Miss You Mad: a psychological romance novel

by Atkinson, Thea

  She's not really painting that live.

  He opened his web browser and selected her site from his bookmarks. Perhaps she just hadn't had an opportunity to begin a new painting and replayed that archive video to fill time. Perhaps something happened: a sick relative, a flu bug, anything that could interrupt her normal schedule. Perhaps the bank teller didn't mean Hannah Hastings. Maybe she spoke of someone else. Some other Miss. Hastings. There had to be hundreds of them.

  In his haste to get the screen loaded, he clicked on the address beneath hers and cursed when he had to click the stop button to keep that site from coming in. Delays, delays. He had to bring the menu up again. Had to concentrate to click the proper bookmark.

  Doesn't matter how calm you are, William. It won't change the fact that she isn't there.

  "She is there. You'll see."

  The painting had come along further since his time in the cafe. Most of the trees had their faces. The virtual Hannah stretched backward, arching so that her stomach stretched toward the canvas. Such long lines her legs made. If he looked hard enough, William could see the burnt ombre curls that created a perfect V below her navel.

  V is for video, William. It's for virtual, and voyeur. Came hoarse voice, a voice that until now hadn't been heard for a very long time. It was a voice that made William cringe. He hadn't expected to hear it again. Not ever.

  William clenched his fist.

  What about vagina... and vulva?

  William jumped from the chair. He swung to face the empty room.

  How about victim?

  William slapped his palms over his ears. He ran head long into one of the boxes and collapsed. The flimsy surface gave way and fell into itself, leaving him panting and twisting his head left and right, up-and-down, round and round.

  He had to stop that demanding voice. Last time he'd let it have even one breath, that voice had done things no man ever should. His fingers clenched and fisted around something silky. A scarf. His mother's scarf. Pink and flimsy and soft as skin in old age. But that skin--his mother's skin--had dried up in the end. Her voice as raspy and dusty as autumn leaves.

  He whimpered.. He wished he could reach inside his nostrils way up into his skull and scratch that voice quiet, but he could only get surface deep, leaving a stinging scrape alongside his hairline. But at least the voice gave in. It stopped.

  He pushed himself to his feet and padded across the littered carpet, dodging tin cans, stepping over pizza boxes. The bathroom. He thought he smelled excrement, and headed for the bathroom, wondering if it was time to flush. Last week, he had forgotten to gauge the contents and the plumbing had clogged. Some liquid dribbled over the edge and onto the floor. Then, it was a bother to wipe the seat, and he had ever after been diligent about flushing twice every few days. Eventually, the floor dried and he stopped getting his socks wet. Maybe he should flush every time. Maybe twice wasn't enough.

  He froze mid step, cocked his head. He almost felt the click of something locking into place in his mind. He jerked his gaze to the medicine cabinet over the sink.

  It stood half open. The cracked mirror door showed a dusty interior full of empty pill bottles. Those bottles were old ones. He had never thrown them away. Couldn't bear to throw them away. There be a new one in there somewhere, right out in front. Full. Waiting for him to slip the cap off.

  Except there was a better medicine: an antique pen in the middle cabinet. It had a sharp point attached to a formed and painted handle. He'd bought it online as a teenager years ago from Ebay and he'd kept it with his journals. It made him feel like a writer from old. He pretended he was Shakespeare. And every afternoon after school, by the light of the noon sun streaming through his bedroom window, he'd sat dipping the tip into the inkwell.

  Then one afternoon, voices punctuated his writing sessions, growing and multiplying until they screamed all at once and William had thought he'd gone deaf from the din. He couldn't hear anything external; only the tortured moans and enraged shouts of a dozen or more internal mouths.

  Within seconds, he was tearing at his arm with the tip of the pen. He'd suffered some sort of poisoning afterward, and ended up in the hospital for a while. Mother had checked him into the hospital. She had blamed the pen for his fever. But from behind the curtain around his bed, in a voice shaking and low, she asked the doctor what had given him the other sickness--the one that made him do such a thing with the pen at all. William had been given lots of pills as he lay in bed for those weeks. But when he got out, he knew the pen had a more divine purpose. It had portended a change in his life. He couldn't throw it away.

  Something else had happened, too. Hadn't it? It had something to do with all those pill bottles.

  Like a dutiful son, he took the pills in those bottles and the voices whispered at times, but they never truly went away.

  When he'd found Hannah, he had no use for pills that didn't work.

  And now she was gone. To hell with the restraining order. He could wait outside her apartment building and see if she came out or went in. He'd know for sure if she was gone.

  He hated the thought of going out. He hated thinking about all the eyes that would be judging him as he strode down the car-infested street. But, like going to the bank, it would be necessary. God knows where he would have been if he'd not gone to the bank that day. He'd still be watching Hannah's site and believing she was still in the city.

  Taking a deep breath, and scouring his apartment visually before opening the door and admitting himself to an uncertain future, he thought briefly of his medicine cabinet. Should there be something else, something from in there, that he packed also? He wandered mentally around inside the shelves. Empty bottles, small plastic white-covered bottles greeted him. Toothpaste stuck to the centre shelf on the left, and in the middle cabinet, on that centre shelf, waited his voice medicine, and he couldn't forget that. He needed it now more than ever.

  Shuffling his vinyl-bottomed sneakers across the worn carpet, he made his way to the bathroom and pulled the antique pen from its spot and shoved it into a pocket attached to the front of his knapsack. Then he plunked his journal in for good measure along with a ballpoint pen. He stared back at the half-open bathroom door before he left and for some reason he thought of Mother. Mother with her blue hair and softly wrinkled face. She'd tell him to flush the toilet. She'd remind him that he didn't know how long he'd be gone; perhaps a few days.

  Mother would flush the toilet.

  Except he couldn't imagine why as he stared down into the swirling bowl that he'd begun to cry. He turned from the sound of water swirling in the bowl back to the cracked mirror. Stress. That's where it came from. Hannah missing, Mother gone, and the voices getting louder by the minute. He stared into the eyes of his own image. Even though they were blood shot and wet, they were the only things he recognised. The rest, the strange expression, the tremor in his left cheek, the sudden pained crook to his lips. They all looked alien. It seemed the last time he'd actually seen himself, he looked different. He'd looked more like Mother. More gentle, less frantic. But perhaps age does that sort of thing to a person. Perhaps grief does. And surely, he'd done his share of grieving lately. It was all he could do to forget about it.

  He squeezed his eyes shut. "You have to leave. If you want to find Hannah, you have to go."

  Swallowing hard, he shuffled back out through the bathroom door, left it ajar, and made his way back across the carpet to the waiting front door. He was going. Going. Out into the street, past hundreds of people staring and grimacing, all the way across town to that security apartment. And like he'd done twice before, wait until someone got buzzed in.

  He told himself he should write as he walked, push words through the funnel of his mind so that he could get through the ordeal. He imagined prose so lofty it would make even Shakespeare weep with envy. He imagined October as a vacuum clearing the stink of hundreds of people from the air. That it had a way of lifting the car exhaust up into the crisp atmosphere and stre
tching it over the tops of the high rise buildings, leaving the folks rushing to and fro looking like mere insects in its wake. The air felt as crisp as new lettuce, and William let the trails of ants ants push away from him, leaving a river of cement sidewalk in their wake, giving him room to walk without having to touch anyone.

  It was cruel to treat anyone with such contempt. Didn't their mothers teach them anything--didn't their mothers tell them everybody was different, that differences made the world interesting, not frightening? He doubted it. Not everyone had a mother such as he did. Not everyone cared.

  William tried not to pay attention to those ants and their trail on their sidewalk. He tried to find that one voice inside that rasped its message. He wanted desperately to listen to its reason. Other voices called to him, though. Quaking within, William hurried past the tall, glass encased financial buildings to the Park gate, around the duck pond and out the other end. He couldn't allow his feet to slow. The weight on his back remained steady, a constant reminder of his mission.

  He didn't know exactly how long it took, but finally he stood in front of the brick building where Hannah lived. He stared at the places where fire had scorched the clay, let his eyes travel from the side to the front where security doors kept him from going inside. People, young, old, businessmen with plastic grocery bags dangling from stretched arms passed back and forth. William wondered which one, which person, would finally decide to breach that security. He decided he looked faintly intrusive standing staring at the doors. He figured sitting on the top step might be the best alternative. He'd look like he lived there. He'd look natural.

  Pulling out his pen and journal, he stretched his feet down the couple of cement steps. It was half-comfortable. Perhaps it would be possible to jot down a few thoughts. Perhaps he could describe how he felt waiting for admission. Of course, dear William of old would set the stage. He'd label the characters at the top and perhaps have a narrator to set the scene. William decided his thoughts should have a narrator.

  Rather like bees, they are, these workers. They hurry and hurry. They watch only the few feet in front of their path, mindless of the flowers to their left and right. They have no want of these blossoms. Yet our hero waits patiently, knowing that the sweetest fragrance is sometimes just out of reach. Stay ho, and thou shall see. Stay steady, dear watcher and know how the endless heart passes even distance.

  Let me not think on't--Frailty, thy name is woman!--

  William paused. He knew great writers kept writing even when they couldn't think of anything to say. He knew the pen should keep moving, and that even if nothing of substance moved through the ink, he should write whatever came into his mind. Sometimes, all that got written on the page was, I can't, I can't, I can't over and over again until he got tired of writing those words and his mind moved on to something else, something good. In fact, if he looked back in his journal, he'd find one whole page devoted to the same sentence. But he couldn't keep writing. William had to pause because, gratefully, someone had begun coming up the steps.

  It was a gentleman. He wore dark sunglasses and carried an empty canvas bag. Without looking left or right, the man moved straight to the front door and fitted a key into the lock. Sighing as if he were tired of the air and had just decided to return to his apartment, William stood. He grasped the handle for the visitor and held it open. He even dared look the man in what he imagined were his eyes. Furrowed brows were all William could see above the glasses. At first, he didn't think the man was going to admit him. But as luck would have it, or dame fortune, he shrugged and went inside. William made a big show of pulling the door closed.

  He took one look at the tiny elevator and shivered. The stairs would be a much better, much less enclosed, method. Pushing open the heavy door, William made his way up the five floors that led to Hannah's inner sanctum. His breath came in short, painful gasps by the time he turned the knob of the fifth and final floor door. He peeked around the frame and studied the hallway. No movement met his eye; he studied the other end of the hallway. Again, no movement. He felt safe enough to step onto the floral carpet.

  Adjusting his knapsack, and feeling through the material to ascertain his pen and journal were still there, William padded down the right to where Hannah's door waited. He wasn't sure exactly what he would do when he got there; should he sit outside? No, too obvious. He might be seen. But what, then? He needed to see the door and anyone that went in or came out. William strained not look backward over his shoulder.

  Someone was following him. He sensed it. That someone wanted to make him pay for what he'd done. He'd avoided punishment for years, but now it was time for retribution.

  The tiny hairs below his hairline rose.

  His quiet padding turned to frantic steps. Hannah's door with its tiny round window into her world stood just in front of him. He wanted to knock. He wanted, no, needed, to get in there. Away from this empty stretch of hall. He needed sanctuary. He felt vulnerable, open, here in this hall. But he couldn't. He knew he couldn't. He had come to watch and wait. And he needed to find a safe place to do that. A staccato voice, one he hadn't heard in many months, opened its mouth.

  Maybe nowhere is safe.

  William bit down hard on his tongue.

  The voice screamed and quieted.

  A woman in a kerchief opened her door and told him to shut the hell up.

  He cringed and started to apologize, but a large thumping noise sounded from inside Hannah's apartment. Sweet Jesus, she was home.

  William could hardly stand his excitement. He stood as still as a mouse under inspection of a hawk's eye. He didn't dare move. Seconds, moments went by. Other sounds came from behind the door. Then, suddenly, it opened. It opened, and there stood the sunglasses gentleman. On closer look, William could see he had puppet lips, barely there. He held a garbage bag in one hand, and the doorknob in the other. He stared out into the hall, and into William's face.

  "What the hell?" He stepped out and pulled the door closed. "You don't live here."

  William backed away. The man advanced.

  "Figured you'd curl up in some corner, did you? Maybe root through the garbage room. Damn homeless. Get out, before I call the manager." The man brandished the garbage bag as if it were a club.

  A flood of voices swarmed around William. Some howled, some whispered. Then one, with a raspy, guttural curse, took the lead.

  Get your pen out, William. I think this cocksucker needs a lesson in manners.

  "No, I can't."

  Sunglasses man moved his puppet lips. "Oh yes you can. You can get out as easily as you got in."

  Come on, William. Take out that pen of yours and scratch and scratch into that yuppie face until it bleeds into a nice little puddle we can splash in.

  William gasped. He stuffed his hands into his pockets and backed away. The man didn't know about his mission. He thought William was homeless. Just looking for a warm place to sleep.

  "I can't hurt him. It wouldn't be right."

  Sunglasses man moved into the hallway for each step William took backwards. "Hurt who?"

  Step by step, William made his way back to the stairwell door. Sunglasses man advanced until William realised he had to leave the building.

  And he'd been so close.

  He waited for what seemed hours outside Hannah's apartment building. Time crawled more slowly then he had ever remembered it doing. He decided to pull out his journal and continue writing. But he knew he had to do so out of sight, just in case Puppet Lips saw him again. It was a shame he'd been caught; he didn't know how much the man knew, and couldn't risk Hannah finding out, so he sat on the asphalt sidewalk next to the steps rather than on them, leaning against the side railing with his knees bent and feet planted.

  Pen poised, his eyes scanning the crowds of people rushing back and forth, he tried to find one word to begin the rush. Usually any word would do, but for some reason, he needed a particular one. He waited, knowing that eventually something would come. And come
it did. It crept along on the coattails of a well-worn pink, terrycloth housecoat.

  Mother. The word called for his attention. He discovered he'd actually written it across the middle of his journal page. Just seeing it made him imagine her. It brought everything rushing back into reality. Her long sickness, the yellowed skin, the way she'd wept each night as his father left and William had to sit with her because he couldn't bear for her to suffer alone. He couldn't bear for her to suffer at all.

  In the early days, she had supported his desire to write. Father had never done that. He'd argued and argued and argued with mother, saying he should go to University. University was the place for someone with such a high IQ.

  His eyes burned just thinking about it. He didn't want to go there. He didn't want to remember. He thought briefly of the money mother had doled out to him regularly every month. She wanted to be certain he could pay for the apartment he'd moved into. Writing is a solitary profession, he needed to be alone. And he'd managed it for so many years, finding jobs at first on Elance.com, then later through querying magazines and submitting sidebars until he'd been given bigger jobs. Then they peppered in because he gave the editors what they wanted. He delivered fast. His work was pristine.

  But the freelance work was soul-crunching. He really wanted to write fiction and poetry. He longed to write that one novel that would even the literary snobs would love. He needed it so badly. Especially when he read the novels that were getting all the press and all the money: Sparkling vampires and virgins with a penchant for S&M. He could write better.

  So he quit the freelance even though he still owed his mother a generous sum. She said it was alright. She'd look after him while he found his niche. She believed in him. But he couldn't do that. He just couldn't. It was too great a sacrifice to expect from her. Pornography was way more lucrative and far less guilt-instilling. He could make his living with very little effort and save the money she worked so hard for. He'd collected the money so she wouldn't be suspicious, planning to pass that small fortune back to her when he amassed an ever greater fortune all at once and tell her to go buy something wonderful. Something frivolous. She'd never had frivolous. She deserved it.