The Goodbye Girl (Red Market Series Book 2) (4 page)

So close to the gates of hell, but never allowed inside.

“Wake up Caesar.”
The whisper goes straight to my crotch and I try to peel open my eyes. The sliver of light almost blinds me so I scrunch them closed.

I can feel pain, though I can’t pinpoint it. It is burning with the fire of a thousand flames and I am reminded that I am alive. I am alive! I shouldn’t be alive! I dove into the fire. I set myself free from the sin that lives inside me, from the devil in the voices. I want to move but the pain keeps me still. My mind is waking from a nightmare that I know is only too real. I hear the muffled whispering of voices and it only makes my plight worse. I feel my cock hardening and the rage building. Something hard smacks me in the groin and kills the painful erection.

“Disgusting. Keep your control in front of me, boy! I’m your mother! Your dick needs to stay where it belongs.” The hostile voice of the woman who birthed me shatters the silence in my head. Sending my senses into meltdown as I quake in fear for what will come next.

“Sort him out.” I hear her vicious bite as the door slams closed behind her. Shuffling movements and a godforsaken sniff fill my ears and I wish I could block them.

I hear it all but I cannot see it. I need to open my eyes so the amplified noises will mute a little.

“Shhhhhh!” I hiss, my throat like sandpaper and the vibration causing a burning pain in my chest. A cough splutters from me and it’s excruciating.
Open your fucking eyes before you cannot control it
, I tell myself over and over.

The light is blinding and the pain has overtaken any thoughts I had in my head. Why is my mother here? Why am I not dead? Svetlana - all burned away by the agony I am feeling. I blink my eyes over and over to try and adjust to the brightness.

“Turn off the light,” I beg and it comes out strangled and dry.

I hear the flick of the switch before I force my eyes open; in the dimness I can focus. I am in a bed, a white bed and the muted light from the draped window tells me it’s late. There is a monitor attached to me but the sound is off. I want to reach over and turn it up so the beeping will help, but I am stopped by the pain. I take in my surroundings and the dreaded truth sinks deep into the pit of my stomach. As the furnishings come into focus, the wooden floors polished to a high shine. Antiques placed in perfect alignment. The priceless oils hanging on the walls and the two men dressed in medical whites standing in the corner.

I am home.

Hell would have been so much better than this.

My mother could put the fear of God into most men and the idea that I have ended up here terrifies me. There is an IV in my left arm and the right one has been bandaged. The dressing goes right up and over my chest and side, I can feel there is more dressing on my neck and one leg. The pain is consuming me. “How did I get here?” I ask the two in the corner. “Talk loud, no whispers please,” I add before the woman with graying hair steps closer to me. She isn’t in whites and looks friendly, I know her - I think.

“Hugo called your mother. He said someone tried to kill you and you needed medical attention.” The voice makes my insanity come alive. “Talk louder,” I cry past the agony.

“You have burns, Caesar. A lot of bad burns.” She speaks in a tone I can barely tolerate.

It comes back in waves, Svetlana, my daughter. I fucked my daughter when all I wanted was to love her. She whispered to me and I went mad. Mateo, he was smiling at me as he fucked her, she cured his disease. The noise wouldn’t stop, the whispers were making me do it and I put myself in the fire. I remember hearing Hugo scream but I thought it was too late, that it was over. I had found the eternal silence of hell. Why did he pull me from the flames, I don’t want this life. I am a madman, I cannot control this thing inside my head and I have done things I can’t undo. Images of my child as I pleasured her body assault my mind and I cringe at the thought of it. I should have said goodbye before I hurt her. I should never have let her live. My mother is going to go all sorts of crazy if she finds out the truth. For now I can say someone threw me in the fire, I can keep her away from my life. I can heal and go back to them. I will go and put an end to this silly mistake, I have to say goodbye to her.

“You need to rest, stop moving and talking and allow the burns to heal. You inhaled a lot of scorching hot air, your throat and lungs are weak.” She keeps her tone at a level I can handle, she knows me somehow.

“How long have I been here?” I need to know.

“A little over a month now, your mother decided it was time we woke you now that you are stable.” Of course she did, my mother is a fucking bitch that loves the pain of others.

“Knock me out again, I don’t want to be awake yet.” She nods and goes to the table beside me and before she can put the drugs in my IV, I ask her. “Please turn that on,” pointing to the monitor, “the beeping helps me.” She smiles wide and flicks the volume back on. The drugs and beeping take me away from the noise in my head and I am happy to leave again.

“Hello, Son.”
A deafening whisper jolts me awake; rage pulses with the throbbing pain that cripples me as I try to move.

“Madre.” The words scratch out past the pain ripping my throat apart.

“You want to tell me your secrets or wait until I find out what you are hiding from me?” the softness of her voice was always my undoing, she is the virus that caused my disease. There isn’t a cure for my mother’s voice. My body revolts against her sound. She knows I am hiding things, my mother knows everything. She always has.

“I don’t have secrets, Madre. Someone tried to kill me.” Talking is agonizing.

“Your assassin must have been the one who called the police. Some boy called Juan, you know him? You let him live, Caesar. Why are you so stupid, son?” I try to overpower the physical response with my mind but I can’t - I never could. Her walking stick connects with my body, smacking me hard in the crotch.

“You filthy man! Stop it or I will have it cut off.” She beats me until my erection goes away and I am paralyzed in pain again.

“I will be back to talk to you when you can control your dick. Disgusting,” she says still in the maddening whisper as she leaves me alone to suffer again.

I groan, trying to get into a position that doesn’t hurt my whole body. I have no idea how much time has passed, the pain is still there but I know I am healing. The dressings were removed and my burns are almost healed. I am afraid to look at them, as my outside will match my inside now - hideous. I sit up and let my legs hang off the end of the bed. The tight scar tissue limits my movements and my skin feels two sizes too small. It seems like I have been gone from my life for an eternity and I pluck up the courage to ask the lady doctor for her phone.

“Your madre won’t be happy if she knows.” She isn’t keen to help me for fear of the devil woman.

“Please, just one call.” Looking around to make sure we are alone, she slips her phone from the pocket of her lab coat and drops it in my good hand.

“I will collect it when I change your medicines out this afternoon, don’t get caught.” I smile at her, she is nice. I might just take her with me when I leave.

“I won’t, thank you.” Thank God Mateo’s number is one I memorized and I know it by heart.

No one knows numbers these days. I wait a while after she leaves to make sure that no one is going to disturb me. After my lunch, I am left alone again. I hold the phone with my burned hand and dial with the other. It's hard and I am frustrated at my inability to grip the phone. The number rings and then changes to an international call forward tone; my stomach sinks and I feel ill. Plan B. I am about to hang up when he answers my call.

“Hola, this is Mateo.” He sounds different, like something is wrong with him.

“Mateo, it’s me. Caesar.” I say my name because I sound different; my voice changed when I breathed in the fire hot air of the furnace.

“Where the fuck are you?” he barks back at me, loud, coarse and bearable.

“Home,” I answer in a word.

“Home? Caesar, we had to move, things are all wrong. Lettie, she is... Lettie’s…” I knew something was wrong.

“Where is Lettie? Mateo!” I do my best to yell without anyone hearing me.

“She’s gone. She left and someone took her. They want you. I get notes asking where you are.” His answers are all just noise in my ears as images of her when I took her from Pavel fill my mind. I have to go find her, because Mateo can’t.

“I will be back soon. Don’t fuck everything up. The old lady is not happy. Get the job done and she won’t worry to check up on you.”

“Are you alright?” Mateo asks. He sounds like he cares but I am afraid I don’t believe him.

“I’m fine, just find her and keep the parts moving.” I hang up because I am sure I heard a noise outside my room. I am a prisoner here. I want to leave. I need to leave. I have to save her - again.

I once had a sweet little doll, dears,

The prettiest doll in the world;

Her cheeks were so red and white, dears,

And her hair was so charmingly curled.

But I lost my poor little doll, dears,

As I played on the heath one day;

And I cried for her more than a week, dears,

But I never could find where she lay.

I sit beside
the white haired little doll, she is so pretty and petite. I want to save her and hurt her all at once. I stroke her cheek, pushing her hair off her face. The screen above her head beeps consistently in a lullaby of sorts, singing to me and her. She had blue eyes, although they are closed and now she won’t open them again. I don’t want to see them; they are blue not brown and they should be brown, they should be Lettie’s eyes, not hers. Lettie left me. She’s gone now and I have new dolls to play with, more every day. I like this one though, she speaks to me even in her stillness. I hear her talking to me. She is just a kid, so little and innocent - beautiful and perfect. Peeling the sheet back just a little, I can see her satin smooth milky skin, she isn’t from the streets. She fell from heaven, this angelic doll. I want to touch her, glide my hand over her small breasts and soft curves. I don’t this time, it feels wrong so I cover her body and kiss her forehead. I sit next to her and talk to her.

“Can you stick me back together, little dolly? Like glue.” I ask her while my fingers comb through her hair.

“I have lost my Lettie Doll and I don’t know how to survive without her. Put the pieces together for me.

“I have fallen apart.” I rest my head on the bed next to hers and try to find some peace, just enough to sleep for a while.

I drape her little arm over my shoulders and snuggle my head into her neck. Her sterile smell soothes me into a light doze, I need more. I need more of them I need to fill this place with beautiful girls like her. Not gutter rats and whores - perfect little dolls. I want to line them up in straight rows and love them to death. I dream of a place filled with hundreds of silent lovers for me to have.

When I wake from my short lived slumber, the temptation is too much. She is too small so I start to look around the room to find the older girl that came in with her. She will do for what I need right now.

“Mateo,” I hear Hugo call before I get to the girl I want to fuck.

“What?” I yell back at him, frustrated at the intrusion into my world.

“We need to talk. The team wants to start harvesting tomorrow . I have recipients arriving for direct transplants in the afternoon.” He is close to me now, here between my girls.

“No. We aren’t ready yet,” I answer him. The panic of losing another one is making me uneasy. I start grinding my teeth and I feel my eye twitching at the corner.

“Mateo, it wasn’t a question. The plans are all in place. You need to get yourself together.” In that one second I would like nothing more than to kill him and fuck his corpse. Then I would need to do all the dirty work and I have never been one to do more than I need to. Hugo is irreplaceable, because no one really knows what he does.

“Lettie is gone. Let’s just focus on work.” He puts a hand on my shoulder, trying to comfort me - nothing can comfort what’s inside me.

“Fine. Do whatever, but fill those beds fast. We need more. We need more of them, as many as you can get. Not whores, ones like the two we got today.” I shake my head towards the little blond doll that is mine.

“You know those are the expensive kind?” He looks confused.

“Are we short of money, Hugo? If not, I don’t want cheap bodies in these beds.” I walk past him back to my newest lover and sit beside her. She is so beautiful my porcelain doll, just like the one my abuela would never let me touch.

My hand is in my pants before long as I relieve my tension and kiss her sweet mouth. The guilt consumes me almost right away. I miss my Lettie. I miss her kissing me back, but I love the dead kisses of them too. I am being slowly torn into two halves, like a paper pulled apart I can hear my sanity as it is ripped down the middle. I leave my little porcelain doll and go to the office to start working on business.

There is a note on my desk again, this one is a little different. There is a picture clipped to it.

I have your little spy. You better tell Caesar someone is looking for him.

I know what you do in there.

My doll is breaking again; I can see it in her eyes as they stare into his camera, hollow and lost. Lettie is dead inside. I want her back. She is mine. His notes torment me and keep me from moving on. Our lives were fine before Lettie. I should be fine without her, but I’m not and that makes me angry and bitter. I shove the note in a drawer with all the others and start to schedule harvests and transplants. I am not running after her, she left me. Dead girls cannot leave so I’ll love them now, I have no love left for living things. Even fucking Caesar left me, he just left! I am always left behind.

I want more, more bodies to love, more of them to be mine. I want the ones that cannot leave me behind unless I say goodbye. I want to be in control, I need to find the order in this chaos. Lettie has gone and life needs to go back to the way it was before. She has ruined everything.

There is music playing in the office, something that would have sent Caesar straight off the edge of sanity and got someone killed. I like it, the soft tones soothe the anxiety and make me calmer. I look around the untidy space and for one minute I miss Juan until I remember his betrayal. This is his fault too, this is all because Caesar wanted to save the gnat. He wanted to keep him alive. I should have put him in the furnace myself. He was a disaster; him and Lettie have ruined us. Ruined me. Destroyed everything, now I’m stuck in this shit hole place worse than even Hunts Point and I am going mad. I start to tidy the office. The uncontrolled need for order overtakes me and I get lost in the monotony of the menial tasks. I feel the sickness that resides in me start to scratch and try to find a way out. I need to go and find something to stop it, I need to exorcise it from me again. I need to go play.

My phone stops me halfway to the solace I seek.

“Hola, this is Mateo.” The answer is like sweet music to my ears when I hear his voice, I am not alone, he is out there. He is coming back. He is angry, he wants her back, but I think we are going to be happier without her, we were all happy before her.

I celebrate my joy at the news of his return with a sweet lover in the waiting room. She will die soon and I had chance to enjoy her for the last time.