by Leddy Harper
He knelt down in front of me and opened his mouth to talk, but the words didn’t match his face. They were angry, harsh sounding, and went against the smile and happy eyes that were in front of me. “Are you fucking my wife?”
“What are you talking about, Dad?” I asked, hoping my words weren’t as slurred as they sounded to my own ears. If he knew I was drunk, I’d be sent to my room. Wait… this isn’t real. I kept trying to tell myself even though it felt as if I could reach out and touch him. It was if I had been inserted back into that moment, back in time.
“You think you can come into my house and fuck my wife?” he roared again, but again, his face was soft and his smile was bright. It didn’t make any sense. Why was he saying those things and why did he look so happy? His words were the complete opposite of his actions, of the look on his face.
I looked around me, wondering whose house I was in. I started to question everything. He mentioned going to his house, but I thought I was in mine. Fear began to envelop me as the questions became worse. “Dad?”
“Caden!” my mother’s voice rang out from somewhere in the distance, but there was no mistaking the fear in her tone. I turned my head briefly, trying to see where it was coming from, but when I turned back, my dad was gone. He was no longer in front of me with the happy smile I remembered him always wearing. I tried listening again for my mom to say something else, but there was nothing.
The room was silent and the only sounds I could hear were my heart racing in my chest and my own erratic breathing. The lights were bright and blinding, causing my eyes to constrict and send a pain throughout them. My head began to throb, and the next thing I knew, I was on my back on the kitchen floor, staring up at the blinding florescent lights.
“He’s okay. Not a scratch on him. But he’s severely dehydrated and lethargic.” A woman was speaking above me, but I couldn’t see her, nor could I see the person she was talking to. There were other sounds around me, metal on metal, rustling around, but I couldn’t see anything. The only thing that was visible was the blinding lights that made my head swim.
“Okay. Whom do we have here?” a deep voice boomed close by. It was a male, but it didn’t sound familiar. It wasn’t my dad or anyone I knew. Who was there and what were they talking about? Nothing made sense and the fear crept in even more… nearly consuming all of me.
“Caden Morgan, age eight,” the woman spoke again. Then her voice went soft as she whispered, “He was found in the Morgan house and has been in and out of consciousness since arriving. No one knows how long he was there or what he witnessed.”
I heard that sentence before. I remembered listening to that same conversation once upon a time. And the realization that it was from my past made the fear deeply penetrate me. It took over and my breathing grew short and erratic. I was having another panic attack and I couldn’t stop it. I needed help, that was all I knew for certain at that point.
The voices faded in the distance as I tried desperately to piece everything together. Was I dreaming? Was I hallucinating? I remembered that moment so vividly, but it had never felt so real. I literally felt as if I was back in that hospital, listening to the doctors and nurses speak around me but never to me.
The cold tile against my back answered my questions… no, I wasn’t dreaming. I was officially losing it. First my dad, then my mom, and now the hospital. I was going crazy. I needed to end it. I needed it all to go away, but it wouldn’t.
I could hear the faint whispers of the kids at school, talking about my family like they would talk about a movie: “Did you hear what happened to Caden?” … “Ask him what he saw.” … “No, you ask him; I’m sure he’d tell you.” … “Do you think he had anything to do with it?”
I heard the people on the TV reporting about it. My aunt always tried to keep the volume down so I wouldn’t hear, but I still heard it all: “Tragedy … horrific … avoidable…”
I switched on my television set and flipped through the channels just to prove to myself that it wasn’t real. Even with the sound up as high as it would go, along with my music on in another room, I could still hear the voices. They were coming at me all at once.
“Post traumatic stress.”
“I can’t even imagine what he witnessed in there.”
“He’s probably going to be scarred for life.”
Yes, faceless voice that echoes around me, I’m fucking scarred for life.
I accepted that fate long ago, but hoped that if I were successful in my professional life, it wouldn’t matter how many scars I hid on the inside. So that’s what I did. I finished school, I became a highly successful and talked about therapist. I even bought a house and a fancy car to prove how normal I was. I did all of those things to show the world that no matter what I had gone through when I was eight, I was capable of anything.
And I was capable of everything except a relationship. But I didn’t care about that. I didn’t want a relationship, never needed one. I knew firsthand how destructive they were and never cared to be in one. Until Ivy. But I wasn’t stupid; I knew without a doubt that a relationship with Ivy would be beyond destructive. It would be catastrophic. And that was being proven by my hallucinations and self-induced lockdown.
Realization crept in, taking hold of me and making it difficult to breathe. I was alone. I had no one, and if I died on the kitchen floor, no one would know. I could be there for days, months even, before anyone would find me. And I was the only one to blame. I had pushed everyone out to avoid ending up like my parents, yet there I was, exactly like them. Alone.
I stumbled around the house as minutes blurred, giving me a false sense of the amount of time I searched for my phone. I found it plugged in on my bedside table and had no idea who had plugged it in or how it had gotten there. I had email alerts and a few text messages from Doctor Klaussen, but I didn’t even look at any of those. I bypassed the popups and scrolled through my call list until I found Alyssa. I needed her. Even though I had no idea why I needed her, I just did, so I called her.
“Hello?” She sounded off… sleepy? Was she confused? Was it all in my head?
“I need you,” I barely got out past the lump in my throat. Was I crying?
I heard a sigh. Was it hers? Was it mine? I wasn’t sure.
“Please,” I cried in desperation, not remembering the last time I had ever felt so distressed. “I’m fucking losing my mind. I need you.”
“What’s going on? Are you having a panic attack?” She sounded worried, that I knew for sure.
“I don’t know. I’m hearing things… seeing things.”
“Are you drunk?” And just like that, the worry was gone, replaced by irritation.
“I don’t know. I have been drinking. What day is it?”
“Where are you?”
I looked around, trying to find the answer to her question. Why didn’t I know where I was? Why was I having a hard time thinking? “My room. I’m in my room.”
“Send me your address. I’m calling 9-1-1.”
“No!” I shouted, feeling my own spit fly out of my mouth. “I can’t go back there. I can’t see those doctors again. They know me. They’ll talk about me.” Hysterics had officially set it and that’s when I lost any remaining composure I had left in me. I started crying out loud, feeling the pressure of it all wrap around me. My entire body constricted and everything started going black.
“Just text me your address, Cade.”
I sent Alyssa my address four times. I messed up the first three times but I was sure I had it right the last time. If not, I would die alone. But then I started to question why she would need it. She knew where I lived. Was I hallucinating that as well? Had I even called her? I checked my call log once more and her name wasn’t there. I hadn’t called her. I had imagined the whole damn thing.
I chose to give up in that moment. I couldn’t even call for help correctly. I wasn’t able to call for help when I was eight, and I couldn’t do it at thirty-four. I should have known th
at moment would come. It was written in the stars. My life was mapped out from early on and there was no way to change it. All of the years I had trained myself to avoid the inevitable was worthless.
I climbed onto my bed, not bothering to get under the covers, and closed my eyes. Images crossed in front of my eyelids and invaded my mind, flashing like a movie reel. This had happened once before, but I knew I wouldn’t wake up this time. I knew it would be the end. Ivy Jaymes had blinded me until I found myself reliving the worst days of my life.
I had thought about Ivy so much I conjured her up. She was everywhere—next to me, touching my face, running her hands through my hair, walking around, talking softly to me. She was so imbedded in me that I would die, taking her memory with me. I was sure of that.
“Don’t leave me,” I whispered to her as she brushed my hair away from my forehead.
“I won’t,” she promised on a whisper.
I knew I would never see her again and needed to tell her things. And if admitting them out loud to an empty room full of images of Ivy was the only way to relieve the ache, then that’s what I would have to do. “I am in love with you, Ivy. I don’t know what love is or what it’s supposed to feel like, but I love you.”
“No… you don’t love me. You own me.”
“And you own me. All of me, including my heart and soul.”
“Sleep, Cade.” That was the last thing I heard before everything went black. And I knew it was okay to leave. It was okay to let go, knowing that my last memory was of her. The only person to ever own my heart, body and soul.
*****
The first thing that my brain registered was the sensation of a drum pounding in my head. It brought me out of the dark depths of numbness and back to the land of living. The next feeling I had was the blinding light in my face. And I was back there. I was back at the hospital; I knew that before I ever opened my eyes. The one thing that struck me as odd was the quietness of the room. There was no beeping of monitors or feet shuffling around me or orders being shouted out. Where the fuck was I?
That’s when my eyes shot open and focused on the ceiling fan above me. Not a hospital room, but my room—in my house. How was I there? I couldn’t comprehend anything as my mind bounced around. My dad had been there, but that was impossible—my dad was dead. I had heard my mom, but again, my subconscious reminded me that my mom was also dead. The nurses, the doctors... everything—all a dream, my mind rationalized. But it all felt so real. Including Ivy. Ivy… I had heard her voice and I had felt the emotion in it.
I slowly sat up and the room whirled around me. My ears were ringing and made it impossible to hear anything. Was I deaf? Was I dead? Was this heaven? I didn’t know anything anymore. My knuckles were black and blue, crusted over by blood. I fought hard to think about why that would have been, but came up empty.
My phone was next to me. I checked it for the date and time—Thursday, eleven o’clock in the morning. The last thing I remembered to be true was leaving Ivy’s apartment, and that had been on Friday. Where did five days go? And what happened in that time?
I got up, steadying myself on my feet as my limbs tingled and my sight began to fade. I waited a few moments before the tingling subsided and my vision came back, along with my hearing. My mouth tasted like battery acid had dried in it and I realized I was still in the same jeans I had on when I left Ivy’s place. I wasn’t wearing a shirt or shoes and vomit was crusted along the bottoms of my jeans. I stripped them off as fast as I could without falling over and headed straight for the shower. I needed to wash off the stench and clear my head.
I made sure the water was cold, needing it to cool my inner temperature. But all it did was remind me of the cold water that blasted me in Ivy’s shower. It reminded me of how it felt to hold her against me, feeling her soaked body against mine. It reminded me of what it was like to be with her, and how I had never experienced anything like it before. The way she touched me with more than her hands. She had the ability to creep inside of me and touch the deepest parts that encompassed me. I had never experienced intimacy like that before. I craved intimacy with her and knew instantly that no one else would ever be able to take her place. .
I needed to talk to her. She deserved an explanation as to why I ran. I wanted to tell her the truth, but the truth scared the shit out of me. I didn’t want her to leave, but I had been the one to push her away. If my only option at getting her back was to tell her the truth, then so be it. Her words, “you own me,” rang out around me. I knew it wasn’t real, she hadn’t been there and I had imagined the whole thing, but I needed to fight for the chance to hear her say it. This was my second chance at everything—or third chance—and I wasn’t going to fuck it up. She had trusted me enough to allow me to sleep with her; I needed to trust her just as much.
After at least fifteen minutes under the cold water, I emerged, feeling slightly better than I had when I went in. My head was still fuzzy and I felt as if I had been trapped beneath a semi truck for days, but I was beginning to feel better. Brushing my teeth had done wonders. And then I smelled it… bacon.
A small part of me worried that I was hallucinating again, that I was making it all up, but once I stepped out of the bathroom and the overpowering scent of breakfast hit me, I knew it was either real or I was in fact dead and this was my heaven. My already slow pace slowed even more as I made my way out of my bedroom and crept toward the kitchen.
It was determined—I was dead and in my own personal heaven. Ivy stood in front of the stove with a frying pan in her hand. She looked exhausted and I thought she looked slightly older since the last time I had seen her. That was impossible, though. I had only seen her less than a week ago, there’s no way she could have aged that quickly. How long was I out of it? And, more importantly, why was she in my kitchen? Everything started coming back to me… the phone call, seeing her, talking to her. What was real and what wasn’t?
“I heard the shower and thought you might be hungry. I’m sure you haven’t eaten anything in a while. At least you don’t look like it. You look like shit.” Her eyes never met mine as she carefully placed the bacon on a plate that was already filled with what looked like delicious scrambled egg.
“When did you get here?” I asked, having to clear my throat to get the words out.
“Tuesday night. Well… technically, Wednesday morning. You called. I came.”
No. I had called Alyssa. I could distinctively remember finding Alyssa’s number on my phone and calling her. I had called her to help me. But then her name wasn’t there anymore. Whose name was there? Had I really called Ivy?
“I called you two nights ago?” I asked in confusion. It was Thursday; what happened the day before? I couldn’t even begin to sort everything through in my head and felt more out of control than I ever remember feeling before.
She didn’t answer, only nodded as she put the plate on the table.
“You’ve been here ever since?”
Her eyes finally met mine; they were full of pain and concern. “You were…” She shook her head and tried again. “I wasn’t sure what would happen and I didn’t want to leave you alone. So I stayed to make sure you were okay. You seem better now. I should probably get going.”
I stepped in front of her, blocking her exit, and grabbed her upper arm in my hand. “How did you get here?” I wanted to ask about what I did or said while she was there and I was passed out, but I couldn’t go there. Part of me didn’t want the confirmation that I had confessed my love for her. I had never told another person that since I was eight years old and didn’t want to find out that I had uttered those words while being semi-unconscious.
“I called a cab,” she said with her eyes downcast.
I lifted her chin by my finger and forced her to look at me. “Have you slept at all?”
“Not really. Maybe a little here and there, but I couldn’t really sleep. You had me really worried.”
I mentally cursed myself as I took in the dark circles b
eneath her eyes and the greyish color of her skin. The only reason she looked older as she stood in front of me was because I had kept her from sleeping or taking care of herself for God knows how long.
“God, Ivy… lay down. Let me take care of you now.” My concern for her crippled me and all I could think to do was help her, comfort her, and take care of her the way she had so selflessly taken care of me. I had never wanted to take care of someone like this before, but the need was overwhelming.
She wrestled out of my grip and I thought I saw a tear form in the corner of her eye. “I really need to get home. I can sleep once I’m there. I don’t need you to take care of me. I don’t need you at all. It’s obvious you can’t fix me. No one can. I’m fucking ruined and there’s nothing you can do for me. So please, just move so I can leave.” She sounded so determined and it caused a war within me—my heart versus my head.
“What are you talking about? We had sex. We were together, intimately, and you didn’t freak out. That’s not improvement? That’s not moving forward?” The more I spoke, the faster the words came out and the more the room began to spin. I needed to sit down but there was no way in hell I would move out of her way and allow her to slip by. No matter how much I wanted to hide from her after the last time I saw her, I couldn’t let her go.
“Except you saw me and you ran!” The lone tear slipped, followed by a dozen more.
I shook my head slowly, trying to keep my balance. I had no idea what she was talking about. “Saw you? What does that mean?” I paused, trying to take it all in. “You think I ran because of you?”
Ivy pulled into herself; her shoulders hunched forward and she wrapped her tiny arms around her body. “Yes… you stopped and then looked down at me. There. And then you took off. I’m not stupid. I know what you saw. I know why you ran.”
“Clearly you don’t if you think it’s because of you.”
“Then why?”