pizza.

  “No, it’s not cold in here. You don’t have to turn down the thermostat.” I’m sliding off the stool to do just that while she protests.

  “But you’re wearing a sweatshirt, so you must be cold.” I point out to her in a reasonable tone. Anastasia is beside me in a heartbeat when I put my hand up to the digital display to dial down the air conditioning. It’s already set at sixty eight.

  “I said you don’t have to turn it down!” I can see irritation written all over her, but I’m not going to relent until she tells me the truth as to why she’s wearing a sweat shirt in the middle of summer.

  “Then why are you wearing the sweat shirt?” Something alien passes over her face, an emotion that I’ve only seen in the mirror. It’s the knowledge that I’m not normal that brings on that look, and Anastasia is wearing it as she’s wearing her heart on her sleeve.

  “I just don’t like my arms, they’re ugly. So let’s just sit down and eat dinner, alright?” It must be the shock that has me relenting because I don’t turn down the thermostat, but I don’t sit down and eat any more.

  “That’s not it.” I say calmly while she tries to swallow a bite of pizza. It must be stuck in her throat because she’s upset about my frankness.

  “Enough, Jonah. I don’t want to talk about it, okay?” She sounds deflated, defeated almost. I don’t usually bring it upon myself to feel sorry for someone because I don’t like it when people feel pity for me, but something about her draws out that emotion and much more.