Ruin Box Set (26 page)

“Say what? That you get off to my tragedy?”

“That’s not cute,” he said.

“I wasn’t trying to be cute.”

“Try to be honest, then.”

“Oh my God,” she said, looking down at what he was doing.

“One day you’re going to talk to me about what you love while I rub my cock until I climax.”

She went quiet again but didn’t look away as he rolled his hips, applying pressure and friction on his hard-on with his jeans.

“I can smell your arousal, Isadore,” he said. “It makes me want to corner you and finally slide my cock inside you over and over until I orgasm. While kissing you, fuck I think about that. All the time. And I hope to never meet the bastard who hurt you, by the way.” 

“Why?” she whispered, completely aroused now.

“Because I would judge him harshly and execute him slowly and gladly earn more demerits, except I don’t want to jeopardize you with another
dark
assignment.”

“Ah, told you,” Isadore said as he pulled into a driveway. “This is my mother’s house.” Despite her casual tone, he felt it in the air of the truck. She liked that he wanted to defend her, needed him to. So why did she have to fight him so hard when it came to letting him get close to her, physically? He was more sure now that it was tied to her sexual attack.

“Let me warn you, she’s
very
chatty. Hopefully we’ll be in and out with whatever you need to figure out here. Tell me what to do, you lead, I’ll follow.”

“I have no idea what to do,” Ruin said, looking at her.

She met his gaze and opened her door. “This is your assignment.”

“Yes, but it’s about you.”

She appeared suddenly blindsided, her mouth open. “Well I don’t know what to do!” she shrieked quietly.

“Maybe I’ll know when we get to it,” he suggested. Ruin was rather anxious to learn whatever he could about Isadore. For more reasons than he could identify.

Chapter Fifteen

They stood at the door of the two story home, maybe two hours before dusk. “Do you think she’s here?” Ruin asked, already knowing she was, but wanting to take Isadore’s mind off whatever had her trembling, and biting her thumb nail. He wanted to wrap her in his arms and kiss her until she forgot whatever it was, but didn’t think she’d accept that.

“Oh, she’s here, alright.” Isadore sounded disappointed even as the door locks disengaged and it swung opened. “Mom!” Isadore gushed, happily. “Surprise! I came to visit!”

The white haired older version of Isadore came closer to the screen door, looking from one to the other, paranoia edging her shocked gaze. “What on earth are you doing here?” she said, her voice nearly a whisper. “Who in the world is this?” She stared at Ruin.

“This is . . . Ruin,” Isadore said. “A very good friend of mine.” She’d pronounced his name Rune. He’d let it slide this time.

The woman opened the screen door. “Come in. But I’m not really ready for visitors.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t call, we just happened to be in the area.”

Ruin couldn’t resist the quirk in his lip and Isadore smiled brightly at him, widening her eyes in a silent plea maybe.

“Just in the area, huh? My name is Susan,” she said to Ruin. “I see my daughter still likes to lie for the fun of it.” The woman turned and headed into the house. “Shut the door and lock it. I’ll put on some coffee. I hope you’re not here for long. I ain’t into putting on a show for more than fifteen minutes. My allergies are flaring up and my arthritis has me practically crawling like an invalid. The pain is more than I can stand.

“Well, thank God for your meds.”

“Very funny, I don’t thank God for that, it’s not only eating up my money, it’s a reminder.”

“A reminder,” Isadore muttered, dryly under her breath. “Try to think of the good memories,” Isadore said jovially.

“Very funny. My memory doesn’t go that far back.”

Ruin hung back a bit while the two of them entered the kitchen. He looked all around, searching for whatever it was he needed to find that would help Isadore. As far as he was concerned, that’s what he was there for. Odors that Ruin couldn’t identify choked him and his instinct to clean house with an all-consuming fire rose up in him. The place held natural and unnatural contaminants. While Isadore made idle chatter at an impressive three-hundred and fifty words a minute, Ruin tried to be quick in his perusal.

“Are you here to kill me?” her mother said to Isadore as Ruin walked along the living room wall, looking at art works.

“What? Why would you
say
that?”

“I don’t know,” she mumbled. “You show up out of nowhere with a hardened criminal who seems to be scouting my home, is he making a map or what? Hey!” she yelled, “get your nose out of my business.”

Ruin eyed her briefly, watching Isadore hiss, “Mom! He’s my friend!”

“Friend, shmind, you’d better keep your dog on a leash or I’ll call the pound.” She returned to rummaging through lower cabinets and Ruin spotted family photos on the wall leading upstairs.

“Dammit,” her mother muttered, “where’s my social dishes, been so long since I used them.”

“You don’t need your social dishes. I just stopped by to say hi.”

“Well you may as well spend the night now that you’re here. I never see you as it is.”

Ruin noted the change in her mother’s words as he slowly climbed the stairs, studying the photos. Her foul attitude remained intact however, and he added it to his careful collection of data that might reveal the source of Isadore’s wall. So far, nothing presented itself aside from the artwork he’d seen so far. If it belonged to her mother, the grace eluded in the colors and strokes was a stark contradiction to the psycho-abstractions happening in her brain. Something had happened to her along the way. Something had walked into her head and taken a sledgehammer to her little painter’s pallet and jumbled all the colors.

Ruin once again felt the urge to finalize that job with fire and reminded himself why he was there. He paused and leaned into a picture. It was Isadore. When she was obese and younger. All of her younger days, starting at about fourteen, maybe, seemed that way.

He continued on through the years lined up on the wall. It was like going back in time with every step up the stairs until he paused again. Isadore wasn’t always obese. He compared the images, discerning that she seemed to put on the pounds over night. At around seven years old maybe? He’d have to ask.

Ruin heard Isadore’s steps on the stairs. “Oh my
God
stop looking at those!” she hissed, hurrying up to meet him.

“What happened here?” Ruin pointed to the pic where she went from thin to obese seemingly overnight.

She looked and moaned. “How embarrassing, what do you mean what happened, I got fat!”

“Why?”

She made several noises of exasperation. “I have thyroid problems. Had. I got it under control as you can see.”

Ruin studied the pics of her overweight, studied the look on her face. There was a change not just in her weight but in her eyes. He pointed from one picture to another. “Do you see the difference in your eyes?”

“What?” Isadore looked at both. “Yes, I’m happy here because I’m thin, and sad here because I’m fat.”

“Yes,” Ruin said. And something else.

“What do you see?” she asked, sounding curious.

“I see a very happy little girl here, and then a very troubled little girl here.”

“Didn’t I say that?”

“No, you said sad because you were fat.”

“What are you saying?”

“That something happened to cause your weight gain. Any traumas that happened at that time?”

Isadore thought a moment. “Not that I can remember, we were so happy then. I just started to be hungry a lot and they found I had a thyroid problem after taking me to the doctor.”

“They took you to the doctor because you ate a lot?”

“Well . . . yes, I mean it was obviously a problem if they did. My dad loved me a lot,” she leaned in, “I think honestly that
that
is her huge issue, she’s jealous of me.”

Hmm. Very possible. But only one way to be sure.

“Where are you going?” Isadore asked as he headed downstairs.

“To speak to your mother.”

“What!? Wait, what are you going to say?” She caught up to him and yanked on his arm, stopping him.

At seeing her panic, he took her face in his hands and kissed her lips softly until her pulse raced for the right reasons. “Trust me,” he said.

The words seem to throw her briefly, at which point he took the opportunity to escape her clutches. She followed his determined steps back to the racket coming from the kitchen. “Susan?”

The woman screamed and dropped a metal bowl and it clanged loudly onto the tile floor. “Jesus fucking Christ, are you fucking nuts? You fucking scared the fucking shit out of me.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “But, I was wondering, I’m actually here with Isadore to try and discover what’s wrong with her.”

Her mother straightened and her face became a mask of rigidity just as Isadore gasped, “Nothing is
wrong with me!
”

The mother aimed a shaking crooked finger at her. “Denial, would be the first thing wrong with her.” She bent to pick up the bowl.

“No,” Isadore said, “this is where you’re wrong, mom. Denial is the refusal to accept reality or fact and acting as if a painful event, thought or feeling, did not exist and it is considered one of the most primitive of the defense mechanisms because it is characteristic of early childhood,
which,
” Isadore raised an emphatic finger, “is
not
the case for me, because I
know
what my problem is and it is not an unconscious negating of a disease or other stress-producing reality in my environment, and I do
not
disavow thoughts
,
feelings, wishes, needs, or other external reality factors.”

Susan gestured toward Isadore with a wooden spoon while looking at Ruin. “See what I mean? Denial at its fanciest.”

“Mom!” Isadore cried. “I’m
not
in denial, if anything, I’m in a form of
repression.
”

The mother widened her eyes a bit. “Well that’s a step up.”

“It actually
is
a step up from denial in the generic classification scheme. I’m not ashamed or afraid to say so,” Isadore said to Ruin now, before looking at her mother again.  “Repression involves forgetting something bad, such as a car accident or an
abuse
, at which you were found to be at
fault
!” Isadore boomed the last word and the mother jerked to her.

“Don’t you yell at me,” she pointed at Isadore, “don’t you
yell
in my house, at me.” Now she pointed to herself.

“If you would ever
listen
to me,” Isadore said, “I might not feel the need to yell!”

“You brought it on yourself, all of it, blaming others is never going to change that.”

“It wasn’t my fault!” Isadore yelled again.

The mother opened the fridge, nodding like they’d had the exact conversation countless times. “Sure, sure. Like it wasn’t your fault your father stopped loving me,” she muttered.

“Oh my God,” Isadore threw her hands up. “That again? Mom, dad
did
love you, you are the one who read more into it. I mean how can you be jealous of your own
daughter?
” Isadore gasped.

“And then you came back home and finished me off with all your lies, lies, lies. Always about you Isadore, everything always has to be about you.”

Isadore choked out a gasp. “Me,” her voice broke as she stormed up to her mother with her finger out. “You! It’s always been about you! You used to
love me!
What happened to that, huh mom, what happened to you loving your own daughter? I loved you and you hated me!”

Isadore sobbed and ran out of the room, leaving Ruin rooted to the floor with the violent urge to stretch forth his hand and strike down the woman for hurting Isadore so badly. “You are wrong about her,” Ruin said, going after Isadore.

“You’re wrong!” she yelled after him. “Ask her about that abuse that happened! Ask her! She’s a liar! And a tramp!”

Ruin found Isadore outside sobbing in the truck even as he felt the tattoo burning new coordinates into his mind. They were done there, thank her God. He climbed in the truck and tore out of the driveway.

“Where are you going,” she sniffed, getting hold of herself.

“Next coordinates.”

“You got them?” she asked softly, making him want to stop the truck and cause her to forget her pain.

“I did, yes.”

Five seconds of silence ensued then Isadore said, “I’m not in denial,” she whispered.

“I know, Isadore.”

More silence and then a tiny, “And repression can be temporarily beneficial, you know? And I’m a
rational
person, why can’t she see that? Why can’t she see how hard I’m trying to be normal and good? All my life that’s all I’ve done is tried to be normal and good and all she does is hates me. Why does she hate me, Ruin?” she finished with a sob.

Ruin pulled off the road and undid his seat belt, sliding to her and pulling her in his arms. “Shhhh, I have you, angel. You’re safe. And you’re so very good.” That much he knew. Foolish maybe, confused about right and wrong maybe, but good. Very good. All of her acidic little tirades at him were so very sweet in light of the good inside her. She was too good in fact, it was one of her problems. She only ever saw hope, even when there was none, nor should be. Her bent ideals of hope, love, and mercy, tainted the real truth and was likely what got her into any and all sorts of trouble.

“What good did all of this do? I don’t get it,” she wailed in his neck, holding on to him, again making him need to cause her to forget the bad.

“Look at me,” he said. She did and Ruin wasn’t prepared for what that would do to him. He officially forgot what his intention was as he stroked the tears on her cheeks with his thumb. He leaned in and kissed them, wanting, maybe needing, to taste them. “So beautiful, angel,” he whispered. “That’s what I know. So beautiful.” He found her lips and kissed them with careful tenderness, his fingers on her neck and cheek careful as well. She was suddenly fragile and priceless in his hands.

“Where . . . are we going? Now?” Desire softened her words and filled her sweet breath, burning him straight to his cock.

“We’re not going to a hotel where I bring you to several orgasms with my fingers and tongue and lips because we have to go to the next destination. That tattoo is burning the . . . fuck out of me?”

He felt her smile on his lips.

“Did I get the fuck word right?”

“Yes, you did.”

She captured his face with a gasp and kissed him with a desperate hunger, her tongue all over his as she climbed in his lap, making him groan. It was dark out now and Ruin was about to hide them from human sight when the tattoo jolted him with a vicious jab of pain.