The Black Jester (Episode One, Kings of New Orleans Series)

CHAPTER TWELVE: REVELATIONS

  Rose is released from the hospital three days later. She’s given instructions to restrict all activity to bed rest for at least two weeks. She tried to find out how she got to the hospital, but all the nurses in the emergency room could tell her was that she was found in the waiting room and was bleeding profusely.

  She’s glad to be back in her house and to change clothes and lay down in her own bed. The emotional fallout from Antonio’s demise and from her nearly mortal wound prove too much for her to handle alone, so she decides to call the only person she knows in the city that can’t get her into more trouble.

  He doesn’t answer his cell phone, so she leaves him a voicemail. “Hello, Michael? This is Rose. I was wondering if I could talk to you. Only if you have time. I can’t leave my house at the moment, but … I could use someone to talk to. Okay, let me know. Thanks … bye.” She hangs up and sighs. “That didn’t sound desperate,” she grumbles to herself.

  She tosses the phone on her bed and gingerly sits down on the edge. She looks down at the lump beneath her T-shirt where the thick bandages still cover the stitches of her bullet wound. She reaches over and presses on it, wincing in pain.

  Relieved to have a solitary moment after all the violence and chaos, her sluggish mind begins to process it all. This is so unreal. So much has happened! Running away from Antonio should have been the last of my troubles. But no! I end up getting shot! She presses on her wound again, expectant of the pain. “I got shot,” she mumbles out loud. The image of Antonio’s body falling dead to the floor surfaces. “And he’s dead.”

  She has mixed feelings about her husband’s death. Primarily, she feels relief, that justice has been served. But a tender corner of her heart holds some sadness. He was, after all, her husband, and she spent the last decade of her life trying to love the small part of him that wasn’t a monster. Did he really deserve to die like that? Does anyone? She recalls that he was prepared to shoot her in his final moments. And that actually brought her the feeling of validation, that yes, she was right to run from him, because at the end of it all, he was prepared to kill her.

  “It was either you, or me,” she says in conversation with the dead man. Heat creeps up her neck and burns in her cheeks. Anger? She feels anger, instead of fear? How liberating … “I’m glad it was you,” she hisses. Vengeance. Justice. The monster is dead.

  After internalizing Antonio’s death as being an act of justice, her anger cools and the heat from her face dissipates. She lies down on her bed and stares at the ceiling until the heavy pain medicine in her system knocks her out for several hours. Waking up after dark, the sensation of someone sitting on her bed is what rustles her from her sleep.

  Michael sits at the foot of her bed. He is leaning over, elbows resting on his knees. Rose is startled and confused but calms when she realizes it is him. She sits up and scoots towards him. She touches his arm to make sure she’s not hallucinating from the heavy medication. He turns his head; his face is stoic.

  “I got your message. Are you all right?” he asks quietly.

  She shakes her head. They can barely see each other in the moonlit room. “Michael? Um yeah, I’m fine,” she says, drowsy from the pain pills and her impromptu nap. She sits up on the bed and hugs a pillow. “How’d you get in here? I’m sorry, I fell asleep. Did you call? Or knock?”

  “The police said that you jumped in front of the Black Jester, and took a bullet for him. Why, Rose? Why would you do that?” His words are tinged with desperation, as if he can’t fathom what she has done.

  Rose sighs, trying to clear the fogginess from her mind. “Well, if I told you … you would think I’m crazy or something.”

  He continues to face away from her. His mood seems heavy and dark, a contrast to his usual warm and gentle demeanor. It is similar to the darkness that filled his eyes in the hotel room when he came to check on her the day after her abduction.

  “Try me,” he challenges.

  “Are you going to tell me how you got in my house?” she blurts out. “I’m sorry if that was rude, I’m just … it’s these drugs, I think they’re too strong,” she says, picking up the prescription drugs on the nightstand.

  “Your front door was unlocked. I came in because you didn’t answer. I wanted to make sure you were all right,” he answers quietly.

  “Oh,” she says. “Probably the drugs…”

  “Rose, why would you take a bullet for a monster?”

  “It’s complicated, Michael. I know it sounds crazy … it’ll just sound worse if I explain it.”

  “Tell me!” he whispers. He turns to her and takes her hands in his.

  “Please don’t judge me.”

  “Just tell me!”

  “It’s because he saved my life. Because he wasn’t the real monster in that room. Antonio got what he deserved. To me, the Black Jester is a hero.”

  Michael looks at her. There are traces of tears in his eyes. They glisten even in the low light. “How could you say that? How? He is a monster!”

  Rose is bewildered by his unusually emotional outburst. “Are you okay? What’s wrong? Why are you so upset about this?” She blinks several times in case it’s the painkillers making her think she sees his teary eyes and distressed expression. It’s not.

  He slides closer to her and pulls one of her hands up underneath his shirt and places it on the palpable wound at the top of his rib cage. Rose gasps when she feels a swollen wound on his bare skin.

  “You’re hurt! What happened?” She feels around the wound and presses on it, inadvertently making him gasp from the pain. “Sorry!” She takes her hand back, trying to clear her foggy mind so she can comprehend what is happening. He grabs her hand again and lightly presses it to her own gunshot wound. He holds it in place and waits for her to process the information.

  “The bullet that hit you … hit me. It didn’t break the skin, but it left a welt. I’m bulletproof. You’re not.”

  She gasps and leans away from him. He lets her hand go. She tries to reconcile what he’s saying. Michael is the Black Jester? The Black Jester is Michael? After speechless moments, she begins to cry out of both excitement and frustration. She stretches over and turns on the lamp on the nightstand.

  The soft warm light from the lamp illuminates his face. There’s something different about it. In her drugged state, she is slow to notice.

  “You’re him?” she stammers. “How? How can this be?”

  “Why did you do it?” His voice is strained, devastated, angry, and thankful all at once. “You shouldn’t have done that. You almost died!”

  Rose shakes her head. Michael and the Black Jester are two completely different personas, and her mind reels to make the connection seem plausible. The pain and confusion on his face distracts her from her confusion and she senses his extreme remorse. “You saved my life! You helped me. I couldn’t let you get killed!”

  “But you can overlook what he does?”

  “What he does? You mean the Black Jester? You talk like he’s someone else.”

  “He is. He is a monster. He does terrible things!”

  “But you are him. Isn’t that what you’re telling me?”

  Michael grabs his head and pulls at his hair with both hands. “Look at me, Rose.” He turns to face her head on, leaning in.

  “I see you,” she says, confused.

  “No. Look at me!” He leans in closer, and blinks.

  Now she sees it. His eyes are two different colors. One is the soft warm brown that makes her feel comfortable. The other is white, as the Black Jester’s are both white beneath the Jester mask.

  “Your eyes … are you wearing a white lens?”

  He shakes his head. “No. No lens. The Jester wears a white one. Michael wears a brown one. So they match, depending on who I am.”

  Rose’s stomach flutters, anticipating some bad news. “On who you are?”

  “The doctors told me I split apart after it happened. I am two different
people. Depending on my mood is who I become. I don’t know much about the Jester, except that he destroys things. And he doesn’t know much about me, except … you.”

  “After what happened? How long have you been doing this?”

  He considers her question but doesn’t want to answer it. Angling his body, he looks sideways at her and then down at the floor. “But the Jester does bad things, Rose. He kills people without remorse. What does that make me? Am I … evil? Insane?”

  “How could you be evil? You’ve helped me. You keep saving my life. That’s not evil.”

  “Insane then? I don’t feel bad when he kills bad people. I’ve tried to make myself feel remorse. But I never can.”

  Resolved to convince him that he is her hero, and not a monster, Rose leans towards him and rests her hand on his arm. “Michael, I don’t understand what you’re dealing with. Or how you can do the things you do.”

  “You mean how I can kill?”

  She is pained by his tortured expression. “But I do know you do good things, too! You saved me! You showed me more kindness and respect in a short amount of time than my husband did in eight years.”

  “The men he kills are bad, Rose. They deserve to die. This city is better off without them. But it’s so easy for him to do. I think he even likes it.”

  She shivers as she thinks of him killing. This is so surreal.

  “But I’ve never had a reason to think I should try to stop from becoming him. Until you.” He gazes softly at her. “You make me think I should stop him.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” she admits. “Maybe I can help you.”

  Michael composes himself, choosing to suppress his identity crisis for the moment. “What do you want me to do? I’ll do anything you need. I’ll leave you alone, if that’s what you want.”

  Rose feels both frenzied and numb. She wonders to herself if the drugs are causing her to feel both drowsy and manic, or if her true emotions are responsible and she’s finally cracking all the way to crazy. She looks up at his now brooding expression. “I don’t know. But …” Without finishing her thought, she all but dives into his arms and he holds her tightly to him. She feels safe, protected, and loved there in his arms. She closes her eyes and soaks in the endorphin rush from his protective hold. “Thank you.”

  When they withdraw from the long hug, neither says anything. Michael reaches his hand to the back of her neck and pulls her into a firm kiss. His move surprises her, but also melts the ice she’s built up around her heart. She is amazed at how he is both gentle and strong with her. Their kisses deepen and the passion between them ignites.

  After what seems like an eternity of silently enjoying the physical affection, they separate only to gaze into each other’s eyes in the softly lit room.

  “Maybe I should call the cops on you,” Rose jokes, trying to lighten his mood.

  Michael smiles. “Maybe you should. I would go willingly, if you wanted me to.”

  Rose shakes her head and returns the soft smile. “No.”

  She can’t help but think about their situation, about the killings he has committed, including those she’s been witness to. She whispers her concern. “What do we do now?” She questions herself more than him. A long silence follows.

  “Michael?” she repeats. She reaches her hand up to his cheek and caresses it gently, feeling the roughness of the flesh colored scars. “Were you in an accident? Or a fire?” she asks about the scars.

  A violent memory of the flood and the fire rips through his mind, and he jerks his head in an effort to make it stop. “Yes,” he answers, his voice distant. The memory plays again and he tenses and slides away from her.

  “Michael?” Rose’s voice sounds distant to him as if it were coming from across the room and not directly in front of him. “Are you okay?”

  He’s rising from the bed, the memory burning in his mind and in his eyes.

  “Michael?”

  He flinches as if her words are physically striking him. Anger assaults his mind and he scrambles to his feet. “No!” he yells at himself, his emotions working into a frenzy.

  “What? What’s wrong?” Rose holds the pillow against her and she stands alert next to the bed. Her heart is racing, and fear rolls in her stomach again. Before she can say anything more, he holds up a hand that silently orders her to stop. Behind his attempt to hide behind his hands, sees the tortured expression on his face. It’s a mix of pain and anger, and his eyes beg her not to follow him.

  “I’m sorry,” he manages to say. “It’s just … you mentioned the scars and …”

  She doesn’t follow him as he rages out of the room, fighting an invisible foe as he crashes into the walls of the hallway and through the kitchen. Her mind races and she is filled with dread as the heavy realization hits her that Michael is admittedly bipolar, seems extremely unstable, and has demonstrated how dangerous he can be. She hears him curse and groan to himself. “No!”

  Rose sinks down on her bed, drugged, puzzled, and emotionally exhausted. She begins thinking to herself, Is he really safe to be around? I don’t want to go from one monster to another … I will not …

  Moments later, Michael reenters the room silently and startles Rose as she realizes he is standing by her. His breathing is labored but he tries to calm himself. He sits on the bed next to her and takes her head in his hands.

  “It was … Katrina,” he says with effort.

  “The hurricane?”

  He nods. “We were with several families. All members of city government. They insisted it was a shelter. My mother and my. My friends, their parents. The storm was starting to tear the place up, but they said … stay. It’s safe. They lied. And then, the shooting started.”

  “Wait, someone was shooting? Inside the shelter?”

  “A planned execution of the last city council members that were opposing corruption. Mafia was integrating and our parents were the last obstacle.”

  “What happened then?”

  Michael unwittingly rubs his left eye as he recounts the story. “Men in suits. Came in from out of the storm. And they just … opened fire. My mother was one of the first hit. Shot in the head. She just fell over …”

  Rose waits as he struggles to pull himself from the nightmarish memory.

  “Then there was screaming. I couldn’t move, I was … shocked. They levelled the parents first, then, they aimed their guns on us. We scattered. I ran up the stairs into the second floor. Others, my friends, ran out. My friend Johnny’s sister was shot, killed. Two of the shooters chased me upstairs. Hunting me down. Fire broke out on the floor and the waters began flooding the first floor. I was hiding in an office while the fire consumed the hallway, creeping towards the office. I started choking on the smoke when I heard one of the gunmen say to the other one, He’s dead. He’ll burn or drown. Let’s get out of here.”

  Rose tries to relax her death grip on the pillow in her lap and forces herself to breathe as he tells the frightening story.

  “The fire nearly killed me. I don’t know how I got down the stairs. The water was so cold. It was so dark. I kicked and swam to get out, but I ended up drowning. My friends had dragged me out of the flood and took me to the hospital. When I woke up, things felt weird. And about a year later after lots of … problems … the doctor told me I had split into two people. I developed Dissociative Identity Disorder.”

  Rose exhales, moved to tears hearing of his horrendous experience. “My God, I can’t believe it,” she says, gently squeezing his arm in an effort to comfort him.

  Michael shakes his head and lets out a defeated grunt. “That’s why we’re doing this, Rose, that’s why we’re all doing this.”

  “What do you mean by all? There are others?”

  He nods. “Yes. Jesters. Kings. The players of the game are everywhere.”

  Sensing the need for a mass quantity of details in order for her to fully comprehend, Rose realizes that Michael, and possibly even herself, are involved in somet
hing of grave enormity.

  “Michael, I’m so sorry about your mother. But I don’t understand what you’re telling me. What exactly is going on around here?”

  Forcing the memories out of his mind, Michael grabs her hands and squeezes them.

  “I should stop now,” he says.

  “Stop what?” she asks.

  “Stop everything. Stop the Black Jester. I should stop him. The mission, my friends don’t need me.” He smiles at his own words, and he sighs in great relief. “You made me realize I shouldn’t let him kill anymore.”

  Nodding, Rose realizes the irony of the situation. Her previous nightmare ended when the Black Jester killed Antonio. And now, sitting on her bed with her, is the Black Jester unmasked, ready to change his life and stop killing. Although unsure of the full scope of details that motivate his actions, his murders, Rose doesn’t feel the urge to distance herself from him or to call the police. On the contrary, she feels strongly drawn to him.

  “I’m sorry,” Michael laments, bringing a hand to her face and brushing it over her cheek. “I’m supposed to be here to help you, not the other way around.”

  “You are helping me. And you have been all along. This is all just … insane!”

  Michael’s phone buzzes in his pocket. The expression on his face turns serious, and he takes the phone out to read the text message. “There’s something I need to do,” he says, looking at her, concerned. “Will you be all right for tonight?”

  “Yes, I’m still really drugged up, I’ll probably just fall asleep again,” she says with an uncomfortable chuckle.

  “Tomorrow morning I’m bringing you breakfast. And we can talk more!” For the first time since she’s known him, he exudes an air of relaxation.

  “Um, okay … Breakfast is nice,” she says, still confused.

  He stands up but before releasing her hands, he squeezes them. “Thank you,” he says.

  “For what?”

  “For showing me what I need to do.”