Dream Haunter (7 page)

“
What’s
wrong
with him?” she pants.

 “
He seems to have
taken a liking to you more than the others, though. He’s told us
about you and how much he thinks that you’re the one.” The woman
shrugs, a hint of bitterness at the edge of her voice.

Melody opens her mouth, ready to say
she can’t be “the one”, when Adam bursts into the room; his eyes
stare in wonder as the women inside their cases stand up, the air
in the room hot with their hatred towards him.

“
She’s fine, Adam,” the
woman in front of Melody assures him as she pulls her hair up onto
her head, refusing to look at him.

Melody walks over to where he stands in
the door frame, her fists clinched at her side. “We need to
talk.”

Adam nods, motioning her to follow him
back to the front of his apartment. Melody’s eyes bounce around the
living room, the glass case lets out a low hum next to the far
corner of the room.

He sits down on the couch with that
sad, charming, look painted across his face. “I don’t want to keep
you in a case, Melody. It hurts me to have you in there, but I’m
scared that you would run if I didn't lock you up.” Adam admits,
his manner has substantially changed from yesterday.

 “
Why are you keeping
them in there? Do you think that you’re the only one who disserves
love?” Melody asks as she leans forward, ready to slap
him.

 
He looks away from
her, being utterly over dramatic and emotional. “No one has ever
loved me. They all just run away,” he shakes his head, laughing at
himself, “Ha, my first girlfriend’s dad beat me up with a bat when
I kept coming back to her house after she wouldn’t return my calls.
Then my second ex’s new boyfriend came and beat me up with his
friends on my date with my third girlfriend. Then I broke up with
her; she got mad and came with a gun and shot me in the arm at my
mom’s funeral.” He leans forward, resting his head in his
hands.

“
But how do we dream of
you?” she asks, not wanting to dip too much into his past in fears
of her feeling too connected to him.

He sits up, pushing his hair back. “I’m
imprisoned here. I did something bad to someone I was close to so I
was cursed to stay here until I could learn to love.” He thinks
about the one he had hurt, she can tell. He continues, “He was my
best friend, the person I wronged, but he didn't tell me that he
was the one who made my mom slam on the car breaks and--- I was so
mad when he told me… all I remember is him screaming at me to stop
punching him and I did, but we weren’t friends anymore and all I
have is hate toward any male.” He clinches his jaw and begins to
cry on her shoulder.

Somehow Melody finds herself kissing
him the next minute; crying, emotional boys have always done that
to her.

Adam pulls away, pressing his forehead
against hers. “I do love you. I have never lied to you about that
and never will,” he whispers, his voice slow and
emotional.

 
Melody wraps her arms
around his neck, gently resting her head on his shoulder.  “I
love you,” she whispers.

 
They sit there for
hours, just holding each other in their arms and being so
nauseatingly
cute
.

……………………………………………

The next day Melody leans across the
kitchen counter, breathing in the sweet and spicy sauce that is
simmering on the stove, Adam gingerly stirs it.

“
Can you let them go?”
Melody asks.

Adam takes the sauce pan off of the
stove and walks around the counter to her, wrapping his arms around
Melody. “Yeah, I don’t need them.”

Adam and Melody spend the rest of the
day de-chipping the women so they could leave, well all except
Chloe, Adam kept her hidden away from Melody.

Adam numbs the skin on the back of
Melody’s neck, using a pair of pliers to pull out the metal ball
and the electric needle from her flesh.

She winces as the needle slides from
her skin; Adam kisses the little hole that remains at the bottom of
her skull. Melody had explained to Adam that she won’t leave, that
she loves him.

“
Sam doesn’t need me. He
probably already has a new girlfriend by now anyways.”
she thinks to herself. But she is so
wrong.

Chapter
Fourteen

Sam got called back to sing for the
talent agency again, but he just can’t bring himself to tap into
the emotions he needs. It isn’t that he doesn’t have enough songs
to sing, he has folders full of scribbled papers with his chicken
scratch hand writing, it’s that all of them are about Melody. His
voice croaks and his fingers slip on the string.

“
I can’t do this; I should
be out there looking for her. Thank you for your time,” Sam says as
he pushes the sound proofed door open, walking out of the audition
room.

The strings of his guitar ring out as
he throws it in the back of the Station Wagon, smashing up against
the seat. He drops himself into the driver’s seat, slamming his
hands against the steering wheel and shouting at the window in
front of him until his vision becomes blurred.

Sam is all too familiar with these
feelings of emptiness and bitterness; the world has no meaning, as
do his songs now. But he hasn’t felt this way since before he met
Melody. The inside of his palms throb as the slip down the leather
curves of his steering wheel. He leans his head on the wheel, the
skin on his forehead wrinkles against it as he stares at the handle
of the black glove box.

The glove box is stuffed full of maps,
fast food napkins, and extra straws, preventing the door from
closing properly. Sam’s lips twitch into a smile, Melody used to
chew him out for his lack of organization skills. His fingers reach
out for the plastic handle, pulling open the glove box, its
contents spill out on the passenger seat, including the little
velvet box.

Sam stares at the box, the car around
him slips out of view, the only things he is aware of is his deep,
heavy, breaths, and the two by three inch dark blue velvet box. His
breath catches in his sore throat as he delicately grips the box in
his fist, bringing it up to his face before flipping it open with
his thumb nail. His index finger runs across the top of the diamond
that is being held tight to the silver band, small intercut vines
cling around the base of the diamond.

His eyes mist over; he was going to
give this to her soon, really soon, but now he fears he will never
see her again.

…………………………………
.

Sam’s friends become worried about him.
They have finally realized that he was never being “corny”, he
really, truly, loved her. Sam refuses to eat, so his friends have
to force feed him. After Chester gets Sam to eat a tortilla chip
with a dab of salsa on the tip, he decides to do his duties as his
best friend, and tell Sam that it is time to get over
her.

“
Sam, I’ve known you since
our junior year of high school. I’ve seen the girls just come and
go and eat up all that romantic crap you shovel their way, Melody’s
just another one of your long list of heartbroken girls. Trust me,
you’ll get over it,” Chester says.

 
Sam rubs his hands
across his stubbled cheek before fumbling around in his pocket,
pulling the little blue velvet box out. “Not one that I’ll love
like this,” Sam says, his voice almost a whisper as his fingers
shake around the box.

Chester gawks down at the box,
snatching it from Sam’s hand, shaking his head. “You can’t be
serious Sam…”

Sam laughs, seizing the box back from
Chester. “Yes. I am very serious. Now just leave me alone. I need
to figure out how to get her back.”

Chester shakes his head, grabbing Sam’s
song book off the coffee table. “Obviously this is gonna take a lot
of good music and crappy Sci-Fi movies to pull you out of this one.
I'm staying here, I'm going to make sure you don’t commit suicide
or start writing some weird emo crap about how much pain you’re
in.”

Sam rolls his eyes and pulls his guitar
back into his lap.

………………………………………
..

*Crash*
Goes something inside of Sam’s room, followed by screams of
pain. Chester goes running down the hall to Sam’s room in the dead
of night to find Sam convulsing in his sleep.

“
Dude! You were screaming in
your sleep!” Chester shouts as he pins Sam’s arms to his
bed.

Sam sits up, acknowledging the broken
frame on the floor next to his bed while fighting back tears. He
focuses on the shards of glass that scatter across a black and
white photo of Melody and him.

“
What is he doing to her?”
he asks, his voice low and angry as he speaks.

 
Chester slams his hand
against the light switch, turning it on. “Who is doing what to
her?”

Sam swallows back his tears,
clinching his fists around the soft army green sheets of his bed,
his knuckles going white. “
Adam
. The guy that took Melody... I
want to know what he’s doing with her!” He springs from the bed,
letting his tears fall out of his eyes as he throws on his jacket,
snatching his keys form the dresser and shoving them into his
pocket.

Chester chases him down the hall. “Sam!
Calm down!” Chester shouts.

Sam ignores him as he throws the front
door open, stomping down the hallway before he makes his way down
the stairs to the parking garage.

Rain drips onto the concrete
floor from the crack on the level above this one, making a
steady
drip
,
drip
noise throughout the
garage
.  He thrusts the key into the
lock of his car, throwing himself into the driver’s seat, locking
the doors right as Chester reaches the passenger door.

 “
Sam! Nothing good
ever happens when you’re upset like this! You know that!” Chester
shouts as he bangs on the passenger window and jiggles the door
handle.

 
Sam starts up his car,
which surprisingly starts on the first try considering it’s a
rusted orange bucket on wheels to most people. His tires squeal as
he speeds out of the garage and on to the main road. He drives down
to his office at the newspaper. The sky is a moody grey and blue,
the blackened clouds bleed with the clear rain drops that tap
against Sam’s windshield. The wheels of his car squeak as he makes
a sharp turn into the parking lot, flashing his employ ID when he
gets to the gate, before pulling into his rarely used parking
space. He doesn’t bother to lock his car as he stomps into the
building, deciding the elevator is too slow, and jogs up the back
stairs.

Sam takes a deep, long breath, jiggling
the lock of his infrequently used office before dropping himself
down in front of the desktop computer, looking for information on
Adam. Something urges him to look at the obituaries from a few
years ago.

“
I know I’ve seen his face
before,” Sam says as he scrolls through the pictures of happy dead
people.

Then he sees it: a black and white
photo of a little, tan, teenage boy and his dad looking down at a
casket. Sam zooms up on the picture, gasping at the depressed face
that looks back at him.

“
Jet!”  he shouts at
the computer screen.

Sam reads the article below the
picture, memories flooding back, one after the other like someone
had opened a box of nostalgia and is randomly show him familiar
objects. “We were best friends… but what happened?”  Sam says
aloud to himself.

He rubs the skin below his neck; his
callused finger tips running across the little silver scars that
are etched across his skin like someone had clawed at him.
Goosebumps make themselves known across his arms, a lump grows in
his throat. His eyes begin to tear as he remembers the reason these
scars are there:

“
You killed my mom!” Jet
shouted, his face red.

“
I didn’t!” a fifteen year
old Sam yelped as he struggled to push Jet off of his
chest.

Jet’s bright blue eyes are a
sad grey color as his fists pound away at Sam’s jaw. “I thought you
were my brother! I trusted you! How could you do this to me?” 
Jet cried, holding his fist back, assessing the blood that was
dripping from Sam’s nose and lips.

Sam stared up at him, the
nerves in his face screamed and his mouth tasted of copper as his
tongue moved reluctantly. “Jet, please. Please stop.”

Jet sat back and shook his
head. “No, I hate you. Burn in hell for all I care.”

Sam struggled to get up as
Jet shoved him back down, wrapping his hand around his
neck.

“
No, no please!” Sam
squeaked as Jet dug his nails in to the skin around Sam’s collar.
Sam gasped for breath, swinging his weak arms around, trying to
throw Jet off before he pressed down on his neck. The next thing
Sam knew, everything was black.

Sam runs his fingers across his neck.
How had he not remembered something like that? He hardly remembers
waking up in the hospital, only vaguely remembers his parents’
telling him that they were pressing charges on Jet, but he couldn’t
remember who Jet was. Sam runs his fingers through his hair. “I
must have repressed him, something so horrible.”