Miss You Mad: a psychological romance novel (6 page)

Just like Shakespeare's Hamlet, he could be locked up tightly in a nutshell and count himself king of infinite space.

"Were it not that I have bad dreams," William whispered to the room.

He thrummed impatient fingers on his pressboard desk. The index finger stuck in dried cola he'd spilled a few days earlier. He pressed the ball of it against his thumb, then pulled them slowly apart, watching the minute strings of goo stretch into longer threads. Without thinking, he rubbed the residue into a ball and tossed it onto the floor. A brief thought took him that perhaps he should slip the gunk into the bin, but it evaporated. That would take time, and he'd already waited too long.

Maybe after he checked his mail, and logged on to her site, he'd write for a spell. His editor's last message had been frantic with command. The deadline loomed. The damned deadline. It all but killed his creative juices, but Hannah had been the tonic for that. While writing used to calm him, now he approached the page with trepidation. There was something off in his journal. It needed more filled pages. All those empty ones bothered him. They were too bright, almost like a white room flooded with light. Sometimes, just to fill in those gaping holes, he resorted to writing just one or two words on the page. With each finished paper he could move on to the next without fear. And wasn't that really what writing was all about--keeping the fear at bay?

Strange, he hadn't remembered fear when Mother was alive. He missed her. She'd always reminded him to take his medication, especially when he got really busy and forgot.

Such a good woman, his mother. But William couldn't think of her. Such thoughts made his throat constrict. They made him realize that he'd been taking his medicine sporadically, if at all. He thought of the amber bottle across the apartment, snug in the bathroom cabinet. He had the horrible feeling that if he opened it, it would be full.

He picked at a long, skinny scar on his arm that he hadn't seen earlier. The room felt too small, like a dark, oh so dark, a coffin without air. And the heat. God, it was so hot in here.

Maybe he'd better not think of Mother because thoughts of Mother brought on the darkness.

Hannah's site was only open at certain times of the day. Or, at least, she was visible on-screen only during certain times of the day. Now would be one of those times. He knew it because the sun wouldn't be glaring into her apartment and interfering with her painting.

He hadn't been sleeping well. He knew without looking that the circles under his sunken eyes were even blacker than before, that the long vein in his forehead stood out like a purple bruise against his skin. The few hours he'd left consciousness were as tormented as the times he was awake and knowing couldn't see her on the computer screen.

The laptop screen blinked back on when he ran his finger across the surface. Within seconds, William had swiped into her site and waited for her form to fill the screen.

"Patience, Willie, patience."

He stared at the monitor.

All the screen showed was a canvas propped on a wooden easel. Beside it, on the left, was a tall stool; on the right, a narrow table. He knew that in a few moments she'd enter the camera's eye to plop a pottery mug of tea onto the table. She would squeeze paint from tubes onto her glass palette, then mix various liquids into a tin can and dip a brush in. That's when his heart would begin to race. That was when he'd swallow and swallow, trying to shove the excitement back down into his belly were it belonged.

He stared at the screen, barely able to breathe. He had a quick memory of the last time he'd seen her, when he'd actually been able to touch that skin of hers. She'd crafted the perfect cry, put just enough fear in it that when he'd sent the lash across her skin the second time, he'd not been able to hold back the extra flourish that turned his flaccid cock into a rigid stand.

She was perfect for him. So perfect.

"Do you think she saw my tweet?" he asked the screen. He could open the web client to see if she responded, but then he'd miss her if she stepped into frame. He could check his phone, but it was charging. He did have a server that brought in extra cash.

He had no choice but to wait and check his Twitter account later. He did not want to miss the moment she stepped into frame for the day. That moment was the best. She'd pull her honeyed hair back into a ponytail and secure it. She'd inadvertently miss a few strands and it was those strands that would catch his attention. He wanted to string them around his finger, to pull them gently so that they unfurled from spiraling curls into straight tresses. He had built an entire fantasy life on those few strands of hair. He didn't want to miss even one moment of them.

When she finally sauntered in and dropped her mug on her work table, something shifted in the video. It was almost seamless, but he knew enough about editing to know something had changed. At first, rage seethed in his belly. The screen, filled with Hannah's precious body and almost-as-precious canvas, taunted him. He'd seen that exact same painting before. Granted, it had been in a different state of completion, and done perhaps thirteen months earlier, but damn, he just knew he had seen it. He'd been so careful over their three dates never to reveal that he knew what she did for a living. He didn't want her to know how much he watched her, how well he knew her body until he had at least a dozen opportunities to touch that skin and prove to her that they were fated for each other.

So much like porcelain that skin, with a delicate tracing of veins beneath that reminded him of flower stems as he ran his tongue along them, stopping to sink his teeth into the most tender ones. He'd branded the stems so many times with petals that last night, he could almost see the daisylike chain he'd created on her flesh. He could taste the blood, hear her stifled and exquisite cries. The memory of it nearly staggered him now as his gaze followed the line of her forearm from the canvas to those perfect breasts and down to her hips.

He scratched at his itching scalp with the lead bit of his mechanical pencil. Just paranoia. That's all it was. He'd heard that term enough to know. He took several deep breaths, casting about for the logic he knew resided somewhere in his cortex. The video hadn't shifted. His Ophelia wasn't painting the same thing again. She would never do that. No doubt the canvas in its underpainting state was just similar. Maybe the first had never truly pleased her.

With a tap, he maximized the screen he'd attached to his laptop. Now he could see her as well as any forty-inch, television screen could show. And what a fabulous view. Much better than that of his apartment. Much better than reality shows. But not quite as wondrous as the real image. The real image always took his breath away. She took his breath away. Sometimes when they'd been together, legs entwined in a sweaty tangle, he'd felt as if they should actually breathe as one.

"Someday we will again," he mumbled, touching the screen with his fingertips.

Her skin was awash with light. The muscles of her round bottom tightened and let go. She leaned to the right, giving the camera full view of her left breast. William caught his breath. With a critical brow, she backed away from the canvas. She went forward, flanked left, then went forward again. Studying the painting, obviously. Fascinating, absolutely fascinating, this intimate glance into an artist's labor. William could barely stand to watch. His heart hammered. He shuffled his feet.

Then for a long moment, she disappeared from the camera's eye. The canvas took center stage for a long moment until she returned with a mug and set it on the stool next to her easel. Splotches of green paint formed an odd wave across her cheek. Again, she studied the painting. This time, her inspection took the form of a sweeping arc-shaped walk from corner to corner. William walked each step with her in his mind, smelling again the oils of her studio, the lavender she kept in a corner vase for inspiration.

He wanted to inhale the oils and paint thinner. It simply wasn't enough to watch from such detached, cold equipment. There was too much distance. Even though he could see her at any time, it wasn't enough. It was imperative that she want him there, that she need him as much as he needed her. He'd failed at it with his awkward gifts; he'd been awarded an opportunity to enrapture her and he'd failed.

Those earlier tenders of his affection were small, trivial things. He shouldn't have tried to woo her through trivial media and technology. She was an artist. She had an artist's soul. Perhaps he would write her another poem. But it couldn't be just any poem; it would have to have multimedia. It would need a beautiful image, and wondrous sounds. And there would be his advantage over Hamlet. Dear William of old, the master, had only paper and pen to describe his emotion. Hamlet had only primitive methods.

Perhaps as she painted, he would create. Yes. God, why hadn't he thought of it before? They could create together. She online and he as he watched. Then he could upload his creation to her, share it to her Facebook page, tweet it to her feed.

His excitement built, taking him to a dizzying rapture as he worked, and so engrossed was he that he almost missed the sound of laughter bubbling up from the carpet and snaking out from the power cords. When he did notice it, he couldn't ignore it no matter how hard he tried. He swore he felt his veins shrink away from his skin. Something was behind him. Something had taken shape in the shadows. Maybe if he didn't look, it would go away. Maybe if he held his breath, the heaviness in the air would dissipate.

But it didn't. The laughter transformed into a low moan, and the heaviness in the air – that feeling that something was staring at the back of his head-- grew as sick and humid as blood. If he wasn't careful, those things would merge together into something more solid than a shadow. It would take shape before long.

"
If thou hast any sound, or use of voice,
Speak to me:"

A whisper, like the sound of rubble showering down the side of a mountain, came from the corner of his living room. No words distinguished themselves from the sound, and it was that fact alone that made the hair stand on William's arm. He dared a glance from the corner of his eyes. Did he see a movement? Did a subtle rush of dispelled air make its way across the room?

His peripheral vision showed Hannah moving into view on screen, but William's pleasure shrank in the face of a shiver of fear. He couldn't enjoy himself. He couldn't lose himself. How could he, when he knew he was no longer alone?

I turned Hannah over to the custody of her hotel room right around midnight. I was loath to let her go, believe me, but after the mind-blowing head, she seemed to need a coma to come back around. I tried to at least find out why she was wanted, but after a solid hour of questioning she wouldn't budge one inch. Nice detective me gave way to hard ball detective to no avail. No matter how I phrased the question, she wouldn't explain why she was wanted. If left to me, I could easily have given her reason for being wanted, but she'd have none of that either. I scuffed my boots all the way down the worn carpet of the hotel hallway, jumped into my BMW, and headed home.

As I drove into my driveway and plopped a loonie into the Colonel's back I realised something that made by boots just a little happier. I could find her website. It shouldn't be too hard, and maybe, just maybe, there'd be some old image of her frozen in mid stroke. Sounded pretty desperate, but I figured I could be okay with desperate. It was a hell of a lot better than feeling numb.

Once I gained access to the net, I began to feel just a little guilty. I felt like some stalker invading Hannah's privacy. On the heels of guilt came rationalization. She'd never know. And what difference would it make to a woman who'd already bared her bosom to millions world-wide and swallowed what I thought was a pretty substantive load of come in the men's room. I'm sure if I had thought to ask for the address, she'd have gladly pencilled it onto my forehead quicker than God could say, "I am."

I did a search on "Hannah" and received a million hits for my supreme intelligence. I'd have to do better than that. Immediately, I tried narrowing it down to "Hannah painter". That made the computer issue its equivalent of a rude belch. I remembered Hannah telling me she had her friend embed the word nudity within her page coding. I Googled with as many words as I could fit into the search engine, typing in, Hannah, art, painter, and to top it all off, the word nude. She came back within the top 10. Thank the great good lord, he'd seen fit to shorten 40 wandering years in the desert of technology to 40 short seconds. Now to make my move into the promised land.

First, I got an opening page, all black but for a few command buttons. One, labelled, free peek, blinked. I clicked in. The free peek lasted thirty seconds. But in that short time, I managed to see enough flesh and paint to set my small spark of curiosity aflame. I returned to the homepage and found the Enter Site button.

I had to subscribe with a credit card number, which precluded my worries about her knowing I'd checked up on her. But I'd already decided to tell her she interested me enough to warrant supporting the arts. I conjured a user name and password then I was in.

I wasn't prepared for what awaited me. It some ways it was incredibly banal stuff: no true excitement of real porn with girls doing heaven could only imagine things on camera, but I couldn't tear myself away. The sheer normalcy of the act, the sense that I was a voyeur in the most authentic definition of the word, made the back of my scalp tingle. She never looked at the camera. There were times when she leaned over, letting her breasts go slack without consideration for how they might appear. No vanity seemed to permeate the scene. It was as though she didn't know she was being watched.