Experiment in Terror 06.5 And With Madness Comes the Light (2 page)

“Jenn,” I said, sitting up in bed. She was
looking around the room like I’d hidden shit everywhere. Literal
shit. “Make this quick.”

“You’re disgusting,” she announced,
flouncing over to a half-eaten pizza on the floor. “What the fuck
happened?”

“You know what happened,” I said quietly,
surprised at the embarrassment I was feeling, relieved that it
meant I was alive. “I lost everything.”

She stopped in the middle of the room,
slender hands on slender hips. “You lost nothing you didn’t already
have.”

“How many negatives were in that sentence?”
I asked, trying to count them.

She rolled her eyes, still managing to look
disgusted. “You can’t lose something you never owned to begin with.
Accept that and move on.”

“Whoa,” I said, shaking my head. “How fast
you’ve gone to Bitch Town. Where’s the compassion I saw in you the
other day?”

“I only have so much. You’ve used it all
up.”

“So, this is how it’s going to be?” I asked,
almost amused by her coldness.

“Jenn,” Bradley yelled from the living room,
“maybe we should come back after we call the hazmat team.”

“Great idea,” I yelled back. “They can spray
you both down for your crotch rot while they’re at it.”

“Real mature,” she sniped, edging toward the
door.

“Someone has to be.”

Her green eyes narrowed into feline slits.
“I’ll come back in two days, Dex. Noon. I expect you’ll not only be
out of the apartment so I don’t have to see your dirty mug, but
that it will be clean and all my stuff will be stacked by the door.
If not, I really will call somebody about this.”

I didn’t know who she’d call aside from the
SPCA, but I wasn’t going to risk it. I glared back at her as a way
of conceding. I didn’t want to just do as she said—obviously—and
that coal of pride was starting to flame. I’d show both of
them.

I started by taking the longest shower of my
life, followed by the longest jerk-off session of my life. I
thought of Perry’s ample ass the entire time I was beating it, and
I’m happy to say I didn’t shed a single tear. Of course, in my
fantasy, none of this shit ever happened.

Then came the cleaning of the apartment,
which I’m not sure how I handled. No wonder they were so
disgusted—I’d seen better living conditions under the Pine I-5
overpass. Finally, I started answering my phone when it rang. I got
one hell of a lashing from Rebecca once I told her what had
happened between Perry and me.

She wasted no time in giving me that lashing
in person.

Crack.

Rebecca’s hand flew across my face the
minute I opened the door. She didn’t even look, she just walked in
and
smack
. It was almost scary, like she had some
preternatural slapping ability. Maybe all Brits had that.

“You fucking wanker!” she yelled at me,
throwing her purse on the kitchen counter. “You piece of shit, good
for nothing, pathetic excuse for a man.”

I stroked my chin and looked her up and
down. She looked like some ‘40s femme fatale with her smooth black
hair, red lips, and sculpted dress. She seethed like one, too.

“You’re quite attractive when you’re
indignant,” I commented.

Smack
. Again. Man, she was fast.

My cheek stung as I rubbed at it. I shot her
a wary glance and backed away. “Are you done now?”

“No,” she said, folding her arms and tapping
her pumps. “No, I’m not done. I’m just getting started. How dare
you?”

“I know,” I mumbled and dragged myself over
to the couch. Fat Rabbit glared at me as I sat beside him, still
mad over the neglect.

She stood where she was, which made things a
little less frightening. “You slept with Perry and broke up with
her right after. I can’t think of a more…selfish, cowardly thing to
do. What’s wrong with you?!”

“Okay, well first of all, we weren’t going
out so I didn’t break up with her.”

“Semantics, asshole. Semantics and excuses.
You knew how she felt about you.”

I pointed my finger at her, suddenly
defensive. “No! No, I did not. She lied to me; she told me she
didn’t love me.”

“And you believed her?”

I threw my hands up. “Of course I believed
her! She’s my best friend. She was. We trusted each other. I asked
her if she loved me, and she said no. To my face. She lied. Why
wouldn’t I have believed her?”

She let out a puff of air as her thoughts
ran amok. “I don’t know. Because it was so obvious to
everyone.”

“Everyone except me! Why would I think she
loved me anyway? And why would I assume she lied? When Perry tells
me something, I believe her. I hardly think that’s the most
jackassery thing I could do.”

She lowered her chin. “She loved you,
Dex.”

Another fucking blow to my motherfucking
heart. I was surprised it hadn’t been pulverized to dust by
now.

“Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t,” I said,
not wanting to think about it. “I guess it doesn’t really matter
now.”

She walked over to me, heels clicking on the
floor, and elegantly sat beside me. I caught a whiff of
flowers.

“Dex,” she said softly, placing her delicate
hand on my shoulder until I was forced to meet her eyes. “Do you
love Perry?”

The thing I could no longer ignore. There
was no point in hiding it now.

“Yes,” I told her, looking her straight on,
my heart banging in my chest. “I love her, more than anyone should
love anything. The kind of love that either fills you up or eats
away at you. I love her at my own risk. I love
her…dangerously.”

We elapsed into silence for a few loaded
moments before she gave my shoulder a squeeze. “I know you do.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“Because I wanted you to say it. It’s not
real until you do.”

“Also,” I went on, ignoring her, “if you
knew she loved me, and I loved her, why didn’t you say something to
us?”

She shook her head, not willing to take the
blame. “It wasn’t my part. This isn’t high school. You’re adults.
If you’re meant to come together it will be through your actions,
not someone else’s.”

“Oh, how philosophical.”

“It’s the truth. And it’s not over yet
between you two.”

“Right.” I laughed sharply. “Every email I
send, every phone call I make, goes unanswered. She doesn’t even
have her voicemail anymore. She probably changed her number. She’s
cut me off and cut me off forever.”

“Maybe for now,” she said. “And maybe she
needs to. But forever is more fickle than you think.”

Forget fickle, forever was a bitch.

CHAPTER TWO

Two days later, just as she’d threatened,
Jenn and Bradley returned. For everyone’s sake, I was gone, taking
Fat Rabbit to a dive bar down the street that I knew wouldn’t bat
an eye at the fact that it was noon, nor the fact that I had a dog
with me. I’d been going there every day since I started wearing
pants again, so I was good for business.

I smoked cigarette after cigarette (another
thing they let me do when it wasn’t too busy) and drank JD after
glass of JD. The bartender—a wiry fellow with ugly star tattoos on
his neck—kept them coming until it was time for me to return
home.

The minute I stepped back in the apartment,
woozy on my feet, thanks to my shit eating habits, and wet from
Seattle’s relentless December downpours, I was slammed with a sense
of finality. Like, fuck—this was real. This was over. This was my
life now.

The apartment looked stripped to the bones.
Half the art was gone, half the furniture was gone. I was left with
the couch, the IKEA chair plus the TV on the ground—she’d taken the
coffee table, entertainment unit, even the shitty rug. Who the fuck
takes back a rug?

I dropped Fat Rabbit’s leash and stumbled to
the bedroom. Thank god the bed was there, though I didn’t see why
she’d need the end tables. Of course she wouldn’t need them. Jenn
took them out of spite. As if fucking around with dickass the whole
time wasn’t enough for her. She got to walk away with the love—or
fuck—of her life while I was left with nothing. Rebecca had been
thrilled when I told her that Jenn and I finally broke up, but I
just couldn’t share that sentiment. Not now. Not when I felt like
I’d been robbed of the life I once had. Happy or not, I had made it
that way. I had control. Now I had nothing.

I could feel it coming, swarming me from
deep inside. That gnawing of your heart, like some little bug was
devouring it before moving onto your lungs. You can’t breathe. You
can’t do anything but sink as your chest caves in, and the despair,
that fucking maddening sadness, eradicates every fiber of your
being. I wasn’t Dex Foray. I was just this emotion that was
crumbling to the floor, holding onto the doorway like it was the
last thread of my humanity.

I don’t know how long I spent on the floor,
crying tears that were too common to be embarrassed by, my heart
continuously collapsing until I was nothing but that husk again.
But when I did come to, I crawled to the kitchen, Fat Rabbit
licking my face as if he had the power to make me smile, and
grabbed a bottle of vodka out of the cupboard. It wasn’t what I
wanted, but at the moment, it was what I needed. I drank half of it
before the darkness settled in my bones and there was oblivion and
relief.

Unfortunately, you need to keep drinking if
you want to stay unconscious. I woke up at about eight at night,
Fat Rabbit clawing at the balcony door, wanting to be let out. I
wiped my face on my shirt, my breath stinking like stale
cigarettes, and got off the floor to let him out. It was colder
than a nun’s vagina outside, the low clouds glowing orange from the
city lights and promising snow. The last time it snowed was when
Perry left. I couldn’t help but see the exquisite pain on her face
as she ripped off that anchor bracelet and escaped into the snowy
night, to places I was too afraid to go.

“God, I’m fucked,” I said to the dog as he
took a leak on the railing. He was judging my parenting skills
again, I could tell. Well, let him. At the moment, he was eons more
evolved than I was.

Call me a sap, or perhaps a dumb shit who
loves torturing himself, but I needed to feel Perry’s presence, to
wallow in the way things were, to pretend. I needed it like I
needed air, as if I would drown if I couldn’t get it. Since
stalking her was out of the question—I wasn’t
that
guy—the
next best thing was to retreat to the den, to the last place where
she’d been.

The den was always my office, my sanctuary,
the place that belonged to me—my man cave, if you will. It’s funny,
I had bought the apartment with my money (well, my mother’s
inheritance), and Jenn hadn’t contributed a lick of anything, not
even rent. Yet she’d wiped her skanky hands all over the place, as
if it belonged more to her. But this room, no, this room had been
mine, and for a very brief yet beautiful time, it had been Perry’s
too.

I sat on the single bed, breathing in air
that no longer carried her scent, picturing Perry in there. First,
I imagined her asleep in that little concert tee of hers, the hem
exposing her sexy stomach, her breasts rising and falling with each
breath, so perfectly contoured and ready for smothering—okay, maybe
I
was
that guy. Then I imagined her rushing in, eyes
brimming with tears, while I sat out on the couch, trying to figure
out what I was going to do now that I was in love with my best
friend, someone that didn’t love me back. I saw her throwing her
things in her bag, suffocating from my betrayal, my callousness, my
cowardly fears.

I had to catch my breath again. The memory
of it all pierced through me and pierced hard. My self-loathing ran
as dangerously deep as my love for her. Perhaps the two were
connected. I got up and flicked on my computer, setting my iTunes
to shuffle. Depeche Mode’s “Mercy In You” played and I pretended it
didn’t mean anything.

The video of our time in the mental asylum
was still on my computer. After submitting it to Jimmy, I hadn’t
talked to him. Rebecca had been acting as mediator, shuffling
messages between us. He knew I was alive and partnerless, I knew he
wanted to talk. None of it meant anything anymore. I couldn’t give
a shit about Experiment in Terror. The experiment failed.

And then my eyes rested on the EVP recorder
sitting beside the monitor, the earphones neatly folded underneath
it. Perry had been the last person to listen to it.

“Please don’t listen to it until tomorrow,”
she had said after having a weird reaction to it. “It makes no
sense to me but I think it will to you.”

I gingerly picked up the recorder and
straightened out the headset. I hesitated before inserting it into
my ears, then took a deep breath and went for it. What the hell had
been on this tape? What was it that caused her to kiss my forehead
and tell me I had nothing to worry about? Usually when someone
pulls that line on you, you’ve got a fuckload of problems coming
your way.

I swallowed hard and pressed play. Static
came on and I turned the volume up a bit. Nothing. I scanned back
to a minute earlier and let it go.

A voice spoke that caused my balls to
shrivel up.

“I’m being watched,” Creepy Clown Lady’s
voice came on. “We all are. By the soulless ones who keep us here.
The demons.”

It was too close to my ears, to my brain. I
pulled the earphones out a tad, as if that would prevent her from
coming through, and scanned even further back. I went back to
listening, hearing only footsteps echo. It must have been the
hallway back at the asylum. Then, everything went completely dead,
like the sound and life were sucked out of the recorder.

“Declan, Declan,” her voice came back on.
“Declan, can you hear me? You should hear me now. You should see me
soon. Your medication no longer works. She switched it on you.”