It actually hurts me, his words. He was right, this was my fault, I did this to her… to us.
“No matter what weird claim you think you have on her, she’s our daughter and I want her to get the help she needs Ryan,” Mel tells me.
I swipe across the counter, knocking all their perfect normal life crap to the floor. “She doesn’t need help! Why do you fucking people always assume we’re sick, she’s not sick, she’s just not like you. Like them!” I roar.
The slap across my cheek from Melody is a bold, brave action considering I’m three seconds away from killing everyone preventing me from being with Cereus, including them both if it comes to it.
“You’re not sick Ryan. You were born soulless or lacking empathy, or what ever the hell you want to believe, but she is sick, her mind is fragmented and she’s lost inside there. She needs help. If you care about her the way you appear to, you will know this and let her be where she needs to be.” Melody ends on a sob her legs giving out. Blake catches her and holds her while she sobs uncontrollably.
Was she right?
You know she’s right.
The world around me fades. Blake becomes further and further away from me. I hear him yell my name but it’s distorted and sounds almost in slow motion.
The empty dark pit inside me consumes me until there’s nothing.
Three weeks and two operations and I’m finally walking out of this place – okay, jumping out the hospital room window isn’t the same as walking out but I was avoiding the officers waiting to question me about the stab wound. Luckily I was still known as Robert Maze according to the records. Blake had been to tell me that Cereus was being assessed but would be contained for the foreseeable future.
They used the term ‘sociopath’ causing tears to mist Blake’s eyes when he was relaying the information. They referred to me as a psychopath when I was in there and they weren’t wrong, that’s the label they gave men like me. A sociopath, I wasn’t sure if that’s what Cereus was. To me she is just trapped in her darkness and just needs to learn how to take control. The doctors spat a lot of jargon to Blake when he asked for an update on her and it sounds all explainable when they use their terms so Blake and Melody are still convinced Blue Water is where she needs to be.
They told him sociopaths usually tend to be more spontaneous and erratic in their behavior compared to that of a psychopath. While both have difficulties forming attachments to others, they may be able to form an attachment to a like-minded person. When a sociopath commits a crime, they do so in an impulsive and completely unplanned manner, without thinking about the risks or consequences. Agitation and becoming enraged easily and quickly is a trait sociopaths have and that can lead them to violent outbursts. The fact that they can be erratic and impulsive with their violent surges increase the chances of them being caught for the crimes they commit.
Maybe she is a sociopath, maybe she isn’t but what I know for sure is she’s mine and I’m hers, and we need to be together, wherever that may be. I suppose it was inevitable that I would end up back here.
I look up at the familiar building and roll my head over my shoulders. Walking up to the gate I hold up the hammer and tell the guard I want to smash his brains into mulch. I begin shouting, “I want to kill people, I want to cave their heads in and bathe in their blood.”
When the door closes behind me as I’m taken to a room – cell - everything feels full circle, only the difference is … I’m not alone this time, somewhere in here my sweet Cereus waits for me.
The chemicals they pushed into my arm were swimming through my system causing the hollow ache to stop hurting. They took me to Blue Water, the place they held my Ryan for all those years. Maybe this was my penance, his ghost can chase me in the dark in here. The memories of my life keep blurring and I’m not sure I want to remember that life.
It hurts too much to remember.
In a weird messed up way I feel close to him in here, living life through his eyes, maybe? Witnessing what he did…
The lights shut out and darkness shrouds me. Maybe this was how it was always supposed to be. I’d got it wrong, thinking I was with Ryan in the dark because the truth was…
We are completely isolated in darkness. Even our shadows leave us…
The End