Good Sick: A Dark Psychological Romance

by Sansa Rayne

  “My other hand?” I said, my voice barely a whisper.

  “Hush. Later.” He reached down to my tender orifice and massaged it gently. I moaned, my flesh extraordinarily sensitive to his touch. He rubbed until I was awash in the afterglow of our union. I cried softly, mumbling thank yous until my eyelids dropped and I passed out.

  What the fuck is wrong with you? I thought, shooting from the bed like a nauseated drunk desperate to reach the john in time. I threw on my pants and shoes silently. I didn’t want to wake her, but I almost had a mind to kiss her forehead before I left.

  Yeah, go for it, Prince Charming. Great idea.

  She looked like an angel, breasts rising softly as she slept soundly. One hand still hung from the bedpost, handcuffed. I grabbed the other set of cuffs and slipped them into my pocket, then I spotted her purse on the table.

  I opened it and found her cell; it was an older model phone, potentially used. I turned it on and luckily it unlocked from a single swipe bar. Acting quickly, I brought up the call screen and dialed my own number. I hit “send” and waited for that first buzz inside my pocket. As soon as I felt it, I hung up, opened the call log and deleted the entry.

  Sorry, Abigail. I should have asked for this last night.

  I carefully set the phone back down, and for a moment I weighed unlocking her other hand. No. She’ll wake. Too risky, I reasoned, so I left the key within reach on the nightstand, then grabbed my shirt and slipped out of the bedroom. I finished dressing in her kitchen.

  I flew down the stairs of her brownstone. Outside I shielded my eyes from the bright light. We must have slept late. Don’t farmers get up at the crack of dawn? I guess she really was a city dweller now.

  Walking from her place to the train felt like a walk of shame, and not because I wore last night’s clothes. You selfish prick, I thought. Got what you needed? I got something all right. Would I have felt like shit if I’d stayed in that bed, or woken her up with a soft kiss, instead of ditching? What was she going to think when she woke up and found me gone?

  It doesn’t matter. This was just a distraction from the case.

  Yeah. The case. That was my goal, my mission. After so many years of floundering in the dark, one night changed everything. I’d never been that close. A beautiful, messed up woman gave me a night of bliss, a kind I hadn’t felt in far too long, but it didn’t replace the emptiness. Until I found what I needed, I couldn’t claw my way out of the pit. I couldn’t climb over girls like Abigail and think I’d reach the top; I’d just sink right back down.

  I felt a buzz in my pants; my phone, reminding me I was still on the clock. Ignoring the twinge of excitement lingering in my cock, I answered. “Yeah?” I knew who was on the other end.

  “We gotta meet.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Usual place?”

  “On my way.”

  We both hung up, and I swung north, a block away from Abigail’s station. I waited briefly for a train, then rode it uptown dozens of blocks. Normally the car would have been packed to the brim with commuters, but this early on a Saturday few people were present. They ignored me as I slumped in my seat, shutting my tired eyes. Every time I did I pictured her, alone and miserable, all because I made one bad decision in the heat of the moment.

  I’m sorry. I’ll make this right, I swear.

  Off the train, I clamored out of the station and back to the street. Three blocks away I found Scot’s Diner was two tables away from full up. My head pounded from the sound of clattering silverware, sizzling griddles and the murmur of customers eating breakfast. Like the restaurant was trying to do me a favor, attempting to drown out the pandemonium in my head.

  I spotted my contact alone at a table; he saw me and nodded. Dressed in a suit, his sunglasses still on, he stuck out like a clown at a funeral.

  “Way to blend in, Frank,” I said.

  He ignored me and sipped from a mug of black coffee.

  “Yeah, because nothing says casual breakfast like vampire chic,” he retorted.

  He had a point. Together we appeared totally out of place. Luckily, nobody gave a shit. I only wished he didn’t have to wear a damn suit. It reminded me of who I used to be, the world I left behind.

  Good riddance.

  Yet I still needed people like Frank once in a while. I hated to admit it, but they had information and reach. Logistical support.

  As long as I find the last puzzle piece. As long as I get there first…

  “All right, I’m here,” I said as I sat.

  A waitress approached the table, but I kept my eyes on Frank. “Coffee, black, please.” The pink apron turned and disappeared.

  “Have yourself some fun last night?”

  “Fuck you,” I growled.

  “You said you were working. So what the fuck, Mason?”

  I sighed. “I got sidetracked, all right? You know how it goes. You meet a girl, you like her, shit happens.”

  “Yeah, I get it, man, but this hourglass is running out of sand.”

  “I know,” I muttered.

  “You want the trail to go cold again?”

  “No.”

  “You want somebody like me to get there first?”

  “No.”

  “Then you know what you have to do.”

  “Yeah.” I knew what he meant, but there was also what I wanted to do: see Abigail again, even if it was wrong. Even if it meant I couldn’t focus on the case at the same time. I had to try, because I wasn’t going to get either out of my head.

  But I left her there. Alone. She probably hated me.

  That sounds familiar.

  Goddammit.

  “Mason.”

  I looked up at Frank. “We’re going to make this right,” he said, his gaze boring into me.

  “Yeah.” I nodded, diverting my eyes to the yellow placemat. I wanted to believe him. We’d been renewing the pledge for a long time now. Frank never lost hope. It drove him to keep the case alive. Good for him. He probably knew I’d given up on hope years ago. It didn’t matter. I still had vengeance, and that was good enough.

  For a moment I was back on the farm. It happened sometimes. I’d hear a bird instead of a car horn, the wind instead of a police siren, and I’d forget the last few months entirely.

  In this case, it was my phone, rather than the roosters, and for a second I was lost. Once that moment of being on the farm was gone, it seemed to slip through my fingers forever. There’s no going back this time. I’d changed, and now Good Souls was in my past forever. Even if there was a farm to go back to, how could I show myself after what happened? I didn’t regret it, but that saying, “You can’t go home again,” rang true.

  When my mind snapped back to the present, I reached for the phone and tried to flip over onto my stomach. I nearly choked on my own saliva when I realized my other hand was still handcuffed to the bed. It felt partially numb, and I quickly flew into a flurry of movement. I nabbed the phone on its fourth ring and swiped to answer it.

  “Hello?” I said, cradling the cell in my shoulder as I reached for the handcuff key.

  “Abbi, how’s it going? Did I call at a bad time?”

  Elspeth. What time was it? How late did I sleep? And where was Mason?

  “Did I wake you?” she asked when I didn’t respond right away.

  “Yeah, but it’s fine. I needed to get up. How are you?”

  “I’m fine, Abbi. I wanted to check on you. Last time we spoke, I got a little flustered, and I felt bad about it afterward.”

  Flustered? She’d screamed in my ear for a solid minute before hanging up.

  “It’s fine,” I said. I wasn’t placating her, or attempting to assuage her guilt. Dr. Davis had put in perspective much of what Elspeth said.

  “Thanks. I know you’d been… well…”

  I sighed, holding the handcuff keys in my hand. I didn’t want to reach over to unlock myself and risk dropping the phone. “You can say it.”

  “Brainwashed, Abbi. I’m sorry if
it hurts to hear that, but it’s true.”

  “I know. Elspeth, can you hold on a second?”

  I didn’t wait for her to say anything, I let the phone fall beside me, then unlocked the cuff and popped it open, releasing my limp hand. I flexed my fingers, which were fine, but as soon as I did, they began to tingle as feeling returned. I spread my jaw in a silent scream, not wanting Elspeth to think I was crazier than she already did. I adjusted to the pain, then retrieved the phone.

  “Sorry, just getting out of bed.”

  “Abbi, what you said… did you mean it?”

  I opened the door to my room and stepped out, searching for Mason. The apartment was empty.

  “I did.” Bullshit, I’d called everything I once believed. In a moment of passion, I’d renounced it loudly and repeatedly. Was that the demons, or just me? “I’m not sure what I believe now,” I said. “Figuring it out.”

  I heard Elspeth’s relief through the phone. “That’s great, Abbi. Really. We’re all figuring it out, you know? Nobody has all the answers.”

  She sounded like Dr. Davis. “Yeah. But I don’t even have the questions.”

  Well, I had one: Where the hell was Mason? I checked the bathroom but, of course, he wasn’t there either. His clothes were gone. The only thing he’d left were the handcuffs.

  Elspeth laughed. “Don’t worry, you will.”

  Did he mean to leave me a note? I wondered, panicked. I didn’t even have a pen or paper handy. But why leave at all?

  “So, what else is new?” she asked.

  “I met a man last night,” I said, mind racing to my main preoccupation.

  Elspeth gasped. “Abbi, you mean, as in, somebody you like?”

  Like? Last night my need for him felt so deep he was practically the air I breathe.

  “I don’t know. We just met.”

  I hated that I could tell a lie without saying anything false. We had just met, but we did so much more. How could I tell Elspeth the truth? After all she suffered, all in the name of purity. I felt like I’d somehow betrayed her, or maybe myself. The phone trembled in my hand. My lip quivered and I blinked away tears, glad Elspeth couldn’t see me now. “I have to go,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

  “Sure. Before you go, I wanted to let you know I’m moving to the city. I’d like for us to be friends, okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said, suppressing the stabbing pain inside. “Same here.”

  “Great. Be blessed, okay?”

  “Yeah. Bye.” I hung up, fingers barely holding still enough to hit the right button on the screen. This time, I let the cell drop straight to the floor as I launched myself onto my bed, tears falling like a dam had burst.

  I had no idea who to believe anymore. If ascension wasn’t real, why did I feel as if I’d been cast from the light of grace? What was the opposite of ascension? Brady had never given it a name, but the abyss had swallowed me. Why had Mason left me without a word? I didn’t have his number; I had no way of calling him. He’d taken from me something I couldn’t get back, and left nothing but pain and a set of handcuffs.

  Then there was Elspeth, who had no idea how much invective I’d invalidated by committing all the sins I’d told her would cost us our right to paradise. I had been so convinced her suffering would lead to her infinite reward. I’d defended men who violated her, assured that ultimately it would bring her an eternity of joy. I’d cursed her name for bringing the police that night, and she forgave me. She said she wanted to be friends. I wept uncontrollably. I had no right to such kindness.

  I didn’t get out of bed until the sun fled the sky. I’d turned my pillow over to the less tear-dampened side a dozen times. Hunger eluded me. At some point I picked the handcuffs up from the nightstand and threw them at the window, but they bounced off the thick glass. I seethed for a while before returning to grief. I couldn’t even vent anger without failing, and I wanted the reminder of Mason out of my life.

  He told you this would happen. For better or worse.

  Clutching the pillow as if it had a neck I could wring, I asked aloud, “Did you know you were going to do this to me, Mason?”

  Did he plan to vanish like that, without a word? Was he some kind of predator? The real life equivalent to a demon? Taking from me what he wanted, then leaving me, condemned to a life of torment? How could somebody be so cruel? Even Brady always held my hand after punishing me, stroking my hair and staying by my side until I calmed down. He gave me lotion to soothe my skin, and spoke verses to comfort my troubled mind.

  “The agony of the body feeds the serenity of the soul.”

  “Scald thy skin the devil’s shade, and the demons shall pass you by, fooled by thy suffering.”

  “One can always walk back from the precipice; the fall is preceded by a single step.”

  That last one hit me hardest. Brady was right, and now it was too late.

  —

  I spent the rest of the weekend in bed, staring at the ceiling, imagining I was back on the farm. I thought about walking around in boots, spreading chicken seed from a rusted bucket. That was one part I always loved about living at Good Souls: fresh eggs. Delicious, every morning. Even Elspeth found an appetite when the eggs were served. I hated living in the city, not being able to have chickens. I hated store-bought eggs. I could taste the inside of the refrigerated truck carrying them for weeks before they arrived. City people had no idea what they were missing.

  On Monday morning I only pulled myself out of bed because I had an appointment with Dr. Davis. I didn’t want to go, but I didn’t have much of a choice. Taking a shower and changing into fresh clothes did make me feel better; all of the grime from the past couple days slid away and I watched it circle the drain. I donned one of my plain dresses, a yellowish one that appeared as ugly as I felt. On the rack in my closet I saw the empty hanger from the dress I’d left behind at Dante’s. I hoped somebody who really needed it found it; at least then something good would have come from the mistake I made that night.

  I rode the subway in a daze, staring out the window as I clung to the pole in the middle of the car.

  “Darling, I’ll trade you my seat for a smile.”

  I looked down to see a middle-aged man in a gray suit. He toyed with his mustard-stained tie, which draped over the metal briefcase resting on his lap. He winked and grinned.

  “Fuck off,” I said. By instinct, I almost added “Be blessed,” but didn’t. For once, I didn’t have it in my soul.

  I got off at the next station and decided to walk the rest of the way. I’d left too early, since I had little else to do, and getting out on my feet would be better than sitting in Dr. Davis’ waiting room for an extra hour. After a block, the skies opened up, raining like a monsoon. Pedestrians scampered beneath awnings and into stores, but I kept walking. I didn’t care if I caught pneumonia; I couldn’t possibly feel any worse than I already did.

  I arrived at Dr. Davis’ office feeling like I just crawled out of a swamp. I stood in the hallway, dripping on the carpet, not wanting to make a mess in her office. I hadn’t taken my phone with me, so I had no idea what time it was; I stood outside her door until Dr. Davis poked her head out and spotted me.

  “Abbi, oh my god, get in here!”

  She grabbed my arm and pulled me in, nearly losing her grip on my slippery skin.

  “I heard the rain;” she said. “I guess you walked here?”

  I nodded, then raised my arms so she could lift the dress off me. Exposed to the air and stripped down to my underwear, I realized how cold I was.

  “Come with me,” she said, stuffing the drenched dress in the crook of her arm. “You’re lucky I work out of a home office.”

  Dr. Davis led me out of her workspace and into her apartment. Spacious and plainly decorated, it felt as though I were penetrating some kind of strange membrane of reality. Like, the doctor wasn’t a regular person outside of her capacity as a therapist. It was silly of me: of course she was. This was Kerri, and she had painti
ngs of flowers hanging in her den too, with an open bag of chips on the coffee table and day-old dishes in her kitchen sink.

  She opened the door to her dryer and scooped laundry out into a basket. Once the machine was empty, she dropped my dress inside and started it up.

  “Thank you,” I said blankly.

  “It’s fine,” said Dr. Davis. She sifted through her clothes, separating a t-shirt and a pair of loose shorts. “Go put these on; then throw your underwear in with your dress.”

  “Okay.” I followed her pointing finger to the bathroom and changed. Inhaling the faint aroma of potpourri, I scanned a row of perfume bottles and wondered what it would be like to have such a normal home. A normal life.

  I also played the last few minutes back in my mind as fresh tears welled up in me. Dr. Davis had broken a serious boundary in letting me into her home; I didn’t think therapists were supposed to do that. In all the time seeing her, I’d known this home existed beyond her office, yet somehow my mind hadn’t regarded it as a real place. I always conceived of it as an “over there,” as if it were on the other side of reality, a parallel universe. I found comforting the idea that it was ordinary after all. I felt grounded, like this place wouldn’t disappear. It couldn’t, because it was just an apartment.

  When I came out, dressed in clothes I wouldn’t expect to see Dr. Davis wearing, much less myself, she led me back to her office, where I took a seat on her crummy couch. “Can I ask you something?

  “Of course, Abbi.”

  Looking down at the stains and worn fabric, I asked, “Why haven’t you replaced this thing?”

  She laughed. “You don’t like it?”

  I grinned in spite of myself. “It’s got character.”

  “It was a gift from my parents when I started my practice,” said Dr. Davis. “I can’t bring myself to replace it. You think I should?”