Ionic Relapse Page 13

  “Do you need to sit down? You looked like you were going to pass out for a second.” She could not help but sound worried. Ashley had never seen the look Kieffer had on his face just moments ago. The way his smile faded and eyes drooped down made her think of those heroin addicts you’d see in movies. One second they are upright and responsive, the next they are slouched over trying to regress back into themselves. A lonely hermit crab without a shell to feel safe in.

  To Ashley, it was the look of total disconnection.

  Kieffer fully came to as he propped himself up against the counter. He took several deep breaths and said, “I’m good. Just need my vitamins is all.” He picked up the chalk colored bottle of drink and cracked it open. Taking a few chugs to wet his whistle, Kieffer was surprised to find that he did feel a little better. He used the back of his arm to wipe the salt water from his top lip before setting down his drink.

  Thank you, 50cent.

  That momentary lapse wasn’t common, but it did happen from time to time. Most times were in situations of prolonged anxiety and discomfort. Usually, though, he had ticks and tells that he could use to measure the distance of the oncoming storm. Like an old man with a bad knee, Kieffer would get ripples and lingering thoughts that only occurred when a full-blown freak out was inevitably approaching. It was a cursed gift that gave him plenty of time to get somewhere safe where he could be alone. The hallucinations and delusions still happened, but they weren’t as aggravated.

  The last few years had their occasional reality hacks, but all-in-all, they had been on a downward trend. Only as of late had the buzzing of insectial voices come back with a vengeance. And why not? He finally had a girlfriend. A reason to reach out to someone and make a real connection. He could finally open himself up to another person and stop hitting walls of his neurotic little cube and join the rest of the human race. This was something that THEY made very difficult. The mere presence of another person was the fuel the fire in his brain needed to burn bright and strong. He learned over the years that it was always much safer to be alone. For everyone.

  “Don’t scare me like that!” Ashley squealed as she tickled at Kieffer's boney ribs. “I couldn’t tell if you were fuckin’ with me. Damn, you're good at that.” Her tiny hands rested in his. They faced each other. The worry slowly melted from her now perfect face. Their gazes locked, the air between them filled with the soft warmness of their bated breaths.

  This is it. This is the time to act. Do it! Kiss her!!

  Luck found Kieffer again. As he leaned in to kiss Ashley, eyes closed, she simultaneously pulled down, her fist wrapped in the front of his jacket. They met with no resistance. Their hands raced across each other’s bodies, swooping in and out of loose clothing. Neither one of them knew where to go, but what would be the point in stopping? They were two young loves, kindred spirits molecularly merging in the sweet amber glow that glimmered off every waxed porcelain tile in the room like a shattered disco ball.

  Bang!

  The sound of the front door slamming shut.

  The kiss was broken. Both Ashley and Kieffer turned toward the empty doorway to the other room. They listened as the sound of heavy, booted footsteps stomped across the hard living room floor.

  “Oh, shit!” Ashley hissed, hurriedly breaking out of Kieffer’s reach towards the fridge. “It’s probably Wayne, my stepdad.” She moved across the kitchen from Kieffer so nothing could be insinuated. They stood quietly, the birth of the room separating them, and waited.

  Suddenly, the heavy footfalls stop just short of the kitchen door. They paused for several seconds and then turned back. A few steps in; silence. Whoever was in the other room was waiting for them. He was sure of it. Other than the windows, there was no other way out except for the living room, where their visitor patiently waited. Just then, Kieffer noticed a closed door off on the left end of the kitchen by the tiled counter extension. He almost sprinted to it in an urge of animalistic self-preservation, but didn’t. He knew better than to risk locking himself in a closet or food pantry. What other options did that leave him?

  Hurry. Better anchor onto something solid before the storm hits. This one's gonna’ be a doozy.

  Kieffer would have also assumed this was all just another “reality hack” if Ashley hadn’t reacted to the same noises. Still, a twinge of doubt remained. His mind stubbornly poked at his thoughts of the unknown, kicking his overworked anxieties into another frenzy. Strangled by fear, Kieffer stood frozen, clamping the counter, just four feet from the empty, open frame.

  And with the good comes the bad. Tough luck, man.

  Then a crazy, but brilliant, idea struck him.

  What if he went out there and confronted Ashley’s stepdad? Just waltzed right into the living room, stuck out his hand and said, “Hi, I’m Ashley’s friend, Kieffer. Nice to meet you.” What’s the worst that could happen?

  Well, I guess the worst would be that instead of shaking your hand, he pulls out a gun and shoots you in the face. Right?

  Not very likely. The realistic worst-case would probably be that he didn’t like Kieffer and refused to let Ashley see him anymore. But knowing Ashley, this forced limitation on her social life would only deepen her commitment to seeing him. He would probably end up meeting her parents anyway with the way things were going. Why not do it on his terms?

  You’re luckier than a rabbit's foot covered in leprechaun shit, you know that? You can’t lose either way. Now get out there while you’re still hot!

  With newfound conviction in his heart and a bounce in his step, Kieffer let go of the counter and brazenly walked towards the doorway. With Ashley whispering at him to come back, he rounded the corner of the long counter and stood in the empty frame.

  What he saw halted him dead in his tracks.

  There, standing in front of the couch, was the Every Man from the dusty photo at the top of the staircase. A little heavier around the waist and a lot greyer upstairs, but there was no doubt that this was him. The blood steadily rising in the man’s temples made the familiar scar from the picture radiate; a scarlet red letter against the pale skin of his face. The memories of questioning uncertainty to his dislike of the familiar stranger were suddenly reseeded. The man was bent down in front of the couch staring at something as if it were talking to him on an invisible spectrum. Head tilted and arms slack at his side, he looked like a man under a hypnotic spell. The man was so consumed that he didn’t notice anyone else's presence in the room. That’s when Kieffer realized what the Every Man was staring at:

  It was his Sociology poster from school.

  The Every Man gawked at it, mouth hung open. A sort of transparent look was on his wrinkled face as if something on the poster mesmerized him. Pulled him some place beyond here where alternate realities don’t coincide; they overlap. The inkjet projections of once living human monsters had completely transfixed him. He looked at them as if they were real monsters. Giant hairy-legged insectoids with twenty eyeballs hanging below a starfish style snout that held thousands of needle-like teeth. So scary and unsymmetrical that the very sight of one could short circuit your brain. And in a very real sense, they were the same. But the thousand-yard stare that Kieffer saw on Wayne's haggard face was different. He didn’t look scared or frightened; he looked like a ventriloquist dummy free of his master's hands. His body rested on invisible strings hung somewhere from the unlit rafters far above them. Kieffer watched as the puppet's little wooden jaw clicked shut every couple seconds, making a sharp ticking sound like fingernails tapping at polished bone. He watched the puppet hang, all but abandoning his original plan to introduce himself. He too was afraid to go in.

  It wasn’t until Ashley walked in from the kitchen that Wayne looked up and noticed the two standing there watching him.

  Back to the now, Wayne fixed his slumped posture and said, “I… uh—”

  “I already talked to mom. Relax. She gave me the greenlight to have company over after school.” Turning to Kieffer still standing i
n the doorway, Ashley said, “Wayne, this is Kieffer. My friend from school.”

  Aaand, ya’ blew it.

  Wayne stared suspiciously at Kieffer, and Kieffer in return. Something inside of the young man’s head was setting off alarms, trying to tell his brain vital information that couldn’t quite be comprehended yet. Only in time.

  “Whose poster is this??” Wayne asked in a low, scruffy voice, gesturing to the flat sheet left propped up on the couch. His mouth sounded dry, his words like dusty rocks rolling down a steep mountainside.

  “That’s mine,” Kieffer choked. His vocal chords felt increasingly tight, as if they were being stretched over his spine like a cello. He felt Wayne’s gaze beating down on him; two gamma ray powered pistols of electromagnetic energy.

  The tension was broken by a thundering sound that at first seemed to come out of nowhere.

  “Get out, NOW!” Wayne’s voice boomed throughout the house. Its sonic wave pounded at the walls like an unloaded barrel of buckshot. Kieffer winced at the sudden explosion, uncertain of what to do. He looked nervously from Ashley to Wayne standing tall, chest puffed up, and eyes blazing with blue fire. Wayne took a couple of heavy steps toward Kieffer before Ashley stepped between them.

  “Stop it!” Ashley cried, tears running faded black lines down her cheeks. She stood directly in Wayne's path. Towering over her like an angry totem poll, Wayne's gaze could still easily cut Kieffer from where he stood across the room.

  Shrinking in size, Kieffer slinked to the couch, grabbed his poster board, and left the house without a word. As soon as the heavy front door latched shut behind him, he ran faster than he had ever run in his entire life. He ran home so fast that he lost most of his presentation to the passing wind.

  Ramirez and Rader were soaking in a gutter somewhere.

  Which left only The Doll Man to hang ominously on his fake wood-paneled wall above his bed. The secret Angel of Death watched over him as he tossed and turned in troubled sleep. Flat eyes swimming with the depth-less black of eons passed.

  Chapter 9

  April 4, 2006

  9:33 pm

  Hampden, Maine

  “I just don’t think it’s that big of a deal, Wayne. She’s sixteen now. Time for us to throttle back a little,” Sharon Bennett said while standing naked over the running sink in the attached bathroom. Her body was covered in fine beads of water: tiny droplets that rolled down her skin with each subtle movement. Her pores tightened against the cool air wafting in from the open door. Using the large fog-stained panel mirror hanging above the sink, she removed the mascara and blush that was still smeared on her from the start of her day.

  Sixteen, she thought ruefully to herself as a handful of warm water washed over her face. I can still remember those days. The bittersweet memories didn’t haunt her, but served as a constant reminder of times gone by. No longer did young men fight over her in bars or at crowded nightclubs while she was out dancing with her slightly less attractive friends. Nor did she get hooted and catcalled while walking through side street construction on hot summer days.

  Not anymore.

  Sharon had to accept the fact that she was just another twice-married woman in her mid-forties with a teenage daughter and fleeting memories of being heart-stoppingly beautiful. The slight wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, only noticeable to Sharon, didn’t tarnish the still stunning figure that she carried with much luck from her youth. Almost the spitting image of a future Ashley, she was a sporty blonde with wide blue eyes set above flawlessly elegant cheekbones. Sharon knew she was still pretty, the constant flirting from the men at the office never let her forget, but it wasn’t the same. She wanted to be beautiful again. The knowledge that with each passing day she lost a little more of her old self-made Sharon feel a twinge of helplessness deep down in the pit of her soul. And for a second, she could actually feel the abrasive sting. Just another slave to the giant grinding wheel that we all know as the unavoidable constant of time.

  These egotistical thoughts of grandeur always dissipated when she was forced to think of how lucky she was. Sure, her life wasn’t as eventful now, but she had a beautiful daughter, a great job as senior editor for an international publishing firm in Portland, and an amazing husband. A man who had showed up coincidentally during the hardest time of her life.

  Sharon met Wayne through the firm back in the early nineties. Starting out as a temp in the editing department in the fall of 1990, Wayne quickly climbed the ladder, becoming floor manager of the entire editing department by the spring of ‘92. Working directly under Sharon for the next four years, the two had grown extremely close. So when Steven, Ashley’s father, told Sharon back in 1995 that he was going to move to Germany with his twenty-one-year-old secretary, Sharon was devastated: completely broken. She was left with all the bills, mortgage payments, and manly chores that come with maintaining a two-story home. The icing on the cake had been a seven-year-old Ashley to juggle while trying to maintain a high-level job full of time sensitive responsibilities. She had seen so many other women walk this path and come out the other end a completely different person. Usually a bitter person. Everyone was different, though, depending on the relationship lost. But on the surface, all those women would be known as one thing.

  Used goods.

  Sharon swore to herself that she would never be someone's second best. Steven and his gutter-slut secretary were wrong. She was much better than that. Sharon kept word of her divorce relatively secret. Even Ashley wasn’t fully told until all the paperwork was finalized. And anytime Sharon was forced to talk about it, she was very blunt, never delving into any real discussion about how or why it happened. She was never one for gossip; her feelings were always put aside once she walked into her office and sat down behind her desk. Sharon told herself every day for months after the divorce that she might not ever be able to stomach another serious relationship. The shank Steven had lodged into her heart felt too deep to ever be pulled out.

  But, Sharon was only human. And humans are annoyingly predictable.

  Feeling sick with vengeful heartbreak, it wasn’t long before she and Wayne were exchanging heated kisses behind closed office doors. It happened one day while they were sitting at the tiny conference table in her office going over spreadsheets. Sharon’s pen rolled off the table while she paused to open her bottle of water. Instinctively, she bent over to retrieve it, but was stopped halfway down. Wayne had met her bow to the floor with a kiss. Caught completely off guard, Sharon at first flinched, not sure of what was happening. But once the smooth warmness of his supple lips was fully pressed into hers, she melted into him. They embraced each other for what felt like hours until a knock at the door broke them of their lover’s dance.

  All this time, he’s known, Sharon thought to herself in the car on her way home later that day. Passing streetlights flashed green everywhere she went. She smiled for the first time in months. He knew I needed help.

  Wayne offered her much more than just a momentary means of sexual release. He helped support her workload at the office so she could make time for her daughter. But more importantly, for her sanity. An infected heart could only take so much added stress before the sickness spreads to the already weakened brain. Sharon could have so easily given up and lain face down, arms flat against her sides, in a shallow pool of self-pity. But she refused. Surely, no one would have judged her for that if they had known how she had been meticulously used and then tossed into the trash like an old pair of shit-stained underwear. Wayne and his outspoken chivalry helped to keep her head above murky waters in those most troubling of times. With no strings attached, he got down on one knee and helped Sharon pick up the pieces of her life. Those sacrifices hadn't gone unnoticed.

  Day by day, week-by-week, Sharon had slowly gotten her life back together. She was forever indebted to Wayne for reaching out selflessly at such a tribulating time. A little over a year into their secret relationship, they had decided to quietly get married. Now, ten years into a bli
ssfully happy marriage, this was the first instance of serious disagreement to surface between them since Wayne had decided to quit the firm and independently freelance back in early 2000. Sharon’s concern with her husband's outburst earlier that day wasn’t over his reaction, but over Ashley’s tears.

  When she got home from a late meeting in Brewer, she heard Wayne in his hobby room and found Ashley upstairs crying on her bed. The hobby room was Wayne's personal sanctuary. As of late, he had been spending most of his free time in there, quietly working on his little projects. What he spent countless hours toiling on was sort of unusual, but then again, taxidermy wasn’t for the faint of heart. He would make little displays with squirrels and chipmunks, even dressing them in tiny garments, after they fell prey to the baited traps he left in the backyard. Sharon thought the displays were weird, but, all in all, didn’t mind. It kept the squirrels out of the bird feeders, and more importantly, it seemed to make Wayne happy. She even encouraged him to enter his displays in carious taxidermy contests around the state. Most of Maine belonged to the uneducated yokels that roamed the hills and decrepit trailers that sprawled across the land. They alone decided the culture, or lack thereof. Truck pulls and taxidermy shows were never in short supply.

  Knowing never to disturb Wayne while he was in his hobby room, Sharon instead sought out Ashley. She was soon faced with something that she had been dreading since getting remarried.

  Daddy/Daughter Issues.

  Wayne and Ashley had always got along fine. He was especially warm and inviting the first time they met when Ashley was only eight. Ashley was initially timid about the meeting, hiding behind Sharon's knees when Wayne came to the house for dinner. He had come baring gifts of stuffed animals and candy, enough for several children. Needless to say, the offerings had won her over. By the end of the night, Ashley had Wayne playing dollies and dress-up for hours on end.