Note; this chapter is from Tala's point of view. If there is anything that you have questions about please tell me so that I may address it in the next chapter. The title of this chapter is 'borrowed' from the cover of Skunk Anansie's third and final album.
Chapter 6 Post Orgasmic Chill
I think that when you love someone, I mean really love someone, you want to possess them.
You want to live their lives for them, make all their mistakes, insulate them so that they don't get hurt.
You want to walk in their clothes and shoes and greet the people they know; because if you can control them and their actions with other people they can't hurt you.
I think that when you love someone, really love them, you want to be the only one that hurts them. Because the deeper you can hurt them the more it means they love you.
I think that being in love means loving them with everything you are, loving then so hard that you hate them. Loving them so much that it comes full circle.
I hate Kai..
I hate Kai so much that at times my brain beats so hard it smashes against my skull until the back of my eye lids bleed.
I hate him so much that every cell in my body hums.
That is just a fraction of how much I love him. My love haemorrhages inside me until I feel it bleeding out of my ears.
I love him so much that every time he smiles I want to kill him.
I love him so much that I'm going to fix him. I'm going to make him understand love and hate and the thousands of emotions he seems to missing in between. I'm going to make him feel. I'm going to make him feel so that I can make him cry.
Because maybe he needs to understand what he does to people. Maybe he needs to understand why Tyson stares up at our bedroom window into late at night freezing his arse off just hoping to get a glimpse of him. Maybe he needs to understand why mum and dad now sleep in separate rooms…why all my mum does is cry…because she knows somewhere along the line she lost every part of her husband that she truly loved and he memories no longer fulfil her need.
Maybe he needs to understand was so quick to believe his story, why the postman delivers more than twice a day or why when it was found out he hated dogs all of the neighbourhood dogs suddenly disappeared.
Maybe he needs to understand how much he is hurting me.
Maybe it's time he understood the power of love and obsession, not just the concepts but the truths as living beings ready to tare us all apart.
He already understands the power of sex, it's power he's held over us from the beginning. A power that someone his age should not have had.
He had been with us for two years. Two years and really he is just as much of a mystery as he was on day one.
No one knew what had happened to his parents, what had happened to him, or even where he had come from.
When he had first arrived mum had said "Give it time, hell tell us when he's ready." she had said "His file says that he was so traumatised that they couldn't get much out of him."
But he hadn't seemed too traumatised when he had arrived. He seemed to know just what he was doing.
Later mum had changed her story "There's nothing to know," she'd said, "He's a robot, not a child at all" then she'd added, "He has the eyes of a hardened criminal."
She'd aged in the last two years, the lines on her face no longer just from laughter. She had the face of a woman who'd seen her husband light the fuse and was waiting for the explosion.
My mother and father barely talked anymore and when they did it was never below a certain decibel. She hugged me twice a day and sometimes apologised when there was no one in the room.
She never laughed.
"Mum do you still love dad?" I'd asked her one morning, because it had just been us and I was talking for the sound of it, for the distraction. It helped, I don't think with of us wanted to contemplate the reason that both Kai and dad were late, especially now dad had his own room.
"I don't hate him," she answered busying herself with work that wasn't there.
"You don't?" I'd asked genuinely surprised.
"I'm too old to hate him." she was standing straight backed before the cooker. "I'm too old for anything that would take so much time and effort."
"Then you don't hate Kai?"
Her face soured and I knew that I shouldn't have mentioned his name.
"That boy is like air. There isn't enough to him to hate him. No not air poison…a disease that we invited to infect our family."
I wanted to defend him. But as much as I loved him…I knew that it was true. Kai destroyed everything he touched. We were like moths. He touched us, kissed us and we turned to dust on his lips.
I should've felt guilty as I sat there with all her sympathy and sad smiles, I know that now. But I couldn't have been honest. How could I? She was my mother I couldn't tell her that deep down I'd already chosen Kai over her, maybe a thousand times over.
How could I tell her what she might have already known? That her husband probably felt the same way.
"I love you mum" I'd told her and it hadn't been a lie.
"you're young." she said smiling like there were weights attached to her cheeks. "You do what you can."
"Dad loves you too." I tried consciously crossing a line.
I watched shocked as her hand moved to slap me then hung suspended in the air above my face, "Don't." she managed to spit out. "I'm sorry but don't. you can eat in the living room. I don't think that the other two are coming."
I nodded and picked up my cereal.
By the time I had reached the other room she had started and no matter how high I turned up the TV I could still here her choked sobs.
I loved Kai but how could he not notice what he was doing?
Maybe he did. Maybe he knew exactly how much he was hurting us. Maybe he didn't care.