Viole[n]t Obscurity Read online

  I crunched my eyebrows together. I didn't know how to answer that. "That depends – is your whole life a game? Is this how you spend most of your time? Trying to figure people out? Is this your game?"

  "Maybe. Maybe it's not a game. Maybe this isn't real, Violet. Did you consider that?"

  "Do you wish it wasn't real?" I asked him.

  "I don't wish for anything. I know better than that."

  I frowned. "Why is that?"

  "A wish is just that. It's something you want – but how could I want something I don't understand. If this wasn't real, then what would it be?"

  I shook my head, uncertain.

  "See, Violet," he leaned forward again, lowering his voice, "when you wish for something, when you want something from the very marrow of your bones, it becomes a part of you and it has the power to destroy you. To wish is to make a mistake."

  A mistake.

  "Have you made that mistake before?" I asked.

  His gaze seemed to darken, the gray of his irises becoming a dense fog. "We all make that mistake, don't we, Violet?" There was something sad about his demeanor. I couldn't explain it, but it was like a cloud descended over him, causing him to pull the little pieces of himself he let out back into himself.

  I didn't want that. I wanted, needed, to know more about Aaron Whitman, about what made him tick.

  "Who broke you?" The words were out, in the air between us, before I realized I had spoken them.

  He leaned back. His fingers stopped tapping. Silence.

  The bland, sterile, silence engulfed us. It took up all the space between us, around us, inside us until time didn't exist. Nothing existed except the silence.

  "The cold," he said, finally. His fingers began tapping again.

  "The—"

  "Have you heard the story about the woman, attending her mother's funeral?"

  "I—what?"

  "The woman, Marissa," he said, "she was young. Your age, late twenties. Her mother had cancer. It was sudden, her death, like those can often be. Alarming and out of the blue. She found out she had cancer, and then she was dead three weeks later." He snapped his fingers. "Like she had never existed at all. Marissa went to the funeral. Her little sister, Shellie, was there. They were sad, as people most often are at funerals." He cocked his head to the side as he spoke. "They only had a graveside service because her mother didn't have life insurance. Cheaper. It was a hot day, sweltering. They lived somewhere in the south. A man came. Someone Marissa had never seen in her life. She was enamored with him." Aaron's gaze flitted over my face. "Enraptured by him. He was kind, caring. She didn't even care how he knew her mother. That didn't matter to her. It was love at first sight. She decided it was fate – her mother's death wasn't in vain because it brought her and this man together. But he left before she could get his number, or even his last name."

  I frowned. "What does this have to do with—"

  "Marissa was frantic, once she realized he had left. She searched for him, Violet. She tracked down everyone she knew that had attended the funeral and asked them about him. But no one knew him. She got nowhere. Two weeks later, Marissa's little sister Shellie is murdered."

  "Murdered?" I asked.

  "Yes, by Marissa."

  "Marissa murdered her own sister? Why?"

  A slow smile spread across Aaron's face. "You tell me."

  My pocket started buzzing, and I quickly pulled out the work phone I'd been given when I started down in Ward Z. It was Richard.

  "Yes," I answered, distracted.

  "Christopher has some paperwork from the main office for you to look over."

  I frowned. "I'll look over it once this session is over."

  "What? Your session was supposed to end twenty minutes ago. Are you still in there?"

  I glanced down at my watch, confirming Richard's words. "Ah, I'll be out in a moment."

  I slipped the phone back into the pocket of my jacket.

  "Leaving already? We were just getting to the fun stuff, Violet."

  I didn't respond. I didn't even look at him. What was there to say? I didn't even know what the fuck had just happened over the last hour and twenty minutes, it seemed as though I had only been in here ten minutes at the most – nor did I know how to characterize it with some sort of response. My insides felt like jelly, uncertain viscous liquids. I stood up.

  "Wait." His voice held an element of panic.

  Panic because he's afraid I won't come back?

  "Watch the camera tonight."

  "What?"

  He motioned with his head at the camera.

  I said nothing as I moved toward the door. "And Violet?"

  Just leave.

  I turned back around.

  "I want an answer next time."

  "About what?"

  "Why you think Marissa killed her little sister."

  His head was still cocked to the side. He hummed now, in time with his fingers. His hair, his eyes, his tattoos they were so dark amongst all the white that surrounded him, like splattered ink on a clean page. Something inside me reached for it, desired it – to smear the darkness until it covered everything.

  Even me.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Before.

  Raymond

  "Babe, I'm home."

  The words banged around inside the little apartment. Inside my head.

  I peered around the corner and saw the woman there. Brown hair, bangs. The tank top she wore was pink.

  "Raymond?" Her gaze met mine and she physically recoiled. "Wh-what's wrong?"

  Who is Raymond?

  Anger bubbled under my skin. "I'm not Raymond."

  "Whose blood is that?"

  Blood? I looked down at my hands. Brown, stickiness covered them. I leaned in and smelled them. My hands? Sweet. I pressed the thumb to my lips. Like saccharine, the flavor infused my mouth. I sighed.

  "Raymond, what's going on?"

  The woman in the pink top had moved closer to the door.

  She's going to leave!

  I didn't want her to leave. She couldn't. She just got here. I knew her, somehow. She belonged to me. Mine.

  "No. You're staying."

  Her eyes widened. Brown eyes. Lighter than her hair, but darker than honey. Would they taste like honey?

  I moved. We danced without music. She screamed and begged. But I couldn't understand it. I just wanted to sip her honey.

  Just a taste.

  But she wouldn't stop screaming. The sound echoed in my head, until it was everything. Even after she stopped screaming – it was all I could hear. That sound, it became a part of me. The very essence of my being – her screams. I grew to love the sound, but I missed our dancing. It happened so quickly, but I wouldn't forget it, not with the sound of her screams to keep me company.

  The pink looked better muted, with the dark stain of her blood.

  Honey.

  I wasn't wrong.

  Her mouth gaped open in its silence. Vacant eyes. I stared into them.

  Beautiful.

  I'd never seen a more divine image. Blood-wet hair, vacuous eyes, blotched pink. Arms lying somewhere across the room. Stiff.

  We laid together in a pool of clemency, her and I. Viscous and sinister.

  I'd remember it always.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I wasn't going to go in the little surveillance closet. Really, I wasn't. I'd thought about it as I'd gone through the motions of the rest of the day. The events seeming to eek by slowly, and yet quickly. By six o'clock I had decided I wouldn't go in that little room. Not tonight, not ever again. I felt steadfast on my walk home through the crisp evening air, the sunset a mixture of orange, blue, and pink – warm amongst the chill.

  But now I stood in front of the screens, my hands moving, it seemed, of their own volition, adjusting the settings to reveal room Z15.

  I sucked in a breath when Aaron filled the screen. He was shirtless, revealing a pale, extremely cut, heavily tattooed chest. The throne alone, a pl
ace to call home. The words were bold, thick script across his upper chest. The rest were a series of smaller lettering of different fonts, seeming to fill his skin like a canvas.

  The patient uniform shirt he wore had hidden a work of art – and not just the tattoos. I stood motionless and watched Aaron, filling the large screen. He hummed his song, while he did chin-ups from the rafters of his room. His lean form glided up and down, as if the movements were effortless, easy. As if he did them all the time.

  He must, with a body like that.

  After what seemed like a hundred reps, he let go with one arm and continued to pull his body up and down, up and down, over and over, with just one arm. He was like some sort of robot, a machine programmed to do this movement over and over and over. Monotonous perfection.

  I tried to think about the last time I had done something as simple as a push up.

  Years and years and years and years ago. High school?

  I couldn't even remember, that's how long it had been.

  I continued to stand. I still wore my work clothes. Changing into one of my nightgowns would have made it more intimate. It's how I convinced myself going in here was okay. He was my patient, I had reasoned once inside the house. He wanted me to watch him, maybe he was going to reveal something, something that would help me break through to him – help me treat him. That's why I was here – to help him. Watching him had nothing to do with me.

  "See, I'm a good person," I said to myself.

  Saying it out loud doesn't make it true, Adeline.

  I pushed my inner voice away. I watched Aaron as he went through some sort of work-out routine. The chin-ups were followed by push-ups. His long, lean body stretched out on the white floor, moving up and down in rapid succession.

  How tall is he?

  I realized I didn't know. Every time we came into contact with one another he was forced into sitting at the table in his room before I came in. He looked tall, I decided, taller than my five feet seven.

  Would he tower over me?

  I shook my head. It doesn't matter, Adeline.

  Sit-ups came next. The muscles in his abdomen couldn't become anymore defined, I decided, but on he went.

  I rubbed my palms against the back of my beige dress pants. They were sweaty, sticky. These pants were probably the least appealing pair of pants I owned – a little too big, unflattering. I'd worn them today because they helped my resilience. Unattractive clothes would deter him. He wouldn't find me attractive in loose, ugly pants.

  How do you know he finds you attractive at all?

  I swallowed. He probably didn't.

  I watched as he went through the motions of other exercises. I hadn't worked out in years. My body was far from perfect. My hips too wide, my legs too thick, my skin softer where it should have been more lean. Men in my past had been certain to point that out. I didn't have model-type body perfection.

  Anthony, my ex, appeared in my head. He stood in front of me, his sandy-red hair short. He didn't love me anymore. He had stopped a long time ago, but for some reason I had wanted to hang onto something that had probably never existed. I had never been good enough for him. Someone else was better for him, and he made sure I knew it.

  The sound of running water made me blink. My eyes shed their own water. Just two droplets. I hated them, and brushed them away. Aaron stood in the corner of his room now. Naked.

  I sucked in a breath. This was wrong. He was my patient. I should have looked away.

  I didn't.

  He had turned on the water in the little corner shower. There was no curtain. Just Aaron and the water. It cascaded over him, a curtain of clear liquid. His back was to the camera. Shadows of Death. The words stretched across his shoulders in old English lettering. Fear No Evil, inked across his lower back. My fingers twitched against the damp fabric of my pants. Touch. I wanted to run my fingers against the dark lettering. Would I be able to feel the ink inside his skin? Would it be warm? Or would it be cold like the one who broke him?

  But then he turned around.

  I should have left the room. I should have gone to my bedroom, taken a sleeping pill and called it a night.

  I didn't. I stood there in front the screen and watched Aaron. To say he was magnificent would have been an understatement. He was perfection. A mottled, breathing, body of aggression. Violence. The papers had said so. His eyes, his words, the ink his skin, they said so. A murderer – self-proclaimed. A terrorist. A monster.

  And I wanted him.

  I admitted it there inside that tiny surveillance room. My hands shook as I stripped off my coat. The smooth buttons on my shirt didn't care that my fingers trembled. They came undone just the same. Until I was there. Naked. In that room, alone. With Aaron.

  He stared at me through the camera. His lips moved, the water dripping down his face as he sang the words of his never-ending song.

  He knows I'm watching.

  He was hard all over. Including the thick length that protruded from the deep V between his legs. He stood still in the water, staring at the camera. At me.

  I suddenly felt raw, exposed, vulnerable. My chest heaved. What would he think of me now?

  His slender fingers tapped against his thigh. I watched them.

  What would they feel like against me?

  Would he tap his song against my skin? Would he whisper it against my neck? Would I be able to feel it like a soft caress, a murmur that prickled down to my toes? Would it make my toes curl? Just the thought made me flex them against the cool wood floor.

  No.

  I knew better.

  "Just one letter. Just one letter. Just one letter away. So close. Too close."

  Aaron Whitman would be anything but soft. There would be no whispering. No soft caress of my skin. He would bury his nails in my flesh. He would bite into my skin with his teeth, until his song was a reverberation from inside my veins. Until we were nothing more than just that – a reverberation of his reality.

  Violence.

  I don't know when I started. When I moved my hand to the wetness between my thighs, but it was there. I hadn't touched myself since I met Aaron Whitman a month ago. I had been afraid of who I would think of – of who would be in the dark places of my mind when I came to orgasm.

  Too late now.

  I touched myself, my free hand, braced against the desk, my eyes glued to the screen where Aaron ran his hand up and down his length, the water raining down on him. A threatening ache built inside me, determined to break me. To shatter me.

  You're better than this, Adeline.

  But I wasn't. And when I came to orgasm a few minutes later, it was to the sound, the image of Aaron Whitman as he came in the shower inside the screen in front of me.

  The satisfaction inside me didn't come from the orgasm that made my body shake and twitch. The song on his lips had stopped. It came from the word he spoke as he came.

  "Violet."

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  "So, tell me about—"

  "You watched me last night."

  "I'm sorry?" I peered at Carl McTavish. He was the fourth and final patient in Ward Z.

  "You watched me. All of you." He glanced around. His salt and pepper hair smooth against his head. Not a hair out of place. Kempt. Not the way you would expect a patient with schizophrenia to look. In fact, he represented everything you would expect from a former oncologist. A weathered face. One with creased lines of worry, of years spent giving tragic news, of cutting out cancerous disease, only to have it return, or not. His hands sat steady on the table in front of me.

  "Who watched you, Carl?"

  "Everyone. All of them. You," he whispered, glancing around again. Nervous, but steady.

  "No one is watching you, Carl. It's just the two of us in here."

  He shook his head. "No, they're here. Just because you can't see them doesn't make them any less real."

  I mulled this over. "I suppose that could be true, Carl. How many are there?"

  "Too ma
ny to count."

  "Who are they?"

  "The ones who know."

  I scribbled down his words. "What do they know?"

  "Everything. That's why I listen to them."

  "You can see them too. I know you do."

  I glanced around. "I don't see anyone, Carl."

  "You see him. I know you do."

  I frowned and looked down at my notes. Carl McTavish's story wasn't new to me. I'd heard of him. Everyone in America had heard of the leading oncologist. The one who saved little Susie Lauren's life from cancer at the age of just seven delicate months. He performed a miracle when he saved that little girl over fifteen years ago. I could remember being in middle school and hearing about the story on the news. The family had been resigned to the infant's death. She had stage four, bone cancer. It had eaten up her tiny little body, the disease everywhere. Doctors said she wouldn't live a month, maybe not even a week. Her parents wanted to fly her across the country to Dr. Carl McTavish, who claimed he could save her. The hospital that had her in their care fought them, for whatever reason, claiming she would never make it. It would just be strain on the few fragile moments of life she had left.

  The courts got involved. First the state she lived in and then the Supreme Court. And finally, Susie Lauren ended up in Dr. Carl McTavish's care.

  Somehow he saved her. The newspapers, the news, everything exploded, when little Susie started getting better.

  A Miracle in the Purist Form

  She lives!

  Dr. McTavish works miracle on little Susie

  The headlines went on and on. He became a superstar almost instantly. People who had never dealt with cancer in the slightest, knew who he was. Even my oblivious middle school self knew his name. They gave him his own television show. It came on after Jerry Springer, but before Dr. Phil on daytime television. Dr. Oz couldn't even compete with his ratings. The world wanted him – the miracle worker who saved little Susie Lauren.

  No Soul More Pure: Dr. Carl McTavish