Colour Series Box Set (10 page)

“Snap out of it Rowan, she is not a pet.” I yell at myself as get up off the cold slate floor and head towards my room. Her door is closed; she has closed herself in now. I put my hand on her door wanting to go in wanting to finish what we started earlier I want her to tell me her truth, her pain. I want to tell her mine just as much. That thought scares me right back into reality and I go back into my own room. I switch off my music and I can hear her crying next door and it makes me feel again so I turn the music back on to drown it out. I remember the last time I kept a girl for myself. I stare at the ceiling wishing these fucking feelings would go away I don’t want them.

Past 1997, Glasnevin, Ireland

MICK LEFT TWO DAYS
ago with his baby girl. He told me that I have two weeks to get my shit together he was moving me to South Africa to work with him there he needed a man he could trust. He also enlightened me that my best friend Callum was being banished to Africa too. He had pissed his Pops off big time and was going to be sent to man his operations in Johannesburg as punishment. Well at least I won’t be all alone, Mick won’t have me in the Cape near him he is too worried about his daughter so I will be staying with Callum.

I never wanted to leave Ireland, ever. My Ma kept me here, but when she passed last year I felt my last shred of humanity died with her, Mick is the only thing I have that is even close to family so I guess being closer to him makes sense. We have talked a little about the move and I did some digging on South Africa, it seems to be a bit of a criminal cesspool if you ask me so we should blend in just fine Callum and me. I also studied their crime stats. What a joke. There are more unsolved murders in a month there than total murders in a year here. Mick says any criminal with a brain and a few cents to rub together could get away with anything there. I just need to get away with murder. I have become cold in the years I’ve worked with Mick. Nothing like watching a life fade away under your hand to make your heart shrink until you don’t have one anymore. Life loses its value and is simply a transaction for me now. People are a currency nothing more.

I am twenty six this year, I’ve been doing this for nine years now.

I don’t plan to wait the two weeks. I’ll be packed and ready to fly out tomorrow night. There is no reason to wait. I only have two things to do before I go. This first one is going to suck, not for me but for her. My girlfriend Cassie. Yes girlfriend. We were sweethearts when I became a murderer just teenagers fooling around, Cassie believes she loves me and is about to find that I am leaving her behind. Worst of all after being sweethearts for ten years she will know that I never loved her. I can’t love her because I cannot feel anything and love is a feeling. I know I am going to break her heart into a million tiny shards. I never professed to love her, I never said the words. I knew I didn’t love her, but my cold heart doesn’t mean I don’t like a warm bed when I get home at night. After I break Cassie’s heart I need to go to my parents’ graves and say goodbye I may never come home. In fact I know in my soul that I never will. I’ll live and die in Africa.

I wait for Cassie to get home from work around six, I have only packed my clothes and the documents I need to travel I have left everything in our little flat as it is she can keep the flat after all it was her home too. Cass sees my bag as soon as she comes in the door. Her eyes immediately give away her feelings she is annoyed and she asks me with a hint of sadness in her voice. “Mick got you going out of town to work again I see, how long this time Rowan?” I turn around and look out the window I don’t want to face her eyes when I tell her this. I don’t want to tell her, I should’veleft a note but I’m not a cowardly man. I could never do that. “I’m going to join Mick, Cass. In Africa. I’m not coming home this time.” Cassie is silent behind me but I know tears streak her face her hushed sniffles give away her heartbreak. “When can I come Rowan?” I knew she would ask in her little world I am going to marry her soon. She’s been waiting ten years, since we were just kids. I’m never going to marry Cassie or any woman for that matter. Murderers don’t get married to good women. “You can’t Cassie, this is goodbye. We have tonight then I am gone. You need to let me go Cassie. You don’t love me you just think you do; no one could truly love me.”

I turn around as she slams her fist into the table and looks me in the eyes. I see her heart cracking in her chest through those pretty little green eyes her bottom lip trembles with her tears. “I do love you, that’s where you are so wrong Rowan, I do. Even though in my heart I have always known that you don’t love me back. I hoped and prayed you would that you would learn to love me but you won’t.”

Her words hit home, she knew all along I never loved her but she loved me anyways. “I can’t Cassie. Not I won’t, I can’t. I can’t love anyone, ever.”

She walks right up to me and stands on her toes to kiss me, I feel like an asshole for kissing her and wanting her right now after I just broke her beautiful heart. When our kiss breaks she whispers to me softly talking into my chest “Good bye Rowan, I will always love you.” I feel her tears wet my shirt as she cries into it before letting go and looking into my eyes with her green ones. I have broken her I see it in her eyes I broke my toy. She leaves, slamming the door behind her.

After Cassie left I drank a bottle of scotch and wallowed in the reality of leaving everything I have ever known behind. I go to bed feeling like shit and I sink into sleep almost as fast as I can fall onto my bed. I’m woken what feels like way too fucking early by my phone ringing and someone beating on the door yelling at me. The brain fog clears enough for me to see and hear its Callum both calling and knocking. What the fuck? It’s six in the morning he is never up before noon unless he hasn’t gone to bed yet?

“Hold on asshole!” I yell fumbling around for my stupid house keys. As I unlock the door Callum bursts in at me. Fuming, he grabs my throat yelling at me like a mad man. “What did you do Rowan?” I am instantly confused. I went to bed drunk and very much alone. What is he on about? He sees my confusion and lets me go. Good move, I was about to backhand him. His eyes are bloodshot and puffy I wonder how much he drank last night, is he still drunk he is acting batshit fucking crazy. “You don’t know do you?” He’s breathless and cautiously looks into my eyes trying to see truth. “What the fuck are you on about at fucking six in the morning Callum. I had a shit night I need to fucking sleep it off.”

He eyes me even more suspiciously now, a frown forming on his face “You really don’t know, do you? Ro, did you tell Cassie you were leaving?” I nod at him. “She left and never came back I asked her to let me go. She knows I don’t love her. Yet she says she loves me anyways.” Hence my hangover asshole.

“You fucking idiot! You stupid fucking idiot! Did you know Cassie was pregnant Rowan? Did you know?” He screams at me prodding my chest with his finger. The horror on my face surely gives me away as I shake my head not believing his words at him and launch towards my car keys and the door “Oh God Cal, where is she, who told you?”

Callum’s face turns snow white and he collapses on the end on my bed next to me. Something is horribly wrong and he doesn’t want to tell me he swallowing hard like a scared little kid. “Spit it out Cal.” I sit back down next to him angry at him now and scared shitless for what may come out of his mouth.

“Rowan the Coroner told me when I was called to identify her body at three this morning. No one could reach you. Cassie left here last night and she killed herself. She jumped off the top of her parents building. I’m so sorry man. So sorry.

I can’t breathe and feel my scotch dinner rising up my throat, burning its way up as I start to wretch. I am going to be sick. I lurch for the small dustbin next to my dresser and relieve my stomach of its fiery contents until there is nothing left to bring up. My throat burns like I swallowed razor blades for breakfast. Callum just sits there white as a sheet, like a ghost not moving at all. She never told me, why? I never gave her a chance that’s why! I am all of a sudden filled with rage for the child she’s stolen from me. Then the truth hits me like a punch to the guts, I told her I couldn’t love anyone that’s why, she knew I couldn’t love her or our child so she chose to jump. I feel the bile climbing my throat again this is all my fault. Another two numbers that are all on me. My cold heart killed Cassie, she is dead because I could not love her.

Callum waits, he just sits there while I go through the motions, first I’m sick then I’m angry and throw and smash anything a touch and I yell and I scream nothing makes it any better it’s burning me from the inside out. I curse God and all the fucking saints. Then I cry. I cry one lonely tear for my child that I might just have been able to love. I cry that tear for never getting the chance. Then I get up, leaving Callum sitting on my bed watching me unravel in front of him and I go say goodbye to my parents. The gloomy day matches the cemetery and my mood. After that I stop at the morgue where Cassie’s body was taken and I go say goodbye to the girl who loved me even when I couldn’t love her back and to the child I will never know. The girl who loved me didn’t resemble her. She was broken, blue and bruised.. I know that my hands may not have done this to her but my heart did, I broke her, I killed her, I’m a monster, the worst fucking kind of monster. I switch my feelings off again right there, no more, ever, I need to be numb and cold and hard.

It’s raining hard when I leave them there I feel the icy rain soaking into my clothes as I get my car and I leave. I go straight to the airport and I leave. I know I’m never coming back to Ireland. It’s no longer home. It’s just the graves of my family. Who wants to live in a cemetery?

My memories of Cassie somehow make these new feelings even worse. I broke Cassie, which was on me, that was all my fault and I never forgave myself for it. She wanted to die, Ellia wants to die too. Those were the two hardest numbers to have carved into my skin I took her life and the life of our child by not loving her. The only time I remember feeling anything like I feel right now was the day Cassie jumped. Guilt. Sorrow. Anger. Remorse. Sadness. But Cassie was dead I couldn’t save her I couldn’t fix what I did to her. I couldn’t love her. Maybe just maybe this time I can. I was not the one who broke Ellia, but I might be able to fix her. All I can offer her revenge though. I can take his life in return for breaking her. And I will take his sorry life. I want to feel something for her, I almost want to say I want to love her, but I don’t think I can.

The one number I will not put on my body is hers. Ellia will not die; I went to too much trouble to kill her already. What if I break her more by keeping her? What if I destroy her too, what if me keeping her kills her?

I CRY MYSELF TO
sleep again. I hear Rowan’s sad music through the walls, he’s trying to drown me out, I just know it. The emotional songs are making my crying even worse so his plan is not the most well thought out one. I wonder if he does it on purpose to make me feel this way like my life is being ripped open and all the ugliness exposed and brought to the surface where I have to face it. When you are living in it you can ignore it to survive, but now it’s over and I have to face what I am. Ugly, inside and out.

The nightmares don’t let me rest tonight. They very rarely do. I am awake before I know it. I usually take sleeping pills to get some sleep that isn’t my very own horror movie on repeat all night but I don’t have that luxury here in my little jail.

Tonight it’s my babies again, yes babies. Renzo has ripped six innocent little babies from my body. Each time he waited a little longer, let me love them a little more before he came and took what was his with his devil doctor. Each time I was locked up for days after in the safe living in my own filth and sadness. I prayed to die, over and over again. I wanted to die. I begged I couldn’t live anymore. I tried to take my own life once; Renzo found me, saved me and then punished me for trying to take what was his. The beating that time had been one of the worst he kicked, punched, scratched, cut and burned me for what seemed an eternity. I was like a rag doll for weeks after that, but he loved that. It’s easy to rape a rag doll who can’t even try to fight. My body was broken but my mind wanted so badly to stay unharmed but eventually he broke that too and I shut down completely. I used to lie still while he beat and raped my body. I stopped fighting; fighting made the pain worse, never enough to kill me only enough to remind me I was still alive. I hate him. And I hate him with every beat of my useless heart I hate him more. Would I kill him? No, who would pay for my sins then? This vicious circle of death should end. I believe that my father’s sins have been paid for with my pain, and with my heart. My coming home is my new beginning where I finally get to try and live. Even if that means just being here and never leaving. I’m home and I’m more alive than I have been in eight years.