Thank you for reviews on the last chapter: Divine Arion, Souless666, and takers dark lover. I'm glad you are still liking it and that it's keeping you on the edge of you seat. With this chapter I finally got the groove back. I'm so happy with it, though I will warn you there is a part that is kinda disturbing…but it is Kane and I made him very…disturbed so…hope you like this next chapter!
Chapter 16
I'll begin with my favorite part of the story. It's something you couldn't remember, you must have repressed some memories, but not this one. You can't remember what happens when you're de—well, you'll see. When they pulled me from the fire and carried me to the ambulance I saw you. I saw the medics surrounding your prone little body like a group of widows bent over a grave. One had a ring of black around his mouth like a morbid goatee, he'd tried to save you, but the smoke had already suffocated you. The man next to him held two paddles in his hands. He was trying to press them to your chest once more, the look in is eyes frantic, but another held him back and shook his head. The guy with the paddles burst into tears. I guess he couldn't handle the death of a child. I could, I just laughed. The one with the ashy goatee looked up at me and glared. He shook his head and tucked your arms into the body bag they slipped over you feet and legs. The one with the paddles surrendered them to the fat man who had held him back just moments ago. His hand shook as he zipped the bag over your pallid, waxy face, wreathed in singed red hair that was only a reminder of the flames that killed you all.
"This kid's lost it." Said the fireman who carried me over his shoulder. He laid me on a stretcher and tore his helmet away revealing his sweat and smoke streaked face. "He just keeps laughing."
"Does he know about the others?" One of the medics mumbled.
"They're dead. All of them are dead!" I laughed so hard I was crying. They just mistook it for hysterics, strapped me onto the stretcher, and slipped a plastic mask over my nose and mouth.
When I woke up again I was in the hospital. I just had a few minor burns and my throat was raw from the smoke, my eyes burned, but this time the pain I felt was invigorating. The fire was still fresh in my mind. It was like a song on loop running over and over and each time it felt better and better. That bitch was gone, her belt forever ash, it wouldn't lick my flesh again. Mr. Calaway was gone dead and nothing more than burned flecks of charred flesh whipping on the wind, entwining with those of his disturbed wife. But most importantly, you were gone.
Shortly after they moved me to the psych unit, I suppose they thought I was mad. I liked to talk to the nurses when they came in to do their checks and poke me with needles, I liked to tell them all about the fire and the screams of my family and how alive they made me feel. I liked to see their eyes widen in fear when I threatened them with all sorts of torture, and I always made sure to use lots of detail. I wasn't thinking right at the time. I had always been clever and cunning but I was too excited and wrapped up in my victory to realize I was damning myself. I should have pretended to be in mourning, I should have wept for my dear beloved family, I should have fooled them all into thinking I cared and reveled in the glory of your deaths when no one was looking. If I would have done that then I would have remained in control. But that wasn't what I did, and what I did got me transferred to the psych unit.
I hated the doctor, Dr. Frost. He was young and thought he knew everything. He knew nothing about me. They didn't even know that it was me who started the fire.
"Did you have a good relationship with your parents?" He adjusted his glasses and tucked away a piece of his hair. He clasped his hands and leaned slightly over the table. Condescending prick.
"Marks father used to say death was ugly and he was there to make it look presentable. He was there to candy-coat it for all of you happy little idiots. You don't want to see your beloved grandmothers pained eyes so they get sewn shut, an illusion of peaceful sleep. You don't want to see her jaw dropped, her mouth contorted, trying to form some last words, maybe a plea to the reaper? You don't want to see that." I laced my fingers and mimicked his posture which seemed to make him uncomfortable. He tried to hide it but I could still see that glimmer in his eyes that gave away that he was uncomfortable. He wanted to fidget. "So, they wire the jaw shut and maybe even put the lips into a little curve as though she was smiling when death touched her with his cold fingers. You don't want to see her white, sagging, skin so they fix all that too. Maybe Mark's father—or mine—does the final honor of masking deaths true face. The make up. If the mortician is really good he can make the carcass seem nearly life like. You could just shake the shoulder and granny would wake up and give you a nice clammy kiss. It's always funny, have you ever noticed people at a funeral? How they talk and whisper? 'Oh, she looked so beautiful' if the mortician did his job well. They will actually buy that charade and they will call it beauty…unless the mortician did a poor job. 'She looked so unnatural, did you see that color on her lips? It was almost orange!'. People are funny creatures, the person in the casket is dead writhing in the pits of hell and their friends and relatives are discussing cosmetics and how her lips would have looked better in a nice shade of pink."
"You seem to be very preoccupied with death."
This guy was really stupid.
"It's all I know. I was born into death. I find it beautiful in its raw, natural state. To molest it the way our fathers did and turn it into a lie is truly tragic. People should see the truth, even when it makes you choke on your own vomit with disgust." I tilted my head slightly and looked at him menacingly from under my scowling eyebrows. I saw that glimmer again and it made me smile. "Isn't it ironic that my family--well, that's what you people like to call them—died in a funeral parlor?" Then, I just laughed.
"Lets see what you look like when death grips your heart, doctor." I lunged across the table at him and he jumped up and away so quickly he knocked his chair backwards and fell over it. I climbed across the table and jumped on. I straddled his body and rained down punches. I might have been just ten years old but he was short and scrawny and I could handle him easily. I heard the door slam opened and the rushed footfalls of nurses and orderlies came into the room. Hands were all over me trying to pull me away. A needle pricked my arm and it all faded to black.
What I didn't realize by throwing my little tantrums and showing my true, twisted, self, is that I was only hurting myself. Each time they drugged me and I slipped away into myself, he became stronger. They coaxed him out and talked to him. Once in a while I would get enough wits about me to realize that I wasn't in the drivers seat. Some timid, over-sized child was blinking at the doctor as he spoke.
Once I heard three of the doctors mumbling amongst themselves when they thought I was too out of it to listen.
"I don't think he can be saved." One of them said gravely.
"There is a way. There is good in him, I've seen it." My skinny little doctor Frost said fixing his glasses. "He must have grown tired of trying to be good, of yearning to be loved, he shoved all of those things aside along with his few good memories. He put them away and gave himself over to his darkness…but that good is still there. I have seen it, I have talked with it, I know its name. He talks about his aunt lot but doesn't now her name, it's one of the few things he remembers and all that he does remember about her is happy. I was able to do some research and found her name mentioned in some family documents, Glenda Burrow. I think he unknowingly took his name from hers."
"It doesn't matter if he has that in him, that side is not strong enough. If you're talking about fusing the personalities I don't think it can be done. The harmful one would destroy the other."
"I don't plan to fuse them. I plan to…" My doctor cocked his head at me and lowered his voice to a whisper. "He's listening…"
After I learned of their plan I became more violent than ever. I knew from the beginning none of them wanted to help me. They were all against me, they didn't understand. I didn't understand. I was playing right into their hands, they wanted me weak so they could break me. It took them two years.
It was my twelfth birthday. I had a session that day. Doctor Frost sat across from me in his usual manner, hands laced together, leaning over the table slightly.
"Happy birthday."
I ignored his stupid charade. I already knew he didn't care, I didn't need him or anyone to care anyway. But I hate liars, and Dr. Frost had been keeping up pretenses for nearly two years. He just didn't know that I had him figured out. I wasn't supposed to know that he wanted to destroy me. I kept a good eye on him and I planned to destroy him before he could reach me.
"Guess what? I had a wet dream last night."
"How interesting." He smirked at me, mimicking me, how dare he? I puledl my lips back from my teeth in a wolf-like snarl. I will not be mocked.
"It was about you. Because I love you so much." At that I laugh, as though the sarcasm that dripped from my voice was not enough. "I killed you. You should have seen the blood, fantastic and beautiful as it oozed between my fingers. It felt even better when I rubbed it on my cock."
I never really had that dream when I slept, that part wasn't completely true. But it was a fantasy I played out over and over and the imagery always made me hard. One day, maybe I could make my fantasy real. Maybe that day was my twelfth birthday, today. I darted across the table and grabbed the pen from his hand and jammed it into his eye. He fell back holding his eye, blood squirted from between his fingers, and I imagined how it would feel dripping warm and wet down my hard-on. Suddenly, hands were grabbing me.
"I told you idiots to be ready!" Dr. Frost barked as he stumbled forward dripping blood onto the table. In a frenzy I whipped my head this way and that and I saw two large men, security, and their hands squeezed my wrists like vices. I tried to struggle, but a third came in wheeling a restraint chair and the two who held me shoved me into it and buckled all the straps tight. I strained against them ripping the flesh open at my wrists and ankles. Dr. Frost staggered over, his left eye squinted shut and blind, blood coursed down his neck and stained his white coat crimson. He leaned over me, inches from my face, his good eye so hot with rage I could almost feel my face burn. He didn't know who he was messing with. I just glared back at him, knowing that I was the one who had won this round.
"You should be nice to people, or they may not give you a birthday gift." Dr. Frost reached his bloody hand into the pocket of his white coat. My anger lessened and mingled with sudden confusion and curiosity. He wasn't supposed to be reacting happily into his pocket, he's supposed to be scared. He pulled some slips of paper from his pocket. "Happy Birthday…I thought you'd like this."
He turned from me and pulled some tacks from his pocket and stuck four slips of paper to the wall. He wheeled the chair around so faced them. The headlines blared in bold ink: RAISED FROM THE DEAD! BOY DECLARED DEAD LIVES! DEAD AND ALIVE: MARK CALAWAY SURVIVES FIRE THAT CLAIMED HIS LIFE! The dates are from two years ago, the day after the fire.
"You're lying. I saw him dead!" I screamed at Frost and willed him to drop dead. I trembled with rage against that straps and tried again to break them.
"No, this is the truth. Your brother was declared dead. The medics even zipped him up in a body bag. You know that, you've told me every morbid detail more than once. But what you never knew was what happened while they were driving him to the hospital morgue a couple towns over. Ten minutes into the trip, he started clawing at the bag."
"You're a fucking liar!" I spat into Frosts bloody face but he just laughed, like me, mocking me again.
"Reporters in your town didn't get the news until the next day. They had already reported Mr. and Mrs. Calaway dead in the fire along with their son Kane. The newspaper there must not have been too much, printed your name as the son who had died when it was supposed to be Mark, I think that's something you should check facts on. Reporting the wrong person dead just doesn't look good."
"You made those fucking articles yourself, you had them printed! I know what you're doing you're trying to destroy me and let that fucking baby take over!"
"I thought you might not believe these." Frost shook his head. "But I anticipated it and I planned for it. This will certainly leave you with no room for doubt." Dr. Frost pulled the chair away from the clippings and wheeled it across the room to a large, one-way mirror. The room on the other side was empty.
"This is bullshit, let me out of here you fucking quack!"
"Be still!"
I knew he was playing with me, he thought that seeing those phony news clippings of my brother surviving would send me over the edge for good and then he could bring out a replacement for me. I wasn't going to let him.
"You motherfucker! When I get out of this chair I'm going to kill you, and I'm going to fuck you, and I'm going to--" In the other room the door opened. I could hear the voices from the other side as a doctor entered the room first.
"I can assure you ma'am, this is just a routine mental health exam. We are required to perform such an exam before the adoption is finalized." The doctor on the other side of the mirror motioned with his arm and walked briskly to a table. He pulled out a chair. "Come on Mark, I wont bite."
"I—I don't like doctors." A familiar voice came to my ears and sent shivers up and down my spine. It couldn't be, there was no way in hell that he—then I saw him. He was taller, bigger, his hair is longer. No, no it couldn't be! My mind had to be playing tricks on me. The doctor must have drugged me I was just hallucinating it couldn't be he was dead! My thoughts swirled in a crazy tornado of chaos, my heart hammered wildly at my chest, I thrashed against the restraints and felt them start to give under the pressure…or maybe it was my mind and not the leather straps that was really on the verge of snapping.
"He's dead, he's dead I saw him he's fucking dead!" My mind was filled only with the vision of his dull eyes rimmed in soot, the clanking and clattering of my limbs beating against the restraints, and my own screams tearing ragged from my throat. It can't be… I opened my eyes to tears and I blinked them away. I stared into the one way mirror at the teenager who had entered the room. He turned his face to the glass and squinted at it.
"Mark, can you sit down so we can begin?"
He ignored the doctor and came to the glass, he pressed a hand to it, as though he sensed me on the other side an his eyes—those intense green orbs bore into me as though they could see through to the other side—and it was the gaze of those eyes that were both dead and living that sent me over the edge.
I finish the story. Mark moves his mouth but can't find the words. He is thoroughly flabbergasted. His face is wet with his tears.
"That motherfucker thought he had destroyed me for good…he nearly did. It's taken me nearly thirty years to find my strength. Those are all years I lost of my life to this lie that they allowed to take over my body!" I turn from Mark and slam my fist into the wall overcome with ire. A framed photo of his girls rattles cockeyed and some flecks of plaster float down and litter the back of the couch. Mark is still flapping his mouth up and down and finally something comes out.
"Wh-wha-what are you…what are you saying?" Mark fumbles a few words out. I turn my enraged gaze to him slowly. "None of that…can be…real…you just…made it up. I know Glen, I know him he's my best friend!"
"No, you know a personality that I unknowingly created when I threw away my conscience! You know the personality those doctors helped develop, you know a man who is the result of a few good traits I shoved aside long ago, you know a man who is the product of fantasy, of an experiment to let me lead a "normal" life as a lie. There is no Glen Jacobs! There is only Kane Calaway and I am not your friend, I am your brother, and I hate you!"
See it was that last chapter (15) that was so hard for some reason. I woke up this morning with this in my head and started writing around 11:00. It just flowed out so easily! It took till four to post it because I had to go to a music lesson before I could re-read and correct errors, or else it would have been posted sooner because I am really excited to see what you guys think. I'm not so happy with the last chapter but I love this one it basically wrote itself. The end is drawing near.