Personal Demons

by Rachel A. Collett

  “Yes,” he said. “Very glad.”

  My heart skipped a beat.

  “I was wondering if you’d let me…” He hesitated, looking around him before continuing. “Sarah, I’ve played over and over in my mind everything that happened in the hospital. I want a chance to start over. I haven’t seen you in weeks and honestly I’ve—I’ve missed you.” His tone was gentle as he asked, “What will it take?”

  My mouth opened to respond, but nothing came out.

  “Listen,” he said. “I hate what happened, all of it, except for one thing. And I would go through it all again. Because I got to meet you.” His hand twitched as if he wanted to reach for mine. “I know I didn’t make a good first impression, and I don’t know what to say except that when I feel provoked I can become a monster. Can you forgive a guy for being a little overwhelmed at the time? I didn’t know what to think or do. I still don’t.”

  I could understand that. After all, the way he explained it, he and I sounded a little alike. I wasn’t fond of that similarity, but it took me off guard.

  “I can forgive you for being overwhelmed, and I can even forgive you for being an ass, if… you can forgive me as well.”

  His head jerked back, seemingly shocked at my declaration of guilt. “Are you serious?”

  “I didn’t exactly make things easy for you either. But let’s keep it to that.”

  “That’s good enough for me. I can definitely handle that. Thank you. Will you let me make it up to you then?”

  I rolled my eyes, shaking my head, but he interrupted before I could answer.

  “Just hear me out. Would you let me take you to dinner?”

  “No.”

  “Not as a date, just so we could talk,” he clarified. “What if we happen to meet somewhere for dinner? You pay for yours, and I’ll pay for mine. You could take me back to that hospital cafeteria for all I care. Not as a date.” He spoke slowly so that I would understand his intentions, but it still didn’t matter. “I just want to show you that I’m really a nice guy. I promise not to hit on you. I could swear to you if you’d like.”

  I held up my hands. “Not necessary, really, Jonathan. I get it.”

  “Well, that’s not true either.” He shook his head. “I would hit on you. I totally would. And I would never let you pay for your own dinner.”

  I laughed nervously, wishing he would just leave me alone. “Jonathan, I…”

  “Where’s your favorite place to eat?” he interrupted. “We can go anywhere you want.”

  I glanced to the Asian restaurant we were standing in front of. “Here? Is this your favorite place? You like sushi, then?” he asked.

  I hesitated before nodding once. “Yes. Love it. Do you?”

  “No. Hate it, actually, but I don’t care. I’ll gladly eat it for a penance if I have to.”

  “They have other things on the menu, you know.” The comment was meant just to inform, but he heard something else.

  “So you’ll meet me.” It wasn’t a question. He smiled widely at me, and my heart skipped a beat.

  I stopped short. That’s not what I had meant to say. “No. Jonathan, I can’t. It would be completely—”

  “What if I were to say that I’ll be here tomorrow at six-thirty. Maybe you could just happen to be here at that time as well. I could be pleasantly surprised to see you and offer you a seat at my table. Heck, you could sit at the table next to me, or we could sit at the sushi bar. It doesn’t matter to me.”

  “Tomorrow? As in the day after today?”

  Jonathan grimaced. “I’m so stupid. Of course you wouldn’t want to eat at the same place two days in a row.” He looked around at the other restaurants in the plaza.

  I shook my head. “I could eat sushi every day. That’s not the problem. I just… I just don’t know.” My heart picked up pace, and an odd feeling of anxiety stirred in my chest.

  “Okay, that’s fine.” He lifted his hands. “I understand. Just promise me you’ll think about it.”

  I glanced down at my feet, and shifted my weight from one foot to the other. I didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t making this easy. “I’m not promising anything else, but I will think about it,” I said, not meeting his gaze. I would say just about anything at the moment to get him to stop asking and go away.

  “Good enough for me,” he answered softly.

  Just then the crowed in front of me separated, and I saw my two friends emerge from the little store. Laith caught my attention and moved in my direction. Jonathan noticed my distraction and turned, understanding that I was about to be joined by my party dawned.

  “I’ll say goodbye, Sarah.” He paused a moment to look at me, a curious twinkle in his eyes, then left.

  A wave of relief swept over me as Jonathan moved away and into the crowd. Laith and Elisa were by my side a moment later. “Did you find your body spray?” I asked Elisa, but she wasn’t paying attention to me. She was looking at Laith who had his eyes trained on the retreating Jonathan.

  “Who was that? Was he bothering you?” Laith glared at the back of Jonathan’s head as he moved farther out into the parking lot. “Are you having another moment?”

  “It was nobody. Wait, what do you mean, having another moment?”

  “I don’t know, where someone randomly attacks you for no apparent reason… that sort of thing?” His gaze tightened.

  “No.” I tried to laugh, but Laith didn’t seem to be joking at all.

  “It was nobody? What are you not telling us, Sarah?”

  “What’s the matter, Laith?” Elisa looked just as concerned, but her concern didn’t go past Laith’s worried expression.

  “I don’t know. Ask Sarah. Who was that really?” Laith asked again.

  I sighed. “It was Jonathan.”

  “Jonathan?” He repeated the name several times silently to himself. He played with the name in his head, trying to figure out how he knew it—then he got it. “Do you mean Jonathan, Jonathan?”

  “Yes. Jonathan,” I repeated.

  “The Jonathan from the accident. The accident that killed your best friend. That Jonathan?”

  I flinched. The way he put it made me ashamed that I had ever spoken to him at all.

  “Yes, Laith, the very same. The one I told you about.”

  “I knew there was something not right with that guy. What in the world was he doing talking to you?”

  “I think—I think he was trying to say he was sorry. He’s been attempting to make things right between us.”

  “And you believe him?”

  “What reason do I have to disbelieve him?” The truth was that there were a lot of reasons why I should doubt him, but I wasn’t about to get into it right now with Laith. I was trying to take the higher road—the road that I had been avoiding in the past. I was ashamed that it had been Jonathan who had taken that initial step instead of me, but I guess that didn’t really matter.

  “How can I shoot someone down who is trying to make up for a mistake? He seems to have changed.”

  Laith’s mouth opened to say something, but he quickly snapped it shut. He shook his head before continuing. “I don’t know, Sarah. I barely saw him, and something about him gave me the instant creeps. I have a feeling something’s really wrong with that guy. I had the deepest desire to run over here and grab you away from him.”

  “Could you be overreacting just a little, Laith?” Elisa spoke up for the first time.

  He shot her a dirty look.

  “Ok, fine. I guess I didn’t get a very good look at him, but I didn’t see anything horribly wrong. Sarah’s a big girl, she can take care of herself. She’s already proved that, hasn’t she?”

  “Huh. I’m not so sure,” Laith said.

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “It was alright. I promise. He just wanted to tell me he was sorry… said he wanted to make it up to me.”

  “How?” Laith suddenly demanded.

  “He… well, he said he wanted to meet me for dinner. Tomorrow
night.”

  His brows rose to a height I didn’t think was possible. “He asked you out on a date?”

  “No! No. He specifically said that it would not be a date.”

  “Are you seriously considering this?” he asked in a condescending voice.

  I got a tad bit defensive. “No, in fact I told him no.”

  “Laith, calm down.” Elisa’s tone was soothing. She patted him on the back a couple of times. From a distance I heard my name being called.

  “Sarah, party of three.”

  “Yes, finally,” I said. “Come on, you two.”

  I walked away following the hostess to our table, ignoring Laith’s pointed stares.

  I wasn’t altogether sure if I was going to accept Jonathan’s invitation to dinner or not. As much as I didn’t want to admit, it was a little tempting. I had been harsh, severe even, in my reactions to him. Now he was trying to make things right, and I felt as if I should do the same. Besides, Ian would want me to let it go, to forgive Jonathan even

  It was midnight before Elisa dropped me off at Cheryl’s home. A large, unfamiliar grey truck was parked just past her driveway, nearer to the neighboring house.

  “Did Cheryl have a visitor come and stay?” Laith searched the area.

  “No, I’m pretty sure it’s the neighbors.” I grabbed my bag but hesitated for a moment. “It’s late. I’ll go around and enter through Cheryl’s back door so I don’t wake her.”

  “Good night, Sarah,” Elisa said.

  “Be ready for some fun tomorrow,” Laith added with a mischievous grin.

  “Oh?” I asked, but Laith only shrugged his shoulders. “Very well. Night, you two.”

  I opened the car door, walked halfway toward the house and turned to wave goodbye. When my friends finally drove away, I sighed in relief.

  Even though I could feel the nip of the night breeze as it blew through my thick sweater, and see my breath on the air, I couldn’t bring myself to move. Something waited for me. I sensed it the moment we pulled up to the house and knew it was listening to us as we sat in the car, but I couldn’t let Laith and Elisa know. I would be damned if I got them involved in what my life dished out in heaps.

  I glared into the shadows of my favorite ash tree and watched as it moved toward me.

  15

  Possession

  My heart skipped a beat as I tried to control the speed to which it had accelerated. I hadn’t seen or spoken to Benjamin in several weeks, but the short amount of time had changed him dramatically. His expression had hardened, his face was guarded, his movements cocky. He seemed smug and arrogant, and as I looked over his body, I noticed it wasn’t only his expressions that had hardened. The rest of him had changed as well.

  This couldn’t be the Ben I had taken care of for nearly a month. The sweet face I had grown so attached to was gone, replaced by the conceited-looking stranger. I glared at him in disgust, upset that I had allowed myself to care for him. He obviously wasn’t who I thought he was either.

  “You’ve been ignoring me. Well, us,” he smirked. His voice was slurred and not his own.

  My head twitched. “Benjamin, what are you doing?” I paced closer, trying to see the color of his eyes, but he stood several feet away and it was too dark.

  “He had a feeling… he knew something was wrong.” He took an awkward step toward me. “He wanted to protect you, but he didn’t know why. How could he have known that?”

  “Protect me from what?” I asked.

  But Benjamin didn’t answer. He placed a hand to his head as if it pained him, then laughed to himself. “Too upset to sleep, so he dulled his senses with drugs.” He tsked. “It makes it easier for me to get in when they’re weak.” He sneered as his gaze slowly grazed over my appearance.

  “Get out of him,” I commanded, frustrated that it had taken me this long to realize what was going on.

  “You would like that, wouldn’t you? Why does he have such a strong desire to protect you? He barely knows you. Even now he fights me.” His face twisted into a scowl, and he growled as if he was truly struggling with something inside. “But as you know, I like fighters.”

  “Benjamin!” I called to him, hoping to capture the real one inside, but the demon just smiled. I closed the distance between us and grabbed him by the shirt. His muscles were hard against my fists. “Get out of him!”

  Before I knew it, his hand was around my neck, lifting me off the ground so fast I was caught off guard. I couldn’t believe my stupidity. He squeezed, and I could feel my airway completely cut off.

  “Now, now. It doesn’t have to be like this.”

  Black eyes stared into mine. His face twitched, and he dropped me. I landed in a crouch and spun on the spot, sweeping his feet from underneath him. He fell hard to the ground.

  I stood over him, ready for another attack, but he only laughed, “You don’t want to hurt him like you did the other one, do you?”

  I had no doubt that was exactly what he wanted me to do.

  He tried to rise, but I pushed him back down with my foot. I had to think fast. No, I didn’t want to hurt him. The memory of my parking lot assailant flashed into my mind. I didn’t want Ben to look at me like that. I ran to the hose and turned it on full. As Ben, or the demon in him, stood, I sprayed him in ice-cold water.

  Ben’s arms flew to shield himself from the blast as several clear, concise curse words rang through the early morning air. After a few seconds, I felt satisfied and turned off the faucet, then sauntered back to a now-drenched and very confused Benjamin. His gray eyes grew large with rage when he finally recognized me, which did nothing for my already foul mood.

  “Sarah? What in the hell…?”

  And then I knocked him out cold.

  16

  Dazed And Confused

  Who knew it would be that hard to move a body as large as Benjamin’s? Somehow I managed to drag him to my car, lift him into the passenger side, and drive him home.

  He woke just as I finished making myself a bowl of oatmeal, one of the only things in his cupboards. He watched me as I made my way to the recliner just opposite of where I had dumped him, sopping wet, on his couch.

  “Hungry?” I asked. When he didn’t answer I shrugged. “I shouldn’t be, but it’s two in the morning and I’m starving.”

  His gaze darted around the room as if looking for someone else. When he was satisfied we were alone, he painstakingly pushed himself into a seated position.

  He winced as he fingered his now-discolored cheek bone. “What in the…”

  “Watch yourself,” I paused before taking a bite, “or you’ll get more than a bruised face.”

  He snapped his mouth closed, leaned back against the brown leather couch, and crossed his arms over his chest. He quickly uncrossed them. “Why am I wet?”

  If I wasn’t still irritated, I might have laughed at his confusion. Instead I just smiled at him, making a face of casual indifference.

  He grunted as he stood, grumbling something about getting changed. I snuggled into my nice dry clothes, courtesy of Benjamin’s closet. He had yet to notice that I sported a pair of his large drawstring sweatpants and a nicely-worn t-shirt.

  After a few minutes, he returned and plopped down on the opposite side of his rather wet couch with his hair sticking up in odd directions. “You hit me? Why?”

  “You don’t remember?” I asked, talking through a mouthful of food.

  His gaze narrowed. “Should I?”

  I swallowed. “You pissed me off.” I took the last bite of oatmeal from the bowl and carried my dish to the sink, taking the time to wash it out before drying my hands on the kitchen towel. I picked up a bottle of prescription pain pills I had found in his medicine cabinet and returned to my chair.

  “I’m guessing you took one of these bad boys before driving to my house and waiting for me to get home.” I squinted, trying to make out the generic name of the prescription. “Are you still in pain, Ben?”

  “Yes,”
he answered quickly, but then sighed, closing his eyes and resting his head on the back of his couch. “No. A little. Last night was… a difficult night.” He finally looked at me, his expression tortured.

  “I see.” And finally, I did see. My two most recent attackers had been under the influence of one thing or another. I would be willing to bet my previous attackers had been as well.

  “So you don’t remember talking to me or cussing at me?” I purposely left out the part about him grabbing me by the neck, since it wasn’t Benjamin who did it. I couldn’t tell him that.

  “Are you serious?” he asked, blankly.

  “As serious as a black eye.” I smiled.

  Again he touched his swollen face. “And so—you hit me?”

  “Yep.” I gave him a forced grin, exposing my teeth.

  He was stunned at first, but then his lips twitched into a smile. “Now I know why I like you.”

  My face flushed as his expression filled with appreciation. I jumped to change the subject.

  “I’m going to keep these,” I said, giving the bottle a shake “And you are going to call me and explain what kind of pain you are in before you ever take them again.”

  He flicked his wrist. “Throw them away; I don’t need them. Does that mean you’ll start taking my calls?”

  Uncomfortable, I stood and walked back into the kitchen and opened several drawers before finding another clean hand towel. I took half a dozen ice cubes and folded them into the cloth.

  “Just don’t piss me off again,” I said, handing him the ice pack.

  He placed it over his cheek. “I can’t make any promises.” His eyes took the time to look over my borrowed clothes and bare feet.

  I shifted nervously from one foot to the other. “I stayed to talk to you.”

  “I gathered that,” he said.

  “I saw a bag packed on your bed. Are you going somewhere?”

  “Yes, I’m leaving… heading to Colorado for a few days.”

  “When?”

  “You said it’s two in the morning?” I nodded. “Then tomorrow, I guess. My flight leaves at one.”