Kiss Me With Knives

I JUST MET THE MONSTER

"You know, I hate the smell that comes from those disinfectants they use in hospitals and I hate seeing patients, but this is where your loan has landed us, Dad."

I was sitting beside his bed holding his hand even though he couldn't feel it. "I thought it was your money all this while. I really did. I thought you were just bad at saving. I was unaware you were borrowing from people like this. I was unaware of it."

He didn't reply because he was unable to. He lay there with his eyes shut, his chest rising and falling, and he appeared small in a way that scared me more than anything those men had said the night before.

"You ought to have told me," I said. "I would have helped you. I don't have money, but I would have figured something out with you. Instead, you kept it all to yourself and now look where we are."

I just stopped talking after that. He couldn't hear me, and I was going in circles talking to myself, so what was the point?

I grasped his hand and stayed there quietly.

At that moment, I sensed the door opening behind me.

I thought it was a nurse. At first, I didn't glance back.

"Mirella."

I've never moved so fast in my life. I sprang up from the chair, but my legs gave way and I tumbled straight to the floor. My heart beat so fast I could feel it in my ears. I grasped the edge of the bed and looked up to see a man standing just inside the door, someone unfamiliar to me, and I found it difficult to get a single clear word out.

"You — what — who are — how did you —" I was unable to finish any of it. My lips were moving yet nothing was fitting together as it should. I was shaking after everything from the night before, after the corridor and the men and the hospital and sitting here alone all night, that voice saying my name from behind me just broke whatever I had left.

He did not approach me. He simply stood there as I pulled myself up using the bed and stood trying to catch my breath and stop shaking long enough to say something that made sense.

"Who are you," I finally got out. "How do you know my name?"

"I am Valmot Knox." he said, as if it were meant to have significance for me. "Your father borrowed a significant amount of money from me. I am here to discuss what comes next."

I glanced at my dad lying unconscious and then back at this man. "He is unable to speak with you. He's not awake."

"I am not here to have a conversation with him," Valmot said. "I am here to converse with you."

"About what. I don't have anything to do with his loan."

"You have everything to do with it." He took one step further into the room and stopped. "Your father owes forty-six thousand dollars. Three extensions. Four months without a single payment and that stops today."

"He's in a hospital bed."

"I can see that."

"So, whatever this is, it can wait."

"It can't." His voice didn't rise. There was no need to. "The debt transfers to you. Your father cannot carry it anymore and someone has to. That someone is you."

"I'm a teacher. I don't have that kind of money."

"I know about your income."

That was something else entirely. The fact that he already knew. That he walked in here with information about me before I even learned his name made me terrified the more.

"Then you know I can't pay you," I said.

"Not with money," he said. "No." He held my gaze and let what he wasn't saying hang between us long enough that I started understanding it before he put it into words. "Your father made an arrangement when he took the loan. He understood what the collateral was if he couldn't pay."

"What collateral."

"You," Valmot said. "You are the price, Mirella. You always were. He knew that when he signed."

Everything in me was still.

"You're telling me my father used me as collateral."

"I'm telling you the debt is yours now and you will honor it."

"Should I choose to withdraw?"

He gazed at my father resting there. Then back to me. He stayed quiet and there was no need for him to reply since the answer was already present with us.

"Twenty four hours," he said. He placed a card on the table beside the bed. "After that I stop asking."

He left. The door closed. I stood by my dad's bed motionless. The card was sitting right there on the table. My father's hand was still warm from where I had been holding it.

He had signed my name on something without telling me. He had put me up as collateral and never said a word and I had been sitting here all night talking to him like he was the victim.

Maybe he was.

But so was I.

I grabbed the card from the table. No business name. No heading. Merely a figure. As if his name by itself should have sufficed.

I walked downstairs to the hospital canteen and phoned my mom. It rang twice before she answered, and I could tell from her tone that she hadn't rested either.

"Mirella." Where are you located? "I have been trying to reach your father since last night."

"Mom, he's in the hospital." I noticed her breath pause. He fell down. He’s stable, yet he has remained unconscious since arrival.

"Oh Lord." Which medical facility. "I'm on my way"

"Mom, pay attention to what I'm saying." I maintained a soft tone. "Tonight, a man arrived here." He mentioned that Dad had borrowed money from him. A substantial amount of money. He mentioned that Dad utilized me as collateral, and now the debt belongs to me."

Quiet on the opposite side.

"Mother."

"Rip it apart," she said. "Tear up whatever he handed you at this moment." "If there is no proof, there is nothing he can act upon."

I glanced at the card I was holding.

I was aware of how silly that seemed. A man arrived at a hospital before dawn, aware of my name and precisely what I made. A man such as Valmot Knox did not function with a single version of anything.

Ripping this card wouldn’t remove a single item.

It only meant I couldn't contact him.

And a part of me realized that this was precisely the type of error he was anticipating me to commit. I don't want double of what I'm inside already.