Enemies and Playmates (45 page)

Maybe Michael Stephen Kent would grow up to be everything their father was not. And everything Stephen Alexander Covington could have been.

Lauren twisted the ring on her finger. A new ring. A beautiful diamond that would soon be accompanied by a wedding band. That brought a smile.

She turned and studied Jesse’s sleeping face. He was the most peaceful man she’d ever known. He had no need for power, no need for control. He was comfortable with who he was, just as he was.

She traced a path from his cheek to his belly button. He moaned softly in his sleep. She kissed his neck. Her fingers slid over the tops of his thighs.

His body responded eagerly, even before he woke. Lauren pressed her body against his. Her fingers lightly stroked him.

Jesse opened one eye. He smiled and pulled her closer.

She lay back, enjoying the sensations his touched created. She gazed into his eyes. Her father’s eyes finally disappeared. All she saw was Jesse. His dark, intense eyes spoke to her in ways she now understood so well.

###

About The Author:

Darcia Helle writes because the characters trespassing through her mind leave her no alternative. Originally from Massachusetts, she now writes in the sunshine of Florida. She lives with her tolerant husband in a home ruled by four-legged babies.

You can learn more about Darcia and her writing on her website:
http://www.DarciaHelle.com
or
http://www.QuietFuryBooks.com

Other Books by Darcia Helle:

Hit List

No Justice (A Michael Sykora Novel)

Beyond Salvation (A Michael Sykora Novel)

Miami Snow

The Cutting Edge

Into The Light

Quiet Fury: An Anthology of Suspense

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Lyrical Inspiration

Ever have a song get stuck in your head? A line or two of the lyrics playing on a loop through your mind until it becomes a silent mantra? Annoying as that can be, sometimes it also provides inspiration.

My music addiction rivals my book addiction. If I’m not writing or reading, I’m listening to music. Some music lovers barely acknowledge lyrics. For me, the lyrics make the song.

When I write, I step inside my characters’ personalities. I need to feel what they feel, so that I can present them to my readers as a three-dimensional person, not just a character on a page. While writing my novel
Enemies and Playmates
, I had a relatively minor character whose impact on the story turned out to be much larger than his small part. His name is Stephen and he is the younger brother of Lauren, the main character.

Stephen’s character ran continually through my mind, along with the lyrics from two songs. The lyrics drove his character, as much as his character sparked the endless loop of the lyrics in my mind. The first was a line from ‘The Struggle Within’, a Metallica song from their Black album.
Home is not a home it becomes a hell… Turning it into your prison cell
. The other was a song called ‘Fade’ from the Break The Cycle album by Staind. That entire song, in my mind, became Stephen’s song. I could hear him singing it, see him living it. One line from that song –
But I never meant to fade away
– became Stephen’s plaintive cry.

I don’t know whether the songs sparked the character or Stephen’s character made me pay closer attention to the lyrics in those songs. I’m also not sure that it matters. Lyrics are pieces of a story. When I listen to a well written song, I can see that story play out in front of me. Sometimes it becomes more than a three to five minute vignette.

I am sure that what I visualize is most often not the same vision that inspired the song’s writer. However, that’s often the beauty of words. They can be many different things to many different people. It’s all in how we listen. Or how we read.

###

Hit List
An Excerpt

Chapter 1

It didn’t rain today. She thought it might but it didn’t. Not that it made any difference.

The clock ticked in the background. That was the only sound. Tick-tock, tick-tock…

She wandered about the house, clad in her worn-out terrycloth bathrobe. Her frizzy orange hair stood out from her head in a wild mass. Corinne had never been beautiful. That implied perfection, which she had never achieved. Nor had she ever tried. But once Corinne had possessed a commanding magnetism.

She had large brooding blue eyes with dark lashes that curled at the tips. Her nose was just a bit too large. Full lips had once smiled often, while giving men something to fantasize about.

She wouldn’t have been considered thin. Instead, she’d been shapely and always well toned. Her flame-colored hair, then a tamed curl, had demanded attention for her. And she’d received it. Quite often. She’d relished in that spotlight.

Now she walked on too-thin legs, back and forth. The clock continued to tick. She listened, finding the sound comforting. Shivering, she wrapped the tattered robe tighter around herself. She felt as if she were a hundred. She was forty-eight.

Having exhausted herself, she sat in the chair by the window. The gray sky grew darker. Soon it would be night. “Damn you!” she shouted into the empty air.

No one was there to respond. “Damn you,” she repeated. But this time the force was gone from her voice.

Corinne didn’t know he’d come in through the back and was now standing in the kitchen doorway watching her. Ian rubbed his hands over his eyes. In the house less than two minutes and already his head throbbed. He didn’t think they could go on like this much longer. Guilt, anger, sadness, frustration. He experienced the entire realm of emotions, all at once, every minute of the day. Sort of like living out a jumbled combination of the movie Groundhog Day and a Freudian textbook.

Ian forced himself into the living room. Her perfume assaulted him. His cough caused her to turn in his direction. Her red painted lips started to curve into a smile but straightened quickly. She’d been mad at him when he left and was evidently reminding herself to stay that way.

“Hello ma,” he said.

Corinne turned away, pulling her robe tighter around herself. She stared off at the television as if the blank screen held some mystical secret. He wanted to scream out every obscenity he could think of. Instead he ran his hand over the stubble on his chin and conjured up an image of a deserted island. The psychiatrist’s idea.

Dr. Endicott had suggested that he create his own “happy place” in his mind. A place he could escape to when he felt on edge. What better escape than a deserted island? Of course, the trick never worked. As if he could possibly trick himself into relaxing on some deserted island in his mind, while standing in the midst of chaos with his crazy mother.

Ian perched on the edge of the sofa and stifled a sigh. “Why didn’t you get dressed today, ma?”

Corinne stood in a flurry of motion that somehow managed to make him dizzy. She fussed over the knickknacks on the mantel as she spoke. “They were outside today. I saw them. I saw them. I saw them outside today.”

He tried to interrupt her singsong chatter but she continued fidgeting with the knickknacks, talking to the room as much as to him. “They saw me watching them. Watching them watching me.” An odd sort of tormented giggle escaped her lips. She said, “They have her. They have her. They know I can’t. I can’t. They have her.”

“Ma, stop.” His voice came out sharper than he’d intended. He swallowed the dry lump and tried again. “Please, ma. Sit down.”

She spun around. Her haunted eyes danced around the room, landing briefly on his but not lingering. “I saw them,” she said defiantly. “You don’t believe me. But I saw them.”

“No one was watching you today, ma.”

“How do you know that? Were you here?”

Ian raked his hands through his hair. Where the hell was his happy place? Count to 10. Take deep breaths. Hell, he needed a damn tranquilizer. “No, ma. I wasn’t here. But we’ve been through this before.”

Corinne began to chant. “Been through this. Been through this.” Then she stopped abruptly and sank back down into the chair. She clutched her robe. Suddenly she looked up. “What time is it?”

He glanced at the antique clock on the mantel. “Almost five.”

“Almost five?” Corinne said this as if stunned that the day had somehow managed to move forward without her. “I’m not dressed. Must be dressed. Must. Because they were here. No one believes me but they were here. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Ian stopped trying to make sense of the words. Now and then she fell into this pattern of incessant chanting. Repeating words and phrases until he wanted to rip out his eardrums to keep from hearing another sound. Eventually she would stop as quickly as she’d begun.

At times they even had normal conversations. Oddly enough, those were the times that hurt the most. Because that’s when he remembered what his mother had been like before their world had been tipped upside down.

Corinne stood and made her way down the hall toward her bedroom. Evidently it had suddenly become important that she be dressed. Ian shook his head and could only wonder at the scattered reasoning that ruled her mind.

***

Fifteen minutes later Corinne emerged from her bedroom wearing flannel pajamas and fuzzy slippers. Ian opened his mouth, about to remind her that she’d intended to put on clothes, not different pajamas. But he quickly snapped his mouth shut before any words escaped. He didn’t know why she’d chosen to get dressed at five in the afternoon. Nor did he know why she’d wound up in new pajamas instead. What he did know was that calling attention to the issue would only serve to increase his headache.

She scurried past him without a word. Pans began clanging in the kitchen. The refrigerator opened and closed, cabinet doors thudded shut. All the normal sounds of someone cooking dinner.

He closed his eyes, leaned his head back against the sofa. Sometimes it all seemed surreal. Not that long ago he’d had a normal life. Living in his own home. Attending occasional family dinners with his mother, aunt, uncle, and cousins. And enjoying them. Now he was living back in his childhood home, with a mother who had apparently overused her sanity. Family dinners consisted of his mother and himself.

A loud clatter came from the kitchen, followed by muttering he could not understand. Ian sucked in a long breath and ran a string of curses through his mind. Damn his mother’s psychiatrist and all the psychobabble bullshit. Where the hell was he supposed to find a happy place amidst all this craziness?

He pushed himself off the sofa. Hopefully she had just dropped something. He directed a silent prayer to God, Buddha, and anyone else who would listen to please give him his mother back. Did he even believe that was possible anymore?

Ian found Corinne sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, hugging her knees to her chest and rocking back and forth. He stopped abruptly, listening to her quiet moans. Her back was to him but he didn’t need to see her face to know that she had gone far away in her mind. He’d gotten used to it by now. The odd trance-like state that simply took over her being. The saddest thing, the hardest part of it all, was the look in her glazed eyes. It wasn’t happiness she was finding in that faraway place.

Chapter 2

Corinne loved her rocking chair. Sometimes if she kept her body in constant motion, her mind would stay clear. She could form an entire thought and make complete sense when she spoke. But, as much as she relished those rare moments, she dreaded them even more. Because that’s when it began to make sense.

They wanted her to tell them what was in her mind. What she had locked up tight inside. Ian. And that doctor with the chubby face and balding head. She always wanted to call him Dr. Hartley because he resembled that man on the TV show years ago. Of course he wasn’t really Dr. Hartley. His name was Dr. Endicott. And he claimed that he wanted to help her.

Corinne didn’t trust Dr. Endicott. Maybe she would have trusted Dr. Hartley. He was kind. And his secretary had red hair, like her own. Carol was her name.

Dr. Endicott’s secretary didn’t have a name. Oh, that was probably not true. Everyone had a name. But this secretary never told her name. Only took messages and answered the phone. And her hair was bottle-blonde, teased to perfection, sprayed into obedience.

Corinne sat on the sofa, its cushions worn from the weight of too many rear ends. She missed her rocking chair. She missed her tattered robe and her fuzzy slippers. Too many words, too much of everything assaulted her senses.

Ian had left her here. He’d promised he’d come back. He’d reminded her that he always came back.

“Corinne?”

She was startled to find Dr. Endicott sitting across from her. How had she forgotten that he was there? His chair, where he always sat. Sleek, mocha-colored soft leather. Well padded, too. His rear end didn’t sink down into a concrete ditch.

She realized that he was waiting for her to answer. His face held that patient expectancy that must have come with his psychiatry degree. “I’m sorry,” she said. “What did you ask?”

“I wanted to know whether there was something that you’d like to talk about,” Dr. Endicott replied. “You’ve said very little today.”

His voice was like oil, thick and slippery. Corinne chewed her bottom lip as she thought about what to say. It didn’t matter, really. All the words wound up in the same place. Sort of like separating all your food on your dinner plate, just so that it could end up in a thick wad of goo in the pit of your stomach.

Corinne sat up straighter, wiggled her butt to better fit the trench. She tilted her head as she thought, then said, “I wonder if geese can fly backward.”