Beautiful Nightmares (The Asylum Trilogy) Page 6

  Now I’m hobbling down the road, taking deep breaths and I know with certainty that there is something wrong. Maybe they’re menstrual cramps. I shake my head. No. I’ve never had menstrual cramps that intense. Then I think I might have internal bleeding. While I’m trying to self-diagnose myself the infant wakes up and starts crying again. “Hush, please,” I force out with a grunt. The wailing on top of the cramping is making my temples throb and I now have a pounding headache.

  I want to shriek.

  I want curl over and plant my knees into the road.

  I want to cry and tuck myself into a ball.

  I want someone to comfort me and take the pain away.

  All of a sudden it becomes too much.

  I feel like I’m being stabbed in the gut over and over and over again. I can’t breathe. Now there’s warm fluid trickling down my inner thighs. My whole body convulses. I’m starting to lose my grip on the baby.

  And before I realize what’s happening, I hit the ground, the child rolls out of my arms, and I pass out in the middle of the road in a pool of my own blood.

  Chapter Thirteen

  ~After~

  I’ve been scheming.

  I’ve been plotting and planning.

  My mind is full of chaos, devious thoughts, and conflicting emotions. I can feel a war between my head and my heart building, but I know that in this battle my head is going to win. My heart will become a casualty, chopped in half and left for dead on the battle field.

  In most situations where it’s a matter of the mind or a matter of the heart kind of thing, I almost always follow my heart. In my opinion, not enough people do, but this situation in particular doesn’t call for that kind of reasoning. In this situation, I need a weapon, and I know that I have to do something I don’t want to do to retrieve one.

  I don’t like hurting people.

  Even in the smallest kind of way.

  Why?

  Because I know what it’s like to be hurt.

  I know what it feels like to be a punching bag for another person’s rage.

  I know how it feels to have cruel words thrown at you like a poisoned dagger to the heart and all you can do is wait for the poison to branch off, working its way through your body. It pinches your nerves and holds your organs as hostages before it slowly kills you. Not only that, but the words somehow manage to strip away your confidence until you’re left standing naked in front of a mirror, picking yourself apart mentally…

  Piece by piece.

  Bit by bit.

  That’s what my Daddy did to me.

  His twisted words and brutal slaps made me believe that I wasn’t worth anything. That I was just like my whore of a mother, who actually wasn’t a whore at all, but couldn’t live with his torturous kind of abuse.

  I don’t think about Mommy as often as I used to. Mainly because after a long, drawn out investigation, the police found her body in our back yard. She was buried twelve feet behind my old sand box. And she was just like how I imagined she would be. Nothing but a pile of bones.

  There was no funeral, being that Daddy was in prison and my new home had become Oak Hill. I’m not even entirely sure what the police did with her remains because I never got the chance to ask, but I keep telling myself that one day I’ll find her.

  One day, I’ll make it right for her.

  One day I’ll see that she’s remembered as the beautiful and amazing wife and mother that she was.

  If I ever make it out of Oak Hill alive, that is.

  Tears swell in my eyes whenever I think about Mommy. My heart aches with remorse and weeps with sorrow for her and how tragically her life ended. I can’t imagine dying like that. I can’t imagine looking into the eyes of the person I loved most in the world, knowing that while their grip is tightening around my neck that they will be the death of me.

  I start sobbing hard and I’m reminded of why I don’t like to think about Mommy anymore. My sobs come out fast and my tears rain down my cheeks. I start to scream. I’m so full of pain and sadness that I feel like screaming is the only way to release it from my body. Grabbing my pillow, I smother my face into and my screams morph into shrieks. I’m trying as hard as I can to muffle myself because the last thing I want is a staff member barging through the door and injecting me with more drugs.

  “My sweet, sweet Addy.” I hear Damien’s voice and when I lift my head and look to my left, he’s sitting beside me. He strokes my hair.

  Softly.

  With gentle caresses and warm fingertips.

  For once I don’t push him away. For the first time in a long time I feel like I need somebody and since he’s here I decide that that somebody can be him. I toss my pillow to the side and launch myself at him and we fall back on the cot. Burying my head into his chest, I inhale the scent of him. He smells like a combination of the outdoors after a thunderstorm and his own essence. This always seems to be the problem between Damien and myself.

  It’s that he doesn’t appear as an illusion.

  He’s so life-like.

  He’s looks, feels, and smells so real.

  And that always throws me for a loop because I don’t understand how this is possible.

  I saw him die.

  He thumbs the tears out of my eyes and kisses the top of my head. Heat pours from his body and drenches me as I wrap my legs around his. “No more tears, okay?” He moves his thumb back and forth across my cheek in a loving gesture. “I always did hate seeing you like this.”

  I let out a long, strained breath and pull myself closer to him. I clear my throat as a wave of exhaustion splashes over me and suddenly I can barely keep my eyes open. “I know,” I tell him.

  “Sleep, love,” he says.

  I don’t need him to tell me again because only mere seconds after he gets the words out, that is exactly what I do.

  ~ ~ ~

  When I wake up, Damien is gone.

  Of course.

  That’s how it usually is. He only comes around when he feels like it. Sitting up, I peel the pieces of my matted-down hair away from my face and glance in the direction of the window. My stomach howls out, crying in pains of hunger as I take notice in the color of the sky. Swirled sprays of oranges and yellows and pinks. Then I mentally curse myself for sleeping through dinner. And then I mentally curse the staff members for not waking me up.

  An image of Mommy flashes through my mind and I tuck that image away.

  I lock it up.

  In a box.

  Chain it too.

  Then I build a brick wall around that box, concealing it from the entire world, myself included. This is something I’m good at. I’m good at blocking out all of the things I don’t want to remember. Or so I’ve been told by some members of the staff. But, I agree with them for the most part. What I’d really like to tell them is; if you lived a life of nothing but agony, tragedy, and death, wouldn’t you block it out too?

  I never do though.

  I never say anything about it because parts of people’s pasts are meant to stay hidden. And if they to happen to be found, it should be because they want that part of their lives to be found out.

  Thinking of that subject, and finding things out, I go back to the notion of creating a diversion so that I can steal a fork from the mess hall. I know they keep metal forks in the kitchen, but I have to figure out how to get into the kitchen in the first place.

  My eyes sweep over the walls of my cell. I’m thinking, thinking, thinking and the survey of my cell comes to a halt when I notice a spider on the wall. It’s in the far right corner and I watch with a smile on my face as it weaves a web in between the walls on each side of the corner.

  Then I think to myself…

  That’s just perfect.

  Brilliant, I tell you, brilliant.

  And in that moment it seems crazy to me how an arachnid could aid me in creating the type of diversion that I so desperately need.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ~Before~

 
; I feel like I’m living in an alternate reality.

  And in this world in my mind I’m standing in front of my Daddy, sobbing.

  My face is in my palms and tears seep through the cracks in my fingers and rain down my wrists.

  It’s not until I peek through my fingertips that the gun goes off. Suddenly, I’m paralyzed by a pain so brutal, so piercing, and so intense that the wind is knocked out of my lungs and I hit my knees. I let out the loudest howl I’ve ever cried and touch my left side, trembling in fear when I see my fingertips covered in red.

  I feel like all the warmth has been sucked from my body and I shiver.

  After taking two jagged steps forward, Daddy stands before me. We are only separated by inches. I’m staring with wide eyes into the barrel of the shot gun. At that moment, my entire life flashes through my eyes. I close them for a second and I swear I see Mommy’s face. I swear I can hear her voice. “Don’t cry little bird.” The tone of her voice is soothing and the sound of it puts me at ease. “It’s not your time yet.”

  I believe her.

  I believe her.

  I am too young to die.

  Then something inside of me snaps and I do something I never thought I’d be capable of doing. I grab the barrel of the shot gun with shaking fingers and bloody hands. I shove on it with so much force that the butt whacks Daddy in the jaw and he stumbles backward.

  Daddy palms his chin.

  Drops the gun.

  I act quickly, slipping through a puddle of my blood and snatch the gun from the floor. I let out the loudest, painful, and heart-wrenching shriek of my entire life.

  I aim.

  Place my finger on the trigger.

  I pause.

  Then I fire and shoot the bastard in the left knee cap.

  ~ ~ ~

  Sometimes I wonder how dreams can feel so real.

  I feel like I’m falling.

  I feel like I’m falling into a pit.

  The strange thing is, the pit is never-ending.

  I just keep falling and falling and falling and waiting, preparing myself for the blunt force when I snap my neck on the cold, hard ground.

  But it never happens.

  I never hit rock bottom.

  The worst part is, it feels like my eyelids have been super-glued shut because the darkness is so black and so thick that I can’t see through it. I need help, I know this and I try to yell for it, but when I do my mouth opens but no sound comes out. My heart hammers against my ribcage. My stomach bottoms out. There’s a weightless yet a surging spike of adrenaline pumping through me.

  I try to scream again, “Help! Help!” But once again no sound leaves my throat. I strain to make out any kind of noise, but the only thing I can hear is the wind whooshing against my ears.

  I reach out, with flailing arms and grab a fist full of nothing and at the same time, I feel like the darkness surrounding me cuffs around my wrists and ankles turning my body into a parachute.

  My body jerks.

  Arches up.

  Then relaxes.

  Suddenly I feel like a feather and it’s as if my downward free fall has turned into a peaceful float. I imagine that I’m outdoors. That’s the sun is stinging my skin with warmth. I imagine that I am a raft without a person lying on top of me and I’m floating and drifting on top of crystalline blue waters. Now, I feel calm. My nerves crawl back into their hiding places. The uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach settles.

  The whooshing sound filling my ears dies down and I swear I can hear the voice of a man. He’s calling my name. “Adelaide!” There’s a pause and the second time he says my name his voice goes up an octave. “Adelaide!” He sounds frantic and urgent and worried.

  I try to answer him, but still nothing comes out.

  Then his voice begins to fade away, dying and echoing all around me as tears of desperation well up in my eyes.

  My mind screams.

  Help me.

  Please help me.

  I still don’t know where I am or what is happening and those thoughts plague my mind. I still wonder if I’ll ever be able to clearly see my surroundings and still hope that at some point that I’ll stop falling. And there’s huge part of me that thinks at some point during this fall that I’m going to die.

  Then I have to wonder…

  Am I dreaming?

  Is this a nightmare?

  I hope so because the thought of this moment being reality terrifies me.

  Am I dreaming?

  I don’t know, and what terrifies me more than anything is that I don’t know when or if I’m ever going to wake up.

  And then I do…

  When I wake up something strange happens.

  I am walking through a darkened corridor.

  Lanterns on the wooden walls light my path and shadows dance along the walls.

  There’s a man crying.

  Elijah.

  I think that’s his name.

  I think that I know this man.

  I can hear him. His voice bleeds through the walls and I know that I have to go to him. I have to go to him because I love him. I ache when I’m not near him. And hearing the pain in his voice nearly cripples me.

  Elijah sits at his desk. He’s sobbing, his hands fisted through his locks of gold, his chest heaving as he lets out another anguished cry. “Why, Adelaide?” he screams. “Why?” He raises his head slowly, his beautiful golden eyes brimming with tears, and he clenches his jaw. Suddenly the emotion in his features twists from sorrow to rage. He stands. His face is red hot like the hearth of a fire and in one swift motion he sweeps his arm along the length of his desk sending all of the papers, folders, pens, and paper weights clattering to the floor. He lets out another fierce anguished cry.

  “Elijah, love. What’s wrong?”

  My question is met with silence.

  “Tell me, my love,” I press on. “What can I do to make it better?”

  My words don’t seem to ease his suffering at all. He begins pacing behind his desk, hands balled in fists at his side. He stops mid-pace and in an abrupt reaction he picks up the antique globe next to his desk and he chucks it with force into the wall. “Why Adelaide?” he repeats his previous question and falls back into his chair in a heap.

  I’ve reached the point where I can no longer hold back my tears and I rush to him, clinging to his arm and crying, “I can’t take this. I can’t take seeing you like this, Elijah. Please. You’re breaking my heart.” I’d give anything to take away his pain. I’d give anything to whisper heartfelt words into his ear and let him know that everything will be all right. That we will be all right.

  “Just tell me why?” he says. “Was it because I loved you too much? Wanted to keep you close? Was it because I allowed you to banish the darkness inside of me and becoming my never ending light?”

  I sob harder. “I don’t understand. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I lace my fingers through his, aching for him to look me in the eye, but he won’t. “Elijah, please tell me.”

  He sits up and moves swiftly and it’s not until then that I see the glint of metal in the dim lighting of the office that I start to panic. “No,” I say inaudibly. “No.” My voice goes up to barely above a whisper. “No.” Now it’s a strained rasp and I feel like no is the only word in my entire vocabulary. “No.”

  Elijah palms the gun with trembling fingers and my hands are on his shoulders. I am shaking him. There’s no effect. My force has no effect. “No, Elijah!” I scream. “No!”

  Elijah lifts the gun to his lips and my heart stops beating. I pry on the weapon, trying to wrestle it out of his grasp. “No! Elijah! Don’t do this please! If not for me then for Willow! She loves her Daddy! Please!” I hit my knees curling my arms around the back of his legs. “Please, don’t do this!”

  “I can’t live without you, Adelaide,” he murmurs mechanically. “Why did you have to die?”

  I bury my head into his knees and scream at the top of my lungs. “But I’m not
dead! I am NOT dead!”

  “I’ll be seeing you,” he whispers and I peer up at him just to see a faint, ghost-like smile on his lips. His finger slips over the trigger. At that moment, I scramble and yank on his legs, tugging with as much force as I can muster. “No Elijah!” I’ve resorted to shrieking. “I love you! Don’t do this!”

  BANG!

  The gunshot echoes through the darkened office. Elijah’s hand with the gun falls at his side and I slide down his body, gripping onto his feet and scream, tears raining all over his brown, leather loafers.

  Then I begin my second descent into darkness.