He had failed on one account. He had decided that he was going to be a much better husband and father this time around. His dad duties had doubled and he had accepted them gladly after Tori died, but now he was determined not to let anything change on that front. He was just adding the husband part and he was going to do it right this time.
Joe had cried himself to sleep many nights after Tori died about all of the things that he did wrong. Her death had been ruled an accident, but he always thought that she either intentionally killed herself or she wound up having an accident but she decided not to fight to survive. He had essentially killed his wife. Elena was right.
He could still remember her scattering the flowers on the carpet as Tracy came down the aisle towards him. Elena had been the flower girl and she seemed happy. But as time wore on she began to remember her mother more and she began to miss the things that her mother should have been there for.
But Tracy had been there. Elena had tried like mad not to form a strong bond with Tracy, no matter how much work Tracy put into it. Elena had become very good at pretending over the years and Joe felt that he had messed up shortly after Tori’s death. He just didn’t realize how much it had traumatized Elena because she was so small.
Tracy and Joe had been so in love right from the start. He truly felt that he had found his soul mate. He thought the same thing about Tori, but when he really looked back on it and compared what he had with each woman he realized that the deep seated and often obsessive love and need for his partner was not there with Tori. He had loved her dearly, but they had really been very different people who seemed to fit together somehow. That was a very attractive thing to have in his life at that time and Tori had agreed.
But when he started to see Tracy, the whole world just opened up for him. He missed his wife so much. He knew that he would never love like that again. He was not sure if he ever even wanted to date again, let alone get married, but he was certain that he would never find anything remotely as sweet as what he had with Tracy.
And now she was gone.
Joe woke up with tears rolling down his face. He had been doing that a lot lately. He had never cried in his sleep before and he was not even aware it was really possible. He kept trying to remember and think if he had heard of the phenomenon on some old television show, but he just could not remember anything about it. He just wanted to sleep for days and days and he wanted every second of that sleep to be uninterrupted. He didn’t think that was too much to ask for.
He reached for his phone and knocked it off the stand onto the floor. He struggled to grab it off the floor but the whole room felt like it was still spinning, as if he was still struggling to wake up from his dream that he had been enjoying. He thought he was enjoying it, but he was still vaguely aware of how much he was actually crying.
After a few seconds of bobbling around for the phone Joe picked it up and answered. He was pleasantly surprised to hear his buddy Alex’s voice on the other end of the line. He was wondering how against the rules it was for him to be using the phone right then when he was supposed to be having a massive amount of rest due to being almost stabbed to death. The man was a machine.
“Hey, Joe. Are you sitting down?” Alex asked. His voice was soft, but serious.
“Yea,” Joe said as he rolled himself back up onto his chair. He was starting to think that he had better start jogging every day and lay off the booze.
“We got the test results back on the DNA.”
“Great. What is the verdict? Is it John’s?”
Alex paused a few moments.
“It is not John’s.”
“What? Well who the hell does it belong to? Please tell me you have an answer and we don’t have to start this search all over again. I’m honestly not sure I have it in me to start over. I’ll just go to the chair willingly. I don’t care anymore.”
“Joe, we have a match.”
“Ok. Who?” Joe asked. He couldn’t figure out why Alex was being so weird.
“It is a partial match for you,” Alex said.
Joe felt like someone had just belted him in the stomach. He stood up and began to pace.
“What? What do you mean a partial match for me? How do you have a partial DNA match? It either is or it isn’t.”
“Well, it isn’t that cut and dry actually. What they mean by a partial is that this person is related to you.”
Joe almost dropped the phone and he clutched it tighter. He thought he might break the damn thing.
“What the hell are you saying?”
“This person is related to you and they are related to Tori. Joe, the DNA is a parental match.”
“What?”
“It’s Kirsten.”
Joe felt the pain blasting through the back of his head before the entire world went dark.
Chapter 11: It’s All Relative
When Joe woke up the first thought that was screaming in his head was the pain. He felt like his body had been crushed by a crusher in the junk yard and most of the focus had been on the back of his head. He reached up and touched his sore head, feeling the blood there. The wound was very easy to feel; it was like someone had surgically removed a big chunk of his skin and then taken the rest and stretched it over his body so that the split there was forever there and it was going to continue to split a little more at a time.
He wanted to move, but every movement made him dizzy and it made him want to vomit all over the place. The pain was stretching now in all directions making even the simple act of breathing difficult. He wanted to just keep his eyes closed and let the world fall away from him. He needed to just relax and keep a good mental attitude so that he could focus. That was all that he needed to do.
Kirsten killed Tracy.
That thought came to the forefront of his mind quickly right then. It was enough to bolt his eyes open in a flash and for his will to ignore the pain and the nausea that was spreading throughout his body.
The last thing he remembered was that Alex had said that Kirsten was the one. It was her DNA in the van that had tried to kill him and she had dropped the necklace that she stole from Tracy’s crime scene there. It was her. It was all her. No. He would not believe it. There had to be a rational explanation. He was just going to talk to his baby girl about it and he was going to know that she was innocent. There was no way that she would ever hurt anyone, especially Tracy. She and Tracy had always had a wonderful relationship.
He refused to believe it, even as the tears rolled down his face and deep in his heart a flicker of doubt raged on. He was adamant that his daughter was innocent of all this. Alex had just made a mistake. Alex was under a great deal of stress. He wasn’t thinking straight. He had almost been butchered just hours before. The man was damn lucky to be alive. There was no way he had interpreted what the forensics department had told him and interpreted it correctly. This was wrong. He was going to prove it and then he and Alex could have a strong laugh about it all.
“Well, look who is awake.”
The voice came from his left. He opened his eyes wide, trying to see who was behind the voice, but he already knew. He could tell that it was Kirsten. But her voice sounded different. It was cold and hollow. He hardly recognized her.
A light turned on just then and he discovered that he was in the living room. And he was also tied to a chair. He had not felt the ropes that were wrapped securely around his body or the smaller ropes that were tied tightly around his wrists.
Standing in the center of the room was Kirsten. He did not hardly recognize her. She was wearing her hair up, her clothes were not the style she normally wore, and on her face was an expression of pure hatred and rage. Joe had never seen her look like this. She was wearing a torn pair of jeans with big work boots and a leather jacket draped over a plain white T. She looked more like some sort of a gang member than his little girl, the honor student.
“Kirsten what is going on?” Joe asked. His head hurt worse wit
h every syllable he uttered no matter how quiet he tried to keep his voice. He kept wondering what she had hit him with. It had hurt like hell and he had a feeling that it might not stop hurting for days.
“What is going on? Daddy wants to know what is going on?” Kirsten mocked him as she began to laugh. She walked around the room slowly, moving circles around him. He felt frightened, truly frightened. He was scared shitless of his own daughter.
“Whatever it is I’m sure we can work this out and talk about it,” Joe said.
Kirsten laughed. “You think you can negotiate with me? After what you did?” She was screaming the last words in his ear.
“What did I do?”
“Well, let me take you down a trip on memory lane. I was a little girl and I came to find out that my own mother was now dead. She had killed herself. The adults, including you, tried to lie to me about it and say that she just went away for a bit, but lucky for me I had a big sister to help set me straight.”
“You were four years old; I was trying to protect you. I thought it was the best thing. I knew that eventually you would get old enough and learn about death. You were too young to understand at the time, honey.”
“Don’t give me that crap. I knew she was dead after Elena told me she was and I knew then what that meant. I knew she was not coming back.”
“I thought I was protecting you. Cut me loose and we can talk about this,” Joe pleaded.
“NO! I will talk and you will listen,” Kirsten said. Her head was almost touching his by now as she shouted in his ear. The pain was unbearable as it rolled throughout his head in shockwaves of stabbing agony. He wanted to grab his head and hold it to keep it from falling off his shoulders, but his hands were tied behind his back. He felt completely helpless.
His mind began to scramble. What was going to happen here? Did Kirsten just want him to listen? Was she just furious to be heard? Or was she past all that and she just wanted him to listen before she killed him. Was she a killer? Was his daughter really capable of killing a person? He could not let himself believe this. If he did it would have taken his entire world and shattered it. There was nothing left for him if he believed that. He had to maintain focus here.
“Ok, honey. Whatever you want. I’m here to listen to you,” Joe said. He had to make sure she realized that he was there to support her.
“Why did you do it?” Kirsten asked. She placed her face right in front of his. He could almost smell the mint on her breath. She was always eating those junior mints since she was a little kid. He had almost forgotten the smell of them since she went to college.
“Why did I do what?” Joe asked. He was not sure what she was getting at.
“Why did you kill our mother?” Kirsten asked.
Joe’s heart felt like it was stopping in mid beat in the middle of his chest. The pain was shooting from his head to his chest and back again. He felt like he was about to puke everywhere. He wanted to purge himself of all of the pain and the agony that had been thrust upon him recently. It was pure hell. He felt his mind begin to slip. His daughter thought he had killed her mother. Why did she think that? What in the hell was going on inside her mind?
“What are you talking about? I didn’t do anything to your mother. I loved her so much,” Joe said.
“Liar!” Kirsten yelled in his ear. The pain was debilitating and Joe knew that if it wasn’t for the ropes that had him tied to the chair then he would have fallen to the floor by now. Oh, how that would have felt so amazing. He wanted to just allow himself to sink down as low as he could possibly go and just fade away. That would have felt so sweet right then.
“Why would you accuse me of that?” Joe asked. He had to go on the defensive a bit. She was not going to listen to reason. He knew that if he had any hope of surviving this then he had to stop acting like a victim. The victim mentality was going to give her thought process validity. If he was acting like he did something wrong then that was just going to confirm it in her mind.
“Because I know it’s true. I might be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and say that you did not mean to kill her. I am not sure whether or not to this day you set up her accident so she would die and you could be rid of her, or if you just decided to ignore her long enough so that she would eventually just kill herself.”
“How could you say that to me? You know how much I loved her. She was my whole world. She was the mother of my children. How dare you accuse me of that?” Joe was now yelling. He was beginning to feel a bit empowered and though it sent a roar of pain through every nuance of his brain he found the will inside of him to yell at the top of his lungs. He had to reassert dominance here or she would not begin to back down.
“I know you did it. You can lie all you want. I will never believe you. I have waited for years until the time was right to strike and carry out this work. Now that time has come.”
“What plan? How long have you been thinking of all this?”
“Since I was probably twelve. That was when I decided to kill Tracy.”
Joe felt his breath catch in his throat and he began to cough uncontrollably. The air in the room suddenly felt very heavy and he began to have a bit of trouble breathing. Was he having a panic attack? He had not had any of these types of attacks in years. After Tori died he had a bit of difficulty just going throughout his day and he had some painful panic attacks. He had eventually gotten it under control, but he believed that he was having one now. His chest was getting tighter and tighter. He could not breathe no matter how hard he tried.
He had to keep her talking though. If she thought for a moment that he was not paying attention to her or taking her seriously then he was going to be in a lot of trouble. She might kill him instantly out of some sort of rage induced fit. He felt tears welling up in his eyes. He could not believe that he was having those kinds of thoughts about his baby girl. He had nurtured her when she was sick as a child with the flu on multiple occasions. He had watched her softball games and school plays. He had blown on her cuts and scrapes when she hurt herself playing outside. He was her father and now she was threatening to kill him after telling him that she had murdered his wife. How was he supposed to go on another day just knowing this information?
“What did you say?” Joe asked. He needed her to hear what she had said again. And it was a good way to waste time, despite the fact that hearing those words again would cause them to echo in his brain for all eternity.
“I killed Tracy. That’s right. I stabbed that bitch up good,” Kirsten said. She was relishing every single moment of the terror she was causing him. He could sense her joy through her clenched teeth as she taunted and teased him. It was like she had been possessed by some sort of a demon. His daughter was not his daughter anymore. She was some psycho that he didn’t know at all. Had this person always existed in side of her? Was there a specific time that turned her into this?
“Why? Why did you kill Tracy? She loved you. She was good to you girls,” Joe began.
“Yea, she was a damn saint. I didn’t really have a problem with her. She was actually pretty nice and a cool step mom to have. Her only sin was marrying you. I killed her just because I wanted to torture you.”
“Why didn’t you just kill me?” Joe asked. He instantly regretted the decision. It was like putting thoughts in the mind of a baby who was strapped to a bomb.
“Because torturing you is so much more fun. You didn’t kill me; you killed my mom. That pain has lasted me my whole life and will last me the rest of my life. I had to do something that would hurt you in the same way. So I killed Tracy and then I framed you for it. I figured that you should at least go to jail for killing one of your wives.”
Joe’s mind was frantic worrying about what to do. He tried to move his arms, but the ropes were tied too tight. There was no way to get out of the restraints. He had to get Kirsten to drop her guard somehow. How was he going to do that? Joe did not have any answers at this time. His nerves were sti
ll getting the better of him. All he wanted to do was go to bed and shut the world out.
He found himself thinking about how hard Alex had tried to fight. He had not given up when it seemed totally logical to do so. He had fought and was willing to fight to the death. That was the mindset Joe knew that he had to adopt.
But it was almost impossible to adopt that mindset to your own kid. Kirstie needed help. She was sick. The real her was in there somewhere. He knew that he could find a way to reach her. She was there. She was just buried beneath so much pain and rage. It had been too much for her to bear when her mother had died. She had grown up with a huge emptiness in her heart and Joe thought that he could overcompensate and find some way to fill that hole. He was wrong. Whatever he did just dug the hole inside of her deeper and deeper. He felt so ashamed. He had been a lousy father and he had messed up both of his kids. Maybe he deserved to be punished. Maybe all of this was really happening for a reason and he should just accept his fate and lie down.
“I never knew that it was possible for you to have so much hate in your heart,” Joe said.
“Well, you never really asked. But yea. I have this much hate and a hell of a lot more. Thanks for the memories.”
“It is not too late, dammit. We can get you help. You are sick. It isn’t your fault.”
“Oh, I know that it’s not my fault. It is all your fault. You were a lousy father and a lousier husband and my mother is dead because of you. I don’t care if you never admit to it and if you never take responsibility for what you did, but I know that you will pay for what you did. I’m going to see to that.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Well, I’m going to kill you and make it look like a suicide. I was going to send you to prison forever but you and that dumbass Alex had to mess that up. Why couldn’t that man just die under the wheels of the van I stole? It messed up everything.”
Rising Darkness Page 9
