by Kingsley Ash
He’s completely hammered.
Arseholes and alcohol.
‘The hell you want to know?’ I say. A vague warning flares in my head.
He flashes his sharp teeth. ‘Why’d you think? Because she’s the hottest babe in here. The kinda chick you wish all girls look like.’
I’m gonna bring the fucking walls down around his head.
‘You really gonna do this?’ I warn him, sweat rolling down my shoulder blades.
Henry’s still pissed with me, still set on the lie that I was hitting on his girl.
He blanks me. Turns to Amy. ‘You look hot, babe.’
My mind pops and a fire sparks inside my head.
If he keeps pushing it, we’re gonna fight. I can taste the certainty of it in the air.
‘You wanna keep your teeth in your mouth?’ I say.
‘Listen,’ Henry says to Amy, ‘I know you’re his date, but he’s a total screw-up. A wreck. Everyone knows it and you deserve somebody who isn’t fucked up.’
At fourteen, I created a whole new personality. I was bigger, thanks to a growth spurt and lifting weights in Jake’s garden. I was more skilled in fighting. I was more skilled in the art of not fighting too. Watching the older guys taught me that a lot of battles were won by simply looking like you were ready to smack someone up.
‘You need to back off, Henry,’ I clench out.
Any other time, and I’d beat him faceless.
I stand up and tell Amy it’s time for us to go. No way in hell am I gonna let this prick blurt out something that’ll fuck up my plans to fix her.
When we go to leave, Henry takes Amy’s arm, his grip tight as he tries to steer her away.
‘Come on, babe, just one dance. Fuck, I’ve always wanted to party with the Mayor’s hot-as-fuck daughter.’
Time doesn’t slow down. Everything’s in fast-forward.
And I explode.
Faster than a shooting bullet, I grab the side of Henry’s shoulder with my fist and crush my forearm against his throat. I smash his back against the wall behind.
I am going to slowly kill him.
I hear Amy beg, ‘Please don’t do this,’ but the monster inside me is smothered in the dark. I can’t fucking control myself.
I lower my head like a bull and crush Henry’s windpipe like it’s putty in my hand.
‘I will kill you if you ever touch her again. I’ll fucking rip out your fucking guts. I’ll fucking kill you, you little bitch.’
I draw back a fist with my free hand, ready to crack in Henry’s head. But then I hear Amy’s voice like an angel through the fires of Hell.
‘Please don’t do this, Shepherd. Please, you’re scaring me.’
I turn to her, my forearm still crushing Henry to an inch of his life. Amy’s eyes are pooling with tears, brimming with fear.
It’s the wrong everything.
The gut-wrenching feeling that hits me smears the world into a pounding blur. The pain keeps time with my heart, distorting my mind, one beat at a time.
Amy is looking at me, eyes wide with horror.
It’s too late to turn back the clock, end bad decisions. Whatever lies I spin to the outside world, I am naked under her eye.
Ugly.
Wrong.
Liar.
Monster.
I release Henry. His mate stands behind him, trying to pull his drunk friend away. Henry threatens something I couldn’t give two shits about, then scurries away. The next time he snakes his way into my club, I’ll break his goddamn legs.
Amy and I leave The Wicked Witch.
We drive in total silence.
My heart feels like it’s full of stones and dirt. Toxic dust.
Amy can’t look at me.
I can’t stop looking at her.
We reach Swan Lake. Amy gets out of the car. I open my mouth to say something, to take in some air. But all I can feel are those rocks inside my damned heart.
I watch her until I see her safely inside the building.
I’ll always remember that first night in prison. Lights out, I was too wired to sleep so I lay down on my bunk and listened to the sounds coming from the other cells. Laughter, shouting, whooping, people banging on the bars. Sounds of excitement, manic happiness, frustration and anger. It was like listening to the calls of animals in the darkness of a jungle night. Predators and prey. I knew which I was going to have to be if I wanted to survive.
I was just fifteen. Locked up twenty-three hours a day.
No sunshine.
Unwanted.
Trash.
The scared little kid I used to be . . . he was back. I lived to survive death on a daily basis from other inmates, using violence to stay off a beating, a stabbing.
I place a hand on the left side of my V-line, exactly where my scar lies. Violence was my life. But now, now I’m realising I want something else.
I bash the steering wheel with my fist three times, and scream manically.
I’ve broken the only promise I made that wasn’t a fucking lie.
I’ve just broken Amy’s heart for the second time.
No wonder I scar my body with tattoos — memoirs cemented into my skin of all the shit I’ve seen, felt.
Just like my scars. Just like my name. A constant fucking reminder of pain. How can I ever hope to give back Amy her happiness — happiness I killed in her — when I hold on to pain so tightly my whole goddamned visage reeks of it?
Fuck but this is all a mistake. A huge mistake. Not just this mission to find my father, or coming back to Greystone, but Amy, too — a huge fucking mistake.
I get out of the car and go up to my room, pent up and angry and not sure what I’m gonna do. I want to pound my fists into something as my thoughts spiral quickly out of control. I understand then that Amy is a never. Love be damned — love isn’t enough for us.
My throat feels tight and I swallow hard at that realisation. If love is wanting someone to be happy then it doesn’t matter how much I love Amy because I know I can never make her happy.
I broke her teenage spirit and Amy’s probably never been truly happy since then. What makes me so vain, so conceited, so fucking presumptuous to think I can provide her with that?
I’m a freak. I know that. I even fucking enjoy it. I enjoy the looks of fear I provoke in other men. I enjoy the way I can overpower any man. I enjoy my superiority — so what if I’m mad in the head? I’m better than them!
But I am the cost.
The nice kid — the boy Amy used to love — gone. Dead.
Now I’m jaded, emotionally stunted, socially confused. I’m nothing Amy needs. Oh yeah sure, I can offer her a pitiful reprieve from her pain, offer her my body and my bed, but love? A relationship? What do those things even mean to a man who has no parents, no role models, nothing but a past riddled with violence and torture?
I stare at myself in the bathroom mirror, my fingers gripping the sink so hard I think they might bruise. My nostrils flare as I breathe heavily, feeling sick and angry and at the very limits of my self-control.
I hate myself. Despite everything I’ve been through in my life, I’m still so goddamn naive. Naive to think I can be anything Amy needs. Naive to think I can just take her home, wrap her up in my sheets and take her for the rest of my life.
I won’t be happy until everything around me is in flames.
I haul back and slam my fist into the mirror, enjoying the feel of the crunch under my hand as the panelled glass shatters and falls.
Amy doesn’t need someone who locks himself in a grave because he’s too fucked up to deal with the ghosts in his own head.
Again, I punch the area the mirror used to be, shards of it pressing into my knuckles as I bend back the metal slightly. But I don’t feel a thing. I’m a freak — such small pain means nothing to me.
Amy doesn’t need somebody like me, a freak, somebody who can’t feel pain or sorrow or happiness or fucking love until it’s literally crushing him under its weight. Des
troying him. Tearing into him so deeply he becomes powerless, unable to comprehend or react to or fucking deal with the feelings that overwhelm him and leave him feeling weak and helpless.
Another punch, the metal bowing, blood running down my arm now, dripping off my elbow onto the floor. But I don’t even notice.
Amy doesn’t need somebody who lies to cover their insecurities. Make the pain of her sister’s brain damage that much fucking harder as she tries to manage her OCD. Doesn’t need somebody who can’t handle her rejection — used to love me — without falling the fuck apart.
The next punch is a little less steady, a little less powerful as my arms shake, and I bite down on my bottom lip hard, feeling completely exhausted, confused, out of control. I feel like I want to cry but I don’t know how to fucking do that.
I stare at the shards of glass in the sink as they refract my skin back at me, and I think it’s a poignant image. I’m no more whole than that glass and no more able to be put back together.
I am broken — fucking irreparable — and Amy deserves better than me. Always has done. Amy needs somebody one step ahead of me. Deserves a kingdom, a castle, a fucking crown.
She’s the rainbow over my dead soul.
I roll up my sleeves to splash my face in cold water, but then notice the deep cut on my forearm. I didn’t feel it. Don’t feel it. The only pain I feel is the ache in my chest as I try to erase Amy from me. Erase her mark on my skin, even if I can’t erase her mark on my dead heart.
Man can never change. Once evil, always evil.
Saving you was the best thing I ever did, Amy, and then I can't stop hurting you. How do you like that? You're the best thing I ever did, and the worst thing I ever did.
25
ME
‘Dude, why’s your milk in an old coke bottle?’ Fab5 says. He’s holding my fridge door open.
Every day, I go into the woods and find treasure. Must be something in the chill of the February air that makes it therapeutic.
There’s a broken musical box next to the sink. It’s one of my favourites. Reminds me of Amy. There’s this little cracked grey clock on the living room wall. That’s becoming a close second.
‘Bro-Dad, your place is filling up like an old toy shop,’ Max says. He’s munching on the turkey sandwich I made him.
The kid’s growing on me. It reminds me of the time I was forced to eat greens. Hated them at first, then eventually they made me feel good and I started to like them. Max is years above his age. Seen the dark side too young. We’ve got this in common.
And Max isn’t exaggerating. The space is filling up. Feels like living in an hourglass. Like somehow I’m running out of time. Being buried alive.
‘Dude, you said your plan was one item a day,’ Fab5 says.
‘That’s all I do. Just one,’ I tell him.
I’ve got a bad sense I’m unravelling.
Fab5 stares at me critically. ‘Shepherd, you are such a junkie.’
‘Hell I am.’
‘Don’t lie,’ Max cuts in, and he turns to Fab5. ‘He’s doing at least five a day. I’ve seen him carrying them in from my window.’
Fab5 shuts the fridge door. ‘Just because it’s junk, Shepherd, doesn’t mean this still isn’t substance abuse.’
‘Yeah? It keeps me fit. You might want to join me, mate.’
‘Piss off. I’ve had to work triple hours while you’re doing whatever it is you’re doing here in Greystone. I don’t have time to train — so give a guy a break.’ Fab5 squishes the fat around his middle. It moves like playdough.
‘Every day,’ Max says, ‘I come home from school and there’s some piece of junk in the foyer. It’s everywhere.’
‘Except your bed,’ I laugh.
‘Oh you wouldn’t dare.’ Max says.
‘But you only sleep on one side,’ I say to him. Max sticks his tongue out.
‘Mate, don’t you think this is gone too far now?’ Fab5 says. ‘This is not what normal people do.’
I know it’s not normal. This is my full-time obsession. It’s my way of replacing another obsession.
I’m willing to do anything to keep Amy safe. That means staying clear of her.
Eight days and counting . . .
I could’ve ripped his head off, I could’ve killed him. And Amy knows that. That look of terror on her face, like an angel died . . . I did that to her. Can’t undo that.
Everything surrounding me eventually rots away.
I’m not for her.
I’ll write it out a thousand times and chant it in my sleep. A romance with me would only end badly.
That means collecting unwanted stuff. Instead of jacking off to those ears, those little elbows, until the end of fucking time. Staying so busy, hungry, tired, and wrecked, I won’t have any energy left to think of all the dirty things I want do to Amy Earhart, and shake the creamer.
What would a monster NOT do?
‘I just need this, okay,’ I say to my mate.
I stare at the angry red line on my forearm, the fury I wrought there. Cut wasn’t deep, there was just too much spilt blood to see clear. I can hardly see the scar now that’s come to symbolise Amy underneath it all. I poke it with my finger, feel the sting, cover my moment of internal suffering in the external pain I’m supposed to feel.
‘Brilliant. I think there needs to be a twelve-step program for junk addicts. Collecting stuff with nothing in mind. Shepherd, hate to break this to you but you’re insane.’
Maybe I feel a connection to the unwanted.
When Max goes downstairs, and he’s out of earshot, Fab5 says, ‘Do you love her?’
I take in the words, my chest aching somewhere that isn’t due to the damn beating.
Yeah, I love Amy, she’s my hope or something. I know it’s love because only love could drive me this crazy. Only love could be this much of a mindfuck. It is love. Just my own twisted and badly choreographed version.
I’m not what Amy needs — not a hero, not a fucking doctor who fixes broken things. I’m damaged goods — still too scared to really love someone because hell, I don’t deserve that. Don’t deserve emeralds, butterfly kisses, sunshine, and every pretty scar, mark, and tears. Don’t deserve that whispered, ‘I love you.’ Want to deserve her. Want to be the man Amy needs. But she’s the fucking rainbow in the sky, while I’m the dark reckless storm. We’re not destiny. Never was.
‘Look Shep, here's some fatherly advice.’
I stare at Fab5 with a death glare. He hesitates, just for a second.
‘If it's meant to be, it'll be. Sure she might be pissed you came back to mess with her head some more, but either she'll want you, or she won't. If she won't, she ain't worth it, man, and if she does . . . Well, when you win her, you better show her the time of her fuckin' life, if you catch my drift.’
If it's meant to be, it'll be.
Sure sounds easy when my friend says it, but I know nothing about either one of us is easy.
‘I’m no shrink, and I don't know just what your problem is, but if you need some Valium or some shit you can come to me, okay?’ The look on his face is what I imagine a father would give his son. ‘Get your shit together, ‘kay?’
I have to get my shit together, like Fab5 said. Amy doesn’t need this. Amy doesn’t need one more fucking thing to worry about.
When evening comes, I sit on my balcony with a tumbler of whiskey, no more company than the cat. Cheshire just glares at me. I just informed the cat that I’ve got an obsession for the girl who lives in room 4.
Fuck.
Amy is a never.
There must’ve been a time . . . when I was good. Before gang life buried me under. A time I read comic books, hugged a teddy bear, enjoyed eating candy. There must’ve been a time . . . I wasn’t me.
I light my smoke and picture a fantasy that lives in the land of fucking Oz.
I can see me now, Amy’s Future, driving to her parents’ house. Red-faced, palms wet, with my hair styled flat and a shiny
ring in my back pocket. A man who grew up with his loving mother. . .
First off, I’ll be a wholesome, fine upstanding young man. You couldn’t wish for better. With a good name, and a pure heart. I never left her in the woods, never left her heart broken.
Even so, I’m hardly worthy of her, I know that. Jesus, who would be? But I’ve solemnly vowed to God and every last saint in heaven that I’ll make Amy happy, or I’ll die at her feet trying.
I’ll be walking up the path soon, Amy’s Future, wiping my hands on the backside of my trousers, ready to say my bit. Maybe I’ll surprise her when she’s pegging out the washing, go down on the knee, do it properly. Blushing to the tops of my ears.
I’ll shake hands with her father and Christian will give me a pen, or a tie even. Amy’s mum is alive, and she pretends not to like me at first, but who could take against a young man so obviously in love?
I imagine Amy with our baby, watching the little world created. The baby is Amy’s, the same way Amy is mine. Carried the baby in her and gave it life. That he or she is mine makes it feel like Amy’s carried me in her. Feels like anything could happen with that kinda feeling. I could wake up tomorrow and be the man she deserves. I could be worthy.
Only the world is ugly and even if anything could happen, usually the same things keep happening. I wake up the next day and I'm still Amy’s monster.
The town warned you about me, Amy.
Now I’m warning myself away.
26
ME
MAX POINTS OUT the smell of cigarettes in the downstairs kitchen, while his mum attends her therapy session. He comes over to me, where I sit at the long kitchen table doing some paperwork, and asks me for five pounds.
I lean back and cross my arms. ‘What’d you want five pounds for?
‘We’ve run out of milk.’
‘Milk doesn’t cost five pounds, mate.’
‘Okay, two pounds then, mate.’
‘Alright, Max. Here’s two pounds.’
‘Stingy, Bro-Dad. I know you’re rich. I’ve seen your shiny car. And you’ve got a motorbike.’
‘There’s nothing stingy about me giving you two pounds to buy milk.’
His shoulders sag, and he sounds like a balloon when you let the air out. ‘Do you want the change?’