Monochrome My Madness

by Ashleigh Giannoccaro

  We stop at my home, she opens the door and bends down to look me in the eyes, she wipes my face with her hanky and presses a soft kiss on my cheek. “Goodbye sweet boy. Your Mummy loved you so much. Now go on inside and be a good kid. You will be a great man one day Callum. A great man. Remember that always.” She drove away quickly and I never saw my grandmother again after that.

  My body tenses at the memories or dreams that flood my mind, I grip her lovely hand tighter and her red nails, remind me of the lady I know now was my grandmother. She said great man, not good man. I plan on being just that. Rumour has it that my gran was more ruthless than any mob man in their day. She was the head of the family for a long time after her husband died. She was a ruthless killer and a ruthless boss under her soft face hid a woman no man would cross. Rowan met Lauri for the very first time when my grandmother died, she was a geeky teenager and he was a lost young man. After that we both left for South Africa and he found his way back to the girl he met at a funeral.

  We wander through the house and all the construction, contractors and mess. In one of the spare rooms, I get the overwhelming feeling that this space was a child’s room and in a moment of madness I pull Shannon closer and tell her. “This is the perfect bedroom for children don’t you think?” For a moment, I still believed I could have everything the world had to offer. The world is a cruel place where we rarely get what we want without heartbreak and pain. I don’t hear it all. I hear sterile and I go deaf to the instant rage that pounds through me. A fire of madness that wishes to attack her right here, but I won’t there are too many people here. Here, this fucking house of dreams and nightmares and shattered hopes, I need to get out of here now. There is no point to all of this if in the end there is no one to leave it to. Who am I taking it all for? I won’t be here forever; we all have and end date. Then what? Shannon has stolen that future from me.

  I feel the blood in my veins changing over to monster with every beat of the heart she just stabbed me in. Why is this tug-of-war between us so fucking hard why can we just not both have what we want? I want to hurt her so badly, like she just hurt me, tit for tat.

  “How am I supposed to be the King of this empire I have created with no fucking heir Shannon?” I yell at her closing in on her personal space only my scream comes out a strangled whisper. My heart aches for the child I will never have. I swallow my sadness and pour all my anger out instead.

  I can’t bear to be in here any longer and I drag her too fast out of the house that I wanted to be her home. My heart throws away the plans I had for the day as we drive away. I do not know how to be this person I do not know how to not get what I want because I need it from someone else, not myself. I fucking hate love. I loathe the hope it allowed to fester in me. The glimmer of life where my future was not just my own. I hate loving her.

  I am fighting to keep from hurting her right here in the car with the traffic stopped all around us. I slam my fists against the steering wheel and scream at her to try letting this anger go a little, “How the fuck did you not tell me this Shannon? HOW?” She should have said, when I told her I wanted her to be my wife she should have said. She has lied to me, deceived me and hurt me.

  “I did tell you, that very first night in my surgery, in the dark, I told you why I would be a terrible wife. I said I couldn’t have your children. I told you Callum.” A tear slides down her cheek, a real tear this time. My stomach lurches, she did tell me, she laid it all out the very first time we spoke. How did I forget something so big? I am losing control. I try to breathe through the fury and apologise to her for my absent mind. I was driving to the office, my plans forgotten, but in truth, my need for her surpasses the need for an heir. I turn the car towards the coast, towards my future with her. Towards the place, I hope to find a tiny bit of hope in my black hole heart.

  The drive away from the city that I hate with every fibre of my being slowly unwinds the anger of earlier and the feelings that the house dragged up are being washed away too. Shannon is nervous, she doesn’t know where we are going, but she won’t ask. Not when I am in this mood, she will not challenge me. She stares out the window, I can sense that she is afraid of me right now, the villain loves that silent torture this is causing. She almost cowers in the corner against the door, like an animal trapped in a cage. I will not put her mind at ease, messing with someone's mind is the most thrilling form of torture that there is. I get a thrill watching her suffer in silent torment. I am beyond fucked up, I am disturbed and destroyed and I destroy everything that gets close. I am going to destroy her. I shouldn’t do this. Walk away Callum, walk away from her while you still can.

  I like the fact that she is afraid of me, it’s that instinct that just might save us from each other in the end. I love the coastal mist it reminds me of home, Cape Town and the fresh sea air that would blow in from the bay. The stormy ocean always pulls me towards it, a dangerous force we have no control over. I am in a way just like it, unpredictable and changing with the weather. I stop the car at the small gravel clearing where the path leads up to the lighthouse and the cliff. The mist is thick and the air is brisk, the wind is blowing from the ocean and carries the smell with it. I’m not violently angry now the anger is a silent hum just below the surface it is not screaming for release any more. I have another plan to get an heir and that has settled my rage to simmer. I will have Shannon, I will get my queen. I know she won’t say no to me even if she wants to, she will say yes. I cannot shake the feeling that I want her yes to be her choice, for her to want just some part of this. I don’t want to love someone who cannot love me back again, but I cannot stop the way I feel for her it consumes me.

  I had Art set up everything so that it would be perfect. I came here a few weeks ago and was quiet for the first time in many years, the place relaxed everything in me and I knew it was the right place to do this.

  I just want to get to the top of the hill as fast as I can, I drag her with me those fucking stupid shoes she has on, won’t allow her to go fast enough. I am anxious and I feel like I am about to sell my soul to the devil. She is still scared shitless and I can see that she is at the point of flat out panic when I snap at her to lose the shoes or let me carry her. She slips them off and tries to keep up barefoot on the hard stones. Stubborn fucking woman. I see her flinch as they bite at her feet with every step we take up the pathway towards our destination. The grass is green and lush and I can feel her relief as we step off of the stones. Her stockings have ripped, her hair is windblown and a shine coats her skin from the mist and exertion from walking up the hill at such speed. She looks flushed, afraid and trapped. Her eyes dart around us looking for a clue or an escape, I think she thinks I am going to kill her over the children we will never have. Wrong – dead wrong.

  The grass is wet from the mist and the sea air, it clings to her feet and my shoes as we walk to the middle of the clearing. The spot where you can see the lighthouse and the cliffs beyond. The grey clouds are thick and I know the odds are that the rain will ruin our lunch. I am not afraid of getting wet if I get what I came for in return.

  I can see her heart stop when she sees the blankets and the food, I see the tension evaporate from her as she realises we are not here for her funeral. I let her hand slip from mine, swallow the giant fucking lump in my throat and get down on my knee. I was raised a gentleman and even if she is saying yes under duress I will do this right and with respect. She may be a cold-hearted killer, but she is still a lady. I may beat her and abuse her when the madness takes, but she is my queen and right at this moment I intend to treat her as one.

  I see it the second she looks into my eyes, fight or flight and she wants to fly. She doesn’t want this, she doesn’t want me the way I do her, I am the means for her to stay alive and nothing more. She was right - she has no feelings. Her lack of emotion doesn’t deter me because I cannot deny my own. I feel for her and now I cannot and will not switch it off. My sadness is intensified by her silent rejection of my love.

&nb
sp; The wet grass is soaking my pants where I kneel; I look into her empty eyes wishing against all odds for a glimmer of hope that there was just a little more there. She wipes the hair out of her face and looks at me she blinks slowly and licks her bottom lip a little. Somewhere in there is a person too, not just a monster. My body is oblivious to my emotional pain and I am instantly rock hard and wanting her.

  “Shannon, will you marry me? Will you be my wife and share the rest of your life with me? Will you try to love me and my demons?” I slip in the love bit to test her resolve a little.

  She squeezes her eyes closed, causing her brow to wrinkle and blinding me to her feelings and thoughts. Her hands wringing each other in a vice grip, the way her chest moves with every breath I know she is battling her demons fighting the fact that I mentioned love. A tear escapes her closed lids and runs down her cheek to her chin where it falls to the grass between us and is lost. Lost; like the hope I was trying to cling to. Surely she must feel to cry, surely she is not that broken. She said she wanted to be normal, this is normal. This is fucking normal. I wait, it feels like a lifetime, but I wait holding my breath and my heart hostage is her answer. When her eyes do open again, they give me the sliver, the tiniest inkling of hope that she might just want this too before she nods her head. “Yes Callum, I am sorry I thought after this morning you were going to kill me, that I was no good to you anymore.” I let out a sigh of relief when she finally speaks. I want her so badly, but I afraid of what I might do to her today

  “Shannon I want you to know that this is more than an arrangement to me, but if that’s all it is to you I understand. Once Neil is dead I will give you a divorce if you want to walk away from me. I don’t want to trap you I want you to choose me in the end and if you don’t I want you to be free of my family’s hold on you.” I give her the out she deserves. I know I am an asshole who shouldn’t get the woman and I won’t keep her if she wants to go. Letting her go will kill me, but just once I want to be a good man.

  “Let me try Callum, I appreciate that you are giving me a choice in it. Let me just try for now. I cannot promise you forever or love or anything more than we have right now. I do promise to try not kill you.” I will take it, I can live with happily right now, I know ever-after doesn’t exist in our world I am walking proof that we all have an expiry date. I am about to make my whole family meet their maker. I feel like I just completed the most important business deal of my life, I am over the moon and happy and my opponent has been screwed. I have won, it feels good but hollow.

  I slip the diamond ring I had custom made just for her onto her delicate hand as I stand up, for the first time in my life I know I have done a truly good thing.I kiss her hard and full of need. I thought I loved Cassie, but I know I love Shannon and now she is mine. Even if it is only for a while. That thought tips me over the edge and I cannot control it, I strangle her until he passes out. I steal her life just a little bit then wait for her to claw it back.

  WE ALL HAVE AN ILLUSION OF who we are and what we want to be. I crave control I want my own life, but what would I do with it? I have been a product of my circumstance for so long that I honestly believed that I didn’t feel. I believed that the anger and rage were all that there was to me, that and the grey that consumed my mind when I needed the release of a kill. The thrill of murdering a man was the high I needed the feeling I craved bone deep.

  Then he gave me a choice, something I have never had before. He gave me an option other than do as you are told. It confused my illusion, mixed things up. It stole my fucking breath away. He fucking broke me in a way I never thought possible and I don’t like it. I will walk away – the second Neil’s body hits the cold earth of that graveyard I am walking away from him, from this family and from this life. Because now I can. Callum will kill his brother, just like all the others. There is this itching feeling that dances up my spine that tells me I might not want to walk away from Callum though. He whispers to my demons and dances with my monster, he quiets their grey and ignites something else in me. He gives me the almost the same rush as a kill just by hurting me. His abuse has taken the place of my bloodlust. He has stolen my darkness and deathly desires from me.

  When this Callum is here the softer side, not the villain. I desire things I shouldn’t and when the other Callum finds a way out and he is brutal and dangerous I fear him and what he may do to me, but I want him to do them. I feel the fracture in my sanity growing bigger than it already was. I just said yes to being a battered wife. I just agreed to let him abuse me. My body might just give up before my mind. He is a lethal weapon that doesn’t want to kill me just get me as close to death as he can.

  He slipped a diamond on my finger following my answer, I don’t think I had a choice. I want to cry they are not good tears that threaten to spill out. I won’t cry in front of him. I won’t let him see me torn. He is tearing me like a piece of fragile paper I can hear the two halves being ripped apart, they will never fit back together right again.

  A kiss is the ultimate act of intimacy I don’t believe we can hide our souls when we kiss. Callum is kissing me and I suffer the torture of his tenderness, a sensation that is new to me sweeps me deeper into the moment and I will myself to stop this plummet into this madness, into his madness and contradiction. I take it back I do not want to feel, I don’t want normal I want to go back. This is hurting me; there is this cavity, that took the place of my heart and remained empty, and filling it with this feeling is devastating me. He is warm, and I am cold, his touch is soft and mine is hard. I crave this feeling, but I don’t want it. I want to kill him, but I promised I wouldn’t. I have always believed a tender lover would be the cure for my grey instead these moments fuel it and yet he seems to keep it below the surface. The weight of the ring on my finger is pulling me into the insanity of my need to slaughter, and I am clawing to find a way to make it stay away. His strong hands invade my skin, skimming their way up my body, his touch sets my lust free.

  “Stop thinking Shannon.” He whispers against my lips, not stopping his assault on my sanity. When he stops, I draw in a breath. His large hand wraps around my throat and slowly tightens wiping the grey away and an evil look makes its way over his too-handsome face. “I don’t understand it either my Princess, but we will make it work.” His voice is thick with lust, desire and imminent danger that makes my hair stand on end. He doesn’t let go of the death grip on my neck and I can feel the lack of oxygen begin to take my consciousness. In that split second of fuzziness before I fall into the darkness behind my eyelids I realise what I feel, but it’s too late to say it he lets me fall into the abyss of my own mind. Where I know I hate him. That line between love and hate is a blurred one, but I know which side I stand on and it will never be love. We are on two different sides of the line. I am not made to love anything. He loves and I hate, opposites so drawn to each other that the line between is blurred.

  I am going to kill Callum –slowly – promises be damned to hell along with this villainous soul. He promised me normal and I don’t want it anymore. Normal hurts. Being loved is the most God awful thing I have ever had to live through and I have lived through hell.

  When I do come to, the grey is gone and something new has settled in me I feel it seep over the illusions and claim them. Black, the madness of Callum has consumed me and turned the grey black. A new desire grows in the pit of my soul. I am going to kill him slowly and watch his torture while I play with that fucking heart I see in his eyes, trying to make its way out of his evil fucking mind.

  We eat, I smile. But only on the outside.

  THERE WERE BENEFITS to my no relationship, no sleepover and one-time only policy. I never had to actually live with what I did. I am not good at living with anyone I cannot even keep a house plant.

  I am awake but it’s so dark that my eyes strain, but I can see it. I tied her to the bed when I was done. Now I cannot hide from it. An image that cannot be washed from my mind reappears. I see Lauri’s scars and in that split seco
nd, I know I am like him and I hate myself. I have done this before. I need help; I have to stop this before I turn her into the ugly that I know comes from what I am doing to her. She is already ugly on the inside. My mind whispers back and I know it’s true. I am terrified that I will kill her, that she won’t be able to take all of me for very long.

  I slide out of bed and cut the bindings that keep her from killing me in my sleep. I grab my gym bag and walk away from the woman I love with nothing but this feeling of shame clinging to me like filth.

  I hide myself in the quiet gym, there are only a few tortured souls here at this hour of the day and I spend a few hours pounding my fists into the bags. Soon I am asked to spar with some hulk of a guy. These guys were not here the last time I was in that ring with a person; it did not end well for my nephew. The memory has me thrumming with energy, and I want to break this fools body then hand his soul to my Princess and watch her crush it beneath her sex kitten heels. My day just got better; maybe a gift will make her forget what I did to her last night. Every night since we have moved into the house where my ghosts haunt me I fight harder to control this need to torture her. This is exactly what we both need. I wonder if Renzo had ghosts, a reason for the scars he left behind on the body and soul of Lauri? I need to purge the ghosts haunting me so I can stop killing Shannon and try save her.

  Right now, I am going to beat this man till he needs a doctor and then take him to mine. I type her text before I step into the ring.

  I know she will understand it. I haven’t let her kill anyone since our engagement dinner three weeks ago when we moved into the house. She is a fucking genius. The quails confused me when she moved them into the courtyard. She fed them on hemlock, the birds are immune to its poison but one in four people who eat the poisonous birds will fall ill and even die from renal failure. My family devoured the dinner, my new fiancé and I are sticking to her vegetarian diet for health reasons. Two of her twelve birds were successful and the panic over the mysterious family deaths continues to make them all nervous and I love watching their silent suffering as they look over their shoulders everywhere they go. No one suspects us, Shannon will often slip in a comment when in public with them about her fear that she’ll be killed if she is my wife. She tells them how the target on this family is like the curse that befell the Spillane’s, but we all know that curse was my father. Now I am the curse on my own family.