Psychosis

At Will

I woke up around noon on April twentieth after blacking out the day before; and found myself still at the dining table, where I’d spent most of the last two weeks. It was long and hand-carved from cedar with eight matching chairs. Several papers were spread out in front of me. A blanket had been placed over my shoulders and my boots had been removed and dusted off. I wasn’t sure how many days I’d had them on. I had found my laptop and plugged in my printer at the table and spent the whole night working after I’d found Eric on the fourth.

My head rested on the back of the chair and I heard footsteps approaching from the stairs. Upon looking across the room, I observed Damien bringing a tray with coffee, tea, breakfast, and cigarettes. He didn’t have a shirt on and his sweatpants sat low on his hips.

“Goodmorning, love.”

I smiled grimly, “Good morning.”

“Join me on the terrace? I haven’t seen you much lately, I thought you could use some sunlight and food.”

I nodded and shuffled outside with my blanket, Damien followed behind. We sat at the same table as when we'd first met, it was cool out. I picked up the french press and poured a cup of coffee.

“No cream or sugar?” He eyed me carefully from across the table.

A moment later, my coffee cup was empty. As I set it down, he reached across with his red bandana. I raised my eyebrow questionably.

“Your nose is bleeding again.”

“Oh.” I wiped my face with his offering, then I dropped my gaze to the plate of pastries. I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten anything. “Where are the kids?”

“They’ve been with your parents since the fifth. You fell apart. Don’t you remember anything?”

“All my memories are scrambled. The only clear one from recently was finding Eric. But,” I picked up a cinnamon roll with my broken hand, sporting a new brace, “you’re welcome to fill me in.”

“Well, you were up for eleven days straight. You finally blacked out yesterday at your computer. I didn’t move you because I thought you’d wake up and I knew how badly you needed sleep.”

“Oh, I vaguely remember fighting you while I was in the shower at some point.” I picked up my glass of tea and washed the cinnamon roll down.

“You were seeing shadow people and when I tried to convince you to go to bed, you insisted on doing more dope to stay awake. You kept yelling at me saying you needed to find the truth and he was coming for you.” He poured us both another cup of coffee.

“I think I’ve just been in one long nightmare. I kept seeing a guy who looked a lot like Eric, just standing around the house stalking me. I guess I felt like I had to go through all the messages and notes and documents. It seemed that was his dying wish.”

“You never told me what happened that day. You ran out of the house at dawn and left everything except your keys. Then you walked into the house covered in mud and blood and glass while carrying a thing of cash and a paper-wrapped brick of cocaine. I called your parents and asked them to take the kids so you could recover from whatever happened.” He sipped his coffee, “When they call, I tell them you’re sleeping and that I still haven't heard anything.”

You should feel awful. Putting your family through all of that. Your kids haven’t seen you in weeks. And for what? A dead man’s wish? Why is it so important that you throw away the life you have with people who love you, just to find out who killed your friends?

You don’t understand. I have to know.

Why? It’s been two years, you missed Damien’s birthday. Let that s**t go.

I can’t.

“You need to tell me what’s going on.” His hand reached across the table and took mine.

My eyes met his and remorse swelled through me. “Kylar called me to meet him at the Wilcox Exit, when I got there, I followed him up 64 and we found tire tracks running off the road into the swamp around Eightmile Creek.”

“Oh is that..?”

“I found him first, he’d been beaten, and…” I blanked out.

“And?”

“And uh, his stomach,” I gestured by sliding the side of my hand across my abdomen, “um…”

“He was cut? Stabbed?”

I shook my head and tried to do the hand movements for ‘intestines spilling out’. It took Damien a moment to understand but once he did he hit the nail on the head.

“Wait, he was gutted?!”

“Yeah.. The worst part about it was that he was still alive.”

Damien set his cup down and leaned back in his chair. “Oh love, I’m so sorry.”

I blanked out again, then spoke, “He told me to take his phone, and to be scarce. When I looked through it, I found a ton of voice recordings and videos and pictures and notes about all the s**t that’s been going on since he started working for Kylar in 2016.”

Damien frowned, “So what did you discover?”

“I’ll just show you when we go in.” I lit a cigarette and leaned my head back with my eyes closed. I didn’t get enough sleep. Not surprising, though, considering that a chunk of the block of coke was missing. I estimated about forty or so grams had been consumed in the seventeen days I’d been spiraling.

We sat at the table next to each other and I started going over the documents that were laid out. He picked up an incident report from April 8, 2018, and asked, “Who’s Jameson?”

I watched him carefully from the corner of my eye. “Jameson was my husband.”

“I had no idea you were married, I thought he left you.”

“He was murdered.” I took the stapled papers and read aloud, “On this day, I, Officer Albert Jones, bared witness to a vehicular accident involving a 2015 black Stallion and a 2018 cherry red sportbike on the Eastbound Causeway. The driver of the car, Robert Smith, was in the left lane heading east when the driver of the sportbike, Jameson Watson, fell unconscious while maintaining a high speed of one-hundred and ten miles per hour, veering into oncoming traffic. Thus colliding head-on with Mr. Smith. Mr. Watson was pronounced dead on the scene. Mr. Smith was life-flighted to Mobile Infirmary.

“Mr. Watson’s corpse was recovered from the scene badly beaten with four bullet wounds to his abdomen and a large jagged shard of glass sticking through his right side, just below his ribs. The glass measured five inches in width and eleven point four inches in length. It is likely he fell unconscious from blood loss and is assumed that he was driving himself to the hospital.

“None of his wounds were self-inflicted.”

Damien stood up and walked to the glass wall overlooking the back patio, his arms crossed and his gaze fixed on nothing in particular. “Your husband was murdered? Did they catch the killer?”

I shook my head, “No, because he died on impact of the wreck, nothing could be done, the wounds inflicted on him weren’t the cause of death. They didn’t even really look into it honestly. It felt like it all got covered up. Eric and Kylar fought for justice but eventually, they gave up. None of us knew how to respond to it, I found out I was pregnant with Sophie and decided I would move on.”

“Have you?” Worry lines formed on his forehead and his brow furrowed.

“How does anyone move on from that? Would it matter? It doesn’t change how I feel about you or what we’re doing together as a couple.” I leaned my shoulder against his, and he wrapped an arm around me in a soft hug.

“So did Eric find the killer?”

“Yeah, he figured it all out.” I pulled Eric’s phone from my pocket and played his last recording. Damien’s eyes widened.

“I think I might be the next target. I think he’s trying to silence everyone who knows about what he did. Something is haunting him. The day Jameson died, he left the house and told me he had uncovered something and needed to check it out.”

“Did he specify?” Damien sat back down.

“No, but Eric’s phone contains material that talks about human trafficking.” I sat next to my lover and crossed my arms, blanking out again, thinking about the information I had been given, what I had found, and how I would make sense of it all.

“Today’s date is April 8, 2018. I have been keeping tabs on things for a while now. But after today, I’ll be watching Kylar like a hawk. My friend Jameson called me this morning and said he’d found something out about Kylar that he shouldn’t have. He sent me an email with several documents of minors who had gone missing between Tampa and New Orleans. With these documents, he sent their last known locations, the dates they went missing, and Kylar’s online location history tracker. I never heard back from Jameson. I saw on the news that he had died in a head-on collision. Kylar wouldn’t give me any information, he said he was oblivious.”

“Today is April 15, 2018. After Jameson’s funeral, Kara had him cremated and placed in their backyard beneath a weeping willow sapling. I helped her dig the hole, Kylar was out of town on business. I took advantage of the opportunity and talked to her about what had happened. She showed me the incident report. It said he’d been shot and beaten and had glass sticking clean through his abdomen. I was appalled. I knew exactly who’d done it. But, I never told Kara.”

“It’s May 6, 2018 today. Kara asked me to visit her. When I arrived, she was excited. It seemed the life drained out of her when Jameson died so her happiness was a nice change of pace. I asked her what was going on, and wouldn’t you know it, she was pregnant. I can’t say I was surprised. I hate that she’s by herself. I took advantage of her good mood to try and nonchalantly get some more info on what Jameson had found. She gave me his phone and told me she had no interest in seeing anything in it. I’m going to take it home and start digging.”

“Today is May 27, 2018. My wife Anais is anxious about what I’ve been doing, she wants to take Elliot and stay with her parents for the summer if I don’t start spending more time at home. I don’t want to lose her, so I will be ceasing my investigation for now.”

“It’s been a while. Today is September 11, 2018. Kylar invited me out for the anniversary of 9/11. At dinner, he asked me to start running larger deliveries and he told me he had started moving heroin. I’m not thrilled, I want to quit, I don’t want to go down the same road as Jameson.”

“Something is definitely off about Kylar, he’s completely off his rocker. It’s September 20, 2018. I agreed to go with him to a job site in New Orleans. I’m hoping to find more information there.”

“Today is September 21, 2018. I drank myself sick on bloody marys and wine last night. When I woke up puking, I did so all over the bathroom. He left, a bit grossed out. Once he was gone for an hour or so I called and told him I was leaving to get breakfast. I did a hot rail so that I could stay focused and alert. Anais would kill me if she found out I was doing meth, but some people have to realize that it can be used as a medication and not just an illicit drug.

“I know Kylar has his eyes on me, but I don’t think he knows I’m onto him. Compared to Jameson, I’m a f*****g i***t. I want him to keep thinking I’m blind. I went to the wine cellar and spent about two hours f*****g off in the office because I knew I was on camera. I’m still thinking of ways to get him to talk. I’m going back home tomorrow after I do a run tonight. I miss my family.”

“It’s Halloween, I haven’t heard from Kylar in a week or so. Anais invited Kara and Alex to trick or treat with her and Elliot. I said I was jealous I had to work, and I am, but it was a good opportunity for me to see what Kylar has been up to.”

“Today is November 1, 2018, and I overstepped boundaries with Kylar. I used his phone to take pictures and started digging. I played it off as if I were drunk and clicked his calendar on accident, but he blew up. He said that if I didn’t watch myself I’d end up like the last nosey motherfucker who got in his way. The calendar had an event happening the next day, it said Kara would be in the hospital and then set a reminder for the same date for the following five years. Not sure what it’s about yet, but whatever it was, I feel like it was notable.”

Damien paused the recording and stood up from the table. “I’m going to need more coffee for this shit.”

“I know, right? I’ve been thinking a lot about how to handle it from my end. Neither Jameson nor Eric left a memoir or anything, I want to add a private office to the house and begin a more thorough investigation, one where I have the upper hand on him.”

“How on earth are you going to get the drop on someone with that kind of power?” Damien sounded concerned, and for good reason. Kylar was a beast. He spent several years in the military from a young age, built an empire of his own from being related to a mob boss, and is unparalleled in his brilliance. He is one of the only sharks who swim in our little pond. I do have to say, I never anticipated him to be a murderer. Drugs will do that to people though, won’t they?

“We are going to do this the right way. I’m going to keep working for him, I’m going to keep using as Eric did, for the sake of getting s**t done. I’ll record every interaction I have with him, I’m going to catch him in the act, and I’m going to stop him from hurting any more kids.”

“Where do we start?”

I looked down at all the paperwork cluttering my table. Then, I looked up at Damien. “I have a plan.” I hugged him and started making phone calls, “Do you trust me?”

“With my life.”

“Will you stay here with me?”

“I’ll stay for as long as you’ll have me.” He tightened his grip on me and planted a warm kiss on my neck just as the phone connected.

Within a week, I had built a massive office space with an underground disaster-proof bunker on the front right side of my home. It had a massive bay window overlooking my yard, a mahogany desk, and a nice leather chair, and I spent every cent of the hundred thousand dollars I’d gotten from Kylar to ensure it was well fortified.

On May 4th, I called my mother and asked her if the kids could stay with her until Independence day so that I could go out of town and work. I told her about the trauma I’d seen and was wanting to get away for a while. I felt awful lying to her.

Once I was off the phone with her, I asked Damien to take a drive with me. We drove through Mobile, had lunch, went shopping, and made our way down to Dauphin Island. There, we rode the ferry. I pulled him out of the car, we were both dressed in all black, and we stood up top the platform and watched the sun begin to set. I turned to him, gazing for a few moments.

“What?” He chuckled. His eyes caught the sunlight so beautifully, his features appearing sharper with the shadows falling on his flesh. I was mesmerized.

“Damien?” I held my lips just away from his.

He tilted his head to make eye contact with me. “Kara?”

I giggled, “I love you.”

“And I love you.”

“I know we’ve only been together since February.”

“The twenty-fourth, yeah.”

I could feel my cheeks flushing, “Damien, will you marry me?”

He swallowed and blushed, “W- I- well um…”

“Is that a yes?”

He grinned wide, “I will marry you every day.”

“You’re ridiculous.” I smiled and squeezed him harder.

“And you wouldn’t have me any other way.”

Later that same evening upon getting home, he spent his time exploring the loft in the office, which was filled with books to satisfy him for years to come, and I sat at my desk. A box with a bow sat on my desk, and within it, an owl quill and ink set.

“It’s a gift I’ve been meaning to give you,” Damien called from the spiral staircase, “I thought today was the perfect occasion.” I glanced up and caught sight of him walking. His outfit consisted of black socks, black jeans, and a black button-down. The shirt was undone three buttons from the top, and I could see a glimpse of a wolf tattoo on his chest. He walked, undeterred, filled with grace, immersed in his readings. I pulled parchment paper from a drawer in my desk and swiveled in my chair, examining the quill, pondering just what I might write on the paper.

On my desk sat two photos, the one of the three of us from our vacation with Kylar and Eric, and a new photo of Alex, myself, and our two newest additions to our little family.

Then, I knew exactly what I would put on the paper.

May 4, 2020

Dear Reader,

If you’ve found this, you should know that I never anticipated living my life in this manner; and up until now, had no intentions to share my experiences. A tragedy befell someone I cherished recently, thus prompting my solemn memoir.

In not so many words, I don’t want to die young. However, if I am cut short unexpectedly, my children deserve better than to have their perception of me twisted by the media. I beg you from the depths of my soul, be sure they know that I love them.

It’s true that I did eventually indulge against my better judgment. I became acquainted with many substances; and though we could not coexist as friends, we thrived as business partners. The maximum amount that I could consume was limited by a natural ceiling effect. In spite of my high tolerance, it was futile to do more than necessary. This led to an inability to form an addiction, making me the exception to the rule. The closest to withdrawal I ever felt was the debilitating exhaustion that followed.

Yet, regardless of what anyone may believe, there has never been a moment in my life that I haven’t been fiercely against illicit drugs; nor the detrimental effects they have on society. So while you read the details of my trip down the rabbit hole, I offer you this wisdom: there are no gateway drugs, there are only drugs and gateway people.

-Kara Leigh Watson

11:32 PM