PREACH.
Book Two
EMMA.
MY MOTHER GOT MARRIED again.
Normally, this is where I would say she has awful taste in men. Which she does. Really awful.
But there's something about Jerry ... maybe she finally made a good choice with him.
Or the worst.
Sometimes it's hard to tell.
I'm not well, you see. In my mind. In my heart. Just a plaguing darkness, eating away at me, making me rot and fester. I get confused. I don't understand.
Or maybe I understand too well?
You can see the issue.
I hear voices. I mean, not in my mind or anything, I'm not schizophrenic. Not yet, at least. I hear everyone else's voices, the ones that have been bitching at me my whole life. Talking to me. Telling me to be a good girl, be quiet, be nice, don't tell mommy about this, she doesn't need to know, it's a secret.
Saying I'm worthless, that I'm in the way, that I should never have been born, and oh, if only the coat hanger had reached me.
Explaining to me that I'm trash and I'll always be trash and I should just be thankful for any attention I get from anybody, now shut up and suck this dick and be quick about it.
But the last voice ...
Sometimes I wonder how much of it I made up. Surely the love part, obviously. He doesn't know what love is, he can't love, so he certainly didn't love me. Not even in the end.
Telling me I was great, that we could be greatness – lies. Surely lies.
Wanting me to do this, tricking me to do that, all games. All manipulation. All for himself, nothing for me.
I thought I knew that, but maybe I was just tricking myself. Maybe I just wanted to believe in something so badly ... so badly, I was willing to die for it.
And now Dr. Rosenstein has put all these new thoughts in my head. It's his voice I hear the loudest now.
So who do I believe? The voice that whispers to me at night, when everything is dark and cold, just how I used to think I like it? Or the voice that outright talks to me in the daylight, breaking my reality down and making me question things I hadn't thought to before.
Dr. Rosenstein really isn't so bad. He got me out of that hospital, convinced my mother to put me in an institution. Not a great place – I was never really into windows with bars on them – but not the worst, either. And I did everything they told me to do, I convinced everyone I was getting better, that I wasn't that ghost of a girl anymore. I followed the rules, I painted pictures, I made friends with my roommate.
I played my part so well, conversations were had behind closed doors. Dosages were lowered, privileges were granted, and after one week in the hospital and three long weeks of being institutionalized, I was allowed to leave. I would still have to come in twice a week for group therapy, and once a week for a private session, but I wouldn't be sleeping behind bars anymore.
Not that going home really changed anything. There aren't bars on my window now, but I'm still locked inside. You don't think Margo would just give up that easily, do you? Now that she's got me completely under her thumb, she's reveling in the power. I'm basically under house arrest. She knows where I am every minute of every day, and if I set foot off Jerry's property, it's back to the institution. If I cause any trouble, back to the institution. If I don't do my chores ... well, you get the idea.
Still, I suppose I shouldn't complain. Jerry's house is at least better than the bug house.
On the car ride home, I was nervous. On the walk through the house, I felt a little sick. That stifling office, that shitty pull out couch. I'm not a real person, so why should I deserve a real room, right?
But I did get one. I get nice clean walls, and a tidy desk, and a comfortable double bed that's hardly been slept in. Technically, it's still hardly been slept in – I spend most nights staring at the ceiling.
Because this isn't my room.
This is Paul's room.
1
HE BENT OVER, SQUINTING at his handy work. He frowned.
He wasn't happy with it.
Church was actually fairly good with his hands – he'd built his own computer, motherboard and all, at the age of eight. He'd taken shop classes all throughout high school and he'd of course gotten good grades. While he wasn't a master carpenter or mechanic by any means, he felt fairly capable to building or rebuilding just about anything.
Yet he still wasn't happy with this finished product.
He wiggled the object. It moved far too much for his liking. He needed something to brace it, make it virtually unmovable.
Fuck.
It was December, yet it was hot in the room. Poor ventilation plus four halogen lights and a lot of physical exertion equaled sweat rolling down every inch of his body. With a groan, he stood upright and stretched his back. Then he pulled his t-shirt off over his head and tossed the dirty, sweaty fabric into a corner of the room.
Slightly better.
He'd always been some indifferent to temperature and weather. Of course he didn't care for extreme heat or extreme cold, but he didn't mind the occasional hot day, nor did he care if fresh snow was falling.
But Emma.
Emma liked it cold. She liked to turn off the heat and let the chill creep into her bones. Liked to float in icy water until her blood practically froze in her veins.
She also liked humidity so thick, it would cause her clothing to stick to her skin, and she loved it when the sun would bake her skin to a shiny pink.
Emma.
Church bent down and grabbed an object off the floor near his feet. Her cigarette case. He popped it open and frowned. Only four rolled cigarettes left. It had been full when she'd gone to the hospital.
He had to start working faster.
He pulled one of the sticks out and held it between his lips. Then he tossed the case onto his dirty shirt before he pulled a lighter out of his back pocket. The first drag was always the worst, especially seeing as how roll-your-owns didn't exactly have filters – he wasn't an experienced smoker and didn't plan on becoming one. He didn't see the appeal at all.
But the smell and the smoke and burning sensation racing down his throat. It hurt. It was gritty and too much sensation and made him sharply aware of the reality he was living in.
It was just like Emma.
Enough. Back to work.
2
“You better be getting dressed in there!”
Emma wasn't getting dressed. She was stretched out on the bed, only wearing a plain cotton pair of panties and a t-shirt. She stared at the ceiling. It was plain, just sheet rock covered in paint brushed in thick, circular motions. But she'd noticed something – little holes, spaced widely apart. It took her a while to figure out they must have come from thumbtacks. Once upon a time, something had been tacked up to the ceiling.
The very idea made her snort out loud.
What did you have up there, Church? Posters for Backstreet Boys? Limp Bizkit?
“Emma!” Margo's shrill voice sounded from the doorway. “What the hell are you doing just laying there? You know, it's an hour there and an hour back that Jerry and I have to drive you – do you think we like doing it, that it's fun for us? And you're just wasting even more time. Get dressed, for christ's sake. And no shorts anymore, that scar is ugly.”