THE REPEATED NOISES AROUND me were disturbed today, something happened and Shannon left me. I know she left, I heard her go. She doesn’t talk to me when she is here the others all do. Shannon is silent, but her cold presence and smell fill the room when she is here. I wonder why she is still here, she could have run away.
Today she left and when she returned something was different. She didn’t kiss my cheek with her cold empty kiss, she just walked back out the sound of her heels leaving the room empty again. I hope she comes back. I feel a horrible sense of loss at the thought of her not returning to me. The door closing sounded strangely final this time.
I can sense even in my sleep that she is dangerous right now and I cannot help the feeling that I need to wake up and stop her from whatever it is that has changed her. The silence is swallowed by noises in the halls and the traffic of the rooms around me and I let my mind drift away again. I am not ready to face the reality I have created.
Rowan, Lauri and I eat on the patio of their home. The food is so good I cannot help, but shovel it down. The sun is setting over the vineyards and we laugh and chat. Lauri’s colourful skin is showing from under her shirt and when she holds Rowans tattooed hand it is as if they were made from the same piece of cloth. Two people made so perfectly to fit together. I watch them longing to find the same thing for myself.
The quiet of my dreams is shattered by Art’s voice in my ear. He sounds desperate. His voice has emotion in it, not the machine he normally is. He has lost his patience and speaks with urgency.
“Callum, if you are fucking in there hiding away now would be a fucking good time to wake up. Your fiancé is going to kill her mother. Sahib is laundering your money and something is wrong at home I cannot seem to get any news from anyone there. They will only talk to you. So wake the fuck up, people out here need you. I am not coming to sit next to this fucking bed again. Tomorrow I am going to leave.” I know he is serious Art never says something unless he means it, my heart sinks at how I am letting them all down. I should have gone home a long time ago. This was all supposed to end with Neil. I am going to kill Sahib his betrayal, no one will take what is mine ever again. I just need to wake up and forget this pull to stay here and float in my past.
I know I have to make a choice to live or die right now. I have let myself stay in this limbo for too long. I have to fight now. Just open your eyes Callum that’s all that is stopping you. Your eyelids are the only thing in the way. I hear the machines in my room start to beep louder and I feel what can only be explained as panic burn in my chest as my heart goes too fast it is going to explode. My muscles begin to burn and every breath that I suck in is hard to let out again. The best part is that I actually feel it. I can feel and I can see my friend and a flurry of medical staff all around me. He is holding my hand too tight and he smells of whiskey and cigarettes but I can see his tired eyes looking into mine and he is smiling at me. Art never smiles, ever.
I cannot separate the voices it is all noise. The lights are blinding me and I feel like I have a hangover from the whole bottle of scotch. Something went horribly wrong and now I can finally try and fix it.
I feel the air turn to ice and I smell her before I see her. Then Art whispers in my ear. “She is already killing you Callum be careful of the devil that you love.” Before he lets go of my hand and walks out of my room as if his job is done. I know he is telling the truth when the look in her eyes is the one I have seen when she plays with her prey and not that of a happy fiancé. I don’t care if she is killing me I cannot make my heart stop loving her, not even if I wanted to. It stops just at the sight of her and I immediately want to say sorry for the times I hurt her I want to make her love me back. I want her. I ache to hold her again, to make love to her body and soul. I need her to stay alive.
I close my eyes again, it was so much easier not facing all of this. I changed my mind.
“Don’t you fucking dare go back to sleep. You promised me normal and it is way overdue, you wake up and we fix this shit Callum, you don’t get to go back to sleep.” She whispers in my ear, but there is venom in every word. I don’t get to go back to sleep. I might never be able to sleep again.
I HAVE WATCHED HER EVERY SINGLE day for twenty months now add something to his feeding tube, it took me months to find what it was. I thought she was trying to make him stay asleep. God I wouldn’t blame her, she may be a murderous whore, but he hurt her. I know what a monster he is. I checked what it was and was surprised to find it was a simple pain killer, nothing that would keep him comatose. So why, did she care? Was she trying to keep him pain-free, he wasn’t hurt anymore he was just wasting away becoming a living ghost I can’t even remember his voice any longer. I spoke to the man every day for years I shouldn’t be able to forget. He saved my life and I am forgetting him.
When she still didn’t stop, I did some more digging and what I found was sinister, clever and made my stomach roll with terror. She was giving him cancer, every single day she dosed him with a drug that would without a doubt in that dosage cause cancer of the kidneys. She really was poisonous and heartless. Yet in some moments she seems to genuinely love him. I cannot begin to understand their feelings, I don’t even think they do. I watched them through the window one night as they fucked while a man was dying on the floor in front of them. They cannot be saved from each other.
I couldn’t do anything to stop her while he slept, but fuck me if I cannot try and make him wake up. Something is very wrong at home and Sahib is stealing the company’s money and she is killing him slowly. Amya won’t take my calls or isn’t getting my messages, I am worried. I need to go and talk to the girl I was supposed to kill but watched over instead. I need to set things right with Amya before I die.
I have done this too long. I am tired. I want to walk away. I am going to. If Callum doesn’t wake up after I speak to him tonight, I am going to leave. I won’t sit at his bedside any longer watching him die at her hand. I want a life, the life he promised me when this all began years ago. I am not going to live in limbo any longer the last twenty months have felt like an eternity in hell. I don’t want this anymore. I want something else.
I simply want more.
I sit next to the skeleton in the bed and I talk to him, I don’t believe for a second he hears us or he would have woken up by now. I never hear her speak to him, in fact, she is almost always silent she only ever says what has to be said nothing more. I tell him that this is it, I am going to walk away I won’t sit at his bedside any longer.
I don’t believe in God or miracles, I believe in the human heart and our own strength to overcome and survive. But there in front of my eyes nothing short of a miracle. He wakes up, he opens those evil fucking green eyes and I see it in an instant his monster is dead. He isn’t the same man that I have been loyal to all my life. He is broken beyond the physical and I know that I will still walk away from them today. I want nothing more to do with this life, I am getting old it is time for me to find my own home.
There are doctors and nurses and the chaos that ensues hurts even my ears. I hold his hand and wait it out. I wait until she gets there. I know I cannot save him from her. He loves her. I won’t watch her kill him I am walking away now. “She is already killing you Callum be careful of the devil you love.” Those are the words I leave my friend with as I leave his room and I leave this life of ours behind.
My debt to him is paid back a thousand times. I need to go and make peace with my past.
IN AN INSTANT, I KNEW THAT he knew. One look and we both knew too much. He is different.
After twenty months, his mind is intact, but his body will need time to heal and won’t ever be the same as it was before. The doctors explain that he may have had mental trauma that needed to recover so his brain remained shut off. I know Art said something to wake him, I also know that somehow Art knows I am killing him, but Art is gone in that moment he walked out of our lives. I doubt he will return his goodbye seemed to carry a finality in it when he left. It is just me an
d Callum now. I am not alone anymore, as long as I have him
He never said one word of it, I went back to my original toothpaste plan of action and he slowly got better and his body began to recover some strength. I know he will never be the man he was before he left me to go and kill his brother. I don’t know what made him snap and do it that night, but Callum is different now and I am not sure what to make of him. I will never be sorry for killing him. I just wish I had done it quickly. This needy suffering is making me want to put a pillow over his snivelling head and end it all now. I love him too much to kill him and that is killing me.
He is indifferent to me as if he can already sense the depth of my betrayal. I do know that something in me is softening as I care for him. I have never cared for or looked after anybody who wasn’t a patient before. Not even my mother, who I killed the day Callum woke up. I gave her a dose of vitamin K that caused a fatal stroke. The high just wasn’t the same without him watching me, I didn’t feel the release and the cycle is still not complete. When it was done, I closed her door and walked away from the past and into my future with Callum. Art may not be here, but I know he would make good on his threat if I decided to walk away, I would still die. In truth, something invisible ties me to Callum and I know it is more than veiled threats that keep me by his side. I want what we became together, I need it. My compulsions have changed and I cannot get what I need from a kill without him. I want him healed, but broken. I need him to be a monster or else these feelings are useless.
My thoughts are a tornado of confusion while he was unconscious I was split between wanting him to wake up and wanting him to just give up and die. Now I am torn between the happiness of him waking up and the disappointment that he isn’t dead. Not only that but the tug at my heart where I want nothing more than to hate him something else has started to fester, something dangerously close to real love. Every time I feel it surface the guilt sucks me in, I have never felt guilt for anything in my life, it is what makes killing so easy, so effortless, but I feel it for Callum. You feel guilty about killing him Shannon and you should not. You should not feel it at all just another face you’ll see when you close your eyes.
Callum has made me care for him, the weight of the diamond on my finger and the whispering of love in my heart will torture me forever because I know I am killing the one thing I love. I just cannot stop, even if I do the chances are it is too late now, the Phenacetin will have destroyed his kidneys and tumours will have already started grow. He won’t die now, not for a long time, but he will die because of what I have done. “Shannon you are going to be a death sentence to anyone who gets near you, just stay away from them all.” My father’s words when he found out what I was doing for fun. He was furious with me for making my silent pact with Neil, because he had to share me now.
Callum will get to see the torture of me watching him die. Somehow deep down, he knows. He always knew I would.
There was an exact moment when I felt love for the first time in my life. I was free of my family and my past and my heart could beat free and I felt it strangling me from the inside out. Love, I did not hate Callum I loved him with all the fire of hell, but it was love none the less. In realising what I felt and truly being able to feel, I could feel his love for me and see how it blinded him to how dangerous I was. Because I am now blind too. I feel the two parts of me pulling apart, two separate pieces of the same soul. The killer, because I know I will still kill, and the woman. I am free of what was expected and I can just be. As I watch him fight to get well, battling his therapists and Doctors every step of the way. I see him becoming himself, but also someone new. It settles deep into my black heart. I will never get rid of it now. I love him and it hurts. The worst pain I have ever felt makes my hands shake and my heart flutters. I let a tear sneak free as I watch him push himself to get well and it makes me happy. I am not so sure I like the way happy feels. Angry, bitter and resentful are all I have known for so very long.
I watch him struggle back to life as he fights the limitations of his weak body and fragile state of mind. He has put the monster to bed, but the monster is only sleeping. I know that there will be a time when I see the monster again. He speaks to me as if he never laid his hands on me as if the scars on my skin are not from his torture. He either doesn’t remember or chooses to ignore the physical abuse he so easily inflicted on my body. I elect to ignore it, to bury it with my mother and all the other shit that my past had heaped on me over the years. I want to take the fact that he has woken up as a new beginning for the both of us. I choose to love him because I have a choice at last. This has to be love, what else could it be?
Callum is frustrated at his frailty and the need to stay in the hospital. The bite of anger starts to build slowly over the weeks as they pass by at a snail’s pace for us both. We fall into a rhythm of me taking care of him and him needing me to. I feel quiet inside, there is no grey, no black there is nothing but him consuming every corner of my mind. Art’s stories of his childhood etched in my head, the birth of the monster was just as brutal as my own. I flashback to the first time we had sex, he told me he wasn’t normal and that he would take what he needed from me whether I wanted to give it him or not. As he bound, beat and raped me my mind shrieked and I fought against him as hard as I could only making him want to hurt me more. As hard as I fought it my body was attracted to it, responded to it. I was so ashamed of it. Now I would give anything to have that night over again.
I may be in love with Callum, but my lady bits are still very much in lust with the idea of him beating the shit out of me. But he won’t touch me, he barely looks at me. Not even a peck on the cheek. His cold rejection now that I can admit the feelings I have to myself, hurts me even more. I miss him so much. I dream of his touch, the ones that hurt and those that didn’t I want him to take me body and soul. I want to be his again.
Four weeks of this dance, of not saying anything when we talk before we finally broke down and it was all out there in the open. Shattered, splintered and smashed into a million shards of what we were. Callum didn’t speak at first he didn’t need to, he simply reached for me and took my hand as we walked to his room, his grip not strong like before it was softer. We walked from the rehab centre in silence and the sound of my heels clicking on the floor surrounding us. His steps are determined and for the first time since he woke up he is standing tall and even though it is just a shadow I see the Callum from before. He pulls me gently into his room and closes the door and the curtain that stops anyone from looking in. His breaths are short and heavy, and I can feel the electric tug that pulled us together in the beginning as he snakes his arms around me. His touch burns like fire, every movement another lick of the flames. He pulls me close and holds me to his chest the smell of him is making my senses tingle, and I am alive with a burst of feelings I have not felt before. A want like no other, I want him, and it is an honest want. I no longer need Callum to keep me safe from monsters, him included, I want him to keep me safe from myself.
He looks into my soul with his green eyes, the evil is gone and lust and love are all I can see when he moves even closer. I feel his breaths warm on my skin and his heaving chest pressed firmly against mine, my nipples react shamelessly to the friction. I can’t look knowing what I have done, I rest my head against his chest turning from his gaze and he whispers softly into my hair. My guilt smothers the tenderness of this moment. When he speaks to me the venom from before is gone and he bleeds words so full of feeling, I want to run away from him. My heart beats too fast because he touches me, my mind won’t focus clearly and I understand why love makes us stupid.
“I am sorry for the things I have done to you, I am sorry for hurting you. I love you to the point of madness Shannon, I love you enough to let you walk out of the door right now if that is what you need to be happy.” His words become static after that and my mind says run. Run for your life Shannon, but my heart breaks and I have to tell him the truth. Shattered shards of all the years that came b
efore him break off and I know for the first time ever who I am. I am toxic, I am a murderer, but under it all I am a person and he loves me. I see him waiting for my reply, for my rejection.
“Callum I am not going to walk out the door, not unless you ask me to after I tell you some hard truths. Then if you want I will walk away and never look back, but if you can see past what I have to say and still truly love me I will stay. I will stay because Callum, for the first time ever I know I love something, I love you.” I push away from him breaking his hold on me. I don’t want him to touch me while I tell him what I have done.
His eyes glint with tears threatening to betray his outer strength and I know my actions will crush him. In a moment of hesitation and conscience, I change my mind and I resign myself to live with this secret on my soul forever. I will love him, care for him, nurse and bury him for what I have done, but I don’t think I can ever tell him all of it. “I tried to kill you while you were asleep,” I say the words, I speak the lie looking him in the eye hoping he sees it and calls me out. Hoping he sends me away because I don’t have the strength to walk away when I know I should. He doesn’t say a word, he looks wounded. My lip trembles with the tears that I desperately try to hold back. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I love you, and I am so sorry. The words fill my head but don’t come out of my mouth.
“I am sorry Callum, I was drowning in all of this, I have lost myself and I didn’t know how to cope so I did what I always did before. It didn’t work, I couldn’t kill you because my heart only beats with yours and I love you. If you die, I die.” I feel my tears burning and stinging as they fall down my cheeks and the weight of my actions falls heavier on my heart. “You changed me, you changed how I work and I cannot make it go back. I cannot get the high or the satisfaction without you. I need you so deeply that I am afraid of what I would become without you. My compulsions were always grey, there is no grey without you, and you are the white that I need to make my black heart grey. I thought I hated you, it burned in me you are one of them. You are just like the ones who made me this way. The thing is the line between love and hate is so thin that I was dancing on the wrong side of it. You are not them; you came to save me from them. Because love burns, love scorches through me when I am with you and I am alive. Hate is as cold as the ice that was in my veins as I spat on your brother's coffin when it sank into the damp earth. Hate is all I ever knew until you. ” I let my own tears leak down my cheeks and the little part of my heart that isn’t completely broken beats just for him. I don’t know how to do this, how to feel these things. I think I should walk away and save him from me. If he ever finds out the truth he will kill me and I know it. This love will only ever hurt us, but I want it so badly I cannot leave. All, I ever wanted, was real love I can’t let it go now.
Monochrome My Madness Page 21