A Sad Soul Can Kill You

by Catherine Flowers

  “Well, because you don’t know, we don’t know where she’s at or what might be happening,” Shari said angrily. She looked at Tony. “I told you we should have put a block on that computer.”

  “I put a timer on it,” he said with a slightly irritated tone. “That should have been enough.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cookie said, crying heavily.

  Shari rolled her eyes.

  “Sorry doesn’t cut it,” Tony said. “Not only are you on a punishment for the next month, but you can forget about using that computer again.”

  “Lord, please let her be safe,” Shari whispered.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Homer kept his arm around Serenity’s small waist as he carried her toward the basement door.

  “Stop!” Serenity yelled. “Let me go!” She frantically turned her body back and forth as she beat on Homer’s chest.

  Homer tightened his grip. “Stop moving!” he said.

  “No! Let me go!” Serenity cried. She began beating on his chest, but she was no match for his more than three hundred pounds.

  “Stop hitting me!” Homer said. He reached over with his other hand and held both of her arms down.

  He took her down into the basement and held her down in an old torn leather chair as he removed her coat.

  “Why are you so frightened?” he asked as he began unrolling the ball of twine he’d purchased earlier. “You wanted to meet me, right?”

  Serenity looked up at him with surprise. “You’re Saucer?”

  He pulled her arms behind the chair and secured her wrists with the twine. Homer wrapped the string around her wrists several times, and then tied a knot.

  Serenity sat still as tears began to spill from her eyes.

  Homer pulled off the elastic band that was holding her hair together in a ponytail. Her hair fell down and stopped at the base of her neck.

  “Now we’ve met,” he said as he ran his fingers through the strands of her hair all the way down to the red tips.

  He walked away and sat down on a bench across from her. Every now and then he twisted the wedding band he still wore on his left ring finger as his hazel eyes traveled the length of Serenity’s legs stretching out from the seat of the chair. He stood up and walked back over to her.

  Serenity tried to catch her breath.

  “You have pretty legs, you know that?” he said as he stroked the side of each of her legs.

  She jumped at his touch. “It’s cold down here,” she said in an unsteady voice. “Can I have my coat back?”

  Homer scrutinized her under the 100 watt light bulb she sat beneath. Even with fear etched all over her face, she still bore a striking resemblance to her mother. He grabbed her coat from the bench and placed it across her lap.

  “Can I go now?” She blinked, and the tears rolled down her cheeks.

  “Can you go now?” He looked surprised. “We’re just getting started.”

  “Please,” Serenity struggled from side to side.

  A distant look appeared in his eyes. “I told her I still wanted her,” he said. “But she hung up on me. Now she won’t answer my calls.” He snickered. “I guess you’ll have to do, little fish.”

  “I need to go home!” she screamed. “Let me go! The police will come!”

  “No, they won’t,” Homer said smugly. He poked her forehead with his finger. “Because they don’t know where you are.”

  Serenity blinked quickly. “Yes, they do. My friend knows your name. She’ll tell them!”

  “My friend knows your name.” He mocked her. “Don’t be so naïve, little girl. Saucer is not my name.” He pulled a small key out of his pocket and began tossing it back and forth. “If you’re going to play with fire you better learn how not to get burned.”

  “Please,” she begged. “I won’t tell anybody. I promise.” She started crying again. “Just let me go home!”

  He looked at her and thought about Tia. “That will depend on your mother. But really, she should have returned my calls.”

  “What . . . What are you talking about?” Serenity cried. “What does my mother have to do with this?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough, little fish.”

  “Please,” she pleaded again, “let me go. I promise I won’t tell.”

  “Oh, you’ll tell,” he snarled. “You don’t care about me either.” He stopped tossing the key. “You’re just like your mother.”

  Serenity stiffened as confusion spread across her face.

  Homer thought about the pain he had suffered because of Tia’s rejection. It was completely unwarranted, and he was tired of it. It had been that way all his life: his mother, the girls in school, his wife, and now her. He rubbed his forehead. He needed to show Sandra—no, he meant Tia. Yes, he needed to show Tia that this time it was going to be his way. And his way was to not let the relationship end until and if he said so.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to Serenity. He pulled the string above her head to turn off the light bulb. “But it’s your mother’s fault.”

  “Wait!” she cried. “Mr. Woodard!”

  Homer ignored Serenity’s cry as he limped up the basement stairs. He closed the door behind him and locked it. All this time, he had unknowingly been chatting with Tia’s daughter. He felt it had been an act of fate that she had turned up on his doorstep after their failed meeting earlier. Now, he had her in his basement.

  Homer felt proud of what he had accomplished. Soon, he would pull out his phone, press the familiar number on the key pad and wait until Tia answered his call. Maybe this time she’d be more interested in what he had to say.

  Serenity watched the pull string from the light bulb above her head swing back and forth. “Please, God,” she prayed, “please let me get out.”

  She anxiously looked around the unfinished basement and noticed a medium-size square window just above the washing machine on the other side of the room. She began to cry as she started wiggling her slender wrists back and forth in an attempt to loosen the string.

  The sun was beginning to set. Soon, it would be completely dark in the basement. “Please, God,” she whispered over and over as she focused all her energy on being freed. Sometime later, she abruptly stopped crying when she noticed the string slowly but surely beginning to loosen.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Tia had a gut feeling that Lorenzo had taken too many pills. Even though their marriage was in serious trouble, she prayed he would be okay. She went over to the nurse’s station in the emergency room. It was late in the afternoon and almost every chair in the waiting room had been taken. Some of the patients sat solemnly, waiting to be called. Others were less subdued, in obvious pain and agitated. She caught a glimpse of the burly security guard standing close by just in case his assistance was needed.

  “Excuse me,” she said to the attendant behind the counter, “have they brought in a Lorenzo Sparks yet?”

  As the attendant typed information into the computer, the faint sound of an ambulance grew closer. “Maybe that’s him now,” Tia said. She waited nervously while they drove into the bay and brought in a patient covered up on a gurney.

  She recognized Lorenzo’s head sticking out from the covers, his Afro smashed down on one side. His eyes were closed, and he was wearing an oxygen mask. An IV was running fluids through a vein in his right hand.

  The paramedics wheeled him toward Tia as she ran to meet them. “This is my husband,” she said. “How is he?”

  “We’ve got him stable.” The paramedic looked at Tia’s nursing uniform. “His pupils are pinpoint, and his vitals and respirations are pretty low. What kind of medication is he on?”

  “Too many,” she said wearily. “He’s been taking a muscle relaxer, a pain reliever, and a sleep aid.”

  “Were the pain reliever and sleep aid over-the-counter or prescribed?”

  “Prescribed,” she said. “All prescribed.”

  The emergency room nurse came over to where they were standing. “You can
put him in room 1-B,” she said.

  Tia followed the paramedics as they took Lorenzo to his room and transferred him to the bed. A lab technician came in to get a few blood samples. And then a nurse came in to check his vital signs again.

  “How is he?” Tia asked wringing her hands.

  “His vitals are stable, but the doctor ordered a gastric lavage,” the nurse said.

  “You mean you’re going to pump his stomach?”

  “That’s right.” she said, preparing Lorenzo to be moved. “Why don’t you wait in the waiting room. The doctor will update you as soon as he can.”

  Tia returned to the waiting room and sat down heavily on one of the oversized cushioned chairs. She stared at the newspaper on the coffee table with its pages old and worn. Although her love for Lorenzo had been through some rough times, it was still mixed in with her DNA, and as much as she wanted to, she could not remove it even though he was unwilling to receive it. The only thing she could do was relegate it to a place in her heart where it remained wrapped up in an emotional cocoon.

  She rested her head on the back of the chair. She wanted to be happy. She told herself she could be as long as the crack inside of her didn’t spread any wider; as long as that internal gulf kept submerging her resentments, she would be happy.

  But the gulf was close to overflowing, and the personal coaching she’d been giving herself off and on for the past two years did little to ease her tension. It had spread down the back of her neck like the malignancy that had spread through the cavities of her marriage, leaving little deposits of unforgiveness within the intricate merger.

  She looked up at the ceiling. Lorenzo’s unemotional attitude may have pushed her toward another man, but in the end, she’d made the choice to do what she’d done. She knew their problems went deeper than just the physical. Their lack of intimacy was just a symptom of something bigger. She just didn’t know what. And because she didn’t know, she had no idea how to fix the problem.

  She closed her eyes. How foolish she’d been to think the answer to her marital problems was in the arms of another man. Her desire to be with Homer had not been based on a physical need. What she had truly craved was an emotional connection, and she thought that was what Homer was offering her. She’d latched on to it even though she knew she was committing an act of sin by stepping outside of her marriage—emotionally or physically.

  She thought about the day Homer had walked up to her in the grocery store two months earlier. She remembered how flustered she’d become when he’d told her that he gave good massages.

  “Oh,” she’d stuttered. “Are . . . are . . . you a masseur?”

  “I can be,” he’d said laughing. “Actually, I’m an accountant.”

  Tia could still see the penetrating look he’d given her.

  “But that also requires the use of my fingers,” he’d said with a serious look on his face.

  She remembered looking at him and not finding anything particularly attractive about him other than the color of his eyes and the sound of his voice. But she’d been grasping at straws, and those two features had been enough.

  “How about we exchange phone numbers,” he’d said pulling out his phone. “You never know when you just might be in need.”

  She’d looked at him. “In need of what?”

  “What have we been talking about?” he asked.

  She remembered the slight smile on his face. “Oh, the massage,” she’d said feeling a little embarrassed.

  “Right.”

  He’d continued to stare at her until she’d had to look away . . . but not before she’d given him her phone number and had accepted his. And by the time she’d made it home from the grocery store, Homer’s number was lighting up on her cell phone.

  She’d told Shari that it was Homer’s deep voice and mesmerizing eyes that had drawn her in. But it actually went beyond that. The real truth was that the only man she’d ever wanted to pay attention to her the way Homer had was her husband. But Lorenzo had wanted nothing to do with her. And the sad part was that she still didn’t know why.

  Although she had betrayed Lorenzo only once, the fire that had burned in her birthed from lust and desire now condemned her, and she could not come to terms with what she had done. She wished she could remove every piece of her skin that she had allowed Homer to touch.

  With her eyes still closed, she lowered her head. Make me over, Lord, she prayed. Please, just make me over.

  An hour went by before the emergency room doctor came out to talk to Tia. “Well,” he spoke softly, “the toxicology screening came back positive for opiates and benzodiazepines. And he’s got a minor concussion from the fall. As you know, we had him undergo a gastric lavage, and we’re going to keep him here overnight for observation. But you can go in and see him now before we transfer him to a room.”

  “Thank you,” she said as she stood up. She was glad she had never worked with this particular doctor or any of the staff on that floor. It would have been such an embarrassment.

  “You’re welcome,” he said as he walked away. “Oh,” he stopped and walked back toward her. “He wouldn’t tell me who’s been prescribing all that medication for him but you might want to get him to stop seeing whoever it is.”

  “I’ve tried,” she said.

  He looked at her with gentle eyes. “I’m not a therapist but getting him into rehab would probably be a good idea.”

  Tia nodded. She waited until the doctor had disappeared around the corner before rising slowly from the chair.

  She went back to the holding unit in the emergency room and walked over to Lorenzo’s bed. He continued staring at the ceiling and did not speak. She reached over to give him a gentle hug, careful not to disrupt the IV tubing that ran from the machine to the top of his hand. His body stiffened like a corpse under her embrace and she quickly released her hold.

  “Who found me?” he asked as he continued to stare at the ceiling.

  “Serenity,” she said, staring straight-ahead. “What happened?”

  “What does it look like happened? I fell.”

  “That’s not what the doctor said.”

  “What?” Lorenzo looked at her with a blank look in his eyes. “Are you telling me that I didn’t fall?”

  “No, you fell,” she said. “But what caused you to fall?”

  Lorenzo returned his gaze to the ceiling.

  The IV pump began beeping at regular intervals. Tia looked at the hanging bag of solution and saw that it was almost gone. Like the bag, she was running on empty, and she didn’t know how much longer she would be able to handle Lorenzo’s unemotional state. She looked back at him. “What’s wrong, Lorenzo?” She placed her hand on the bed rail. “What’s really wrong?”

  He remained silent as he choked back the tears he knew would come as soon as he opened his mouth.

  She touched his shoulder gently. “Tell me.”

  He looked at her and rolled his eyes.

  She stood next to his bedside feeling completely useless.

  Just then, the nurse came in, and Tia picked up her purse to leave.

  “The bag is almost empty,” she said to the nurse as she walked angrily out of the room.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Tia sat in her car in the hospital parking structure. She started the engine and let the car warm up, then lowered her head onto the steering wheel. What was wrong with Lorenzo? Why did he hate her so?

  The past thirteen years of their marriage hadn’t been easy. She’d had to get used to Lorenzo’s episodes of gloominess, and the hardest part had been never knowing when they were going to occur or even why they occurred. Still, their years together hadn’t been all bad. There had been some good times too, some beautiful times, and she had held on to them.

  She remembered the drives she and Lorenzo would take to Milwaukee when Serenity had been younger. Sometimes they’d drive the whole way back without speaking. And Tia would be amazed at the connection that flowed between them in
the silence.

  At the end of those drives, Lorenzo would park the car in the garage and say, “That was a nice drive.”

  And Tia would respond. “Yes, it was beautiful.”

  She remembered the silly jokes she told that made him giggle, and how just him smiling would make her smile. And she remembered how they would study the Bible together, often searching for answers to questions that one or the other had.

  As time went by, Tia began to notice a decrease in the number of intimate times she and Lorenzo shared. And when there was an occasion, it seemed as if he was just going through the motions.

  It was during Serenity’s eleventh year that Tia noticed a distinct change in Lorenzo. The severity of his sullen moods increased, and he became distant and emotionally unavailable. Trying to talk to him about his behavior had been useless. He would either deny that anything was wrong or he’d give her short, snappy answers in an attempt to shut her up.

  Droplets of moisture fell from her eyes and landed on the bottom of the steering wheel. What had happened? She couldn’t do this much longer. It was too much. Even now, lying in a hospital bed, he still had nothing nice to say to her.

  “Father, help me,” she cried. Her shoulders heaved up and down rapidly. “It’s too much. It’s just too much!” She shook her head from side to side. “How much do you want me to bear, Lord? I can’t do this.” She folded her arms and began rocking back and forth. “Give me strength,” she whispered as her tears subsided. “Give me strength.”

  The air flowing from the car vents began to feel warm as Tia slowly pulled out of the parking structure. She looked at the digital clock on the dashboard. It was almost 8:00 p.m. It had been a long day, and the nausea rising in the center of her stomach reminded her that she hadn’t had anything to eat since she’d left for church that morning, and then headed straight to Serenity’s audition.

  She drove the several miles home quickly. When she pulled into her garage, the only thing on her mind was eating something and going to sleep. She didn’t have the energy—mentally or physically—for anything else. She left the garage door up while she called Shari. The phone rang once before Shari answered.