Page 34

Veronica

T here’s nothing new or special about Veronica’s phone. It’s just a Samsung Galaxy S4. It’s not even as shiny as it was three months ago when she got it. If not the fancy pouch she bought for it online, she bet it would be all scratched up and crappy-looking by now. The bottom line is, it’s not attractive enough for her to stare at it for hours. And yet she has been staring at it for the past two hours.

Raidon hasn’t called her yet. She has called multiple times and he hasn’t answered. She has left countless messages but he wouldn’t reply. This means he isn’t back to his body. It’s still the version she sat through a five-hour flight to the United States with.

For a second, when she had received that necklace, she thought he was back. Only him would have been that thoughtful. Clearly, it isn’t him. And she misses him. But he is yet again, hiding behind the shadow of the monstrous version of him. And she doesn’t know why.

This got her curious.

At what point do they switch characters? What is the trigger behind it when the humane version of him retreats into the dark and leaves the world as a playground for this callous, venomous thing?

For the past few hours, she has read almost every article and report ever written concerning multiple personality disorders. She finds that some people were born with it, and some develop it after a traumatic experience. She has no idea which line his case falls into.

She wants to know how he got it. Was he born like that? Did life carve that into him? Or is this more or less a spiritual problem and indeed, his dead twin brother likes to possess his body?

She doesn’t think she can ask him. Because she doesn’t know how that will play out. Imagine telling someone they are not mentally stable. That could really go bad in so many ways.

Whatever it is, she knows that he needs love, support, and understanding. And she really hopes she can be someone who is capable of giving him that.

Her phone vibrates, startling her out of her thoughts.

Shiro.

“Hey, sup?”

And as much as she’s delighted to catch up with her best friend who left roughly three hours ago, he is just not the person she wants to speak to right now.

“You sound like you’re forcing yourself to be excited to hear from me,” he notes, and a shuffling of objects echoes from the background.

She scoffs, rolling her eyes.

“What’s up with you?” His voice is calm, mellow. “He hasn’t reached out to you yet, I guess?”

Her brows furrow. He is the last person she expected to bring up Raidon. Didn’t he spend how many minutes giving her reasons why Raidon was a big no-no?

“No, he hasn’t.”

“Want me to go to the hotel or whatever and go check up on him?” he asks and Veronica’s brows furrow. “Maybe drag him by the collar to you?”

She chuckles weakly, and the lack of glee in the laugh makes her internally wince.

“That won’t be necessary,” she tells him. “I doubt he is even in the country. His plan was to drop me off and fly back because he’s got stuff to do back in Russia.”

“Oh.” There’s a pause. “So what are you doing at the moment?”

Veronica glances around her room. “The house is messy. My room, for a starter, smells kinda damp. I’m going to do some cleaning.” She sits up, reaching for the power of her desktop to turn it off. The homepage of a medical site is still glowing on the screen, evidence of how long she has been researching BP and Multiple Personality Disorder.

“Do you want me to come over and help out?” He offers. And she knows if she says yes, he will be at her doorstep in seconds.

“Don’t worry.” She stretches, pressing a fist into her lower back to ease the stiffness from sitting in that position for too long.

Her stomach suddenly grumbles, a sharp reminder that she hasn’t eaten more than biscuits and tea today.

“Are you sure?” Shiro asks, just as she stands and exits her room.

“Yeah.” She heads down the hall toward the exit to the garage. “What about you? What are you doing?”

“Painting Mrs. Tanaka’s nails,” he says and Veronica hears his mom giggle in the background.

Veronica chuckles. “Well, let me leave you to it, then.” She hangs up, slipping her phone into the back pocket of her jean shorts.

She pushes open the door to the garage, stepping into the dimly lit space. But something feels off. The garage is way too spacious.

Her eyes scan the room, searching for the missing puzzle exactly.

And then it hits her.

Marlene’s Ford Fusion is gone.

Her breath catches immediately, her heart hammering. How did this happen? How does she begin to explain this?

She scans the room again, eyes searching odd corners that would normally not fit a safety pin let alone a fucking car.

Was there a burglary? Did someone break in and steal the car?

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.” Her trembling hand fumbles for her phone. She quickly swipes the screen, her free hand diving into her fiery hair, tugging as she dials up Shiro’s number.

“I’m so dead, Shiro.” Her voice shakes as she paces back into the living room. “Marlene’s car is gone.”

“Gone?” he asks. “What do you mean, gone? Gone how?”

“She didn’t travel with her car, Shiro.” She scrubs a hand through her face furiously. “She left the car at home. I just went to grab cleaning supplies from the store but the car isn’t there. She’ll kill me, Shiro. She’ll kill me.”

“Okay, calm down…” His words blur as the distant sound of a car rumbles up their driveway.

Veronica freezes, heart pounding. She dashes to the kitchen window, finger gripping the frame. Her breath catches at the sight of Marlene’s Ford Fusion pulling into the garage. And behind the wheels is none other than the sea witch, Marlene Mendes.

Veronica staggers back, throat dry.

“Vee?”

“-She’s…she’s back?” She asks for confirmation from Shiro even though she is the one staring across as the car pulls into the garage. “But she said she was going away for a week.”

“What?” Shiro’s confusion cackles through the phone.

“I’ll call you back.” She ends the call just as the car’s engine dies in the garage. She sets the phone on the kitchen counter, wiping her sweaty palms on her shorts.

A moment later, the door creaks open as the sharp echo of Marlene’s heels clicks against the floor, slicing through the quiet house.

Veronica steps into the living room, schooling her expression.

Marlene is a criminal profiler, but Veronica plans to play it cool and not get caught in her net. If she couldn’t profile her dad, she doubts she can profile her right now.

Marlene arrives in the living room, pulling off her dark sunglasses. She scans the room slowly and deliberately until her dark brown eyes fall on Veronica.

A chill runs through Veronica. But she holds Marlene’s gaze, knowing full well that avoiding eye contact is a dead giveaway.

The silence in the room stretches until Marlene exhales a soft, mocking chuckle. Then fixing her sunglasses on, she turns and walks away.

No words. No confrontation. Just an eerie, suffocating air of knowing.

Veronica watches her disappear down the hall and into her room, unease uncurling in her stomach.

Marlene knows something. But what?

For the next two hours, Veronica scrubs every inch of the house—except for Marlene’s room—waiting for Marlene to reemerge. But she never did.

Now at 10. p.m, she is on the phone with Shiro while setting up her workstation.

She spent every penny on that trip to Russia. If the universe is kind, just maybe she will encounter more people trying to commission a character art. Because right now, she needs the money. And a distraction.

“So…” Shiro says into the phone pressed against her ear. “Did anything happen? Did Marlene—”

“No,” she says as she doodles away on her tablet. “She just walked in, looked at me, and walked away. She hasn’t stepped out of her room ever since.”

“But does it look like something is off?” His voice is layered with worry.

“Yeah, definitely.” She pauses to analyze the quick sketch she just made. “But she hasn’t confronted me so…”

“Do you think she came back earlier today or last night?”

“I think it’s last night,” she says, remembering seeing fish casserole in the refrigerator and there was no fish casserole in the house before. She couldn’t have made that today.

“Wow.” His tone drifts off. “I don’t feel good about this.”

“I’m sure it’s gonna be fine.” Her attention is focused on the man staring back at her on her tablet. And her heart aches because she remembers how much she misses him all over again.

“Are you positive?”

“Mhmm.”

“If anything happens—”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll let you know.”

“What about your boyfriend?” he asks. He seems to be taking an interest in Raidon all of a sudden. And Veronica doesn’t know how she feels about it anymore. It’s as if he’s asking just to prove a point.

“Has he called you yet?”

“Nope.”

“Fuck him.”

She chuckles. Yes, fuck you, Raidon Volkov.

“I think I’m ready to sleep.” She yawns, then proceeds to add finishing touches to the eyebrow of the man in the image.

“Talk to you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, sure. Good night.”

“Goodnight.”

The call comes to an end. Veronica places the phone beside her on the desk and continues her sketching. But her door suddenly swings open, revealing Marlene, cheeks slightly flushed but she doesn’t look dead drunk yet.

“Is there a problem?” she asks, placing her stylus on the tablet.

“Do you need anything?” This time, she has to stand up for the situation.

“Yeah,” she draws out, a devious smile lifting the corner of her lips as she shuts the door behind her, taking slow and slightly predatory steps further into the room.

“What?” Veronica backs away on reflex.

“You know, I was wondering how my step-daughter got caught in a CCTV camera in an airport all the way in Russia.” She pulls a hand from behind her back to show the screen of her phone. “I mean, as far as I’m concerned, I left her to take care of the house in Pennsylvania. So you can imagine my shock when she was caught on camera in Moscow, Russia. And then I started wondering.” She takes casual yet taunting steps further into the room. “Could she have a twin? Am I just tripping?”

“Th-that’s…”

“That’s not you?” She raises a brow. “Right, I thought so too. That can’t possibly be you. I mean you were right here, tending to the house. Come on, how would you have ended up there? It’s stupid, right? Anyone that thinks it’s you must be a damn bloody fool, isn’t it?”

“I-”

Whatever Veronica is planning to say gets shoved back down her throat as a resounding echo of a slap knocks her off her balance, leaving her staggering a few steps back.

Her ear is ringing, her cheek throbbing, and there is a metallic taste settling at the corner of her mouth.

“Who is he?” She prowls toward her, shoving the screen of her phone into her face. “Who did you go and see in Russia?”

“M-my friend.” Veronica struggles out, cradling her face.

“Oh.” Her thick brow raises mockingly, tongue tucked inside her cheek. “Your friend, right?”

Veronica nods.

“How wonderful.” She claps her hands. “A friend.”

Veronica nods again.

“Wow.” A sinister smile touches Marlene’s lips. “This friend must be so special, isn’t he?”

Marlene sinks to the edge of the bed, her legs crossed. And then she goes ahead and burps. The stench of alcohol is just a hint but it still lingers around Veronica’s nostril for some seconds.

“So…” Her eyes drag back to her. “Where did you get the money to go see this special friend ?” She makes an air quote with her fingers.

“It’s my money,” Veronica quickly says.

“I never said you stole it.” Marlene’s eyes darken, and her lips lost the smile which was never even real in the first place. “Where did you get the money? I am your legal guardian and I reserve every right to know.”

Veronica stalls a little, then realizes keeping information from Marlene Mendes never ends well.

“I made a few commissions.”

Marlene’s eyes travel to Veronica’s desktop and then to her tablet whose screen is still left on. She rises to her feet and crosses over to the study desk.

She picks up the tablet.

“So people are finally interested in your silly little doodles, huh?” It sounds more like a confirmation. And she sounds more cynical than proud of Veronica.

“Yes.”

“So, now you are making so much money you even fly across the world now, isn’t it?” Marlene hasn’t turned her back, but her tone grows more spiteful and her grip on the tablet seems a bit too hard.

“I really needed—”

“I bet you think you are a big girl now, am I right?” She slowly turns to Veronica. “Now you have wings, don’t you?”

“What—”

“I bet you wanna fly now, huh?” Veronica doesn’t like Marlene’s smiles, and this one on her lips right now makes her really nervous.

“Marlene, what—”

“Tell me, how far do you wanna fly, my little swan?” She raises a devious brow. “Where do you wanna fly off to?”

“Can you stop?—”

“-Russia? Asia? Maybe the UK? Or have you thought of maybe South Korea? Yes.” She snaps her fingers. “I bet you have thought of somewhere far away from Marlene Mendes.”

“I’m not—” Veronica licks her suddenly dry lips, wringing her now sweaty hands, and swallowing the big lump stuck in her throat. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“These lies.” Her fingers dig into the screen of the tablet. “These little lies of yours are what I hate the most. You are just like your father. You two are so good at lying to me.”

“I swear—” Veronica fails to finish her words as the echo of glass being shattered slices through the room.

Her tablet. Marlene is smashing the screen of her tablet on her desk.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Veronica’s voice tears across the room, shaking the foundation of the house, while Marlene continuously rams the tablet on the table until pieces of glass begin to fly all over the place.

Satisfied, she tosses what is left of the device across the room, prowling toward Veronica, eyes haunting and crazed.

“You are a liar.” She grabs Veronica’s hair, shoving her face into hers. The smell of alcohol makes Veronica dizzy, or maybe it’s because she is pulling her hair from her scalp.

“You made a promise, remember?” she snarls, her fingers digging into Veronica’s jaw. “You are supposed to stay here with me. Your life is mine. And now you think you can fly away and leave me behind?”

“I’m not leaving.” Veronica’s chest burns, her head spinning. “Just leave me alone, you psycho!”

Panting, Marlene’s hold on Veronica’s face and hair suddenly loosens and she staggers backward. Veronica takes a step further away, watching her through the curve of her lashes.

Marlene’s gaze grows more unsteady and crazed. She also looks very, very confused. And all of a sudden, the woman pulls at the braids she has her hair in, letting out a loud cry. Her eyes search around and when they fall on a stool by Veronica’s dresser, she dashes to grab it.

“Wait—what the—”

Everything happens too fast and before Veronica can understand what is happening, the shattering sound of her desktop screen rings across the room. Over and over and over again, she smashes the screen with the stool.

Tossing the stool aside, she goes over to tug off all the connecting cords, hoisting the desktop from the table and dumping it on the floor.

For a few seconds, Veronica feels completely numb, paralyzed, a distant ringing in her head as she stares at the mess. And then something shifts within her, a flicker of rage that grows with the ticks of the clock’s hand. Then, red bursts behind her eyes, a strangely familiar entity with the destructive energy of poison engulfing her from within. In her veins, her blood has been replaced with acid, anger like forest fire roaring in her chest.

The room reverberates with a bone-chilling cry, raw and agonizing as Veronica charges like a wounded lion towards Marlene. But before she can make an attack, Marlene fists a hand, throwing a punch directly at Veronica’s jaw, sending her barreling to the hard floor.

Veronica has no time to reel back from the attack as Marlene lunges at her. She pins her to the floor with one hand, and then jabs her elbow right into her throat, earning a choking sound from Veronica.

Veronica thrashes against Marlene’s hold, but perhaps, she has lost the will to fight as all weak effort to set herself free comes out futile. So she lays there, defeated, unyielding as Marlene wraps her fingers around her neck to hold her in place while her fist sends punches after punches to Veronica’s jaws, head, ribs…over and over and over again.

“Today, I’ll finally kill you!” Marlene roars, grabbing the reading lamp on the bedside drawer, raising it midair only to smash it into Veronica’s head. The unexpected force earns a struggling gasp from Veronica before blackness spreads across her eyes.

Then she feels nothing but numbness, hears nothing but the shallow beats of her heart.

Veronica doesn’t know how long she stayed knocked out. But being woken up by the sound of her 6:30 am alarm tells her she was out throughout the night.

When her eyes crack open, she is a bit confused. And when she tries to move, her sore and aching joints protest in pain. She tries to open her mouth but there is a throbbing in her jaw, a metallic taste of blood on her tongue.

And that’s when memory floods her.

Drunk Marlene, her broken desktop and tablet—her years of hard work gone in a puff of smoke, and a beating that sent her reeling to the edge of death.

Her eyes twitch and her fingers clench. Heat builds and simmers low in her chest, each breath shallow, feeding the fire. Suddenly the world around her blurs out.

And disconnected from her surroundings, she barely even notices that she had passed out on the floor earlier but woke up tucked under the covers of the bed. Instead, the edges of her vision tint in red as she throws the cover off her body.

She feels nothing, not even the sharp pain when a broken glass embeds itself into her foot as she trudges out of the room, the air bitter, the tension in her chest corded like a wire ready to snap.

All she sees is red, and her mind bounces between grey, bleak, and black. She is in no control when she charges into the kitchen and grabs a knife. And all she hears behind the crack of the closed door in her head is kill her, kill her, kill her.

So when she barges right into Marlene’s room and reaches the bump hidden under her cover, all she hears is, ‘Kill her, she has ruined everything, kill her. And so she does. She drives the knife right through the cover, over and over again. She pours all her years of hate, anger, neglect, and regret into every motion of the knife. She wants her to bleed. She wants to hear her scream and beg.

But there is a problem, she can’t hear anything, nothing at all that sounds like the cry of agony. And she can’t see anything.

No blood.

Violently, Veronica pulls the cover from the bed and all she sees are pillows whose cottons are spilling out and flying around.

A loud roar slices through the air like a primal cry of rage as she continues to stab the bed and the pillows over and over again until she is worn out.

Her breaths are shallow, sweat coating every part of her body as she collapses beside the bed. Then something snaps. It feels like a dark cloud finally moving to give way to the blue. It feels like a mask being pulled away from her eyes.

She can hear and she can see clearly now.

“Oh, my god!” The knife slips from her trembling hands, hitting the floor beside her with a loud thud. She raises her trembling hands to her eyes, her heart pounding.

These hands. These hands of hers. They almost took a life.

“I told you, didn’t I?” Veronica’s head snaps to the other side of the bed where there is a brown chair Marlene usually sits on to go through criminal files whenever she is working from home.

And right now, Marlene is sitting there, legs crossed, a sinister smile on.

“You are just like him,” she says. “Like father, like daughter.”

“No.” Veronica shakes her head, panic breaking through the haze of shock in her eyes. “No, no, no. I’m not. I’m not like him. I will never be like him.”

“Why not?” She raises a comical brow. “His blood burns fervidly in your veins, doesn’t it? His darkness lives inside you.”

“Stop!” Her hand flies to cover both of her ears.“Stop.” She roars, her chest burning.

Then, all of a sudden, a quiet settles around her, Marlene’s voice is gone. She cracks her eyes open. And though the brown chair is still there, Marlene is not.

She isn’t there. She was never there. It was all in her head. This is her conscience judging her, not Marlene.

And then she realizes it: that thing in her father’s head might be in her head, too.