Redeeming Rhys (14 page)

990 Harmony Way

An address was painted in blood over and over, dozens of times, over the chair that Father Sullivan used to sit in. His limp body, or what was left of it, was sitting on top of the altar. Rhys tried to keep his promise, but Father Sullivan pushed him to a very dark place, begging the bad boy to come out and play. Perhaps Langston Sullivan had met the hell that he deserved.

Rhys felt peace for a moment, realizing that the secrets and the man that harbored them was dead. Gone. Forever. The man that wore the blood of his mother was gone and being fed to the devil that he made others fear.

But what others didn’t realize was that he was an angel in disguise. Some fallen angels used to be heavily admired by God before they were cast away to the pits below. Langston Sullivan must have been one of those dirty, despicable ones. He didn’t have friends or loved ones. He only had himself and his sins.

His sins were his friends.

But they were gone now, too.

Rhys didn’t feel as lonely as he once did. He walked up to the altar where parts of the pitiful priest lay, and he sat there, planting himself comfortably into the soles of both feet as he got used to the coldness that was wrapping itself around him. He was wearing the sins of Father Sullivan. Part of those were his mother, and he liked to think that maybe she wasn’t as fucked up as he was. She had to be the good part.

Rhys felt himself getting aroused at the thought of decency, staring at a puddle of blood and remnants of a human body. He shook his head at the mess he had made, partially proud, running his hands through his hair, understanding that the strength that he thought he had was depleting quicker and quicker. He needed to figure out what that meant.

990 Harmony Way

He remembered their first time together; in that moment, not only did he steal her purity, he siphoned her soul. It belonged to him; the white catalyst to his black, fruitless heart. Heaven and hell had made a melody that was addictive and delicious to the devious little boy who had gotten his first taste of innocence.

Finally, after ten years… he was going to get her.

Hello, sweet Wren. It’s me, Rhys. Do you want to come out and play?

Perfection is a state of illusion.

“IT’S ALRIGHT, MARA.
You are in a safe place now,” Wren said in a soothing voice to the twenty-something-year-old that sat parallel from her in her tiny office.

Mara, a recent victim of date-rape, had just spilled her soul about how she remembered everything, apparently when she wasn’t supposed to. Her body was paralyzed by a drug that was slipped by her date, a man that she had been dating for three months, but she had been reluctant to move forward with anything past sexual petting and heavy kissing.

Wren knew that part of her brain wasn’t perfect. Perfect didn’t exist. When the women that confessed their souls in her office cried for mercy and to a God that she had begged to for years, her heart sped up and her tummy tightened. It was as if she was under a spell,
his
spell, even after all those years.

Mara continued to sob into her hands, her blonde curls draping over her face to encase the sorrow that spilling so heavily from her small frame. Silence was often golden in moments such as those, and in that second, Wren knew that she had to give it to her. She thought for a moment about reaching her hand out to rest it delicately on her knee, but withdrew it before her dainty fingers could land on her trembling leg. Images of times long ago flashed heavily before her mind, scraped and bloodied knees and sobs of distress echoing in her head. She was a masochist for pain, suddenly feeling the urge to make her sins go away the only way she was taught how.

Confessing. Praying away her pain.

She couldn’t revisit the man that took her under his wing after that horrendous night. She knew that he had secrets too. He never shared them, but she saw them behind his eyes. They seemed too good to be true, like the delicious apple that Eve craved to eat in the Garden of Eden. Sometimes, temptation gets the best of us.

“Mara. I think you have done excellent today. Are you still seeing Dr. Yuri for your weekly med checks?” Wren asked, knowing that changing the subject soon after the incident and details were unveiled usually proved to be a good turn for the patient’s state of mind and sanity.

“I see him tomorrow,” Mara responded, bringing her bright, blue eyes up to meet Wren’s brown ones.

She wiped them free of tears, and sat there for a moment, staring at Wren, waiting for a clue as to what to do next. Wren hated that part, when the victim came to the realization of it all. The dirtiness of the encounter would never waiver. She could vouch for that. It had been over a decade since she had experienced something similar, yet every time she thought of him, she wanted to crawl back to the place where it all started, bathe in holy water, and fall to her knees while chanting Hail Mary’s until everything was better.

Better doesn’t exist.

Life is about pretending and going through the motions. Some days are better than others. Wren had become a master at understanding that. With Constantine, her new boyfriend, and her time at the shelter, she should have it all, yet part of her heart was still missing.

She knew exactly what it was, but it wasn’t like she was given a choice. Choices are golden, beautiful little treasures that aren’t handed out to people like her. From the outside looking in, she was the adorable little girl with dark hair and Mary Janes that sat there quietly every Sunday in Mass, never making a peep. Little did everyone else realize, she held many people’s secrets…

“Mara, you have made tremendous strides today. You should be so proud of yourself. Follow-up with Dr. Yuri tomorrow and I will see you next week. You have my card, so if you need me before, don’t hesitate to call, okay?” Wren handed her another business card, even though she probably had a dozen from every time she came in for her weekly sessions.

Mara had been coming for two months, and Wren had given her one of her business cards that she proudly made at home. They weren’t high class, but it made her feel like she was worth something and close to the victims, even more so, there for them if they needed her.

She knew what it was like to be alone.

To hurt without anyone who wanted to listen.

She looked at the clock above Mara’s head, hanging on the cracked wall, and wanted to smile, but refrained because it wouldn’t be an appropriate moment. Constantine was due to pick her up after her last session, and Mara was her last. It was the Thursday before the Fourth of July and Constantine had planned on taking her out to dinner before he worked the long holiday weekend.

Wren hadn’t talked much to Constantine about what happened or how he responded to her sexually, she just ignored it and hoped that next time they were intimate, he would be softer and that she would enjoy it as much as she did before. She was ashamed and she opened her mouth on many occasions to tell him her story, or at least part of it, but she remained mute. Her tongue was tied to the boy that magnetized her with fear and dread since she was six-years-old. Rhys filled her with so many other things, but she couldn’t put an exact emotion on it. She only understood that it wasn’t normal. She wasn’t normal.

Wren concluded her session with Mara, a little too eager to get her out of the door and have her on her way so she could start her evening with Constantine. She wanted to believe that he held some sort of goodness, because he had given her every reason to believe that he was decent, but something seemed off. She sat back in her office chair, slightly exasperated with her jumbled thoughts as her phone buzzed to life on her desk. She shrieked out in surprised and laughed it off, the effects of adrenaline coursing through her veins heavily from the worry and surprise. She picked her iPhone up from her desk, a few papers falling to the ground in the process, and swiped the screen to unlock it.

It was a text from Constantine. He was canceling on her for the evening, and Wren couldn’t help but feel slightly disappointed. She couldn’t help but think it was because of how their first, and only, sexual encounter went. Was she wrong for enjoying it? Did he think she was a whore, or did he sense a deeper disconnect with her? A thousand scenarios surged through her, and she tried not to ponder too deep, but just when something half-way normal stumbled into her life, her past, and her fucked up self, had to sabotage it before it had even developed a chance to make it.

Working late. I’ve been called to a mess in Fort County. Rain check?

-C

Disappointment settled deeper in her gut, and she tried to type back, but worried that she would sound too desperate. She declined a response, and decided on greasy takeout and cheesy one-star films on television that didn’t require much thought. She’d make sure to take an extra nerve pill for the evening, because any change in her emotional status always led to flashback nightmares, and as much as she didn’t understand Rhys, or want to part from him for that matter, she couldn’t revisit him. It was too painful, and she was far too fragile.

She huffed in exasperation and shuffled her papers out of habit to make them form in a messy pile atop of her desk. She looked across the room as the florescent light above started to flicker. She made a mental note to go to the handy man at the shelter on Monday to repair that. She didn’t like the dark and knew with her luck, she would be stuck in the pitch blackness with no light. The thought made her heart speed up and her gut churn.

She took a deep breath and stuffed her phone and keys into her purse, checking one last time around her tiny office to ensure she grabbed everything she needed for the long weekend. Her sour mood intensified and she realized the summer heat would stick to her in an annoying way and she hated how it felt against her skin. Wren dreaded the feeling of walking out into the summer air; it almost felt like the devil had a hold of your lungs for a little while. A cold shower, bad food, crappy movies, and anxiety medicine would make it all go away.

At least that is what Wren thought.

As she stepped out into the darkness, her bad mood left just a little bit with the idea of a new day starting in the morning. To 990 Harmony Way she went…

He painted his face black and hid in the darkness until it was time to revisit the tragedy.

RHYS TIPTOED UP
to the second floor of the Fernwood Apartments, a small flat complex outside Louisville, Kentucky. Rhys was like a ghost, his movements so calculated and premeditated as if he had waited his entire life for that moment. It was the reaping, after all. His large, heavy feet barely feathered across the concrete as the threat of waking those existing in their normal-versed lives behind four walls penetrated his bones.

His blue eyes caught the shimmer of the numbers he had traced so well with his hands in a frenzied, fugue state; 990, the golden and silver radiating from the reflective numbers of the scratched off-white front door. Rhys was delighted to see that there was a “for rent” sign on the neighboring apartment door, so even if Wren did manage a scream, it would fall on nonexistent, deaf ears.

His hands shook as years without desire and innocence drew them in from their drought. He had broken into cars and houses before, he was practically a master at it, making sure to pick the lock just right so it didn’t scratch the knob and leave any evidence behind. When he reached his destination, he briefly laid his ear against the door like a gentle lover would to another’s chest to see if Wren was home. He didn’t hear any proof of her being inside of the apartment, so he took his knife and pick from his bloodied pants, staring for a second at the splatters that danced around perfectly on his aged denim, the result of the chaos he had just went through as well as the solidification of the secrets from Father Sullivan.

He had to put that part of his life behind him. They were dead. They couldn’t come back to life, and he didn’t want them to even if he could get them back from the underworld. He had only one thing left to do on earth; to get his angel and the penance from her sweet lips. Sure it would take some convincing from his mouth to hers to get her to listen to what he had to say, but he had traveled to hell and back, literally, to get to her. He was most definitely not going to leave without a fight.