One for Sorrow

by Louise Collins

  Chad could feel it, drained, weak.

  Romeo moved away, then sat down in the chair beside the bed. They weren’t in a white room, but one painted an overly cheerful yellow. The sheets had a floral pattern, and the lampshade hanging from the ceiling had tassels. Chad flared his nostrils, taking in the smell, not the dampness and dust like most of the times he woke up, but tomato soup. It smelled good, and he started swallowing excessively.

  Romeo gestured to the bowl on the bedside table. “It’s a bit hot at the moment.”

  Chad didn’t comment. His face twinge with an itch, and he went to scratch his nose, but recoiled at his sharp facial hair. Every time he touched his face it was longer, more unruly. There was no clock in the room, and he could only judge time by his growing hair. Romeo always looked immaculate, styled. His handsomeness mocked Chad while he lay there, feeling worse each day that went by.

  “Are you with me?” Romeo asked, running his hand through Chad’s hair.

  He didn’t flinch out the way, snarl an insult, or lash out. In his muddled head he knew they were the acceptable reactions, but instead, his eyes drooped, and he moved into the touch.

  Romeo soothed him, stroked back his hair, then curled the longer strands of his sideburns behind his ear. The touch was intimate, and nice, and Chad was too exhausted to deny himself the sensation of touch. It was wrong, but it felt right.

  “Yeah. I’m here.”

  He knew it had been days of drifting out. Days of messed up dreams about work, Neil, his mum, but for some reason it was the magpie that stayed with him after he woke.

  “How long have I been out of it?”

  “You’ve been in and out of it for fourteen days now.”

  Chad tugged his eyebrows together. “Fourteen days?”

  He looked down at his leg, willing it to heal. The rake had stabbed into him, missing anything vital, but the infection had been even worse. The pain throbbed, a constant sensation that only softened, and loudened, never faded altogether. Romeo had stitched him up with thread, then wrapped bandages around him. He’d washed the wound, but the rust from the rake had got inside him.

  “Oh, open up.”

  Chad parted his lips and allowed the pill to be shoved inside. It was bitter on his tongue, but Romeo lifted a glass to his lips, and he gulped down the dissolving pill. They were good. They made him feel dizzy, detached. They made him no longer care that Romeo was leaning close to him, Romeo petted his hair like a dog, and kept his fingers on Chad’s lips longer than necessary.

  “How’s the pain?”

  “It’s okay at the moment.”

  “That’ll kick in before it hits again.”

  Chad shuddered when he remembered the first few days. He hadn’t dreamed; there had only been pain. Pain Romeo couldn’t stop despite what he pushed through Chad’s lips. Over the counter painkillers had done nothing, and he’d resorted to searching through the previous farmer’s old medicine cabinet. When Romeo found them, he shook them in front of his agony scrunched face, glee shining in his eyes, declaring he’d struck gold. Painkillers that were potent, and effective, but made Chad tired, sluggish, unable to do anything for himself, and antibiotics prescribed to cattle. They were two years out of date, but still seemed effective.

  Romeo fed him, sponge-washed him, and helped him go to the bathroom. Everything hurt, and Chad felt most comfortable lying in the bed, doing his best not to move, and drifting in and out of consciousness. But he didn’t like the dreams. The dreams were a different kind of painful, and he hated that Romeo was the one to save him from them. Romeo called his name and surfaced him from the nightmares.

  Romeo was Chad’s messed up hero.

  “What were you dreaming about just now?” Romeo asked.

  Chad glanced at the window. The one thing his strung-out mind had recalled accurately while he was asleep, the muddy fields, and storm-gray clouds.

  “There was a magpie tapping a snail against the window.”

  Romeo hummed. “That’ll be because I told you about my game with the magpie.”

  “Crushing its eggs every year isn’t a game.”

  “Not that. What happened next.”

  Chad frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Romeo rolled his eyes. “I told you about it a few days ago.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Do you want me to tell you again?”

  “Yeah, it might kickstart my memory.”

  “When I was fifteen, I found the magpie in the garden. I don’t know what had happened to it, but it couldn’t fly. It had broken its wing. I told my dad, and he said it wouldn’t survive. It was better if it was put out of its misery. It was the humane thing to do. He said he’d end its suffering, but I stopped him, said I’d do it myself.”

  Chad licked his dried lips. They felt like sandpaper against his tongue. Romeo noticed. There was a bowl on the floor by his feet, and Romeo reached for the flannel, wrung out the water, then brought it to Chad’s lips, dabbing along them. It felt so good a soft moan escaped him.

  “So you killed it?”

  “No. I didn’t want to end its suffering. We had a game going on, so it couldn’t die. I needed it alive, so I kept it in a box in the shed.”

  Romeo moved the flannel to Chad’s forehead. Chad’s eyes fluttered at the relief, the soothing cold. It shouldn’t have felt good, but it did.

  “Your dad didn’t find it?”

  “No. I kept the bird well hidden.”

  Romeo put down the flannel and picked up the bowl of soup. He stirred it, then lifted a spoonful. Chad’s mouth opened, earning him a small smile from Romeo, and then he spooned the soup into Chad’s awaiting mouth.

  He closed his eyes, letting the taste and smell steal him for a few seconds. He heard the spoon scrape the bottom of the bowl, followed by the tapping off of excess. Then he opened his mouth without opening his eyes, and waited for Romeo to feed him.

  “I kept the magpie alive. I killed snails to feed it, as well as giving it scraps of bread, ham. It even ate cheese. At first the magpie pecked me every time I tried to feed it. It squawked, flapping its damaged wing, making it worse…”

  Chad thought back to the hazy days after he’d hurt his leg. He’d thrashed, cried out, moved to avoid Romeo’s hand every time he reached for him. He’d refused water, food, begged Romeo to end his suffering, to take the pillow and press it to his face.

  “Then … something happened, and it stopped fighting me. It let me feed it, let me close. Let me ease its suffering.”

  Chad snorted, still not opening his eyes. “Did you find some good drugs for it, too?”

  He smelled the soup coming closer and opened his mouth.

  “No. I persisted. Fighting me was getting it nowhere, but giving in, accepting its situation, that helped it. It realized it had no control over its fate. I did.”

  Chad cracked an eye open and peeked at Romeo. “Maybe it was biding its time, getting stronger, better. Did—did it get better?”

  Romeo looked at the ceiling, lost somewhere, and then he turned his attention back to Chad. “Its body got stronger, better.”

  “Body? What about its mind?”

  “It lost that somewhere along the way.”

  “How could you tell what was going on its mind?”

  “I just could. I enjoyed toying with it. I found it interesting. Despite what it knew about me, the things I’d done, I still won it over. It still became … attached.”

  “Is that what you want to do to me?”

  “It’s one way to pass the time. Waiting two months between killing is torture, and you’re a good distraction.” He grinned, but then his smile faded. He reached for Chad’s hair and started stroking him. Despite knowing he should lean away, distance himself, he didn’t, and Romeo smiled.

  “Now rest.”

  Chad did as he was told.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “You were crying out for your mother earlier.”

  Chad could still taste
the saltiness from his tears. He wanted Romeo to ignore the embarrassing episode, him sobbing himself awake then accepting a cradling hug from Romeo, but he could see the curiosity in Romeo’s face and knew it was only a matter of time until he’d ask.

  “You sounded like a child. Your lip was wobbling, and your face crumpled. You sounded small, fragile.”

  Chad remembered the earlier dream, not a dream, but a memory, one that made him feel cold, and his gut plummet to his toes. He didn’t like thinking about then, the times before he had Toby.

  “Tell me about your mother,” Romeo said.

  “No.”

  “We’re gonna be spending a lot of time together.”

  “I don’t want you toying with my mind.”

  Romeo leaned back in his chair. “Tell me or, I’ll leave you on your own.”

  Chad wasn’t attached to a beeping machine, but it was obvious Romeo’s words had triggered something. His chest started to rise and fall faster. Romeo’s voice and presence cut through the dreams, dragged Chad to the surface, but when he was gone, one dream led to another, and another, until he was stuck in a merry-go-round of hell. Memories of his mother he’d long ago blocked out, hallucinations of the incident room, and the magpie, tapping on the window.

  “Don’t…” he gasped.

  “Then talk to me.”

  “Will you use it against me?”

  “No. I only want to get to know you, Chad, the real you. The one no one else sees. It’s for my personal interest. I won’t torment you with it. I won’t tell anyone else. I just want to know. So why were you crying out to her, do you remember?”

  Chad picked the sheet on the bed, pinching the material between his thumb and forefinger, then releasing before pinching it again. “It was a memory. I’d hurt myself.”

  “How?”

  Chad exhaled through his nose. “I don’t remember how, but I had a graze on my knee. I was walking home from school.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Five or six.”

  Romeo lifted his eyebrows. “And you were walking on your own?”

  “Yeah. My knee hurt. I wanted her to make it better, like everyone else’s mothers would’ve.” Chad snorted. “At that age I believed magic kisses were a thing, a mum could take away the pain if she wanted to with only a kiss.”

  “And what happened when you got home?”

  “The same thing that happened every day I got home. She ignored me. She didn’t care about me. She cared about drugs. She cared about where they were coming from, and when, and how much, and how much she needed to make to buy them.” The bitterness rolled off Chad’s tongue. He couldn’t help it. It was the drugs; they loosened him up. He looked down at his broken body, too sluggish, too heavy. “Now look at me, swallowing any pill you shove in my mouth, barely with it, fucking helpless and reliant on a man to feed my addiction. I wonder if she’s proud of me, proud I take after her with the drug reliance, the same way your dad was proud you took after him with the painting.”

  “You’re not gonna get addicted. I won’t let it happen.”

  “Would it bother you if I did?”

  “Yes.”

  Chad frowned. “Why?”

  “I can’t let you go back into the big bad world addicted to drugs. I won’t destroy you like that.”

  “You have messed up morals.”

  “I have rules when I play games.”

  “I’m a game?”

  “Yes. Did you love your mother?”

  The question was so evasive, so unexpected, Chad’s lips opened and closed a few times before he formed a reply. “She was my mum.”

  “And that wasn’t an answer.”

  “Course I loved her.”

  The words were sharp on his tongue, and unconvincing in his head. Romeo narrowed his eyes, seeing through it.

  “It’s okay not to love someone…”

  “She was my mum, of course I loved her.” Chad growled through his teeth.

  “You’re talking to me… You don’t need to lie.”

  Chad swallowed the guilty lump in his throat. “It’s not normal though, is it? You’re supposed to love your mum. The woman that brought you into the world, it goes without saying, you love her.”

  Once Chad started, he couldn’t stop. His mouth spoke faster than his brain could stop the words. He blamed the drugs he’d been taking. They pulled down his barriers, exposing his not-so-nice insides.

  “She had to do what she did to get us money, to buy us food, my clothes, school supplies. So what if she didn’t notice me, she didn’t patch up my grazes or kiss away my pain. Things were hard for us—”

  “What did she buy first, food for you, or drugs for herself?”

  Chad didn’t answer.

  “Your mum was a junkie, who slept with men to get her fixes. You were just … there.”

  “Don’t judge her.”

  “I’m not. There’s no judgment. I’m stating the truth. The same way I could tell you, I learned from an early age mums’ kisses did nothing. My mum kissed me enough on the head, but it never healed the damage growing inside. She couldn’t fix me.”

  “Your mum cared about you.”

  “She did.”

  “And mine didn’t care about me.”

  “No, she didn’t. Does that make you hate me, knowing I had something you wanted? A loving family, kisses from mummy. She read me bedtime stories and tucked me in at night, too.”

  Chad scrunched up his nose. “Yes, it makes me hate you more.”

  “She held my hand when she walked me to school, and always came to collect me, big smile on her face, and warm hug when she greeted me. She asked me how my day was—”

  “Stop it,” Chad said. Tears were burning in his eyes.

  “You had so much love to give, but no one there to receive it, and I was the opposite, I had plenty of people to receive it, but no love to give. Were you lonely?”

  “Yes.”

  “So was I.”

  “You had people around you who cared.”

  “But I knew I was different. You could be standing in a crowded room, smile on your face, and still feel lonely. I knew I was twisted, wrong, and they weren’t like me.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

  He thought Romeo would push, keep asking questions. It wasn’t like he could escape, and he’d be worn down eventually, but instead Romeo nodded, then whispered.

  “Do you want a change of scenery?”

  “What?”

  “I could move you into the living room. The TV’s there… Would you like that?”

  Chad nodded. “Yeah.”

  “It might hurt getting you down there.”

  “I can’t lie in this bed anymore … reminds me of a hospital.”

  Romeo looked pointedly at the yellow walls, and the tasseled lightshade. “I don’t know what kinda hospitals you’ve been in lately…”

  ****

  Chad had forgotten about the newspapers on the walls. It was worse in the day, when he could read the headlines on each one. Both his failure to catch a killer, and his failure of a relationship plastered to the walls. He scanned his eyes along the dates, spotting a few recent ones.

  He knew Romeo had left the house, he’d cuffed Chad to the bed before he went, and apologized when Chad couldn’t hide the distress from his face. Without him there, it meant hours of uninterrupted, messed up memories and dreams. It only stopped when Romeo woke him, brushing his fingers through Chad’s sweat-soaked hair.

  Romeo helped him over to the armchair by the window and lowered him down. Pain flared in Chad’s leg, and he gritted his teeth, riding through the burn. Romeo pulled the coffee table over, then carefully lifted Chad’s leg. The pain lessened with his leg horizonal across the table.

  Romeo moved away, switched the TV on, then strolled out the room. The TV took a long time to come on, before finally, the screen brightened. Chad recognized the news presenters; he found his name running in the banner a
long the bottom of the screen.

  He’d avoided watching the news the entire case, and didn’t buy the Canster Times, but both were in front of him, and he couldn’t avoid them. It was the first time he saw Audrey. She looked like a nice woman, graying hair, and thick-framed glasses. She was a grandmother, a charity giver, but Romeo and the Canster Times, had reduced her only to number two of his countdown.

  Chad watched a report about her with glowing testimonies, a report about the pressure the police were under, a run through of all they knew about the smartly dressed killer, and then there was a report about him.

  The search for Chad Fuller’s body.

  “They think I’ve killed you.”

  Chad started, jarring his leg. Romeo stood in the doorway, arms folded, and eyes fixed to the TV.

  “The Canster Times started reporting it four days after you went missing. You’re no longer a man, but a body.” He gestured to the papers on the wall. “They speculate whether I’ve chopped you up, burned your body, buried you in a ditch… There’s even one that says I might have eaten you.”

  “My colleagues will know I’m alive. They know your pattern.”

  “They must have your car, my gloves, your shoes, the rock, but none of it has made it into the Canster Times. They know you’re missing but have no details. It’s curious.”

  Chad’s throat tightened, and he turned away from the TV, away from the news articles and stared out the window. “I can’t watch this anymore.”

  “There’s binoculars.”

  “So?”

  “If you don’t want to watch the TV, maybe you can look out the window…”

  Chad frowned but reached for the binoculars anyway. He pressed them to his eyes and looked out the window across the fields. He didn’t know what Romeo wanted him to see. There was nothing but mud, grass, trees, and then something flashed in the distance. Something fast moving caught the sun.

  Then another.

  He realized it was a road. A road to freedom, people to help him—he could see them whizz by like sparkling dust, there but out of reach. He thought of the dogs at Tristram’s house. They could see freedom, but couldn’t reach it no matter how hard they tried.

  He put the binoculars down, then stared at Romeo. “Message received.”