Love Beyond Sanity (5 page)

Brown hair and grey soulless eyes, she looked the same every time she appeared. Her figure, like the near-anorexic women in magazines, was flawless but not to his taste. He raised an eyebrow, checking her out. Her breasts were too small; she might as well be a little boy.

"Hello, Jason, gorgeous." She smiled showing her perfect array of white, porcelain colored teeth. "How are you today?"

"The same as ever." Jason braced himself. It was only a matter of time before the hurting would start.

"I'm having a rough day." He never asked but she always volunteered. Evidently, he was supposed to be concerned with her comfort.

She sauntered towards him. "My brother is making me crazy. He had one simple job when he came to this plane of existence. He was supposed to eliminate the Outsider's special children and enslave humanity. My family has done this millions of times in millions of places. But he's been screwing it up, and so once again, here I am cleaning up his messes. He won't even be appreciative when he finds out."

"Sounds rough." Jason had been listening to her talk about these so-called Outsiders for weeks now. His left-brain must have been working double time. Here he was inventing his own mythology. "Tell me what portion of my mind you represent?"

The woman sighed. "Not this again." She shook her head. "Every time you doubt me J, I have to hurt you more. It's time for you to accept who and what you are. Think about
my feelings
. I come to this place, I find myself an Outsider, rather easily I might add, and
my Outsider
doesn't even have the decency to know what he is."

An Outsider. Well, he had always felt like something of an outcast among society. It was funny that he kept coming up with this word in all of his delusions. What a strange name for him to have invented. He wished he had a notebook to write this stuff down.

Jason stood up. He felt better being taller than her. Not that it would stop her from causing him massive amounts of pain if she so chose. At least it gave him the appearance of not submitting blindly to her abuse. She needed a name and she wouldn't give him one so he'd started to think of her as Self-loathing. It seemed as good a name as any and it was the reason his mind had invented this whole dramatic play for him to endure every day.

He shook his head. "Why don't you explain to me what I am then?"

She leaned her head to the left as if she considered what he said to her. "I could do that, I suppose. It might actually amuse me for a while." Her eyes glowed red. "I have a little time before I'm due to visit Sebastian in New Orleans. I could instruct you in your heritage."

Why hadn't he thought of this before?
It would be a lot more pleasant to let this
thing
, this horrid hallucination, explain his delusions to him than to let her continue to cause him seizures, headaches, and vomiting as she shot electrical currents through his body. Electric Shock Therapy was easy compared to her abilities.

"You are one of the chosen children. Eighteen children born to undo the mistakes your parents made in releasing Sebastian. Oh, he's my brother living here disguised as a human, but he's really a demon unto humanity. Stupid idiots thought they could eliminate us all together. Boy did we show them who was in charge." She seemed to wander off into her own thoughts.

If she were real, he'd say she was a person who was not accustomed to talking or spending a lot of time around others. Certainly, she wasn't a conversationalist. Chosen children and special destiny. He'd always had a complex about needing to be the best, to be on top of his game.

"Where was I chosen?"

"What?" She didn't seem to follow his line of thought.

He shrugged; he was used to it. "Where was I when I was chosen? Who chose me and why?" He could talk himself out of this nonsense. He would simply force his brain to a new reality, to see the illogical nature of this whole experience.

"Oh, Dr. Randall, you are
so
limited. The Fates, Destiny, the Gods chose you, however it is that you are comfortable describing it. Veli Destrand, before he died, used to call it 'the good side'. He was pretty accurate in that." She laughed. "Such a shame he's dead and you won't get to meet him until I send you to death. But in the mean time you're so exciting to play with."

He didn't see it coming. The electrical current struck his body with what he could only imagine was the force of an eighteen-wheeler. His entire being shook from the experience. His insides burned as if he were a mere piece of toast. Without surprise, he fell to the hard ground.

Breathe. It was nearly impossible to perform that basic function. Eventually, it would pass. He knew this because he'd been going through this experience at least once a day since he'd been stuck in his own mind's creation, but each time she electrocuted him, it seemed to get worse.

When he could move, he pounded his fists on the ground in front of him. If this was punishment for killing the would-be kidnapper, he'd take it. He had stopped the man's beating heart and he knew he'd been responsible when it had happened. Even if nothing medical could ever prove it, he had felt his mind reach inside the other man's chest and command his heart to stop beating.

He was a monster and no matter how much he could explain this away, he couldn't rationalize that away. So he would suffer this way. Forever. In a jail of his own creation.

Jason tried to smile through the ebbing pain. He raised his head to look at the Self-loathing. She sat on the rock he'd recently occupied, unconcernedly filing her nails. The nail file bothered him. He could only imagine what she would be capable of doing to him with that since it only seemed to be just a point of her finger was needed to destroy his body with jolts of electricity.

"I take it you don't want me to ask questions."

"It's not questions I mind, darling." She huffed. "It's the obstinacy used to disguise disbelief."

Jason pulled himself into a sitting position and wiped the sweat off his face. He hated this feeling of helplessness. When he had a patient on the table, held their life in his hands, he felt flawless and powerful, as if the world turned because he commanded it. Control. In here, he'd been stripped of that very concept.

"So, I'll just cut to the point. You are fated to either destroy my brother, me, and anyone else who might show up from my dimension and send us permanently back to the pits from where we came. Or you can perish, leaving humanity to us. You can only do that if you find your other half and, as I've brilliantly trapped you, that will never happen."

"Why not just kill me? Why go to all this trouble?" At this moment, he might prefer to just be gone.

"I still might, but what fun would that be? I want to torment Sebastian with you. He feels so proud because he's raised two of your kind as his own. I need my own Outsiders if I want to take over. And the way you fried that man's heart. Oh yes, you will be most useful to me."

Like hell.
Somehow he'd figure out how to choke to death on his own tongue. What was he doing or worrying about? She was a manifestation, nothing more.

Something she said stuck in his gut.
His perfect other half
. If he closed his eyes, he could still see her as he'd imagined her. Tall and skinny, they'd both been twelve. She had the longest blonde hair he'd ever seen. It passed her waist and shone like rays of the sun had come down to personally grace her with their presence.

He'd looked for her everywhere in real life. No one came close and finally he'd had to give in and admit she wasn't real. Women didn't smile at him like that—unless they wanted his money or to be associated with his career. It wasn't that he wasn't good looking. He knew he was. But all anyone could see when he or she looked at him were dollar signs. He was too odd, too intellectual, too cerebral to garner normal attention. As his mother would have put it, he lived too much in his own head.

Ironic now.

She
didn't seem to mind. As young children, before the other feelings for her had started, they'd been playmates. She'd simply sit with him in silence, happy if he was content with whatever he thought about.
He didn't hurt her head
. That's what she'd said.

It had been like removing one of his limbs to eliminate her from his mind. Like purposefully causing himself to go through death. But he'd had no choice.

You couldn't live in the real world if you were forever obsessing with what wasn't possible.

He'd never known her name. Hadn't needed to know it. It was like he'd always known her. They were beyond names from the moment they'd connected in this place. A smile crossed his face. Maybe he could conjure her again if he tried hard enough.

His whole body wrenched from the ground. Self-loathing held him up with one arm. Her eyes glowed red. Hell, somehow he'd pissed her off, and he hadn't uttered a word.

"Your whole demeanor has changed, Outsider. What could you possibly be thinking about that is making you the least bit happy? I don't want you happy."

He wouldn't tell her. She could shock him until he died. That girl, that little girl, who he had invented, who never aged past twelve in his mind or heart, was his to protect. He wouldn't let this hallucination use her to harm him. Or, God forbid, if she were real, he would fight to the death to keep her from this creature.

"I'm not going to tell you. I've already figured out that although you are part of my mind, you can't read my thoughts. So you'll have to satisfy yourself with giving me physical pain because I'm never giving you my mind. That will always belong to me."

Self-loathing dropped him hard on his back. It hurt but he wouldn't dare complain.

Her smile held malice in it, and if it was possible, her eyes glowed an even deeper red. "You can keep your thoughts. They will be your company after I take your powers, Jason. Then I'll let you die because I will have what I need from you. It'll be in the bed you lay in now. You'll whither in it. A young man of nearly thirty. Bed sores will cover your body, which will look less and less like the male perfection you've worked hard to create and more and more like a man three times your age." She laughed and loomed over him. He wanted to reach out and squeeze her neck but knew it wouldn't matter. You couldn't kill what wasn't real. "Eventually you'll catch pneumonia and choke to death on your bodily fluids."

She'd just described his biggest fear. That he would never wake up; never cease to be the unresponsive vegetable he knew he was on the other side. His parents would eventually stop visiting. He'd be something whispered about if someone saw them on the street. 'What a shame their son had had that strange breakdown and died in the mental hospital.'

What an utter shame he'd never become the man he was supposed to be.

"I'm off to New Orleans now, Outsider. Don't worry. Our time together is almost over. I'm almost strong enough to take your powers. Then we'll be done."

She shot him with electricity again and he rolled over with a groan. He closed his eyes; glad she'd vanished, preferring only his own thoughts for company. Remotely, he wondered what that little girl would have grown up to look like. Stunning, he was sure.

Chapter Three

Sebastian stared at Alexa's ass from across the living room.

The red and brown shaded walls gave the room a romantic feel. That's what the painter had said when he'd done the work. Two minutes later Sebastian had eaten his soul. Truth be told, it wasn't much of a soul but it had satisfied his afternoon craving and given him a few more hours of relief from wanting to eat Alexa and Gabriel.

If it got any harder to resist, he would go ahead and kill Gabriel. Alexa was all he really needed now. Her powers were immense and her ass was perky and firm. He'd fuck her ass and then eat her soul as he took her power. At the thought, a little drool formed in his mouth and he swallowed it away.

Not too far off. Not too much longer.

Alexa was bent over, searching inside a large black bag. She removed items, mostly clothes, and placed them in a pile to the left of the bag. Quietly, she muttered inarticulate remarks that he gathered expressed her distress.

He sauntered forward, his hands in his pockets, trying to look loyal and unassuming. He'd had his brown hair cut short earlier in the day but left his whiskers dark and growing on his face because he heard she liked that look. When he stood behind her and she still hadn't looked up, he decided she must be really involved in whatever she searched for.

"What are you doing, Alexa, darling?" It still irritated him, even after thirty years, how southern he sounded. He liked the accent on Alexa, just not on himself. Somehow genteel didn't seem to gel with the image he was about to present when he took over the world.

She shrieked and turned to the right to look at him. "Oh gosh, Sebastian, you terrified me." Her laughter sounded like bells ringing. He supposed it was charming. He didn't give a shit. "What are you doing home? I thought you were going to speak to the mayor today about garbage pick-up or something."

He shrugged. "Done." She still hadn't answered his damn question. "What are you looking for in that bag?" He leaned down to get a better look. At closer inspection, it seemed like an overnight bag. Where was she going?

"I can't find my hairbrush. It has literally vanished." She rubbed her right pointer finger with her thumb. "Poof."

Her hairbrush. Where could that have gone? He couldn't care less. "Going somewhere?" He pointed at the bag like he'd just noticed.

"Gabriel invited me up to North Shore for the night. Wants to show me the boat and what he's done with the place." She paused as if she considered her next words. "He said he didn't think you would want to come."

Gabriel was right and Sebastian nodded with a lazy manner he didn't feel. There was no way he was going up to that shack Gabriel called a house. Why the man had given up on the splendor of uptown New Orleans for the nothingness of the St. Tammany Parish was beyond him.