“Yeah, right,” he says, standing to his feet and rounding the desk. I have this baffling compulsion to drop kick him straight in the balls as he invades my personal space, which is odd. It’s not like we haven’t been this close before—we’ve been closer. But the abrupt movement puts my nerves on end and Lily starts scratching at the inside me, about to tear out of my skin. Maddie is starting to panic, half afraid that Lily will actually puncture through and reveal herself. “I think you’d be a very interesting test subject, Maddie.” He reaches out to touch me, but I flinch back, surprising him. “You’re actually one of the most interesting people I’ve met in a long time.”
“Yeah, you say that now.” I dodge around him and stride for the door, calm as I can be despite the fact that Lily is stirring inside me. “But one day with me when we’re not fooling around and you’d be bored as hell.”
“Oh I doubt that.” He backs up and sits on his desk, putting one foot on the floor and letting one dangle. “We could always give it a try and see where it goes.”
“I’ll tell you what.” I reach the doorway and keep my back to him, not wanting to look at him when I say it because I sort of feel guilty for getting drinking involved. “Come down tonight and have a few drinks at the after party and you can observe me, but only while we’re drinking.”
“What after party?”
“The one your dad’s friend is having.”
“What friend?”
“Leon something or another. The one who got arrested.” I glance over my shoulder at him.
He seems puzzled, rubbing his scruffy jawline. “Oh… yeah... I forgot he was going to be out here for a while.” He pauses, thinking deeply about something then shakes his head. “So what if I said okay to your request to drink and join the party?” he replies, getting to his feet. He picks up my drink on the desk and then walks over to me with his eyes fixed on me. “Then what would you do?”
Lily growls at me. She’s mad. Enraged. Murderous.
“You can’t drink.” I arch a brow and look down at the glass in his hand. “You’re a recovering alcoholic. Remember?”
“Is that why you offered?" He hands me the glass and I take it from him. Then he reaches out quickly and strokes my face with his fingers before I have time to back away. “Because you knew I couldn’t accept the offer?”
I shake my head. Liar. Liar. Pants on fire. You have to do better Maddie. He’ll read you like an open book. “Nope.” I’m getting thrown off balance. Get it together. I take a long slow drink, feeling the burn of the alcohol as I pull myself together. “Honestly, I really don’t care if you observe me or not. You can do whatever you want, River.” I step out of his touch, feeling a ping of guilt when he looks a little bit hurt.
Bravo. Way to clean up the mess you just got us into, Lily says sarcastically.
“Okay, I will then. And sober if that’s okay.” He slants against the doorframe, so close I can smell his cologne. “I really don’t want to throw eight years of sobriety away.”
I should tell him no, and that this is only going to happen if he’s drunk as a Las Vegas tourist stumbling down the strip at two a.m. I should not care about him enough to care. But another voice rises inside me. One that’s mine—Maddie’s alone—and it’s connected to an emotion I didn’t know I possessed. Compassion.
So much for having fun. “Fine.” I step away from him, my head getting too foggy to think clearly. I need to chill out on the drinking. “You can come observe me, but don’t say I didn’t warn you when you’re about to die of boredom.” Die of something.
“Oh, I highly doubt that’s going to happen. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’ll be the exact opposite.” His voice carries a promise of something… I wish I could figure out what. Discovery perhaps. If so, then I’m in some serious trouble. Then he steps forward and places a kiss on my lips, taking control over the situation, something he rarely does.
Lily snarls and Maddie winces and bites down on River’s lip hard. And the startling part is, she… I like it. River moves back and touches his lip with his fingers, his brows furrowed. I’m not sure if he liked it or is just startled. I’m guessing the latter, since seconds later he smashes his lips against mine. His tongue slides deep into my mouth and by the time he’s pulling away, he’s breathing profusely.
“After you get off,” he says, breathing heavily and gripping my hips. “You should come up here.”
“Maybe…” I look into his eyes and see lust and desire flaring brighter than it ever has. It’s startling because I can almost feel it myself; the need to rip off his clothes and touch him all over. It’s clear this little relationship thing we’re having has been going on for way too long.
I back away from him. “I have to go,” I tell him and then leave the office before he can utter a word. I’ve got a headache and I’m feeling kind of tipsy as I walk down the stairs. Lily is pissed and whispering at me to turn around and strangle River to death, that way there won’t be a problem. Maddie feels stupid. I feel like my flesh is cracking apart and I’m about to split open. By the time I reach the bottom of the stairway, Lily has flipped a switch and is laughing inside my head about how big of a mistake I just made. That if she was in more control, none of this would have happened. I almost wonder if I should just let her come out and clean up my mess. Take over. Finally just be her and see what happens. Let all the darkness and morbid thoughts inside me spill out.
Let myself finally become her.
Chapter 8
Lily
I’m not sure how I got control of our body this time, what the purpose is. Something seems off with my freedom or maybe I seem off. I’m a little unsteady compared to usual, which is kind of the point for me existing. I’m the stable one, the one who gets even. The one who takes matters into their own hands, instead of being weak. But I feel weak at the moment. And sick.
Still, I move through the crowd, a silent predator, looking for something to do to distract the need to vomit. There’s so much sex dripping from everyone in the room, the music with slutty lyrics blaring so loudly as they shout and holler for Sydney who’s dancing on the stage. The sight of her brings the anger out briefly, but I won’t act on it, not here, not now, but maybe one day, if I’m given the right moment.
I turn away from the stage, ignoring the overly large man who smacks my ass as I down the rest of my drink. With each step, I feel more lightheaded and sick to my stomach, the lights above my head seeming brighter than the norm. When I spot the woman named Bella, I decide to go over there and chat, if for no other reason than to keep my attention focused on something but the blurry dance going on inside my mind.
“Hey!” Bella raises her hand as I approach her. I’m still trying to figure out if I like her or not. Sometimes it feels like she’s as dark as me inside, but there are other times where she seems sketchy and untrustworthy. “Come meet Leon.” She points a finger to a man sitting down on a stool beside her.
The hairs on the back of my neck instantly stand on end and it feels like a jolt of static flows across my skin. I stop for a moment, staring at the back of the man whose name makes me feel like my airway is constricting.
Bella keeps waving me over, despite my lack of interest in her. Rolling my eyes, I finally maneuver my way through the crowd and to the bar area, stumbling over my feet a few times.
“Hey,” she says, giving me a quick kiss on each cheek, invading my personal space and annoying the crap out of me. “What have you been up to?” she asks, giving me this look like I’ve just done something she’d like to do.
“Nothing much,” I reply, with a hint of slur to my speech.
Bella gets this all-knowing smile that I don’t understand—no one understands me. “Would that nothing much be a certain someone who has an office with a view.”
She glances over her shoulder at the window above us, which reminds me of how irritated I am with the man standing up there, looking down at us, a shadow in front of the glass; I can still tell that it has to be
River. Always watching. Always looking at me. I swear he knows, no matter what Maddie says. He knows who I am and needs to be taken care of.
“I don’t know.” I stare at the window until my eyes start to sting, then I drop my gaze at Leon, my skin tingling with an eerie sensation I don’t like. “Is this Leon?” I finally ask just so he’ll have to turn around and I can see his face.
You’re a whore! I swear I hear it aloud, but maybe it’s in my head.
“Oh, yeah. I forgot introductions.” Bella picks up a beer and gestures at Leon. “Maddie, this is Leon.” She motions her hand at me. “Leon this is Maddie.”
He slowly turns around in the barstool with a smile plastered on his face. He’s wearing a baseball cap low on his forehead, his eyes shadowed, and between that, my blurry vision, and the dim lighting, I can’t see his face very well. “Pleasure to meet you, Maddie.” He sticks out his hand for me to shake, his sleeve riding up a little and I detect the dark lines of a tattoo on his wrist that of a dragon with fire blazing from its mouth.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Leon,” I say. I think he has brown hair, his eyes look black, and his face is rough. “Do I… know… you…” My voice sounds like an echo in my head.
“You’re a whore,” I swear I hear someone whisper from nearby, but I keep my eyes on the Leon, feeling as if I look away, I’m giving up my power over myself and I’ll fade into the dizziness.
He gives a low chuckle, “I don’t think so.” He says something else but I can’t make out what it is, his lips move, his eyes studying, hand on mine, but nothing makes sense. There are people in the room, but I feel none of them, almost like I’m surrounded by dead bodies. I should be okay with the idea—I usually am. Calm. Cool. Collected. I don’t like to feel out of control. That’s Maddie’s thing and if I didn’t pick up the other end, I wouldn’t have much of a purpose. But right now I feel like I’m hanging off the edge of a cliff, holding on with one finger.
“Leon’s going to be chilling at the bar for a while,” Bella says, but her voice sounds far away.
My pulse throbs underneath my flesh. “Oh yeah… that’s… nice.” My palms sweat… bones ache…
“I’m going to be helping Glen out for a while,” Leon says, eyes still fixed on me. “While he takes a few weeks off for vacation.”
“That’s nice.” My eyes start to roll into the back of my head, my legs about to give out. “Will you… excuse me,” I say, pulling my hand away from his. He laughs again and it makes me want to slam my fist into his face, but instead I stumble away toward the stairway, figuring I’ll go take care of someone else and get my control back, no matter what it takes.
Chapter 9
Maddie
I remember the first time I saw a dead body, the first time since after the accident anyway. I was eighteen years old and the incident strangely occurred by choice, which probably isn’t very common except for maybe a mortician or a detective or a serial killer.
I’d been out back of the diner where I waitressed at, taking my fifth smoke one break of the day. I was going through my 1950s to 60s movie phase, curious to see if perhaps I felt more peace in that era than I did in the current one I was supposedly born into. I proceeded to watch every classic one I could get my hands on and while I was fascinated with the simplicity of the time, I didn’t feel particularly moved by anything. But I started acting like a character from that time, a hobby of mine since I have no idea what character I really am. One trait a lot of the characters had was they smoked from cigarette holders. It made them seem so dazzling and sophisticated and I found myself obsessing the demure. So I went out and bought a sheath dress and saddle shoes from a vintage store, along with a cigarette holder, jade with a white tip. I wore the outfit for a week straight, everywhere I could, which caused a near panic attack from my mother and scrutiny from my grandmother, yet I kept on wearing it.
I was wearing the get-up the day I saw the body. Standing out back, smoking near the dumpsters, two guys had wandered past the end of the alleyway that leads to the main road. They were talking about a crime scene they just passed and how the body was still on the sidewalk. I don’t know why I did it. What really pushed the compulsion to manifest? It’s not like I’d spent hours upon hours obsessing over the need to see a dead body. Thinking about the dead. Or even killing. I hadn’t quite gotten to that point yet in my life. But I still found myself putting out my cigarette and walking down the alley to the street where I spotted the blue and red flashing lights of cop cars, but no ambulance. People were gathered in a restless cluster. That had to be the spot. Shuffle off the curb, I slowly made my way across the street toward a row of shops on the other side. The crowd was growing in front of Mel’s Fine Seafood and I noticed the window on the second floor of the store was broken. Slivers of glass were scattered and covered the sidewalk. Whenever the sunlight above hit them at just the right angle, they’d shimmer like diamonds. The illusion of pretty.
I approached the edge of the people and stopped toward the back. There were some people crying, some whispering about how tragic, some shaking their heads with sadness. I squeezed my way up to the front where two policemen in uniform where standing with their arms out to the side, trying to keep everyone back. But the people were drawn to it, wanting to see, yet not wanting to. Just like me. I was no different from them at the time, except that maybe I couldn’t remember a huge time of my life. My emotions were the same, though. Part of me wanted to go back to the diner and continue working as if I hadn’t seen anything at all. While the other part of me wanted to stay. I would have blamed the need to see it on Lily, but she was strangely silent. So it was just Maddie, myself, no one and nothing else that made me step forward. I did it on my own.
I couldn’t get up close and personal, because of the policemen, but I could see a girl, probably around my age, lying just behind them with her arm kinked above her head, her legs sprawled out on a sheet of blood soaked concrete, and it was in that moment, I knew this wasn’t the first time I’d seen a scene like this. I didn’t know when else I had or who it was, but I knew I’d stood and gazed down at something similar before.
The blood looked like spilled paint, the patterns of splatter and droplets creating a symmetrical abstract painting that told a story of how a girl fell through a window. But that’s it. There was no story of what caused her to get to this moment in time, what had happened right before. If she was hurt to begin with or if the glass cut up her skin. If she did this to herself or if someone else did it. I wondered what the story was.
Inching closer, I noticed the girl was missing a shoe. It wasn’t anywhere around, either, and part of me wondered if maybe someone had killed her and the killer took it. I had no idea why I’d think such a thing. I didn’t watch crime shows. But for the briefest second, I swear I could feel… almost see myself doing something similar once before. Holding someone’s shoe after they died and feeling powerful over it. Then I suddenly thought of the box of buttons in my closet that feel like my treasure in a way, and I had to wonder if that’s what they’re from? But as quickly as the image surfaced, it was like ..
Chapter 10
Maddie
I can’t escape. The fear. It’s scorching within me. Fire and smoke. Suffocating like the rain crashing down from the clouds. It drowns me. My soul. I can’t outrun it… Can’t escape… Can’t escape the flames… The fear. Everything I’ve seen… done… To myself. To him. To her. But I need to… but she tells me I can’t. That I have to feel it. There’s no other way.
Someone is screaming from inside the house, something about someone being a whore. I hate when I hear the screaming, because it means something bad is going on. I don’t want to move, so I lie there on my side, staring at the wall. The concrete is cold on my skin. I’m sick of how cold it is. I don’t want to be in this room anymore. I want to see the sun. Smell the rain. Breathe fresh air. But I’m a prisoner.
I don’t want to be a prisoner anymore… Someone help me… please… Let m
e out… make all this go away…
“Look at me,” he whispers and suddenly I’m somewhere else. Not with the man or the screams. I’m safe. “Stop listening to the screams, stop feeling it, and look at me.”
I tilt my head and see a figure sitting beside me. I can’t see their face, but I have this feeling they’re smiling at me and it almost makes me smile. They seem so content, even with the screaming, as if it gives them some strange sense of peace instead of pain, like it is to me.
“Do you want to play our game?” he asks. “It’ll help you not think about him.”
“I’m not sure it’ll help,” I whisper, squeezing my eyes shut as I start to fade away back to the man. I wish I could disappear from this place. I miss the outside world so badly. It’s been too long since I’ve seen the grass and trees, the flowers just outside, breathed the fresh air, looked at something other than these same four walls.
“We can try and see if it works,” the voice pulls me back to the room and the person in the corner gets to their feet and walks over to the boy, gently stroking their fingers through the boy’s hair. The boy cringes, but remains focused on me. “You at least have to try and focus on something else besides what he’s doing.. focus on something else but the pain.”