Duality: Vol 2, Euphoria (A New Adult Paranormal Romance) (6 page)

At first he seemed to be resisting the effects of my touch.  Then sweat started beading up on his forehead.  He blinked rapidly a few times and his eyes went bloodshot.  His head shook once left and then right.

It was horrible to watch, this grown man trying to fight the inevitable.  I started to pull my hand away, but he growled at me.  “No!  Keep it!”

I gripped him tightly again, getting pissed I was being pushed into hurting him.  As I got angrier, he lost more control of his cool.  He was breathing heavily now, huffing out on the exhales.

I quickly decided that the only way out was to dose him up good and end it before the guy gave himself a stroke or something.  I channeled all the energy I could feel inside me and sent it out through my hand and into his arm.

A second or two later, he pulled away and collapsed on the floor, cradling his arm while crying and moaning.  “Ohhhh, Jesus H … oh my wife … my child … oh, what did I do?  Please,  Jesus save me … save them …”  His sobbing was getting louder and more painful-sounding.

I was desperate, stuck in place with my panic.  I wanted to comfort him, but I couldn’t get near enough to touch him.  I knew it would make him worse, and there was a roomful of guns in the other room, not ten feet from where I was standing. 
Shit!  What should I do?

“Awful … terrible … pain …”  He choked on his own cries.  “Kah!  God, oh no … why did I do this?  What did I do?”

“Mrs. Butts!” I yelled.  I ran over to the bottom of the stairs and yelled as loud as I could.  Looking over my shoulder, I could see him curled up in a fetal position on the floor.  It looked so wrong, seeing that strong, confident man wallowing in my darkness. 
I’m a terrible person. Why did I let him convince me to do that?  I knew better!  I knew better!

“Mrs. Butts!  Jasmine!  I need you to come here right now!”

Running footsteps at the top of the stairs sent a ray of hope into the darkness surrounding us.  “Thank God,” I said.

The first person down was Jasmine.  “What the hell?  What are you yelling for?  You want to wake the entire neighborhood?”

“I’m sorry, Jasmine, but it’s your dad…” I turned around to gesture at him, but he was gone.

“What about my dad?”

“Oh,
fuck!”
  I yelled, jumping off the stairs and running towards the room filled with guns.

Chapter Seven: Rae

I WAS JUST PULLING OUT a chair to sit down at the breakfast table when Malcolm’s desperate yells came up from the panic room.  At first I thought I was imagining something like a television set left on or a neighbor yelling outside, but it quickly became clear; something bad had happened downstairs.

I left the table and ran behind Kootch, the last one to make it down the stairs.  Everyone was leaving the steps and running towards the back corner of the room, where all the guns and ammunition were kept.

“What’s going on?” asked Kootch as he jumped to the ground ahead of me, obviously annoyed.  “My pancakes are gonna get soggy.”

Kootch’s pancake problem disappeared in the wake of Jasmine’s screams.  As soon as they reached my ears, I got goosebumps over the fear I heard in her voice.

“Dad! 
No! 
What are you doing?!  Stop!”

“Joe, put it down, babe.  Please!  You don’t want to do this.  Please, put it away.”  Mrs. Butts was begging her husband; it was awful hearing her so out of control and worried.

Standing at the bottom of the stairs, I had a terrible feeling I knew what was going on.  Malcolm was in the corner of the room, over near the cots, as far from the gun room as he could get without leaving the panic room entirely.  He looked horribly guilt-ridden.

“What happened?” I asked him, torn between following everyone into the other room and staying to find out why he looked so stricken.

“Just get in there,” he said, defeat in his tone.  “You’re the only one who can save him, I think.”

“Rae!”
screamed Jasmine.  “Rae!  I need you, Rae!  Please!”

“Yeah, Rae, you better hurry up,” added Kootch.

My heart leaped into my throat and I felt like vomiting, but I ran.  I ran right for the ammunition room where I knew tragedy awaited.  I was shocked at what I saw when I reached the entrance to the room.

Mr. Butts was at the far end of the space pointing a handgun at the side of his head.  Tears were streaming down his beet-red face.  Even his nose was dripping, but he wasn’t doing anything about it.  He just leaned against a wall partially slumped over, moaning and babbling something about pain and darkness.

“What the hell is wrong with him?” asked Kootch.  He stood off to the side, looking confused and scared, like a little kid.

“Rae, you have to help him,” said Jasmine, tripping over to me, grabbing onto my arm when she got close and shaking it hard.

“Me?  I … what can
I
do?”  I looked at Jasmine’s mom.  She was standing diagonally to Mr. Butts, her hand out in a calming gesture, making sounds and murmuring things I couldn’t hear very well.

“You need to erase what Malcolm did,” said Jasmine, her voice strained and high.  “You have to reverse it.”  She was crying openly now.  Her grip on my arm felt like eagle claws digging into my flesh, but I didn’t brush her off.  My touch couldn’t hurt her since she was a Neutral, and I knew she was just panicking.

“Why are you blaming Malcolm for this?  What did Malcolm do?”  I looked over my shoulder, but I couldn’t see out into the main room.

“I think my dad made him touch him … show him the dark stuff.  You have to undo it.”  She pulled me towards her father.

I dug my heels in, frightened by the desperate look to his whole posture and expression, and the obvious lack of sanity I saw there.  “I … can’t … I … I’m afraid I’ll hurt him.”

“Hurt him?  Shut up!” screamed Jasmine, an unhinged tone creeping into her speech.  “You can’t possibly make him worse!  Now get over there and give him a Rainbow whammy or you’re never going to be my friend
ever! 
Do you understand me?!  Ever!”

Her words cut me like a knife.  The last twenty-four hours had been my whole life concentrated down to its worst parts: Find a friend, lose a friend.  Meet people, hurt people.  Get too close, have to leave.  I wanted to cry right along with her.

Mrs. Butts looked over at me, panic evident in her expression.  It scared me almost as much as Mr. Butts’ breakdown.  “Please, Rae,” she said, “if you can do anything, please try.  I’m confident he won’t use the weapon on you or I wouldn’t ask.”

I wasn’t so sure about that, but I knew I couldn’t just stand there and not try.  Besides, a bullet to the brain was a solution I’d considered before, but I’d always been too chicken to go through with it.  Maybe this was how I was supposed to leave this world, letting someone else do the dirty work.  It made me ashamed to think about using his distress to ease my own.

I stepped around Jasmine, avoiding looking at her eyes.  I couldn’t blame her for playing the friendship card on me; I would have done the same for someone I loved, had I ever loved someone like that.  It was probably jealousy that kept me from acknowledging her statement.  She had no idea how lucky she was.

I walked up to stand next to Mrs. Butts, trying to soak up some of her courage.  “What do you want me to do?”  By this time, Mr. Butts had slid down the wall to sit on the floor and had one arm resting sideways over his bent knees.  He still wept, but his head was on his forearm, while the hand holding the gun rested against his ear, pointed at the ceiling.  The sobbing wasn’t quite as pronounced or loud as it had been when I first came into the room.

Mrs. Butts pointed to her husband.  “I need you to go over there and do whatever it is you do.”  She looked at me, searching my face.  I think she was trying to find hope there.  Her voice softened.  “Use your influence on him.  The yin to Malcolm’s yang.”

“What if I … what if I can’t help?”  The pressure was killing me, making me feel like I was going to stroke out right there in their basement.  I’d never had anyone count on me for something so important.  This grown man, this veteran of the military who probably kicked butt all over the world, was very possibly going to shoot himself right in front of me.  Nothing in my life had prepared me for this horror.

Her nostrils flared as she got control of her emotions.  “It’s not your fault.  Whatever happens here is not your fault.  Please, just try.”

I nodded.  She was a brave lady.  I wanted to be strong like her.  Taking a deep breath, I squared my shoulders and faced Mr. Butts. 
Here goes nothing. 
“Mr. Butts …”

“His name is Joe,” said Jasmine from behind me.  “Call him Joe.”

“Joe … I want to come over there.  Do you mind if I come closer?”  My legs were shaking with the stress and fear.  My feet didn’t want to move.  Everything in my body was telling me to go the other direction, to run, run, run far away from this place and these people.

He didn’t acknowledge me, lost in his own world.

I forced my feet to move and walked towards him quietly, never taking my eyes completely off the gun.  Stopping directly in front of him, I squatted down so we could be face-to-face.  I spoke in as calm a voice as I could manage.  “Joe, hi.  It’s me … Rae.  I stayed here in your house last night.  I don’t know if you remember.”

“I remember,” he said, through tears.  “I remember everything.”

“Good.  I think something happened to you and made you sad.  More sad than you’ve ever been before, maybe.  More sad than you know how to handle.  I’m going to try and help you, okay?”

“There’s no help,” he moaned.  “No help.  No peace for the wicked.”

“You’re not wicked, Joe.  You’re not wicked.”  His words tore me up inside.  I really needed him to stop feeling so awful.  I wasn’t used to seeing this kind of pain around me.  Usually, it was the opposite, with just me feeling the sadness of my life while others danced around in the light.

“You don’t know,” he moaned.  “You don’t know me … the things I’ve done …”

“Shhh, I’m just going to put my hand on your arm, okay?”  Whatever confessions he was about to make, I wasn’t interested in hearing them.  I had a feeling no one had ever heard them before, and they probably weren’t something for his teenage daughter to hear if they involved his past.

His head jerked up.  “No!  Don’t touch me!”  The hand that had been across his knees fell to his side and hit the floor.  “Stay away.”  He tried to press up against the wall more, get away from me, but there was nowhere for him to go.  He was frightened but weak.

Ignoring the gun that was thankfully still pointed at the ceiling and resting sideways against his head, I put my hand on his leg.  “See? No big deal. I’m just touching your knee.  I won’t hurt you.”

He stared at my hand for a few seconds.  It seemed like a full minute had passed by before he spoke.

“It doesn’t hurt.”

“I hope not,” I said, feeling less frightened at the expression on his face.  Some of the stark fear was being replaced by curiosity.

“There’s no pain,” he said.

“Right,” I replied, not knowing how else to respond.

He sniffed hard, picking his hand up to wipe his face.  “What’s happening?” he asked, looking only at me, his eyes locked on mine as if he were drowning and staring at me would save him.

“I think you’re coming out of the darkness.  I want to touch you with my other hand, now.  Is that okay?”

He nodded, reminding me of a child filled with innocence and trust.

“I need you to put the gun down, though.  I’m afraid of the gun.”

He looked up at his hand next to his head, appearing surprised to see it there.  He watched his own arm lower the gun to the ground, as if it belonged to someone else.

As soon as he let the weapon go, I put my hand on his bare arm.  Lifting it up to his knee, I rested his hand there.  “Put your other hand there, on your other knee.”  I looked at it pointedly, using my gaze to direct him.

His hand moved as if he were hypnotized.  I placed my other hand on his, and together we sat in front of each other, me with my palms going warm over his.  “Better?” I asked, smiling through the last remnants of panic that were refusing to totally leave my body.

“Yes.  Better.”  He cleared his throat.  “What did you do to chase away the demons?”

My voice caught and didn’t want to come out.  I coughed to the side to get back on track, to get my voice working again.  I hadn’t expected to hear that word. 
Demons.

“I just got you back to the real world.  You were lost in a … dream state or something.” 
That’s it.  Play it off.  We’re cool.  Nothing to see here.  Move along.

“Don’t over-juice him,” said Jasmine.  “I don’t want him trying to make out with you like Kootch did.”  She sounded happy now.  Relieved.  I guess I was back on the good friend list.

I wasn’t sure how I felt being off the list so fast and then back on again like she hadn’t threatened to hate me forever, but now wasn’t the time to be thinking about girl-friend drama.  My work wasn’t done here yet.  Wherever Joe had gone, it wasn’t any place I’d ever seen a Rainbow go before.  I wanted to be sure he wouldn’t fall back in when I let go.

“You let me know when you’re feeling normal again, like … your regular happy self, and I’ll let you go.”

“I’m not sure I can do that,” said Joe, giving me a half smile that looked pitiful on his tear-stained face.  “I’ll do just about anything never to go back to that dark place again.  I’m ready to overdose on whatever drug you’re pumping into my system right now.”

“I think that’s enough, don’t you, sweetie?” asked Mrs. Butts, stepping over to stand at my side.

She wasn’t talking to me, but I responded anyway.  I nodded and pulled my hands free, standing.  I backed away from her touch and from Joe, moving until I was even with Jasmine.

“Nicely done, Rainbow maker,” said Kootch.

“Don’t call me that,” I said, feeling hollow inside.  All I wanted to do now was leave.  What Malcolm and I could do to people was wrong.  We hurt people.  We needed to get away from them.