Would LOVE to know what you guys think. :) Are you enjoying the story so far? Hate anything? LOL but very happy; actually did two updates relatively quickly for me. Anyway, enjoy. Thanks so much for reading! :)
*UPDATE* REALLY dumb, I know, but this is the final, better, improved version I am happy with. It's essentially the same as the first upload was, except I changed/added some descriptions about Cal's parents and added just a tad extra at the end. I also fixed minor typos I did not catch initially.
Rose lay in bed, feeling empty. The only sound she heard was her heartbeat.
She could not sleep. She stared into the black bedroom as if in a trance, seeing all the shadows and dark shapes of furniture, but not registering them.
She felt certain there really was something as ridiculous, as far-fetched, as a ghost in the mansion.
The entire mansion was oh-so-cold; so quiet at this late hour. So..ominous.
She felt dead. Cal's words came back to haunt her, to taunt her.
She tried closing her eyes to sleep, but flashes of Jack, dead, came back to haunt her again.
As they had every time she had tried falling asleep.
She felt dead. She felt so damn lonely she could not put into words, convey to another, just how empty, depressed, she felt.
Vaguely she realized she was digging her nails into her arms.
Strangely, or even alarmingly, it did not bother her that the pain did not bother her.
It was almost welcome.
She felt drained. She felt as if she were invisible, washed-out to everyone who came in contact with her.
She had the most ridiculous notion of suddenly giving up speaking, giving up eating, and just simply letting herself waste away to practically nothing, until she was dead.
It almost made her smile. But not quite.
The notion was blissful. It was divine.
She already felt dead, but to actually be dead, be lost forever from this hell, would be another thing entirely.
She heard the grandfather clock downstairs chime away the hour violently. Three in the morning.
She had never felt more awake.
She felt a dull curiosity at whether Cal was asleep or not.
The curiosity throbbed, permeating the air around her.
She actually, somehow, wanted to check whether he was, strangely enough.
She wanted to know she was not the only one in this bleak building, as she felt right now.
She closed her eyes again, and flashes from Titanic, the sinking came back to haunt her, making her almost scream.
Violently she clamped a hand over her mouth.
She closed them again, desperate for the blackness, the emptiness, of sleep, and now Jack was smiling at her, but something was off, entirely off: His handsome face was now distorted, the skin slowly slipping off. All his skin was peeling off, his body disentegrating, the water having ravaged it for days, weeks, and he was still smiling at her, but now his eyes were sunken in.
His limbs were slowly peeling, breaking away from his body, and now he was a skeleton.
She sat up, trembling, trying not to cry, to vomit, and vividly, she had more flashes of him, dead, as he had been. His hands stuck to hers, his skin blue, cold.
Tears pouring down her cheeks, she violently began to rock herself, willing the visions to stop, to just stop. Stop tormenting her.
She almost wished someone could hold her right now. Even if that person turned out to be Cal.
She stayed that way late into the night, and, finally, fell into a restful period of sleep at last, tear tracks still etched on her face.
Sleep was blissful.
*
Cal stared as if dead into the blackness of the parlor, vest off, shirt open slightly to expose the beginnings of the small amount of dark hair on his chest.
He heard the wind whistle around the house.
He wondered if she was asleep.
He wondered why he did care.
He could feel his heart throbbing painfully in his chest, almost racing, at the thought of her. Of her beauty. Of her words before.
It struck him that he could just simply shoot himself in the mouth, shoot himself, end it all, and she would not care.
Somehow he found himself feeling dull at that thought, and then he found himself smirking.
He registered he was extremely messed-up to be amused at that thought, but it struck him that he really wasn't amused. At least not completely.
It was another way to block out the pain.
Vaguely he realized that tomorrow was his father's birthday. If he would have still been alive, the bastard would have been sixty-three.
Cal smirked as he thought of his father. For so long, in his old age, Nathan Hockley had suffered from a failing heart and had thought that would kill him...Cal and his mother had thought the same, too...but as luck would have it, an automobile accident had ended both of their lives.
He felt nothing at the memory of his father, except hate. Nathan Hockley had been nothing but a controlling, abusive bastard. To everyone else he had been a handsome, successful, wonderful man, the It man of the first-class crowd, with the most successful business, lovely family, and wealth.
But Cal knew better.
He remembered a beating he had received once when he was twenty, where he had been punched until he felt winded, for daring to stand up to his father for once.
He remembered the time when he was seventeen he had been beaten so badly it hurt to sit for months.
He still had scars on his back from one of the countless beatings he had received since he was a little boy throughout his adolescence and even adulthood.
He still winced sometimes when he dressed himself.
Vaguely he found his thoughts shifting to his mother. She had been a joy, a beautiful yet chilly woman who was cold, distant and uncaring, who cared more for gossip with her friends and the latest fashions than her only son, who turned the other way when Cal had been beaten.
Perhaps that was why he had lost his virginity to an older woman in their circle when he was seventeen.
He had always been crazy about many girls his age in their circle, and had eventually slept with most of them, but her...she had been the first.
He vaguely remembered how beautiful the woman had been, how...caring. She had actually made Cal feel as though somebody cared for him, for the first time in his life.
She had been married, but she assured Cal that her husband had affairs left and right.
He remembered how his heart had pounded, how he had blushed furiously.
And afterward he had felt...happy. Complete. Like a man.
He would have something to brag about to his friends, he had thought wryly.
But in private he had never partaken in something more wonderful.
And then came Harvard, and his graduating with honors, and his twenty-first birthday, and traveling around the world upon graduating, and he had slowly turned a little more jaded, even more than he had always been, his friends were so arrogant, becoming a little more arrogant, even more than he had always naturally been (but mostly, acted) but still himself, and becoming heir and then head of Hockley Steel, and (to his ever increasing enjoyment) plenty of women through the years, he seduced so many and made so many fall at his feet...and then somehow, he had turned thirty, and became a little wiser, and a little older...and then came her.
He had never known love before, but with her it had come naturally.
And then came...He smirked and took another drink.
He felt his heart throbbing again.
And then came getting cheated on, giving his heart to a woman he loved more than life itself and having it stomped on, ripped open.
He lightly traced the small nick he had gotten from shaving earlier. His fingers traced the small red cut.
He had no desire to see her, or talk to her at all, for awhile. No. Not after all she had said, how ungrateful she was.
He smirked again. It was such a lovely home he had, life he lived. Yes.
If people could only really see how the man so many others envied, so many women adored, lived.
He felt amused at the thought. The majority of their first-class counterparts were insufferable bastards and mindless women who didn't have enough brains to fill their entire craniums, or women who were snooty and uncaring.
But of course, there were always the people he did admire, respect. Even liked.
He did like first-class, but he did always have a good laugh at some of the people in private.
Or smirk.
His thoughts flashing to Rose again, he balled his fist and wanted nothing more than to throw something, punch something.
He felt his heart bleeding.
Why did she always torment him? Why oh why?
As he discarded his alcohol glass on the table, he smirked as he realized he had no answer to that at all. Then his smirk gradually vanished, as the pain returned in full force.