I See You (28 page)

The DVD burns a hole in my hand as I spin it in my fingers, then sliding off the sofa, I insert this disc into the machine and press play.

W
ALKING UP THE SIDE OF
the house to the back door, I sigh. I know he’s expecting me. The note stuck to the door tells me how well my brother can read my every move.

The client who ordered your precious Nina’s job awaits you, brother.

Client? What does that mean? It hits me all at once, and I have to grab the doorframe to stop the shake in my legs, sending me to ground. Tricia had been the one who ordered the hit on Nina.

“Holy shit!”

Knowing the door will be unlocked, I push it open and step inside. It’s eerily quiet. As if I can smell the scent of corruption and sin, I instinctively make my way up the stairs. For some reason, I’m not apprehensive. I even reach into my bag and take out my camera. She feels heavy in my hand, but so right. So perfect, like her weight is the very thing that regulates every beat of my heart.

I had sworn that never again would I capture anyone’s pain and misery, or their last breaths. But today, I know I will once more dip into the realms of hell. A hell I was born to. A hell that rules every one of my cells.

Tricia slowly tilts her head as I walk into the bedroom. She struggles and it’s gratifying to witness. Her demise, the state she’s in.

Lifting my camera, I sigh as bliss slithers through my veins. Everything once again right with the world as my blood flows freer and the oxygen in the air seems easier to breathe.

I followed the crimson river flowing down between her pert breasts through the lens; the deep rouge substance slowly travelling over the deep ridges of her breastbone, a pattern developing in the path of blood and leading her life force to pool on the floor around her tiny soft feet, her toes squelching in the puddle.

Click.

Capturing her death was the embodiment of power; watching her dreams leave her so unreservedly and so effortlessly. Witnessing her once strong will desert her and mock her bitterly was rather sad to watch, a void now occupying where fullness had once influenced. If we never had anything to rely on but our commitment to oneself then what had we actually ever had? This girl had been taunted by her mother’s condemnations her whole life, and outcast because she didn’t surpass her mother’s ideals for a daughter. As she swayed before me, her forced splendor now of no support or comfort, then all she had strived for was an irrelevance blown away by the breeze of her final breath.

Click.

Her faint murmured moan brought a smile to my lips, the sound as empowering as seeing the blood now trickle over the small swell of her stomach, her pale skin alive with the adornment of the deep color, her character escaping with each traitorous pump of her heart.

Click.

The heart was such a deceitful thing. She thought she had loved, and had been loved. This small, frail life before me never collected anything but false genuineness all her tragic life. But all she had witnessed was a deception of hope, her mind manipulating every emotion that had been given to her. There was nothing real in emotion. The only genuine thing she would feel was the slowing of her heart and the light fading in her mind. Was it all worth it?

Click.

Her chest stuttered for a moment, encouraging me to click quickly and rapidly, my need to take her final gasp prisoner in the lens a vital necessity. I owed her the idolization of life, her soul fossilized to allow her existence a memory.

Click, click, click.

She gasped, but it was too deep and strong to be the final one. This one was spirited, almost as if she refused to grant me my petition.

Click.

I was growing tired; such a long day. The bitter wind blew through every available cavity in my space, making me shudder angrily, the hairs under my shirt shivering at the chill coming through the window.

Click.

I was surprised, my head tilting and my own eyes widening as hers slowly opened and she managed to focus on me. She frowned faintly, unnerved but surprised by my presence. “W . . . why?” she rasped, her cracked lips splitting and giving my camera more opportunity to work. They never spoke to me. Never. But she was different from them. Personal. I tipped my head, both stunned and humbled by her fight.

Click.

“Why?” she repeated, her voice quiet as her breathing slowed. Lowering the camera, I stared at her. Of course, she wouldn’t understand. They never do. Not until the end.

“Because capturing the making of angels, light or dark, is sacred.” She didn’t scoff or stare at me. Instead, curiously, she nodded faintly.

“You . . . you should know . . .” Her mouth was unmoving as she pushed her vocal chords to do the work for her. “ . . . I’m no angel. I have sinned, and as such there is nothing for me after death.”

I smiled and stepped towards her. She didn’t move back. The chain she hung from still allowed her a little movement. She was simply quite beautiful if her insides were not so ugly. This end for her was a good choice. After all, to her, it was all about appearance. Maybe all this would fill the hole inside her that caused her corruption. I hoped so, for her sake.

“And in the righteousness shall a seraph ripen to become a beast of the heaven.” I mocked. There was no faith here, neither her nor my own. There was only life and death and I was here to enjoy hers.

She blinked at my words and as I lifted the lens to finally capture the death that encompassed her, she whispered back, “And in the beast shall an angel of virtuousness flourish. I forgive you.”

Click.

“You can only forgive those that you know, those that you understand. You neither know me nor understand me.”

Confusion distorts her features. “Of course, I know you.” Her breathing labors to an almost wheeze as her last word pushes past her lips. “Noah.”

Everything around me is thrown into chaos with that one single word; that name. My mind ruptures, splintering into jagged shards and piercing me with unwanted visions. I grab her face but the light is already distinguishing. “What did you call me?”

“Noah,” she whispers as blood starts to trickle from the corner of her mouth. She can’t die now, not yet.

“I’m not Noah. I’m Devon! Devon Trent!”

She hasn’t even got the energy to fight me when my fist curls around her thin throat. “Why did you hurt Nina? Why did you ask Noah to hurt her?”

She chuckles, triggering her to cough and spit blood onto my face. “Always so perfect. And so effortlessly. Why should she have it all?” She starts to heave as she struggles against the fill of blood in her lungs. “Noah!” she cries out as her body convulses painfully.

“I AM NOT NOAH!”

“You will always be my Noah,” she chokes out as my fingers around her throat tighten. Her eyes bulge before they seem to burst in her head and blood seeps from the edge. “I love you,” she whispers, and then she is gone. And so am I.

The camera falls, cracking on the floor and shattering along with my grip on reality, my sanity dissolving.

My thoughts are wrong, disjointed. I feel like I’m tearing out of my skin and my psyche is splintering into thousands of tiny slivers. I can’t switch off the pandemonium inside me. I can feel him inside me, screaming for release but it can’t be true . . . I can’t be him. How the fuck would that even be possible? Noah is my brother, the boy who took care of me when I was young, when I’d hurt myself. He’d been the one who held me and told me everything would be okay. He’s real. He’s a real person who breathed air through his lungs and saw the world through real eyes.

It’s like I’m slipping away bit by bit, with no anchor to tell me it’s okay and that she’s lying, but a part of me knows there’s something different about me lately. I’ve been losing time, memories, even objects . . . everything is hazy and then indistinct when I try to lock down specific times. My migraines have been getting worse and they’ve knocked me out for hours, sometimes days and I put the weirdness I’d been feeling down to them.

Leaping from the car, I rush through Nina’s front door and the world fractures into particles of fire and internal chaos. I can’t shut the noise out and I baulk as screams echo from the fire, hissing out and engulfing everything.

Then there’s nothing.

“Devon, what is this?”

I look at the TV and tip my head in confusion. Then I turn to the tear-soaked face of Nina, the woman who caused all these truths to the surface, the woman I love but Noah hates.

How can I contain such strong, differing emotions? Intense, soul-consuming love and a deep seated hatred, within the same entity if I really am both me and Noah. Is this what it’s like to be crazy? Or is this another play by Noah, and I’m tumbling down the rabbit hole he dug.

“Why would you have this?”

Nina’s hysteria breaks my heart, her despair so potent that I struggle to swallow through the thickness of her emotions, her horror. How can I even explain any of this to her when I can’t fathom the truth myself?

The sound from the television draws both our attention and that’s when it dawns on me what she’s watching—Noah’s brutal attack.

My mouth opens but I can’t force the words free. I’m struggling to breathe never mind talk. But just as I manage to croak out her name, the view on the TV rotates around a room, Nina’s old bedroom, furniture whizzing past as though on a conveyer belt until Noah fills the screen.

“She was a fighter Devon,” his eerie voice echoes through the speakers. The voice is deeper than my own. “I said you can have her but I didn’t say in what condition.” He pulls the balaclava from his head and the blood hurtling scream that tears from Nina’s throat brings me to my knees. My face is filling the screen;
my
eyes,
my
lips,
my
chin, fuck even the mole under my right eye is taunting my sanity, ridiculing my every thought and memory.

How can this be real?

My mind snaps back to the fire, and Noah standing in front of me, asking what I had done, but the more I try to focus on him, his image warps like I’m looking at projection of him. He’s distorted and muffled. Oh God, acceptance sinks in and I realize he wasn’t there. He wasn’t with me, next to me and talking to me. Had he been inside?

Burning? Dying?

Did I kill him?