Secrets 12

Chapter Twelve: Sean Doesn’t Live Here Anymore

(Date unknown) …heads or Tails a quarter is still a quarter…” – Taken from the journal of ‘Sean Brown’.

It wasn’t my face that I was looking at…it was Kevin’s…

* * *

“What’s in it for me?” Rose asked. She craned her neck around to look at me. I had to admit that she was a bit beautiful. Evil as fuck, but beautiful.

“Ten grand,” I told her.

Rose turned around and laughed. “Four million dollars and you think I’m just going to be satisfied with ten thousand dollars? Tell me, Ford, when the fuck did I become stupid?”

“You’ve always been stupid if you ask me,” I said.

She was ready to head for the door but I stopped her by grabbing onto her wrist and holding her still. She yanked her hand away from me. “One million and I’ll help you.”

“That’s too much. Can’t do it,” I said.

She opened the front door without even touching it, her venomous dark eyes still fixated on me. “You’re not going to be able to find somebody else that can help you the way I can. Half a million isn’t going to fuck up whatever you and Patrick have planned up. Just give me what’s mine and I’ll help you get what’s yours.”

I sighed and told her, “Let me think this over with Patrick.”

Rose shook her head. “You don’t need any time to think. It’s either a yes or no question.”

I didn’t want to say it, but I really didn’t have a whole lotta choices. And I fuckin’ hate it when I don’t have a whole lotta choices. “Alright. One million.”

She smiled, that obnoxious, gorgeous smile of hers. “Good then I’ll see you tomorrow.” Before she left she told me, “I hope you have fun tonight, because this is going to be the last night in a long while before you’ll ever be Kevin Ford again.”

“Don’t worry about me,” I responded. “Just make sure you’re here by tomorrow night at eight o’ clock.”

Rose took a couple of steps out of the door, and she said, her back still facing me, “And if you try to fuck me over, please believe I have ways of fucking you over even harder.” She gave me one last lethal look. “And you don’t want that.”

I closed the door in her fuckin’ face and locked it.

* * *

“Who am I talking to right now?” The handsome doctor with the green eyes asked. He looked serious, concerned, and almost a little scared.

I laughed. “Who do you think you’re talkin’ to doc?” I asked.

“The tone of your voice has changed dramatically. Your body language is different too. I would say that I’m not talking to Sean anymore…but to Kevin.”

Smiling I said, “Maybe you’re right. So what am I doin’ here, doc?”

“I want to ask you some questions.”

I looked down at the fucked up clothes I was wearing, a big ass loose white shirt and white cotton pants that were barely hanging onto my ass. “What the fuck is all of this for? Where the fuck am I?”

“You’re in a mental rehabilitation hospital,” the doctor said. He wrote down something in a notepad that he had.

“Is that you’re fuckin’ nice way of sayin’ I’m in a fuckin’ crazy house?” I asked.

“Nobody’s calling you crazy, Kevin.” The doctor tried to look calm and reserved, but I could tell that I was making him a bit nervous. I picked up the handheld mirror on the bed beside me and examined my face. It was my face all right. Nothing that looked like ‘him’ was anywhere in that looking glass.

Putting the mirror back down I said to him, “Maybe I am crazy, doc.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” the doctor said. He paused for a moment. “But I do think you’re dangerous. And that’s why you…that’s why Sean is here, because he’s dangerous.”

That made me laugh again. What he said sounded so fuckin’ stupid. “You had it right the first time, Doc. I’m the dangerous one.” I hopped off the bed and peeled off my shirt. The cold air in the room clung to my chest and made my nipples harden. I looked down at my chest and saw all my tattoos there, especially my favorite one of the dragon going down my pecs, over my abs and around my back. “That feels a lot better.” I looked up and saw the doc eyeing me, part fascinated, part surprised…and even what seemed like a little turned on.

“That wasn’t there before,” the doc said.

“There’s a few things you need to know about Sean and me,” I told him.

* * *

I didn’t know whether to feel happy or upset that Patrick had decided to come back. When I opened the door, I was expecting to see him but at the same time I wasn’t. For a long time we just stood there, looking at each other, and then he asked, “Can I come inside.”

In my mind I thought, “You don’t want to come inside here,” but aloud I said, “Yeah. Come in.” I turned on the light so that the living room wouldn’t be so dark. As soon as I did, Kevin, who had been sitting on the couch talking to me, disappeared into thin air.

Patrick walked through the threshold, past me. He smelled different, not a whole lot different, but different. His usual body scent seemed replaced by someone else’s. “What happened before, when I dropped you off,” Patrick said, “I know I was acting a little weird and shit like that. I just wanted you to know that I wasn’t mad at you or anything like that.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said.

Patrick went over and sat on the couch, in the exact same spot where Kevin had been sitting. He patted on the seat beside him, signaling me to sit along with him. I still felt a little bit nervous being so close to him, even though I wanted him here, even though inside I really did want to be close to him. I just still didn’t know if he could be completely trusted. Just a little bit hesitant, I sat beside him, close enough but also keeping a little bit of distance between us, not a whole lot, but just enough to let him know that I was still feeling a little bit of discomfort toward him.

“You still think I’m going to hurt you,” Patrick said. The tone in his voice was cold but also a bit disappointed.

A small fire was still burning in the fireplace. It was a small fire, not very strong, but it was steady. I saw the ashes of the all the pages I had written in my journal.

“To be honest, I don’t know what to think about you, Patrick,” I told him. “It’s hard for me to tell when you’re lying to me or not.”

“Well, Sean, I can say the say the same thing about you,” Patrick replied. “You’re not the most honest person yourself.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Patrick just looked at me for what seemed like five minutes. In his mind, I could tell that he was strategically planning his next move, his perfect choice of words that would make me crumble. I waited for him to speak, part in anticipation, and the other part mostly fear. He looked more handsome than he had ever looked before, the amazing dark hair, his skin extremely clear, his light brown eyes extraordinarily bright, his lips slightly open as if he were waiting to kiss me. But I knew better. He wouldn’t be kissing me. Our lips would probably never touch again. “Did you ever write about what you did to your parents in any of your journals, Sean?”

At some point I knew he was going to mention that. I had been waiting years for that question. I had trained myself over time not to react surprised or suspiciously if anybody, especially Patrick were to ask that question. “What do you mean what I did to them? I didn’t do anything to them.”

It was like being interrogated by a detective who knew everything about you and there was nothing I could do or say to convince him that I was not lying about anything.

“Sean, I only asked if you ever wrote about them in your journals,” Patrick said. He looked toward the embers smoldering in the fireplace. “Or is all the evidence of your secrets gone?”

“Patrick, I’m not a killer,” I said. I began to feel a fury start to fire up inside of me, and the more I looked at Patrick the more I started to hate him.

“I never said you killed anybody, Sean.”

“You don’t have to say it out loud. Your eyes are telling me.” I got up from the couch and moved away toward the nearest wall, trying to keep as much distance as I could away from them.

“What was in those books that were so important that you had to burn?” Patrick asked. He stood as well and took a step toward me. He never looked as tall before as he did in that moment. Along with the fury I felt I began to feel afraid. I didn’t want to show it to him how intimidated I was, but I knew he could already tell. “`Cause I know everything in those journals wasn’t about me,” Patrick continued. “I want to know the things you didn’t want me to know, the parts you didn’t want anybody to know.” He kept moving toward me. I didn’t have anything to defend myself with if he decided to do something….and then I remembered the gun.

“Stay away from me!” I shouted at him.

“What are you yelling for?” Patrick asked. “It’s just me. I didn’t come over here to hurt you.”

“Yes, you did,” I replied. “He told me.”

Patrick stopped moving toward me and just looked at me quizzically. “Who told you what?”

“He said if I burned them all it would make things different…better.”

When I said that, Patrick understood. His beautiful face went from looking perplexed to looking completely stunned. “That’s not possible. You can’t talk to him.”

“But he can talk to me.” I told him what Kevin said to me, about what needed to be done.

“I don’t believe you,” Patrick said. His voice was filled with a quiet rage that was on the brink of homicidal. “He wouldn’t tell you anything.”

The gun was still upstairs rather Danny’s body was there or not. I had to get past Patrick and get up there. “Patrick just go home,” I told him.

“You’re lying,” Patrick said bitterly. “You’re a fuckin’ liar. He didn’t tell you anything. There’s no way both of you can talk to each other at the same time.”

Before I knew it, Patrick was in front of me, his warm breath blasting on me, his strong hands gripping my arms. This wasn’t the Patrick that I’d known for years, the Patrick with the movie star looks and the great personality, who was always cheerful and funny and just a cool person to be around. This was somebody completely different. I didn’t recognize this Patrick in front of me, the one with the cold, angry eyes and the violent hands that were trying to break me apart. “You’re a fuckin’ liar, Sean. You’re a fuckin’ liar.” He took his hands off my arms and in a lightening fast motion wrapped them around my neck and started to squeeze.

* * *

“You believe in magic, doc?” I asked.

The cute-looking doctor with the bright-ass green eyes couldn’t help looking at my body. I couldn’t blame him. With a body like mine, it would be hard as fuck not to look. After a while of staring at my chest and abs and the tattoos covering them, he finally looked me in the eyes. “If you’re talking about illusions, about making what seems to be unreal real, than yes, I believe that’s possible.”

“Not talkin’ about ‘illusions’ docs. And I’m not talkin’ about makin’ what ‘seems’ to be unreal real. I’m talkin’ about ‘making’ what’s unreal real…and also what’s real unreal.”

“No, that’s not possible,” the cute doctor said.

“Why not?” I got up from the bed and stood. “Watch.” The dragon on my chest started to move, slowly at first, downward to my abs and then around toward my back. It proceeded to move around faster and faster until it eventually came to a stop where it originally had been now. I looked at the doctor, and he looked at my chest, dumbfounded and panicked. “So tell me, doc, do you believe in magic now?”