Colour Series Box Set (76 page)

We buried Laurie today and it feels like a lifetime since we walked in to find Rowan holding his baby girl and her dead body on the floor. Her devil came to get her in the end she sacrificed herself to save them, she loved them that much. That was the difference in Laurie, she could love unconditionally. That is a different love than what is permitted in this world of ours, everything has conditions for us, even love.

Everything has been turned into a black and white film around me, it moves slowly without sound and the colour has been rinsed away. I may have a black heart, but it aches today for the crushed man in front of me and for this sweet baby girl who will never know that love. She will be one of us now. Her village lost its angel.

Where the fuck are you Callum? You are the one person in the world that Rowan needs now. We fucking need you.

My carefully constructed world is crumbling into chaos and ruins. All I feel is the loss of everything I have ever held close. Robin holds me to his chest as I cradle little Avery in my arms I cry for all that this world has taken from us. Every life that has been ripped away to pay for our family’s sins breaks my heart. It will never end unless we choose to walk away from it all.

I DIDN’T SIGN UP FOR this shit. I know he is in there, I fucking know that monsters don’t just die that easy. But this, I cannot do this limbo anymore. I am not a doting fucking fiancé who will sit by his side for all eternity. I am a killer and I am going crazy. Twenty months, six hundred and eight days of this static unmoving torture.

At least I can still make sure that I get the Phenacetin into his system because he has a feeding tube. I don’t know what drives me to continue with it.
Maybe it’s the anticipation of the high that will come from his death.
He may just fucking die from his injuries he doesn’t need cancer, but I need an insurance policy. He has been in a coma – or vegetative state for so long now that most have given up hope and just wait for him to die. He still breathes on his own but hasn’t shown even a hint of waking up, not even once. His beautiful, healthy body wastes away, his hair is long and reminds me of the Callum I saw in the graveyard. I cannot do this forever I want to run away, but Art watches my every move. I want to leave so I will stop killing the man I love, but I am trapped so I just carry on. Phenacetin is a painkiller that was removed from the market because it causes cancer. I have been giving it to Callum since the day we got engaged.
I cannot stop myself.

I buried Neil all alone, I spit on his fucking casket as it was sinking into the cold, wet ground and I picked a hideous headstone. I would have left him in the morgue forever if it weren't for the public image we needed to uphold, I am the unofficial boss now. I am the head of a criminal empire and army of evil and I fucking hate it! Neil didn’t deserve a funeral, he should have suffered longer. Being a crime boss is not what I signed up for, ever. I don’t want any of this shit. He better wake up someday so I can kill him for this clusterfuck. I need him to wake up and hurt me so I can justify killing him.

I exist in a limbo between the hospital and the ghost house. Every single day is the same and it is killing me. I haven’t been able to kill someone in twenty months and the grey is so much it consumes every waking moment and I suppress the urge to kill every person who crosses my path. I cannot do this forever. I need an out or to kill someone. Worst of all, I miss him. I miss his touch, his kisses, the love. I miss the pain and that makes me feel dirty and shameful.

I finish giving him his ‘food’ and wipe him down, moving him to help with the bedsores that have begun to form, when a young nurse knocks at the door. Her shifty little eyes won’t meet mine.

“Miss, sorry I mean Dr Shannon, your mum has been brought into the emergency room they asked me to come get you.” She sounds nervous as she delivers another blow. I do not need my mother added to the metric shit ton of crap in my life right now. I pull a sheet back up over the skeleton that is Callum and follow the girl downstairs. I hate my mother.
“Shannon you will never be Cassie so stop trying, it’s annoying.”
I was never good enough for her. She knew what my father did to me, I used to hear her crying in the room next door.
She never once tried to stop him from raping me. She just gave up on life and went bat shit crazy, leaving me alone with him.

My mother, my problem a burden I never wanted, yet another thing I have no control over in my life. I feel the grey becoming a permanent presence and fear I may snap and become a spree killer and murder twenty people in five minutes.  The sound of my footsteps echo down these big halls as I walk through the corridors of death and disease, it is fitting with the sterile smell and hanging aroma of death. It is like my soul belongs here. I gravitate towards death, constantly seeking it.

I am met by rush of doctors and emergency nursing staff all crowded around the weak woman’s body. She is barely recognisable as the woman that I lived with for all those years. The flurry of activity for a woman who doesn’t even know what day it is anymore makes me feel even less than always do when I see her.

The doctor who I recognise from when Callum was brought in greets me. “Shannon, your mum has suffered a stroke. We are doing what we can.” I gag at his use of the word mum, she was never a mum, she was mother. If this stroke doesn’t fucking kill her I, will give her one that will.
I need this more than she needs to live
. She isn’t really alive at all, her mind is long gone and her body is failing her now too.

“Doctor, do not take any extraordinary measures, my mother is old and senile if it’s her time to go, so be it.” My voice is icy and I see a hint of confusion in the doctor’s eyes after I was so vicious with them to do anything to save Callum this must seem callous.

“Are you sure Shannon? You are her medical power of attorney so I have to do as you say, but please think about that.” I want to punch him in the face, but I don’t. I stay calm and cold. I don’t need to think about it. “Doctor, I want to sign a DNR for my mother NOW.” I seethe at the man standing in front of me living a dream that I once had for my life. He shakes his head and sends a nurse to get me the papers.
I wanted to be a  doctor in a big hospital once. Instead, I got the mob and all its problems. Instead I got Neil the boy who took everything from me and gave me nothing for it and Callum the monster that changed me. I got my desire to kill instead of save I didn’t get any of my dreams.

I sign the papers without a second thought and return to Callum’s bedside in time to help with his meds, a daily routine that has become the monotonous soundtrack of my life.

My mother lives. She survives the stroke,
this time
and is now even more of a waste of oxygen than before. I cannot look at her any longer. I know what I need to do, I slip back out of her door and leave the hospital. I go home to the ghost house and prepare to get rid of
my
ghosts. I fill a syringe with a large dose of vitamin K for my mother and take more Phenacetin for Callum’s feeding tomorrow.

The halls of the Spillane mansion still echo with the ghosts of lives lost here, the strongest echo of all is the little boy who they shattered on those front steps. I shower in the eerie silence of the one place on earth I finally feel settled. When Callum called me a ghost, he had no idea how close he was to the truth. My mind spins with memories of his touch, of his brutality and his words. No matter how long he has been gone I cannot seem to let him go, I want to hang onto him, but I want to kill him more. I want to feel the love he felt, I want to bury the empathy that I feel, I am torn into small pieces of myself when it comes to that man.

I know that there will be business to attend to in the morning and that Art and Sahib will expect me to make an appearance tomorrow. But my mother is sick and I will be at her bedside instead. It will be the last time I am at her side. I do not intend to be at her graveside.

I cannot be
everything
forever. This has to end soon. If he weren't breathing on his own, I would switch off the machines and walk away and never look back. I just cannot bring myself to kill him quickly. I keep telling myself that maybe I don’t want him to die, after all. I love him and I don’t want to let go – or hold on.

I climb into the bed where the bindings that he used to tie me up with every night still hang from the bedpost. His clothes still hang in the closet, rows and rows of black suits. His body won’t die and neither will his memory. My body has long since healed, but I still feel his hands around my throat strangling the life out of me. I close my eyes to the sleep I know will be haunted by Callum and his possession of the only feelings I have ever known. I will wake up to hate him and love him again. I won’t have cuts and bruises. My skin is not on fire with the welts from his belt but I will still have an aching heart and that pain is more than I can take.

My dreams are overtaken by Callum’s tender times, when he worshiped me and touched me like I was precious and not poisonous.
Those are the worst
. He saw something in me that doesn’t exist and it caused lines to blur between us. He loved me past my murderous evil, he loved me while I killed. He saw something more, something that I could never find in myself, not even now.

My dreams are disturbed by my ringing phone a little after one in the morning. I groan at the intrusion, it's not enough my sleep is bad, but they must wake me in the middle of it. I don’t even look at the screen before I answer it can only be Art at this hour of the day, the man never sleeps he is a walking machine.

“What?” I bark into the phone my voice rough with the dryness of sleep. I wait for a response.

“Um, Dr Shannon, I mean … Ummm …Mr O’Reilly is awake. They asked me to call you first.” I am instantly awake, did she just say that Callum is awake? My heart stops and starts again at the news. Now what? Who will I get when I open that door?

“I am on my way, they are not to do anything until I get there do you understand me?” I let the tone of my voice tell her how serious I am about this. We don’t know what sort of brain damage has been done and I want to see for myself before they fiddle with him.

Once again in a moment my life is turned on its axis and everything changes in a second.

It is time to face my monster. It is time to let go of the hate and the fear and to love him while he heals. I know I do, I just have to let myself. I am going to get a chance to love him and nothing could be more terrifying.