An Unlikely Romance Ch 05

Read all the previous chapters to understand what is unfolding here in this one. As always, I appreciate your comments and votes. If you have any private feedback for me, don't hesitate to shoot it my way.

"Let no evil impair my rest.

Or powers of darkness me molest"

-Anonymous

---

"Walk me through this again."

"We will be giving you a mild sedative to put you to sleep. After ensuring that you are out, we will be injecting some Cortisol into your carotid artery. This should carry it through the bloodstream up to the brain. There it passes through the memory centres, activating the dormant ones. Your memory should come to you as a recollection or a dream. Pay close attention to what you see, they hold the key to what you want to know."

"Okay then, let's go for it."

Dr. Hart pushed the plunger down slowly. I felt my vision get darker and darker. Soon it was completely black.

I found myself groping in the dark, trying to hold on to something. I couldn't find anything. Finally, I felt my dreamscape forming. It seemed surreal, but bit by bit, a scene formed around me. I didn't recognize the place, if it was a real place. It was one long road leading to nowhere. Cautiously, I followed it. It was a full moon night and the sky was cloudless. Hundreds upon hundreds of stars shone down from the sky illuminating my path.

The surroundings were barren. No trees, no buildings, no people, not even a blade of grass. The lack of scenery gave it an ethereal feel.. Then I saw a shadow standing by the roadside. It was a woman. Curious, I walked up to her. She was facing away from me. She turned slowly and I could see her face. I immediately took a couple of steps back in shock. It was her.

I had seen that face so many times in my dreams. Every single fantasy I had of killing a prostitute had her in it was of her. I had been killing substitutes all this time, but she was the true object of my urges. I could never get that face out of my head. That gaunt expression plastered on that cold emotionless face. Each time I recalled it from my dreams, it inspired an intense anger combined with a chilling fear. Nervously, I began.

"Who are you?"

The question didn't seem to register as she gazed into the desolate horizon. There didn't seem to be any light in those cold, unfeeling eyes as she gazed down the road. I repeated my question.

"I have the answers you seek."

Her voice was sepulchral, her expression forlorn. She went on.

"Please do not go any further, do not look. I am your subconscious begging you not to awaken these memories. They will drive you insane."

Taking a deep breath, I said "I have to."

"You were warned."

Slowly, she disappeared into the night. A fog swirled through the air. It blocked out the stars, the moon as well as the surroundings. All I could see for a few minutes was white. Then the fog thinned a bit. The surroundings were visible again. But they were different. It was like one long hallway. There were many doors on either side of the hall and one large door at the very end.

Cautiously, I opened the first door to my right.

The door opened into a bedroom. It was night-time. The dim lamp cast long shadows across the room. In one corner a woman sat over a desk reading intently and muttering to herself. She seemed barely aware of anything else as she kept muttering in a low tone. From time to time I could discern the words- 'they are watching us.'

Suddenly, I heard a piercing cry from one corner of the room. Turning in that direction, I saw a boy of hardly three sitting on a chair. He was crying loudly. The woman stopped her muttering and ran over to him and quickly clasped her hands over his mouth.

"Shhh.. don't let them know you are here. They are watching us. They will find out."

That voice. I have heard that voice so many times before. It's the female voice inside my head goading me on to kill hookers for years now. This woman was the manifestation of all my urges. I had to find out more about her.

The kid kept crying at the top of his voice as she tried her best to calm him, but he wouldn't stop. Unaware of my presence, they went on. Finally the woman said, "Simon, listen to me, they are coming."

Simon? Was that kid me?

There was a loud knock on the door which scared the poor woman out of her wits. She tiptoed to the doorway and opened it. A large man forced his way into the room. She frantically tried talking to him, "Save me, they are coming once more. Please save me."

He roughly pushed her aside and made his way to an adjacent room. Her head hit the wall and she fell to the floor. The kid continued crying.

Hurriedly, I ran out of the room and shut the door. Gasping for breath, I stood in the corridor. Just one room down and I already knew so much about myself. It scared me, but I had to see what was inside the next room.

Tentatively, I opened the door. It was the same room. The kid was still crying at the top of his lungs. His mother bent over the bed trying to calm him. She kept muttering incoherently to him.

"Shhh... they're almost here. They are coming to get you, to kill you. Don't worry, he will protect us. He is a prophet."

I looked at where she was pointing to see the large man (presumably my father), passed out on the floor with an empty bottle of scotch beside him. I look closer at my mother. She had a perpetual manic expression on her face. Her eyes darted everywhere and her mouth betrayed her hallucinations.

Schizophrenic, paranoid, delusional, manic depressive, bipolar. In the past I had read up on these to identify which one I had. From my untrained vantage point, she seemed to have signs of all of them.

But that wasn't it.

I saw a few drops of blood on the floor and on the bed. She had a neat cut under her left eye and was bleeding intermittently. Her husband wasn't ideal either. A control freak who had brainwashed her into thinking he was almighty, a prophet.

Born to these parents what chance did I have of coming out normal?

Two doors down and I already felt sick to my stomach. I opened the third door to see the worst scene yet. The kid lay on the bed while my parents were having sex beside him. It was hideous. My mother was underneath and was obviously in pain as daddy dearest kept piling into her. She screamed out loud and awoke the kid who in turn started screaming. This did nothing to slow down my father who continued slamming his oversized organ into my mother's visibly bruised vagina.

He increased his speed and so did her screams. Only now, they were mixed with begging as she implored him to stop but he didn't. He hoisted her knees on his shoulders and put even more strength into it. Looking down at this macabre concerto of violence, I could see some flecks of red on his cock. Finally, he pushed away like a ragdoll and left. I could see her vagina had several dark lines around the labia and a small trickle of blood seeped out of the opening pooling in between her legs.

She mustered up the strength to say, "Thank You."

There had to be a special circle of hell for assholes like that, who make sex-slaves out of their wives. Unsure if I wanted to see what came next, I entered the next room.

I took a step back to digest the sight. My father was having raw, animalistic sex with another woman. She was the woman who had warned me earlier, the face of all my fantasies. She was screaming at the top of her lungs while my father humped her at full speed. This entire scene was repulsive as her high pitched screams reverberated around the room.

This spurred my father on and he let out a few animalistic grunts and redoubled his efforts. Her nails were digging into his back as she pulled him closer. They seemed oblivious to the toddler crying his lungs out nearby.

After this sexual derby ended, the whore got up and lit a cigarette. All at once, my fear returned and I cowered in the corner, fearfully awaiting what would happen. She yelled out, "Why doesn't that stupid kid shut up?"

Saying this she got up from the bed and grabbed the kid's small arm. Taking another drag, she took the cigarette out of her mouth and pushed the fiery end into his shoulder. His demented screams made her smile. I could feel one of the healed scars on my shoulder light up. She laughed and held it in contact with the shoulder for a minute or so. Then, she lifted it and took another drag.

I literally ran out of the room. My heart was beating rapidly and I was sweating. Dr. Hart was right. These memories were better off buried. I was in way over my head. But I had to go on. There was no other way.

Saying a silent prayer, I opened the next door to my childhood.

It was more of the same. This and every other door were flashes into a past I had suppressed. My mother was constantly beaten and tortured. There were occasions where he knocked her out cold. That hooker featured heavily.in these scenes-always having sex in the same grotesque rhythm, sometimes right beside my mother's unconscious body. The child was another constant fixture to this macabre soap opera.

The hooker didn't like him one bit. She used his arms and shoulders as an ashtray on multiple occasions and even beat him to try and shut him up. On the few occasions my mother tried to intervene, she was pushed aside by daddy dearest. When I say pushed, I meant punched, kicked or knocked out.

As I went past more doors, I noticed something different. Gradually the kid wasn't crying any more, but watching the whore with a look of intense hatred. It is very tough to visualize such a look on someone so young, but I saw it. Even his childish mind knew that she was evil.

It didn't help that she continued verbally and physically abusing him.

Each room was a story in itself and I could gradually see the genesis of a monster. This monster was slowly developing. Bit by bit, I could understand everything--my hatred, my urges, my fantasies.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, I was standing in front of the last door. Suddenly, that hooker appeared in front of me. She was pale with fear.

"I am sorry. I made you what you are. You have your answers. Just please don't go in there. That is the one memory that unleashed the beast and repressed all the others. Please do not look."

I could feel my rage boiling inside me as I grabbed her neck roughly. Years of nightmares and fantasies rushed back to me in a deluge as I tightened my grip.

"You made me kill all those girls."

"You know that you can't hurt me right? I don't exist. This is all in your head."

I watched as she disappeared. Her last words to me were, "It took a lot of effort for you to close that door. Don't open it."

I didn't really have a choice. I had to see what was behind it. Behind the door was possibly my salvation. Taking a deep breath, I opened it.

It was that room again, but something was different. There was a distinct miasma in the air. My father and his girlfriend were going at it full steam on the bed while the child was looking on. His expression was hateful as he looked on at the grim rhapsody of human flesh splattering against each other unfolding in front of him. Oddly enough, my mother was nowhere in sight. I knelt down beside four year old me and waited for that instant which would be the coup de grace to my soul. In this crucible of filth and hideous fornication, a monster was about to be born.

There was eerie feeling of foreboding in the room. I watched not knowing what to anticipate. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a movement near the door.

The light was too dim to make out clearly, but I could see a silhouette of a woman standing in the doorway. Slowly, she stepped forward. It was my mother, unlike I had ever seen her. Her hair was scattered all over her shoulders. Her eyes betrayed little emotion. But what caught my attention was the object in her hand- a kitchen knife. She was clutching it tightly.

I knew exactly what was happening. I had been there. She was having a psychotic break.

Time slowed to a crawl as she slowly crept into the room. The happy fuckers were oblivious to her presence. They kept up their debauched carnival as she was standing at the foot of the bed. Wordlessly, she sank it into my dad's neck. He screamed in pain as blood spurted out freely. She kept the knife embedded inside and turned it. His arms flailed for some time, but it was soon over. He lay there in a massive pool of his own blood.

The blood washed all over the hooker as she cried out in horror. My mother grabbed her by the neck and forcefully brought her face inches away from her child's. I was getting a close look as well.

"They sent her to watch us. They sent her to seduce that man into relinquishing us. I saw through their plan."

Saying this, she slit the hooker's throat. Blood spurted out from the jugular vein and onto the kid's face. The hooker tried to say something, but the only discernable sounds were her drowning in her own blood. The job was finished by a few quick stabs to the chest. She fell down on the floor, still bleeding.

Now my mother turned to face me, not four year old me, but present day me.

"I hope you understand why I was telling you to do it all this time. They are an evil scourge. Look at her. This worthless tramp hurt you when you were just a kid. She stole your innocence. She had to pay."

The bloody whore got up as well, her wounds still gaping.

"I am sorry. I told you not to look. I warned you."

I looked at my mother's eyes which had long since lost any light.

"She hurt me when I was young. But what about the girls you made me kill? They did not. You made me a monster. In my head, constantly telling me to go out and kill whores."

Both women were silent. I went on.

"Like a being inside my head, you walked all over my brain pulling at the wires, twisting reality, until I could not resist your cruel temptation. You made me what I am. I never had a choice to be anything else."

"You are what you are. There is no changing that. You are just going to have to accept that."

"You're wrong. This whole remembrance gave taught me one important thing. I still have hope. I can still change."

Her derisive laughter echoed off the walls.

"Hope? What hope? How can you seriously think of changing after this?"

I looked down at my four year old self and smiled.

"I wasn't born a monster."

This reply took her aback. Enraged, she replied.

"That boy is dead now. You are what you are. Embrace it. Go back and kill even more whores until they all go scurrying back. You think you can change? They don't." she said, pointing behind her. The door opened and one by one all eight of my victims entered the room. They were bloody and messy, exactly how I had left them. They circled me and pointed accusingly.

The first one looked at me with a deathly stare. Her neck was split open.

"Why did you kill me? I didn't do anything."

They all spoke to me, their voices distant and sepulchral. I tried turning away but they were all around me. I saw that girl with that innocent expression. She had that expression fixed across her face as she tilted her head from side to side surveying me. The gash on her abdomen was clearly visible. Nina, the police officer, also looked at me. She wasn't even a hooker.

"No, please, make it stop."

The door of the room softly opened. All eyes went towards it. Monica entered, her eyes tinged with betrayal. The circle of accusers parted to let her in. She was standing over me. I searched her expression and found no anger, no wrath, no fury, just a sense of sadness and betrayal at my misdeeds.

"Please, I didn't have a choice. She made me do it. It wasn't my fault."

I hysterically cried and pointed. Monica did not say anything. She barely moved a muscle. All the warmth was gone. She looked at me coldly and shook her head in disapproval.

"Do what you want. Hurt me, kill me, but please forgive me first."

Just dead silence. Nothing.

The room was spinning around. The images were becoming blurry and indistinct. Soon, all I could see was a blur of colour. It was sucking me in like a vortex. I helplessly flailed, but to no avail. The colours soon disappeared and I was bucking and thrashing in the black abyss of my guilt.

My eyes opened. I was in the clinic. The doctors had forcibly woken me up. My pulse was still erratic and my heart was racing. I had taken a journey deep into the innermost recesses of my mind searching for answers.

I wasn't sure they were the answers I wanted.