AUTHOR'S NOTE: hey ya'll! I just wanted to say WOW! And also THANK YOU SO MUCH to all of the people who left me wonderful comments for the first chapter of this story. I really feel like I let you guys down by taking so long to post this next chapter, because seriously, your reviews made me more happy then you'll ever know! Any continued support and/or constructive criticism you could scrounge up for me would really help me get the next chapter up faster (wink wink), but again, I feel like I don't deserve it after the HUGE delay in getting chapter 2 in here…
But here it is anyway—hope you guys are still around and still enjoying it!
Oh, but first: I feel like I should give a special shout out to electricxrain who added me to her C2 group, and to Nimue26 who suggested my story to her…you guys are awesome!
ALSO: props go to Shakespeare for the title of this story…it comes from the beautiful soliloquy in Act 5 of MacBeth…it's so awesome, you guys should check it out if you don't know what I'm talking about…I guess I should have put that in the first chapter…oops…
If this chapter seems a bit confusing, I wanted it that way…I'm not going to give EVERYTHING away in chapter TWO…geeze…haha
OK! Enough rambling—thanks again, I love you all!
Chapter Two
It was hot. Hot enough to kick the blankets off and still feel enveloped in heat. He didn't understand how he could feel so oppressed by the hot air on the outside, and yet still feel so cold on the inside. He lay on the bed motionless until he couldn't take it anymore, and jumping off the bed, pulled his New York Dolls t-shirt over his head and used it to wipe some of the sweat off of his forehead.
The heat made him angry for some reason. He felt irrationally frustrated about it, and the fact that he recognized that it was irrational irritated him more. He looked down at his hands and realized he was clenching the shirt, his knuckles white from the tense pressure. He quickly threw the shirt across the room, where it smacked the wall and slid to the floor, a black and crumpled witness to his anxiety. Sighing heavily he sat down again on the edge of the bed, running his hands wearily through his hair.
Jack was a person who adapted to circumstance. Most people would look at him, at his life and suppose it was because experience had trained him to be that way. Jack saw it as something he was born with, as though something or someone out there (if there was someone out there) had looked at him, and the life he was about to lead, and thought "Shit…that kid's going to need something…or else…" And he had always prided himself on his ability to go anywhere, and suffer anything without much consequence.
But lately, he had felt his resolve and hardened shell beginning to melt. He had used to feel as though nothing could touch him within the walls he had carefully constructed. But now there were holes…and they were widening…and God, it hurt when the cold slipped in.
He rubbed his hands over his face and forced the thoughts away from him. The dark, shadowed thoughts that crept up silently, flicking their forked tongues in his ear, whispering ever so softly,
Remember.
But he didn't want to…and he wouldn't when he refused to…but he knew full well it would all catch up with him eventually, in the still of night, when he drifted away into the subconscious…
All that would come later though. For now, he shook off the shade that had begun to wind its arms around him, and lay back down on the pillows, thinking of trivial things. He thought of the people who slept in the room down the hallway. The Winters. Why the fuck their name was Winters when they blasted the heat so damn much…But they seemed like decent enough people. Roy pretty much ignored him, which was fine with him. The hulking man seemed more interested in the soulless comfort of the television then by any of the people around him. That is, except on the nights where he went out drinking with his buddies and would come back sloppy and brazen. Jack had made the mistake of being downstairs once when Roy fell in the front door, his greasy, shit-faced friends laughing on the front porch. He remembered the sharp-toothed smiles and the glinting eyes as the men noticed him, and the way his body immediately stiffened and went numb as Roy through his huge arm around Jack's shoulders and shoved him in introduction towards two equally huge men, who's names he had instantly forgot. After managing to worm his way out of the drunken attention which mainly focused on his tattoos, he decided he wouldn't go downstairs at night again, no matter how thirsty he was. No, he liked it better when Roy ignored him.
And then there was Sara. He wasn't exactly sure how he felt about Sara. She seemed nice enough…or rather, more nice then the other false mothers that he had been shoved upon, women who were either too wrapped up in their own lives, or the lives of the other children in the house, to deal with him. To them he had been just one more mouth to feed, one more load of laundry. And he had been okay with that…or at least he had grown accustomed to it, the idea that he was no more then a number. But now, he didn't know how to react to Sara. She seemed to devote herself to him, making sure his every need was met, his every whim achieved. He didn't ask her for much, and yet she was constantly hovering, prying into him, trying to make him happy. It was draining, and he had begun to avoid her at all costs, staying in his room, or wandering the suburban streets of their Detroit neighborhood even though it was sometimes unbearably cold. It had come to the point where he would rather face the prospect of frostbite, then to have to look at that woman's thin, affection-starved face and bite back the words that had recently pushed their way forward to the tip of his tongue: leave me the fuck alone!
There had been a time when he craved this kind of attention. But he wasn't a little boy anymore. Things had changed. Now he just wanted her to go away.
There was something about her though…something he couldn't quite place his finger upon…He saw it when he looked at her, when he looked into her cold, appraising eyes. While she seemed to physically exude the aura of a matriarchal figure--the loving, doting mother--her eyes were coolly aloof. And beneath that cool surface, something else existed, something…other…and it was something that made him uncomfortable. Something that he knew he wouldn't like if he discovered its true nature. It was times like these, when he thought about Sara in the quiet of the night that he felt unsettled, and considered that maybe he escaped her not because of her smothering, but because of what he feared was in those eyes…
Sleep crept up on him suddenly and without his consent. And though he struggled against it, it naturally won, and his eyes grew heavy, and his unconscious took over. And the thoughts that he had been running from all day sprang forward in his mind, as they did every night.
A dark room
His hand reaching for the lights, a voice whispering "No…"
Hesitation
"Come sit with me Jack…"
A red guitar
A loaded gun
A question
"Do you know why he painted it red?"
Fear, anxiety, frustration, yearning, powerlessness
Pleading, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? Please, please, don't…
Words that are never said
An explosion--
Jerking awake, Jack realized he was sweating, and this time, not from the heat. He knew that it was going to happen, and yet, as always, he was unprepared for it when did. But something was wrong. Something woke him up. He hadn't reached the conclusion, the grand finale, the part that echoed in his mind most clearly…
Still gasping for breath, he sat up slightly and looked around. There, standing by the door, a figure dressed in white linen. He squinted and rubbed his eyes, and then sat up completely. Looking back at the figure, he could see now that it was Sara, her gaunt frame lightly illuminated by the moonlight pouring through the plastic blinds on his window.
"Sara?" he said quietly, his voice cracking slightly from a night of silence. She didn't speak. He waited for a moment, and then continued, "Is something wrong?"
She fidgeted at the door way awhile and then suddenly stepped into the room, closing the door quietly behind her. She turned back to him, her face shadowed, giving no reasons for why she was there. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, but remained seated, and tried again, "Sara?"
"No!" she burst out in a harsh whisper, her voice breathless and excited, a tone he'd never heard from her before. She was usually so controlled. She stepped forward again, rapidly closing the space between them, and as she moved, her face was abruptly bathed in light again. And Jack saw that latent emotion, the one that had been hiding behind her eyes since the moment he met her suddenly pour out across her face. Adoration, lust, desire…sweeping forward and catching up her rigid mouth, her flushed cheeks…and he had never been so afraid of a woman.
Before he could react, she was right in front of him, her long, cold fingers on his bare chest, pushing him back onto the bed. Her body pressing forward on top of his, her face next to his ear murmuring, "I've wanted this for so long…so long Jack…I know you've wanted it too…" and then her hands were running down his chest, and her face was above his and she was pressing her lips on his…
And then he snapped out of the part of his mind that was trying to understand what was going on. All he knew was that he wanted this to stop…now. He grasped her shoulders and shoved her off of him, off of his bed, and onto the floor. He scrambled back, kneeling on the lumpy mattress, the disheveled sheets, his shoulders against the wall, as though the bed was his fortress, and if he pressed hard enough into the wall, he would tumble through it and away from this mess. She looked at him with wide, uncomprehending eyes, her mouth hanging slightly open. She slowly got to her feet, and stood for a moment, looking at him with that stupid, agape expression.
"Jack…?" she finally uttered, and stepped forward, her arms extended toward him.
"No!" he exploded, flinging one hand out in front of himself, the other pressing palm down into the wall, waiting, wishing, praying, that it would let him melt into it. "No," he said again, more quietly, his breath coming in wheezes. He shut his eyes and struggled to calm down. He opened his eyes again and looked at her, not trying to veil the shock and disgust he felt, "just…just stay away from me…"
"But-" she began again, inching closer to him, and as she got closer he saw her face shimmering with her last remnant of hope. He felt sick.
"No." He said again, this time with solid and forceful power behind it. He lowered the hand that was held up between them to his side. Again he said the only words that come to mind, stressing each one, trying to break through her false hope, "Stay. Away. From. Me."
It worked. Her face fell as her original expectations fluttered away in broken pieces. But what was left in its place scared him. He could still see desire, yes, still burning beneath her pale skin, but now it was mixed with anger and rejection…and determination.
"Fine." She said, her voice hardening. She turned on her heel and walked toward his door. When she got there she looked at him over her shoulder, her hand resting on the doorknob. "You'll be sorry…" And he could hear the broken pride of a woman scorned and he didn't doubt her words. She turned back toward the door, head held high in a vain attempt to retain some semblance of dignity, and opened, stepped through and closed the door it all in one swift movement.
Once she was gone, Jack collapsed into a sitting position on his bed. He pulled his knees up and rested his head against them, trying to regain control of his breathing. He couldn't quite believe what just took place, and yet it seemed to fit in perfectly with everything that had happened in his fucked up existence so far. He wrapped his arms around his knees and breathed deeply. He was clear on all the details of his past, no matter how shitty or disturbing or heartbreaking they were. What came next, he wasn't sure…
