Colour Series Box Set (77 page)

THE REPEATED NOISES AROUND me were disturbed today, something happened and Shannon left me. I know she left, I heard her go. She doesn’t talk to me when she is here the others all do. Shannon is silent, but her cold presence and smell fill the room when she is here.
I wonder why she is still here, she could have run away.

Today she
left
and when she returned something was different. She didn’t kiss my cheek with her cold empty kiss, she just
walked back out
the sound of her heels leaving the room empty again. I hope she comes back. I feel a horrible sense of loss at the thought of her not returning to me. The door closing sounded strangely final this time.

I can sense even in my sleep that she is dangerous right now and I cannot help the feeling that I need to wake up and stop her from whatever it is that has changed her. The silence is swallowed by noises in the halls and the traffic of the rooms around me and I let my mind drift away again. I am not ready to face the reality I have created.

Rowan, Lauri and I eat on the patio of their home. The food is so good I cannot help, but shovel it down. The sun is setting over the vineyards and we laugh and chat. Lauri’s colourful skin is showing from under her shirt and when she holds Rowans tattooed hand it is as if they were made from the same piece of cloth. Two people made so perfectly to fit together. I watch them longing to find the same thing for myself.

The quiet of my dreams is shattered by Art’s voice in my ear. He sounds desperate. His voice has emotion in it, not the machine he normally is. He has lost his patience and speaks with urgency.

“Callum, if you are fucking in there hiding away now would be a fucking good time to wake up. Your fiancé is going to kill her mother. Sahib is laundering your money and something is wrong at home I cannot seem to get any news from anyone there. They will only talk to you. So wake the fuck up, people out here need you. I am not coming to sit next to this fucking bed again. Tomorrow I am going to leave.”  I know he is serious Art never says something unless he means it, my heart sinks at how I am letting them all down. I should have gone home a long time ago. This was all supposed to end with Neil. I am going to kill Sahib his betrayal, no one will take what is mine ever again. I just need to wake up and forget this pull to stay here and float in my past.

I know I have to make a choice to live or die right now. I have let myself stay in this limbo for too long. I have to fight now. Just open your eyes Callum that’s all that is stopping you. Your eyelids are the only thing in the way. I hear the machines in my room start to beep louder and I feel what can only be explained as panic burn in my chest as my heart goes too fast it is going to explode. My muscles begin to burn and every breath that I suck in is hard to let out again. The best part is that I actually feel it. I can feel and I can see my friend and a flurry of medical staff all around me. He is holding my hand too tight and he smells of whiskey and cigarettes but I can see his tired eyes looking into mine and he is smiling at me. Art never smiles, ever.

I cannot separate the voices it is all noise. The lights are blinding me and I feel like I have a hangover from the whole bottle of scotch. Something went horribly wrong and now I can finally try and fix it.

I feel the air turn to ice and I smell her before I see her. Then Art whispers in my ear. “She is already killing you Callum be careful of the devil that you love.” Before he lets go of my hand and walks out of my room as if his job is done. I know he is telling the truth when the look in her eyes is the one I have seen when she plays with her prey and not that of a happy fiancé. I don’t care if she is killing me I cannot make my heart stop loving her, not even if I wanted to. It stops just at the sight of her and I immediately want to say sorry for the times I hurt her I want to make her love me back. I want her. I ache to hold her again, to make love to her body and soul. I need her to stay alive.

I close my eyes again, it was so much easier not facing all of this. I changed my mind.

“Don’t you fucking dare go back to sleep. You promised me normal and it is way overdue, you wake up and we fix this shit Callum, you don’t get to go back to sleep.”  She whispers in my ear, but there is venom in every word. I don’t get to go back to sleep. I might never be able to sleep again.

I HAVE WATCHED HER EVERY SINGLE day for twenty months now add something to his feeding tube, it took me months to find what it was. I thought she was trying to make him stay asleep. God I wouldn’t blame her, she may be a murderous whore, but he hurt her. I know what a monster he is. I checked what it was and was surprised to find it was a simple pain killer, nothing that would keep him comatose. So why, did she care? Was she trying to keep him pain-free, he wasn’t hurt anymore he was just wasting away becoming a living ghost I can’t even remember his voice any longer. I spoke to the man every day for years I shouldn’t be able to forget. He saved my life and I am forgetting him.

When she still didn’t stop, I did some more digging and what I found was sinister, clever and made my stomach roll with terror. She was giving him cancer, every single day she dosed him with a drug that would without a doubt in that dosage cause cancer of the kidneys. She really was poisonous and heartless. Yet in some moments she seems to genuinely love him. I cannot begin to understand their feelings, I don’t even think they do. I watched them through the window one night as they fucked while a man was dying on the floor in front of them. They cannot be saved from each other.

I couldn’t do anything to stop her while he slept, but fuck me if I cannot try and make him wake up. Something is very wrong at home and Sahib is stealing the company’s money and she is killing him slowly. Amya won’t take my calls or isn’t getting my messages, I am worried. I need to go and talk to the girl I was supposed to kill but watched over instead. I need to set things right with Amya before I die.

I have done this too long. I am tired. I want to walk away. I am going to. If Callum doesn’t wake up after I speak to him tonight, I am going to leave. I won’t sit at his bedside any longer watching him die at her hand. I want a life, the life he promised me when this all began years ago. I am not going to live in limbo any longer the last twenty months have felt like an eternity in hell. I don’t want this anymore. I want something else.

I simply want more.

I sit next to the skeleton in the bed and I talk to him, I don’t believe for a second he hears us or he would have woken up by now. I never hear her speak to him, in fact, she is almost always silent she only ever says what has to be said nothing more. I tell him that this is it, I am going to walk away I won’t sit at his bedside any longer.

I don’t believe in God or miracles, I believe in the human heart and our own strength to overcome and survive. But there in front of my eyes nothing short of a miracle. He wakes up, he opens those evil fucking green eyes and I see it in an instant his monster is dead. He isn’t the same man that I have been loyal to all my life. He is broken beyond the physical and I know that I will still walk away from them today. I want nothing more to do with this life, I am getting old it is time for me to find my own home.

There are doctors and nurses and the chaos that ensues hurts even my ears. I hold his hand and wait it out. I wait until she gets there. I know I cannot save him from her. He loves her. I won’t watch her kill him I am walking away now.  “She is already killing you Callum be careful of the devil you love.” Those are the words I leave my friend with as I leave his room and I leave this life of ours behind.

 My debt to him is paid back a thousand times. I need to go and make peace with my past.

IN AN INSTANT, I KNEW THAT he knew. One look and we both knew too much. He is different.

After twenty months, his mind is intact, but his body will need time to heal and won’t ever be the same as it was before. The doctors explain that he may have had mental trauma that needed to recover so his brain remained shut off. I know Art said something to wake him, I also know that somehow Art knows I am killing him, but Art is gone in that moment he walked out of our lives. I doubt he will return his goodbye seemed to carry a finality in it when he left.
It is just me and Callum now. I am not alone anymore, as long as I have him

He never said one word of it, I went back to my original toothpaste plan of action and he slowly got better and his body began to recover some strength. I know he will never be the man he was before he left me to go and kill his brother. I don’t know what made him snap and do it that night, but Callum is different now and I am not sure what to make of him. I will never be sorry for killing him. I just wish I had done it quickly. This needy suffering is making me want to put a pillow over his snivelling head and end it all now.
I love him too much to kill him and that is killing me.

He is indifferent to me as if he can already sense the depth of my betrayal. I do know that something in me is softening as I care for him. I have never cared for or looked after anybody who wasn’t a patient before. Not even my mother, who I killed the day Callum woke up. I gave her a dose of vitamin K that caused a fatal stroke. The high just wasn’t the same without him watching me, I didn’t feel the release and the cycle is still not complete. When it was done, I closed her door and walked away from the past and into my future with Callum. Art may not be here, but I know he would make good on his threat if I decided to walk away, I would still die. In truth, something invisible ties me to Callum and I know it is more than veiled threats that keep me by his side. I want what we became together, I need it. My compulsions have changed and I cannot get what I need from a kill without him. I want him healed, but broken. I need him to be a monster or else these feelings are useless.

My thoughts are a tornado of confusion while he was unconscious I was split between wanting him to wake up and wanting him to just give up and die. Now I am torn between the happiness of him waking up and the disappointment that he isn’t dead. Not only that but the tug at my heart where I want nothing more than to hate him something else has started to fester, something dangerously close to real love. Every time I feel it surface the guilt sucks me in, I have never felt guilt for anything in my life, it is what makes killing so easy, so effortless, but I feel it for Callum.
You feel guilty about killing him Shannon and you should not. You should not feel it at all just another face you’ll see when you close your eyes.