Brutally Beautiful (25 page)

After the massacre,
I mean it was still surreal to me
, that word, massacre.  How many people can say they’ve lived through a massacre?  After the massacre, I became fascinated with blood, especially my own.  How it ran through my body, what kept it pulsing through my veins, and the biggest question I could never find the answer to, was why my heart was strong enough to keep surging that blood through my bullet riddled body when my
fucking mind wasn’t
.  Why did I survive?  I know I didn’t
live
after the incident, but why the fuck did I survive?

I was hospitalized for weeks after, but all I remember was pain and news reporters, which in essence was the same monster, wasn’t it?  When I finally got released from the hospital, I spent the majority of my time locked inside my room repeatedly slicing open my skin with razorblades like it was a drug. Just to watch my blood flow, watch the choices it made…to clot or to run thickly down my arm in one long stream of crimson.  I could feel the quickening of my blood as it thickened and pulsated through my veins.  How many people can say they feel that?”

He ran his fingers through his hair, tugging its ends, and scratched at his scruffy face.  With a corded neck and clenched jaw, he continued, “Finding me one day, hands bloodied and scarred, my mother dragged me to the hospital and they kept me there for evaluation and questioning. 

Did I have blood lust?

Did I feel the need to hurt myself?

Did I feel aggressive towards anyone?

He was my best friend, how did I not know?

Was I in on the plan?

They listened to my fears.  I didn’t want to go outside.  I always needed an escape plan…but to them, my fears weren’t justified, and medicine was their answer to everything.  They believed I was just as sick as Thomas was. Why do people always vilify the people they don’t understand?

Then came the fucking
Lithium
.  They said I was bipolar, manic, beyond repair.  So they gave me mood-altering drugs for voices I did not hear and mania I did not feel.  I had to have blood tests to closely monitor me and regulate the toxicity of the drugs in my bloodstream.  Do you know what it’s like on that?  I threw up for a month straight and lost 25 pounds.  You don’t get high on it, nope - but you can enjoy some other wonderful benefits, including, but not limited to shit like diarrhea, vomiting, numbness of the brain. God
that’s fucking fun
, and oh yeah, this one’s the best…permanent deadness. Now, the other shit they shoved down my throat got me high; I hated not being in control.  I hated sleeping, nodding out like a fucking junky all the time, moody and irritable.  Insatiable. 

I was a normal fucking sixteen-year-old kid before this shit. I had seen horror movies, I was well read and smart, I knew what I could turn into because of this.  I knew there might be a monster lurking somewhere inside me waiting to escape.  And I waited and watched, wondering when the Mr. Hyde in me would introduce himself. Nightmares kept me up, drugs put me out, and my mind was so out of focus and narcotic-induced-comatose that I would sometimes forget my own damn name. 

Psychotropic oval-shaped blue pills made me constipated, gave me a sharp case of palsy in my limbs, and kept me in various states of fear and madness.  I wasn’t crazy, but they were making me become it.  I was a walking zombie, a twisted imitation of myself, damaged by violence and tragedy.  They called me delusional and paranoid. They called me the
dead kid walking
.   But when I didn’t take the medications they offered me as my cure, I would still see the splashes of blood against my skin, still smell the gun powder, still hear the echoes of the bullets and laughter. I could still see those fucking pitch-black colorless eyes of my tormentor, my best friend, as he tried in vain to kill me.

The world was trying to change me, telling me I was broken and damaged inside.  I decided I was better off on my own, where people wouldn’t assume I was going to turn into the monster that attacked me, like it was a contagious disease. 

I ceased to be a person, and instead, became a case fucking study in violence.  I became mute, voiceless for months, not wanting to give them anything more than what they took from me.  So I wrote in one of those composition notebooks. It was an outlet for my adolescent aggression, my violent thoughts… I was alone and learned to live with the gruesome imagery in my head, by writing.  The doctors kept telling me that it was all in my head, but what they forgot was that it had been in front of me. All of it was laid out brutally for my eyes to see the last breaths of my classmates, for my skin to feel the warmth of their blood, for my ears to hear their cries and pleas, for my nose to smell gun powder and acidity of iron, for my soul to feel damaged beyond repair.  This wasn’t in my head, this wasn’t in my fantasies, it was chillingly and viciously
real
.

I spent years building up walls around me to keep people out…If I go to my brother’s, I have to sit in the back, near the exit, in view of everyone, where escape would be quick.  The tension coils tightly in my body
all the time
, I’m constantly in a strained state, my muscles are always working against themselves. I never had to spend too long in a gym, because I get more of a workout just standing somewhere thinking.”

The tips of Kade’s fingers traced a soft line on my jaw.  One lone tear quickly slipped over my lashes, then more followed, streaking sadness down my cheeks.  He curled his right hand possessively around my throat while the other wiped away my tears. “Kade, I’ve seen nothing in you that show madness, only your very understandable anger.  Bad therapy can mess up the rest of your existence if you allow one person whom you think holds a degree in something use their opinions to change you into the person they think you should be.”

“Enough about me.  Now,” he breathed against my skin.  “Now it’s your turn, Samantha Matthews. I just laid my life out for you, so don’t be scared, because there’s nothing you could say that would make me think differently of you.”  The fingers at my throat stroked my skin and added pressure.

“Kade, I’m very happy with the person I was and the person I am.  I accomplished more in my life at thirty-two than most people do in their entire lives. I’m not ashamed or guilty of anything I’ve ever done.  There’s nothing that I think I’ve done that I regret.  Oh, yeah maybe one,” I laughed bitterly.  “I guess I didn’t check my husband’s pulse after I thought I killed him, because the sick son-of a bitch is still after me.”

Chapter 12

“So what did you do to him?  Fuck, Sam, you tried to kill him?” 

Her skin blanched, turning bright alabaster white.  “Nah, I used my mega brain power to make him self combust,” she tried to joke, and then tears poured down her cheeks, because she knew it wasn’t funny.

“What happened?” I asked. 
Did she really try to kill her husband?  Husband?  She was married?  She was a killer?  Attempted murderer?

“I stepped out of the train wreck.  Battered and bruised, but free.  It all started in a heartbeat when my world shifted right out from beneath me and everything I’d ever believed was one huge lie.”

“
Fuck
, give me one night of truth.  One fucking night of truth for the both of us, before you run for the rest of your life and I get left here wondering why I let you go.”

Samantha opened her mouth, about to share something then closed it tightly.  Averting her eyes to her hands, she shook her head in frustration.  She wiped the stream of tears off her cheeks and struggled to find the words.  Her pain was killing me.  She sat in silence, and I thought to offer her a bit of space to gather her thoughts together, so I excused myself to change out of my wet pants and get us both a drink.  Brandy was always my choice. 

With heavy wet pants, I trudged back up the stairs and into my bedroom.  Inside my mind, I could feel the pressure building, the not knowing what had happened in her past, and whom she was running from.  The question that slammed around my brain like a damn pinball machine was if the person I was obsessing over, the one that made me calm, the one I didn’t want to leave. Was she a cold blooded killer?  Or was whatever she did justifiable?  My mind raced, and the pressure came close to bursting through my gray matter and splattering it against the walls.

Struggling to peel my pants off, my anger took over and I ended up ripping them off and launching them across the room into the corner, where they landed with a loud wet splat then slid wetly down the wall.  I yanked open my armoire so forcefully the inside drawer came flying out at me and landed on my foot, sending sharps spikes of pain across it.  “Bloody-Motherfucker-Wank-Shanking-Bugger!”

Pinching my fingers over the bridge of my nose, I knew I had to calm myself; I needed to get back downstairs and try to talk to her.  I couldn’t be up in my bedroom having a goddamn episode. 

Rummaging through the mess of clothes that had spilled all over the floor, I found a pair of boxer shorts and pulled them on, then ran for the brandy.  Opening the plug, I took a long swig right from the canister trying to settle my anger, then with harshly clenched fingers, I poured us both a glass.  The only image that came to mind to help calm myself was smashing both glasses against the wall while still in my hands.  I wanted to see the blood that would drip from the wounds and feel the burn of pain.  I itched to taste the coppery liquid when I placed my mouth against the broken skin, craved it.

The walls of the room felt heavy against my flesh, moving in, taunting to close around me and collapse upon my body, trapping me.  Sounds became solid and tangible.  My antique hand-forged wrought iron clock drummed its heavy ticks and tocks inside my temples.  Outside the window, rain hissed and clanked against glass like bullets from the sky.  Creaks and groans of the floorboards under the rug cracking and whining from my weight sent splinters of electric heat up through my legs.  Every sound was somehow physically assaulting my senses, and my breathing accelerated along with the beating of my heart.

Desperately, I tried to focus on the image of Samantha, downstairs, trying to control my monster.  I barely made it back down the steps without having an attack.  All I had to do was see her.

When I walked back into the room, Samantha was standing in front of the fire, staring into the burning embers as if they held all of life’s answers. For a moment, I stood quietly and watched her, wondering if I would ever really get to know her.  Her pale ivory skin took on a golden glow in the firelight and I knew I would never again in my life see such a beautiful haunted woman.  She raised her arms, twisting up the long dark locks of hair, and clasped them in her hands almost as if cradling her head from frustration.  Her chest rose and fell slowly as she took in deep breaths, and I could do nothing to take my eyes from the curve of her breasts and the perfect contour of her hips.  She was no cold-blooded killer. Someone hurt her and she needed to defend herself.  A fierce wave of possessiveness washed over me and my mouth ran dry.  I wanted to erase everyone she had ever loved, any man she had ever cared about, and take her all for myself.  Obliterate every memory of anyone that had ever hurt her, and fill her mind with just me.  Only me. 

Would she even want me after all I had said?  Would she take me for half the messed up person I was?  Why did it feel like she understood me, as if she’d been touched by violence too?

There was no easy synopsis to give her for what I had gone through, but there was never an easy way to let people in when all you want to do is hide from the things that have hurt you.  So, I understood her silence, her hesitation and her pain.  I could have told her every little detail of my nightmare, but to what avail?  I just wanted to give her some part of me, so she could give me a part of her, so she could trust me.

There are never any easy answers for the questions that came with violence.  Thomas made a goddamn videotape of his farewell speech, his suicide note to the world, and left it in the front seat of his car blaming me for everything, making everyone who watched it believe it was all my fault, which was all bullshit. I’d never known he’d go to such bloody lengths to hurt people.  Nevertheless, for the rest of my life, I would constantly fight battles with invisible demons because of him, and whatever triumph I accomplished thus far was little to me now, as I stood in front of this woman, because I wanted to be a man she could confide in, someone who is not so damaged.  Something about her, standing in front of those flames made me have hope.  That made me calm, like the cool misty rain that comes after the chaos of a hurricane.

There were things that I never wanted her to find out about me.  There were things I’d done that I felt weak for doing, yet I did them out of feeling so helpless and so full of despair I saw no other options. 
Did she feel as helpless in her situation to have had to use violence on someone she had once loved?

There were things that changed in me so completely from that one day that reverberated into everything and everyone in my life.  My life became one huge domino chain, piece by piece, smashing into each other, knocking one another down.  I was nothing more than a flimsy house of cards and one strong gust of wind tore me down, blowing my cards to the ends of the earth.