Disclaimer: Read Chapter One.

Thy Collection of 40

'Love is all in how you look at Romance'

Secrets

Pulling up into the driveway not even wanting to open the garage door for lack of time, Tommy got out of his jeep and banged his door shut. Running up the walk toward the door, he held his lower stomach, clutching it as he stumbled for his keys quickly. He knocked on the door twice before finding the right key and unlocked it. Running to the public bathroom in his home, he barely made it as he sat down on the toilet letting out a huge sigh of relief.

- - -

Coming into the kitchen, Tommy had searched the house for his wife. With a confused look on his face, he walked toward the refrigerator and got a bottle of water to help him swallow his Imodium pills. After his drink, he sighed and sat down at the table letting his eyes wander about. He had come home early from work because of a bad case of diarrhea. He smiled and shook his head as he thought that fighting off evil was much more easily dealt with than this. Again, he clutched his stomach before running to the same bathroom and shutting the door behind him. Though, his thoughts did thank the last battle with Mesagog five years earlier for not having to fight off evil now in his condition.

- - -

Again, he makes his way to the kitchen and sits down at the table rubbing his lower stomach in the process. Resting his head back letting it fall backwards, he looks to his right to find a piece of paper sitting alone on the counter calling to him. He put a questioning look on his face as he got up and stood in front of it. He read it out loud, "seek every corner, read every tangled suspect". He reads it yet again slowly in his head now trying to make something out of this.

His thoughts draw back to his wife as he picked up the paper and examined it thoroughly. "Hmm" he said, "Kat, are you home?" he asked out loud once more; no answer. Usually when he got home, his wife would have dinner waiting for him on the table. Maybe she was out grocery shopping. It could be a number of things why she wasn't home, but the small paper made him wonder what it meant. "Seek every corner, read every tangled suspect" he read yet again. Could his wife be in any kind of trouble for some reason? He couldn't place his finger on it, but it was her handwriting.

Suspicions arise in his head as he held the paper clutching it tightly now in between his fingers. When his wife got home, he'd be sure to ask her what's going on…

He figures it won't be long until his wife gets home. How much could she walk around the grocery store being eight months pregnant? She'd get home soon. He'd ask what's the piece of paper doing on the counter and what it means. He shakes his head reasoning with himself making his mind drop the subject. He decided to just go ahead and drive his jeep into the garage instead. Heading out through the kitchen door directly into the garage to open the gate from the inside, he quickly noticed the garage had been cleaned. So clean as going far enough to say that it could sparkle. Turning on the light, he got a better look around. Gasping, he ran to the corner of the garage and saw a small squirrel choked by the garage door wires. He walked up to it and looked at the creature in disgust once he noticed an 'E' imprinted on its stomach.

Elegance had filled the garage only until the nausea crossed his stomach to find such an act of torture in seeing an innocent creature's life end so abruptly…

Maybe it was dead before the 'E' was burned into its skin. Seeing the dry pink skin outlined with black make Tommy shut his eyes as he looked down feeling a drop of some sort hit the top of his shoe. He bent down and rubbed his index finger over it. It wasn't until then did he notice the squirrel dripping blood from its back. Getting up quickly and turning it around, he let out a breath of disgust as he noticed it had been stabbed in the back. Seeing from the deep gouge in its back, he knew it wasn't an animal that did this. It was a marking of a thick butcher knife. Could Kat have done this? Could the love of his life, whom was expecting his child, have a second life on the side of the one he knew? "No" he said to himself, "not her."

Turning around, he questioned his wife once more before completely dropping the subject in his head. She couldn't have done that, he thought, she couldn't have done that. Walking normally toward the kitchen, halfway there, he notices something on the ground to his left. A dead snail this time; he bent over and saw the snail with its limp head turned to the side. Seeing the substance that lay around it, he noticed there was salt all over the snail. He remembered the many times he did the same with a snail as a child. Pouring salt on them just to see their slow reactions as they died right before his eyes. But those kinds of actions he did as a child. How could Katherine do something like this? He began to think it might be some sort of cult act. Maybe there was just something she wasn't telling him about her emotions. Could she have committed something so cold-hearted yet immature at the same time? It was then when he saw the shape that the slime was heading.

Confusion went through him as he saw a slimed 'C' printed on the salty cemented floor. Witnessing such torture of a small snail would have been horrible. He could only imagine the first hand pain one should feel…

Getting up swiftly and turning off the light before heading into the kitchen, Tommy began to pace back and forth. It was then that he got the idea of going into their bedroom and try to search for clues in her drawers. Maybe something there would tell him what he needed to know about his wife. He walked beside the bed toward her nightstand. He wasn't one to intrude into other people's things, especially his wife's, but if she had a problem of some sort, they must deal with is as a couple. Going into the nightstand, opening it slowly, he somewhat placed himself outside of the situation. "I'm being an idiot" he stated out loud to himself. "There's no way I can do this." He closed the drawer as it was, and sat down on the bed. Setting his hands down on his thighs, he felt the crumpled piece of paper in his pocket. It was the note he had found. He opened it, and yet again read those words. What do you want to tell me, Kat? His thoughts were overpowering him now, and he simply remained sitting on the bed pondering what could be up.

Laying back on the bed, placing his hand over his forehead, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath before releasing it and sitting up straight as quickly as possible. He didn't know what came over him as he opened the drawer again and searched for a clue. Nothing in the first drawer was found that would be incriminating but a bunch of envelopes from the mail containing the bills, a couple of coupons, threads and needles, and a copy of US magazine. Shaking his head, he looked around as if he were being spied on for some reason before he slowly but surely opened the bottom drawer of her dresser. There, lone in the center with nothing surrounding it, lay her black journal. Raising his eyebrows, Tommy picked it up and observed it as if it were some kind of magical book. He hesitated. Apprehensive of what he might find, but more torn of what he might not; what if there was nothing in here? What if all of this is just in his head? He'll feel horrible for sure if he finds nothing in here, then again, he didn't want to be disappointed and have all his feelings come in for nothing.

Reluctantly, he places one hand under the journal and the other over it having his thumb pull the cover open slowly to reveal nothing in the first page, not even her name…

Turning the page to the second, he saw yet another blank page. Again, he turned it. He found yet another blank page. Wrinkling his eyebrows, he switched the process from page to page to a quick thumb overview. Skipping the pages quickly, he saw something passing through the pages and he stopped. Going back flicking the sheets of paper, he came to see a single 'R' in the middle of the page. Wrinkling his eyebrows even more, he resumed scanning the rest of the journal and found nothing when he came to the end. Going back to the inked 'R', he questioned the emptiness of the book. How could this be? He thought. He'd seen her write in the journal several times at night before they went to bed. Shaking his head again, he places the book back in its place and stands up from the bed. Looking out the window straight in front of him; he sees not very far off in the distance, the gated area his wife loved so much going to for sometimes hours in the day: her garden.

Squinting from having the sun hit his eyes as he walks out the door, he places his hand over his head as a visor to shield himself from the hot sun. Still recalling the 'R' he found in her book, he ponders if she has a lover. Maybe his name starts with an 'R'. That son of a bitch Rocky! He thought they were friends. He thought he could trust her. Up to this point, he thought he was sane. Laughing off his suspicions, he realizes he's driving himself crazy at this point after finding just a small, maybe insignificant note. He could ask Kat when she got back what it all meant.

Coming to the entrance of the gate, he finds that it's locked. But why? Who would want to go into a garden not having been the owner? Looking around at the gate, he tugs on it a bit to find that the chain connecting the two doors is not tight at all. He pulls on the right door of the gate and pushes the left one.

Edging his way through the snug fit, he turns his head and breaths outward to make himself skinnier barely being able to go into the garden successfully without any real trouble at all…

He sees a small shack in the back of the garden, and heads its way before tripping immediately after taking almost five steps from the gate. Looking back to see what tripped him, he sees a blue top of the mayonnaise jar stuck in the floor pointed upward. From his angle, he can't really see that good, but it somewhat looks like something's written on the top. He bends down and wipes the few clumps of dirt away from it.

An 'E' seemed to be printed on the top of the jar with whiteout. What the hell is up with you Kat? He questioned in his mind for what seemed now to be the hundredth time. He pulled up the top but found that it wouldn't come out of the ground. Pulling it harder now, he saw the top was still screwed onto the jar, which was buried into the ground. Clawing into the dirt, pushing it out as he scooped it up, he found it to be easier than he thought.

Picking up the unlabeled jar up to eye level, he finds that there's a brown hard-boiled egg without its shell inside the jar. He'd give it maybe more than a year in there to say the least. What was even stranger than that, there was a picture of the neighbor's cat somehow glued to the egg that remained in tacked with it's round oval shape.

He decided to shake it out of his mind. He placed the jar carefully down in the hole again for fear that it might disperse having it be so rotten already. He pushed the dirt back around the jar's top again, while looking up at his destination. Something in the tool shed should tell him something about the answers that he needs for the note being so suspicious.

Stepping over the jar a bit quickly, he walks to the shed. Looking around at al the different fruits and vegetables carefully aligned and well organized, he wonders if he has any reason to suspect his wife. Maybe she did witchcraft as a hobby. It wasn't hurting anyone. What if she was doing all of this as a superstition to have a healthy birth for their baby? There might not be anything wrong with that; as long as they were clear that she wouldn't hurt anymore animals. This was Kat though, HIS Kat. This was a girl who cried for two hours straight after accidentally running over a chipmunk. She couldn't have done that to the squirrel in the garage nor the snail.

Probably it was some punk kids getting back at their teacher for giving them a failing grade in a test. Maybe a past alumnus whom got held back from not passing science and wants to get even with the teacher that gave him or her a hard time. Sure, keep telling yourself that Tommy.

Taking one more step toward the shed, he notices a rather peculiar vine that covers most of the side of the door in the shed as if it were telling him not to come near it at all for some reason…

Tommy takes a step toward the vine before hearing a nearby car. Looking back into the driveway, he checks to see if Kat was coming home; nothing, just a car passing by. Sighing with relief, he resumes with his steps toward the shed's wall. Removing the grapevines he sees a white painted 'T' childishly sprayed on the bottom center of the wall. To his amazement, the 'T' didn't surprise him, it was the vertical line of the 'T' that did. For at the bottom of the line, two angular lines were smudged triangularly pointing downward making some sort of arrow pointing to the ground.

The smudges were those of tomato for some odd reason. It was as if the bottom triangular shape was to be blurred out but still visible to whomever this was meant to be for. Please don't let it be you Kat, he remained saying in his head silently. Cursing under his breath, he knelt down and felt the damp dirt under him. Squeezing it harshly in his palm, he started digging with his hands. Removing the dirt was easy, but he just couldn't take the dark wet dirt clogging up his fingernails anymore. It was getting uncomfortable. Throwing aside his uncomforted feeling, he began again.

Shoveling desperately with his hands through the dirt, he began to feel that his wife meant more to him than the world itself; nothing could hurdle that but his wife and no one else…

He stopped dead in his desperation to find the truth. Getting up, he kicked the dirt back in its regular position and pushed the vines back as far as they'd go to cover the 'T'. Thinking thoroughly, he wiped the wet dirt off of his knees to reveal his wet spots under the dirt on his beige pants. Rubbing his hands together, he got out of the garden the same way he got into it, by squeezing his way through. Walking the few feet to the kitchen door he wiped his hands on his humid black shirt. He opened the door, and went toward the refrigerator and got a cold beer out. He kept walking to sit on the couch in the living room. As his rear touched the seat and his thumb turned on the television, the door opened, and in walked his wife; nothing in hands.

"Hey, what are you doing here so early?" she asked him, placing her keys on the hook next to the door.

"Nothing" he said not taking his sight away from the TV, "I just got home." And with that, took a drink of beer.