by Bo Reid
“Please tell me you got the son of a bitch,” he whispers in my ear, and I smile.
“Of course, I did.”
Basically, he’s the cool uncle that condones murder. Even if he isn’t really my uncle.
Chapter 6: Batrachotoxin
Morana
We meet Deputy Austin out front of my childhood home where my father was recently murdered. We’re here to pick up an outfit for the funeral and any other things that he wished to be buried with. At least that’s the official reason we’re here.
We’re not supposed to go into the office as it’s still an active crime scene, but I think we’ve already established my direct inability to do as I’m told.
Ranger stands in the entryway talking with Deputy Austin while I look around the office for key pieces of evidence. Austin’s a good guy. We went to high school with him and of course, he knows all about us. He played on the football team, but he wasn’t a mega douchebag. He was one of the few that actually understood what the word ‘no’ meant the first time it was used.
This town’s made up of three types of people: those that pretend they aren’t afraid of Valdis blood; those that don’t try to hide their fear; and those that have an appropriate amount of apprehension. Those people generally fall into the category of not-so-legal activities themselves.
Ranger and Austin could’ve been good friends if it wasn’t for me, they would’ve partied together. Instead, Ranger was busy burying dead bodies. They could’ve picked up girls together. Instead, Ranger was stuck watching me slit throats. All their lives could’ve been different had it not been for me. Yet, I’m selfish enough to never want to let any of them go, even if I ruin them by keeping them here.
I shake my head clear of the damage I’ve caused to their lives and move quickly around the room, searching in all my father’s secret nooks and crannies that only I know about.
“Morana, if anything happens to me, you look in here and you’ll find all our secrets.”
“What kind of secrets, dad?” I ask in a small sleepy voice.
Dad’s a large man with a kind smile. Everyone likes him and Hades, but I hide behind them in a crowd. I’m much smaller than my brother, but dad lifts me high onto his shoulders like a princess for all to see.
I wish I could tell him I’m not the princess in the tower, I’m the dragon guarding it. The monster that just wants to be left alone, tucked into the darkness, locked away in a cave, never to be dragged into the spotlight.
“You’ll learn them soon enough my dear, but for now I want you to always remember where our secrets are hidden. They might save your life one day. Okay? Can you do that, my dear? Can you remember where to find these things?” He kneels in front of me and holds my small hands in his large ones.
Silently begging me to remember what he’s saying.
“Of course, daddy, I’ll remember.” I always remember; even the things I’m not supposed to hear, not supposed to know. I remember those things too.
“Good girl,” he says before planting a kiss on my forehead and sending me back to bed where I dream of fog and darkness.
Dreams that would make others shake with fear are the things that make me smile. Even I know that’s wrong, and yet the bright and happy things aren’t what bring me joy. Only darkness and pain and sorrow are what spread a smile across my face.
I push on the oversized oak desk till it exposes the corner of the rug. Throwing it back I kneel on the floor and pry up the floorboards. Hidden under everything is a safe. I quickly punch in the code, a fifteen-digit random sequence of numbers. A code no one would be able to remember by heart unless of course they created it, or have an IQ of one hundred and sixty-five. Dad made me learn the code when I was five and repeat it back to him on demand.
It didn’t matter where we were or what we were doing, if he asked for the numbers, I would need to be able to rattle them off without any mistakes.
Wrenching open the safe door I spot exactly what I’m after. I pull the satchel out of the safe, thumbing through the papers quickly before closing the safe door, relocking it, then putting the office back in order.
I move to the bookshelf in the corner pulling out The Damned and the Beautiful, a leather-bound book that holds more secrets than words. A small video camera sits in the binding of the book. I created the set-up when I was eighteen after we were getting ready to move into the warehouse. The camera auto records every twenty-four hours, then transmits to a secure network within the house.
It’s unhackable from outside the walls of this office, and you couldn’t even find the signal if you didn’t know where to look. I grab the book and toss it into the bag.
I check the remaining more obvious hiding places, a safe behind a stupid painting, the locked drawers in his desk.
Here’s the thing about hiding places: if you don’t use any of the obvious ones, people will look until they find your secrets. But if they think you kept your secrets behind the picture like a bad mob movie, they stop looking when they crack it open.
They never think to move the desk, flip over the rug, and pry up a certain floorboard, unless you give them a reason to keep looking. So, make it easy for them. People rarely like to work for what they want.
I exit the office and make my way down the hallway to my father’s room. Searching through his closet I pull out his most expensive suit, a crisp white undershirt, Rolex, diamond cufflinks, and his expensive Italian loafers.
Whoever said you can’t take it with you when you go didn’t know Aeron Valdis.
I open his tie drawer and my breath catches in my throat. Reaching my hand out I thumb the first tie. It’s really nothing special, but I haven’t seen him wear it for years.
When Hades and I were six years old we went with our dad to the tailor. He said we could pick out a special tie. Hades and I argued over which one to get for him. Hades wanted something bright and fun. Like him. I wanted something dark and serious. Like me. Even at six years old we were opposites.
In the end, we picked an aqua blue tie with gold pinstripes. It was the ugliest goddamn thing I’d ever seen. I asked the lady at the counter for a tie clip with a little skull on it. She said they didn’t have any, but she could order one, and she did. When the clip was sent to our house, I wrapped it up in black tissue paper that Lucinda bought for me and presented it to my father.
He wore that ugly tie with the little skull tie clip to every one of our performances. For every sports game Hades played, for every piano recital I was in.
He was present for every martial arts award ceremony and every dance performance. He never missed a single event, and he was never seen without that ugly tie.
Until Hades died. Then there were no more events to attend. I figured he threw this away or at least hid it in the back of his closet like he hid away the rest of the memories too painful to relive each day. But no, it’s right here, front and center where he’d see it every damn day.
“Morana, Love, are you almost done? Austin says time’s up,” I hear Ranger call from the hallway as he knocks lightly on the door.
I quickly wipe away tears I hadn’t realized were dripping down my cheek.
“Yeah. I’m done,” I call out, grabbing the ugly tie and adding it to the garment bag holding the rest of fathers expensive suit.
I suddenly wish I wasn’t such a monster, that I was a better daughter. A better sister. That I could’ve just been the princess he wanted me to be.
That Hades wasn’t killed, that my father was still here. That I hadn’t let the last few years get between us.
That I could crawl into my father’s strong arms after a bad dream. That he could tuck me in and tell me the dark is nothing to fear because without the dark there would be no light.
Without a monster, we wouldn’t have a hero. He just didn’t realize I was the monster in my own nightmares.
I wish I still had my dad; I wish I was still that little girl who was told where to find the secrets.
I just wi
sh I could be better.
“Hey, Pretty Girl, you good?” Hunter asks as I stare out the window of our apartment without seeing anything around me.
“Huh? Oh yeah, I’m fine, just thinking,” I say as I turn to face him, giving him a smile that’s fake as fuck, but I don’t want him to worry.
He raises one eyebrow at me. Busted. “You’re not, but I’ll let it go for now. Have you looked through any of this stuff yet?” he asks, motioning to the papers, notebooks, and recordings spread across the coffee table.
“Not yet,” I say, shaking my head.
“Do you want to do it now? I can help you, but I’m not sure what we’re supposed to be looking for.”
“Yeah, let’s get started. Here,” I say, handing him the book with the camera in it.
He takes it, turning it over in his hands, “You know I’m not much of a reader.”
I roll my eyes at him while taking the book back, and sit down to start peeling the binding off. I pop out the small camera and the attached hard drive that auto stores everything. Plugging the small drive into my laptop I press the mouse a few times and bring up the last recordings.
It would’ve kept recording even after my father’s death so we should be able to see everyone that’s come in and out of his office since then. And see what they’d done while inside.
“Damn, is that his office?!” Hunter asks in surprise, and I smile at him.
“Yup. Care to see what’s been going on in there for the last four years?” His eyes get wide as saucers.
“Four years?” he shrieks like a little girl.
Shrugging, I say, “Yeah, I made this before we moved out, just in case.”
“Do you have anything like this here?” he asks sounding just slightly worried.
“Maybe,” I singsong. “Why? You worried, Hunter?”
“Me? Worried? No, just curious,” he says but I bet he starts thumbing through all our books to see if he can find anything. He won’t.
Sometimes I forget that the guys might know I’m smart if my straight A’s and 4.0 GPA were ever a hint. But they don’t know that father had my IQ tested after high school. They don’t know I have a near-photographic memory, that I received full-ride scholarships and research grants from every university in Northern America. Not to mention the personal invitation to study at Notre Dame.
Just more secrets, more walls that I’m not willing to give up just yet.
But clearly none of that mattered because, well, I’m just your everyday, average, run-of-the-mill psychopath. I mean, I’m not technically; I can’t be a psychopath because I have the ability to love and form attachments. But I’m too smart, too calculated, and my behavior’s too controlled to be a sociopath. So, I really don’t know what I am.
You know what, let’s put a pin in the whole psychopath vs sociopath debate and come back to it at a later date. M’kay?
“Here.” I turn my laptop towards Hunter and pass him a notebook. “Watch through these recordings. You can skip through the hours no ones in the office. Start at today and work your way backward. Mark down every time stamp where someone’s present, or when there are phone calls made. Note every person you recognize in the video, and any other details you see even if it doesn’t seem important.”
Hunter nods, focusing on the video. “Why don’t we just start at the night he was killed?”
I start thumbing through the papers from the floorboard safe. “I want every single detail gone over. If we start with our endpoint we won't know how we got there. We need all the details before we dive into this,” I explain.
Going back to the papers in front of me, there are countless forms in here: notes on business dealings and meetings, bank statements for our offshore accounts, background checks, and notes on all our ‘employees,’ past, present, and possible future ones. There are even files on every member of every organization we deal with. His old calendars are in here too. Father always kept meticulous notes on everything.
I grab a file marked ‘TWINS’ and start pulling out papers. I have to blink back more tears. Awards, school pictures, drawings, report cards, attendance records, everything Hades or I ever did as children up until the day he died is all here. It’s like when he died so did I, and in a way a part of me did.
When that last piece of my soul died, the last thing that made me human left, nothing else mattered except my kill rate. I’m sure if I look hard enough I could even find that father kept records on that as well.
Ours is the thickest file in the satchel. Why he felt he needed to hide this stuff with our important documents I’ll never know.
“Dad! I drew this for you at school!” Hades yells as he barrels down the hallway towards dad’s office.
He throws open his door stepping out into the hallway just in time to catch Hades as he rockets into his arms. I walk slowly towards them with my drawing crumbled in my hand and my head hung low.
Dad gushes over the colors and the stick figures Hades put on his paper using crayons, and the puffs he glued on for clouds.
Stopping in front of them, I peer into dad’s office to see four men standing and sitting around his desk. Two are wearing jeans and leather vests, the backs have a giant picture of an angel skeleton with the words “Fallen Angels MC.” The other two men are in suits. One’s Mr. Ashby. He’s always here. The other’s a man I’ve never seen before.
I scan his features, cataloging them away in my memory. The way his suit’s meant to look expensive but even I can tell it doesn’t come close to fathers. He wants to be someone but he isn’t, at least not yet.
When father catches where my gaze has drifted, he reaches back to shut his office door. “Morana, did you draw something as well?” he asks me and reaches a hand out to take my paper. I hesitate, but hand it to him, lowering my head again.
My picture doesn’t look like Hades', it doesn’t look like any of the other kids’ drawings either. The teacher didn’t say it was wrong, but she didn’t gush over the pretty colors like she did with the other kids. She never says I’m wrong, she’s very careful not to use that word, but I can see the way she looks at me. She might not know just how wrong I am, but she knows I’m not like the others.
“What’s this of, my dear?” he asks as he kneels down in front of me, setting Hades on the floor.
I shrug my shoulders, but he reaches a gentle hand out to my chin, making me look into his eyes. Eye contact is important, I know that, but it’s hard for me.
“You don’t bow your head to anyone, my dear, not even me,” he whispers, quiet but firm.
“We were supposed to draw our family, our house,” Hades says.
“It’s home,” I say and shrug.
“What is this?” he asks pointing to the dark structure.
“That’s our house, that’s the tower where the hero is,” I say. He smiles a little.
“And this?” He asks.
“That’s the monster,” I say.
“And is the monster guarding the hero?” he asks, but I shake my head.
“No, she’s protecting the hero.”
“That doesn’t sound like a monster then,” he replies as Hades loses interest and runs off to find Lucinda and get a snack.
“Morana, my dear, will you explain this? I just want you to tell me what you see,” he says gently.
“This is our house, it’s big and dark like a castle.” He nods, settling onto the floor so I can climb into his lap. “And this is where the hero is. See, it’s bright, cause heroes are bright. And this is the monster, she’s dark cause there can’t be heroes without the dark,” I explain.
“And who’s the hero?”
“Hades.”
“And who do you think the monster is?”
“Me,” I say quietly.
“Why, my dear?” he asks.
“Because you can’t have one without the other, and Hades’ the light, so I have to be the dark,” I explain, and I see it in his eyes when the tears prick but don’t fall.
“My dear, that’s not how it works. You can be the light too. There’s plenty of darkness already,” he says, but I shake my head. I know I’m the dark, I just am.
“No daddy, I have to be the dark. But I can protect the light. I promise to always protect Hades,” I tell him before he wraps me in his arms, unable to speak.
The door to his office opens up once more, and the men inside call out impatiently to him. He takes our drawings into his office, and the other man in a suit stares at me until the door closes.
And more secrets are hidden away.
But I know where to find the secrets.
“Pretty Girl…Morana… Morana…Hey, come back,” I faintly hear Hunter calling me. A slight shake of my shoulder has me blinking my eyes and returning from my memories.
That’s the thing about a photographic memory, you don’t just remember things, you relive them. The good, the bad, everything. Memories don’t discriminate from your pain, and a memory that might bring smiles and laughter to someone else is like a dagger straight to my cold heart.
My memories just remind me how different I’ve always been. They tell the story of my life; they bring back the pain as I beg for the numbness to wash over me. I don’t like to feel; it never ends well for me.
“Hey, are you okay? Where did you go?” he asks as he tries to take the pictures from me.
Quickly I shove them back into the folder. “Nowhere, they’re just stupid pictures we drew as kids. It’s nothing,” I say as I go to grab another folder.
“Morana, are you okay?” he asks again, squeezing my shoulder gently.
I shrug his hand off. “Yeah. Like I said, just a stupid memory.”
“Okay, well, I think I found something.”