Page 24

Fourteen

Aidan

The wedding night.

Part of me knows I’m asleep. It’s an awareness just at the edge of everything, but I keep forgetting and falling back into the illusion so I can’t control it or wake myself up.

I keep repeating Father Rossi’s murder at the aquarium over and over.

And each time I do the satisfying thing—the necessary thing so that I can remind myself that it is truly done.

I cut up the body. I leave the wedding reception… just drive off and dispose of it myself. I pretend it wasn’t my wedding day to the woman I’ve been obsessed with since I could barely write my name in shaky block letters.

Suddenly Maddie doesn’t exist in my reality at all…

the wedding is forgotten, she is forgotten in the need to complete the ritual.

I go home, I strip and burn my clothes. I shower.

I go to the secret room. I put on fresh clothes.

I mark out his face with the red marker.

I mark out his name. I rewrite this obsessively over and over in my mind because I can’t accept this change in the routine.

I think I might completely break down over the fact that I can’t confess this murder to Father Rossi.

Of course he knows I did it, he was there, but I can’t say the words, the rote words I didn’t realize until now how much I need to say for it to feel…

complete. Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. I cannot be absolved by him.

I need to confess. I need to get this out of me. I need to claw it out of my skin before it squirms deeper into my soul, before it possesses me and erases me, leaving only a hollow shell in its place.

Why didn’t I leave Father Rossi until last?

Brian and Mina handling cleanup was the only way to do it.

It was the smart way. It gave me an alibi because after all, I was at my own wedding.

No one would imagine that I would have time to do everything in that short window of time I was away.

And no one could imagine I would have an actual reason to kill the priest who officiated my wedding only hours before.

Maybe no one but Maddie even realized I was gone. And she was probably happy about it.

The dream finally changes, breaking the cycle, revealing the truth of what actually took place.

As soon as I’d changed back into my original clothes and turned the kill site over to Brian and Mina, I could think of nothing but how my routine broke.

The rest of the party went by in a blur.

The only thing I fully remember was removing the jackass who wanted me to smash cake in Maddie’s face like one of those piece-of-shit losers who obviously hates the woman he’s marrying…

resents her because he knows she’s so much better than him.

I know Maddie is better than me, but she is the only good thing. I would be a fool to resent the sun.

I got home, practically flung my new bride at Cora to deal with, then went down to the basement, burned my clothes from the wedding, my mind screaming what does this say about us?

What does this mean? What am I doing to us?

As though all of this were some sympathetic magic, and everything was just all wrong.

These weren’t the clothes I killed the priest in.

They didn’t need to be burned. They were the clothes I married her in…

and yet… I still had to, had to burn them, had to try to salvage the routine even if it burns everything down with Maddie in the end, I had to put the pieces back in a neat ordered row where it all makes sense and everything feels calm again.

But in the shower, I can’t get over this glitch…

the burning of the wrong clothes. I want to dig them out of the incinerator with my bare hands and somehow fix it, make them unburnt.

Why did I do that? I can’t believe I burned them.

What the fuck is wrong with me? I stay in the shower much longer than normal, practically scrubbing my skin off…

trying to fix it—all these little broken things.

Why are things going so wrong? And now I’m thinking about the kill where there was the live round in the revolver…

and the scene shifts and I shoot myself instead of the guy…

and again, I’m dimly aware that my troubled mind is dreaming all of this but I’m in too deep.

I can’t pull myself up. Now I’m in the lake at The Black Gardens, my body weighted down, sinking deep into the water, looking up to see the smug smile of the man I thought I killed as I drift away forever.

I’m jolted back into the shower and I don’t know what’s real. This all feels real, like maybe I just fell asleep standing under the spray.

I get out of the shower, go through the rest of my routine, change clothes, cross out Father Rossi’s face and name. I go upstairs to my room, strip off everything but my boxer briefs and go get Maddie for… The Wedding Night.

I carry her to my room. I turn my back to make her a drink, and then the knife I killed Father Rossi with is in my neck, blood coming out far too fast, and I know… she’s killed me. I’m going to die, and absolutely everything in my life has been for nothing.

And this time, I wake up.

I’m awake, but my eyes are still closed. I try to keep my breathing even as I piece together the parts of the dream that were memories of tonight, and the parts that were just crazy. Am I sure I’m awake right now?

There’s a weight on top of me and cool, sharp metal pressed against my throat.

My survival instincts are about to kick in to throw off the threat, when I pause to really take in what I’m feeling…

cool silk brushes against my stomach, warm thighs straddle me.

It’s just Maddie. There’s only a thin layer of her virginal white lingerie and my black boxers between us.

We even dressed for bed as hero and villain.

Still, I have to tamp down the panic. It’s too close to the dream, her here with my knife at my throat.

If she was going to do it, she would have already done it. I try to comfort myself with this most rational thought, but I don’t know how long she’s been here like this.

Without these small cloth barriers, I could angle myself just a bit differently and be inside her in less than a second, distract her from the desire to kill me. I know she must feel my erection against her, between her legs.

The fact that I woke up aroused after that dream is probably the most concise summary of how fucked up I am.

What exactly about all that was arousing?

Or maybe my body somehow knew the most coveted object of my desire was straddling me with her whisper light silk grazing over my skin.

If she moved just an inch or so she could start grinding on me.

She could put us both out of our misery.

I hear her heavy breathing, and I feel her growing warm wetness. I’m not sure if she can decide whether she wants to fuck me or kill me. I know that feeling well.

Without opening my eyes, I say, “I see we’ve hit the anger stage of the five stages of grief.”

Maddie gasps and jumps, nicking me just under my jawline. She didn’t realize I was awake. I wonder if some spirit beyond planted that dream to wake me up and save me. But save me for what? I’m the monster. No one saves the monster. That’s not how the story goes.

I open my eyes and look up at her. It’s a full moon tonight, and the drapes are open. The fire has burned down to mere embers in the grate. From my vantage point, she looks like an angel with a halo of light around her head, causing her blonde hair to shimmer in the silvery moonlight.

She repositions the knife right over my snake tattoo.

“You going to cut that snake’s head off?” I ask. Inside my mind is nothing but chaos as the dream lingers. Would she have killed me if I hadn’t woken up when I did? I’m giving a very good show of being a calm guy, fully in control.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” Her voice trembles. “Just let me go.”

I can’t help it. I laugh at this. When you don’t want to hurt someone, you don’t risk your life to straddle their sleeping form with a weapon in your hand.

It’s the knife that killed Father Rossi earlier tonight. Brian cleaned it and returned it to me, and somehow I thought the bedside drawer was a good place to put it. If this is the dumbass move that ends up killing me...

“Do it,” I taunt. “Cut the snake’s head off. Free yourself from your captivity, little bird. Fly free.” I don’t tell her that she’ll also free me. The one thing Maddie and I truly have in common is that we both live in cages now. She just can’t see mine.

Tears stream down her face, and her hand shakes.

Still, I’m not ready to make my move. It’s too risky.

If she slips and cuts me again, she might get my carotid this time.

I probably won’t get lucky twice. The feeling of all the blood spewing out of me as the knife plunged into my neck in the dream is still too real.

Blood pools just under my jaw from where she nicked me only a few moments ago, and I know how precarious this situation is, how delicate this operation.

“How are you getting out of the house?” I keep my voice low and steady and calm. No need to spook the horse.

She’s beginning to look uncertain. The anger is still there—fire in her eyes—but there’s also fear creeping in, slowly dousing the flame.

“Do you think my men haven’t been instructed to kill anyone who harms or attempts to harm me? You should be begging for my mercy right now.”

The blade presses harder against my skin as she grips the handle tighter.

The anger reignites. Despite her innocence in certain areas, Madison knows who she is and what she wants.

I knew we’d hit a point where this offended righteous anger would spill out.

I just didn’t think it would be on our wedding night.