by Rick R. Reed
“So he’s been at this place ever since?”
Mary Helen nodded. “It’s not the best solution, but it’s the best we can do. He can’t be on his own.”
“Does he talk about what happened?”
“Sweetie, he doesn’t talk about anything. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. He’s spoken hardly a word since that day we saved each other. He sits and stares out the window. He takes care of himself in the sense that he bathes, eats, watches TV. He’s like a zombie.”
“So, if he watches TV, then he must know that Dahmer was killed.”
“Yes. Unfortunately. One of his caretakers, a nice young man named Dwight, called me to tell me they tried to keep the news from him, but how can you keep national headlines away from someone even if they’re institutionalized? Dwight said Emory’s been agitated ever since learning that Dahmer was dead—sinking deeper into his own personal darkness.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means that what I said a minute ago, about him taking care of himself, is no longer true. He hasn’t showered in a couple of days. He won’t eat. He stays in his room and refuses to come out to the common area, something he didn’t do before.”
Mary Helen was quiet for a long time and so was Tyler. They drove up to the facility and parked in a visitor’s space.
When they got out, she looked up at the institution, its gray façade against a brooding sky full of bruised clouds. A chill wind blew out of the north, causing her to cross her arms over her chest. Would it snow today? And if it did, would they get back to Chicago in time to beat it or have to fight their way through a blizzard? She could smell snow in the future.
She glanced over at Tyler. “Are you ready?”
Tyler was pale. “I don’t know how to answer that.”
Mary Helen let a grim chuckle escape her. “I don’t blame you. But I’m hoping maybe your being here will help settle him.” She paused as they walked up the wide walk to the big double oak-framed doors—the main entrance. “Or at least not unsettle him more.”
“But no pressure,” Tyler said, so softly she barely heard him.
“No pressure.” Mary Helen opened one of the doors for Tyler and followed him inside.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Emory looked out at the day through the only window in his room—it was little more than a long, vertical slit, cross-hatched wire between its double panes. Outside, blackened fingers, the trees’ bare limbs, reached up toward a sky that was a mix of white, gray, and charcoal; clouds lay heavy on the horizon.
Most of the land around the facility was barren, flat—empty fields. This emptiness comforted him in a way, made him feel he was alone in the world. And being alone meant he didn’t have to confront the demons inside him, demons that had caused him to hurt others, to think that a cannibal killer was a suitable role model for a young man.
In here, life was easy. One day merged almost imperceptibly into another. Time passed quickly for a place where almost nothing ever happened. He ate the meals that were made for him, even if they were disgusting at worst and bland and flavorless at best. He watched endless hours of TV in the common room (although he hadn’t graced the room with his presence since he’d heard about Dahmer’s passing). He’d sleep for at least ten hours a night, sometimes more if nightmares didn’t trouble him.
He didn’t read.
He didn’t think about the past.
He didn’t wonder about the people he once knew because, save for his sister, that world had forgotten him. He no longer felt a part of the walking mass of contradictions, dashed dreams, and futile hopes he thought of as humanity.
Empty was enough. He could go on like this forever.
He had to admit, though, if only to himself, that news of Dahmer’s passing had stung, maybe even shredded a little what remained of his heart. He could imagine Dahmer’s fear as that other inmate attacked him, and it made Emory wince, feeling the blows in a kind of psychic communion.
No. Those days were over, he told himself. Those days are the ones that landed me here. There’s no connection between me and him. There’s no connection at all.
There never was.
His head snapped up as footfalls and subdued voices on the tiled floor of the corridor outside his room sounded. He recognized Mary Helen’s voice, but not the male one. He turned away from the window and faced the door. What do I need to get through now?
Keys jingled and then an attendant pulled the metal door open.
Mary Helen came into view first. He was always surprised when he saw her, how dowdy and matronly she’d become in just a few years. Still, she was always a welcome sight, one that reminded him there was at least one soul in the world who still cared.
And then, behind her, there he was.
Emory sucked in a breath.
Tyler. What are you doing here? Have you come at last to confront me? To harm me? To kill me? I can’t say that I would blame you, not after the way I treated you.
“How’s tricks, brother?” Mary Helen smiled as she came into the room. She stopped to pull the thin quilt on his bed up over the sweat-soiled sheets. She lifted his pillow to fluff it and then replaced it on the bed. “I brought you a visitor.”
It had been so long since he’d uttered a single word that he was surprised something would emerge from his lips at all. “I see that.” My voice sounds like an old man’s. A croak.
Mary Helen crossed the room a little farther and glanced out the window for a moment. She turned back to say, “It’s started snowing. And it’s coming down hard. Sad to say we should make this quick. Who knows what 55 will be like in an hour.” Her gaze moved to Tyler, who nodded.
Tyler hadn’t changed much. His hair had grown out a bit, and he’d gained a few pounds, which he needed to do. He looked more like a grown man and less like a boy just entering adulthood. Emory swallowed hard.
I still love you. The thought emerged out of nowhere, or maybe, more apt, it emerged out of the ether of who Emory used to be.
Mary Helen looked at Emory, then at Tyler, back again. And Emory could see the decision written on her face.
“Why don’t I go get us some coffee? Let you two boys get reacquainted.” She smiled as though bestowing a gift. She asked Tyler, “Would that be okay?”
Tyler, to his credit, had to think about the question for a moment. Emory supposed, had the tables been turned, he would have to ponder as well. Hell, he’d probably run for the hills.
But Tyler simply said, “It’s okay.” He sat on the edge of Emory’s bed and watched Mary Helen leave the room.
If she was surprised at Emory’s speaking, she didn’t show it.
After she was gone, Tyler and Emory simply regarded each other for the longest time. Emory had to turn away once he felt Tyler’s gaze was too acute, too penetrating. Outside, the sky had grown even darker, and the snow swirled down. Under other circumstances, it might have been pretty, but today, the cold it represented seemed as though it had been brought by Tyler himself.
In an absurd twist, Emory realized he was afraid of Tyler.
“How are you, Emory?”
How does one answer that question? Emory didn’t have a clue, so he simply pushed out his own question in response. “Why are you here?” He genuinely wanted to know.
Tyler licked his lips, causing Emory to think of a stressed-out dog. Tyler didn’t answer right away. But before too long, he spoke. “My first impulse was to say I honestly don’t know. But then, before I rushed to blurt that out, that easy answer, I realized I did know.” Tyler drew in a breath and patted the bed beside him. “Come sit here.”
It wasn’t a request and Emory did as he was told, sitting a foot or so from Tyler. He resisted the urge to gnaw on a fingernail. It wouldn’t have done any good anyway, since all of his nails were bitten to the quick, so badly on some fingers that there was dried blood in his nail beds. He braced himself for the onslaught of words—the pain and the accusations. He deserved it all and more
.
But Tyler surprised him.
“I came here because I think you need closure. At first, I was going to say I needed it. But I think I found that particular commodity long ago when I forgave you for what you did.”
Emory eyed him but said nothing.
“Does that surprise you? That I forgave you?” Tyler shrugged. “It might have surprised me—once. But you know what? Forgiveness isn’t about absolving someone. No. I read somewhere that it’s really about releasing your own pain, being a survivor rather than a victim. I realized, Emory, I could have trapped myself in my victimhood forever if I didn’t forgive you.”
Tyler sighed and stared out the window for a moment. Emory didn’t dare look away, but he wondered what he saw. Snow coming down? Or the inside of Mother’s walk-in closet?
“So I did—forgive. And even though it took a long time, it eventually sank in and I was able to move on. I realized that I might never be able to get a grip on why you did what you did. But I could understand the motivation for it and could even see myself in that.
“When I heard about Dahmer being killed, I immediately thought of you. I wondered if you were okay. I knew that, in some twisted way, he meant something to you. Can I forgive you for that? Yes. Can I understand that?” Tyler shook his head. “No. Never.”
Tyler scooted over a bit and leaned into Emory then, so their shoulders touched.
Emory closed his eyes. More than what Tyler had said, more than his presence, this simple touch moved him, made everything that had been dead inside him come back to life, like a downpour on a desert.
Just like that—a single moment, a single touch from another human being saved him.
Gave him something he never thought he’d have—hope.
He’d had an epiphany—for that’s what it was—only once. It was when he was in the fevered state where he thought he must kill his own sister. And then the look in her eyes, her terror and disbelief, immediately reeled him back in, causing him not only to draw back the offending weapon, but for shame—a real, human emotion—to rise.
Emory sat with Tyler for a while with their shoulders touching and reveled in it. How long had it been since he’d felt genuine warmth from another human being? It was a gift Emory didn’t know if Tyler himself realized he was bestowing.
Gently, Tyler reached out, wrapping an arm around Emory’s back and pulling him closer. “I may not understand the fascination with a killer, or those letters you wrote, but I came to grasp one thing—you did what you did not because you hated me or wanted to hurt me, but because you loved me.”
“I wanted you to stay.” There. It’s really that simple.
Tyler looked at him and Emory knew he could see the tears standing in his eyes. One rolled down his cheek and then another and another.
Tyler hugged him hard and whispered, “I know. I know.”
And then he let go and pulled away. He stood.
Footsteps sounded outside the door and, again, the jingle of keys, and whoosh, the door opened, and Mary Helen stood there, a tray of Styrofoam cups in her hand. The smile vanished from her face as she regarded them, looking from one, sitting and in tears, to the other, standing near a window where outside all was white.
“Everything okay?”
Tyler moved toward her. “Everything’s okay.” He turned to smile at Emory. “Right?”
And Emory nodded. Sadness, grief even, moved through him. “Everything is okay.” He paused, feeling like he might be frozen in this moment forever. And then he realized he was alive and that he could move.
He got up. “Thanks.” He lifted a cup of coffee from the tray and took a cautious sip. It burned going down, and Emory imagined it dissolving the lump in his throat.
“You guys should drink yours in the car.” Emory glanced out the window. “It’s really coming down. Fast and hard.” He sat at his desk chair and set his coffee on the desk. He drew in a deep breath.
“And I know Tyler can’t stay.”
About the Author
Real Men. True Love.
Rick R. Reed is an award-winning and bestselling author of more than fifty works of published fiction. He is a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Entertainment Weekly has described his work as “heartrending and sensitive.” Lambda Literary has called him: “A writer that doesn’t disappoint…” Find him at www.rickrreedreality.blogspot.com. Rick lives in Palm Springs, CA, with his husband, Bruce, and their fierce Chihuahua/Shiba Inu mix, Kodi.
Email: [email protected]
Facebook: www.facebook.com/rickrreedbooks
Twitter: @rickrreed
Website: www.rickrreedreality.blogspot.com
Other NineStar books by this author
Unraveling
Sky Full of Mysteries
The Perils of Intimacy
IM
Chaser
Raining Men
Blue Umbrella Sky
Third Eye
Legally Wed
Hungry for Love
Big Love
A Face without a Heart
Bigger Love
Torn
The Secrets We Keep
Also Available from Rick R. Reed
IM
One by one, he’s killing them. Lurking in the digital underworld of Men4HookUpNow.com, he lures, seduces, charms, reaching out through instant messages to the unwary. They invite him over. He’s just another trick. Harmless. They’re dead wrong.
When the first bloody body surfaces, openly gay Chicago Police Department detective Ed Comparetto is called in to investigate. Sickened by the butchered mess of one of his brothers left on display in a bathtub, he seeks relief outside where the young man who discovered the body waits to tell him the story of how he found his friend. But who is this witness…and did he play a bigger part in the murder than he’s letting on?
Comparetto is on a journey to discover the truth, a truth that he needs to discover before he loses his career, his boyfriend, his sanity…his life. Because in this killer’s world, IM doesn’t stand for instant message…it stands for instant murder.
Third Eye
Who knew that a summer thunderstorm and a lost little boy would conspire to change single dad Cayce D’Amico’s life in an instant? With Luke missing, Cayce ventures into the woods near their house to find his son, only to have lightning strike a tree near him, sending a branch down on his head. When he awakens the next day in the hospital, he discovers he has been blessed or cursed—he isn’t sure which—with psychic ability. Along with unfathomable glimpses into the lives of those around him, he’s getting visions of a missing teenage girl.
When a second girl disappears soon after the first, Cayce realizes his visions are leading him to their grisly fates. Cayce wants to help, but no one believes him. The police are suspicious. The press wants to exploit him. And the girls’ parents have mixed feelings about the young man with the “third eye.”
Cayce turns to local reporter Dave Newton and, while searching for clues to the string of disappearances and possible murders, a spark ignites between them. Little do they know that nearby, another couple—dark and murderous—are plotting more crimes and wondering how to silence the man who knows too much about them.
A Face without a Heart
A modern-day and thought-provoking retelling of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray that esteemed horror magazine Fangoria called “…a book that is brutally honest with its reader and doesn’t flinch in the areas where Wilde had to look away…. A rarity: a really well-done update that’s as good as its source material.”
A beautiful young man bargains his soul away to remain young and handsome forever, while his holographic portrait mirrors his aging and decay and reflects every sin and each nightmarish step deeper into depravity… even cold-blooded murder. Prepare yourself for a compelling tour of the darkest sides of greed, lust, addiction, and violence.
Also Available from NineStar Press
Connect with NineStar Press
; Website: NineStarPress.com
Facebook: NineStarPress
Facebook Reader Group: NineStarNiche
Twitter: @ninestarpress
Tumblr: NineStarPress