14. April 10, 2023
Demon
What in the actual feck was he doing? He was out of his goddamn mind, is what he was.
Had he really agreed to an affair with Cherry that had a time limit on it?
One that was totally going to destroy him when she walked away like she apparently did with every other lover she’d had? He needed his head examined.
The flight to St. Lucia was going to be twelve-plus torturous hours over two separate flights.
The first leg took off just before midnight, so maybe she’d sleep through most of it.
He’d both hated and loved the two hours of checking in, hanging out in the VIP lounge, and boarding the plane.
It gave him all kinds of excuses to touch her.
A hand on the back to guide her. Holding her hand as they walked.
An arm around the waist while checking in to pull her close and kiss her temple so he looked like a doting new husband.
Pulling out her chair and making sure her hair didn’t catch behind her.
Brushing her hand when he handed her a glass of champagne.
She responded to all of it as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
It was going to be both heaven and hell. Was he going to take advantage of their status? Hell to the motherfecking yes. However, he would be the first to admit that he desperately wanted it to be real.
Once they’d boarded the plane, the flight attendant brought them more champagne. One sip from the glass and Cherry gave a small giggle, rubbing her nose. “Bubbles. They tickle.”
“Are you tipsy?” he teased.
“I don’t drink much, if ever. I don’t like not being in control of my body for any reason.”
“Well, let me be in control of it.” He noticed an odd look on her face, one he couldn’t decipher. All he knew was that it made him uncomfortable in public. “Drink your champagne, Mrs. McCarthy. I promise not to let you get out of control.” Even he heard the gravel in his voice.
After they were in the air, it wasn’t over thirty minutes before Cherry slipped off her shoes and drifted off to sleep in the chair bed next to him.
He reached over and covered her feet with the thin airplane blanket she had draped over herself.
A throbbing started in his lower back, so he moved to adjust to a more comfortable position in his seat, then he drew out his tablet and entered the group chat.
– God, Midas, Steel, TB, Waters already in chat
– Demon now online
MIDAS:… 11th for Steel, the 12th for Waters, 13th for me, and 15th for God. That correct?
DEMON: wot u fex bet on
TB: Here we go again with having to decipher the Harvard grad’s deplorable spelling.
MIDAS: Nothing.
MIDAS: We were predicting when it would snow in Chicago and cause a flight delay.
DEMON: I dont believe u
DEMON: april u twatz
DEMON: no snow
DEMON: & not flyn thru Chi
MIDAS: Don’t care. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
DEMON: Feck u btr not hav ben bettn on me & C
WATERS: Of course we were, idiot. At least we weren’t betting on whether you were joining the Mile High Club like some of us had to endure.
DEMON: So wots the bet
WATERS: If we tell you, that distorts the odds, and you’ll fuck all of us over just because.
DEMON: xctly
TB: Fuck, please learn to type like a regular human being. I don’t want to work this hard.
DEMON: told u b4 hate txtn
DEMON: mayb if u smartr u cud read
TB: Midas, can you send in a special request to the flight attendants and have one smother him with his cheap airline pillow?
MIDAS: Say ‘please.’
TB:
DEMON: Not nice 2 do 2 C
TB: Why? She’d get to dump your sorry, mopey ass for someone who’s going to treat her right.
DEMON:
MIDAS: You’re always so negative.
MIDAS: You can tell a lot about people by their emoji use.
MIDAS: Demon, what are your most used emojis? Top 5.
DEMON: 4 fex sake
TB: This oughta be good.
MIDAS: C’mon. Humor me.
DEMON:
MIDAS: Guess those make sense.
MIDAS: Ok everybody share. Top 5.
TB: Seriously? I left my very pregnant sub at home for THIS?
WATERS:Make him call you “Sir”? Does that help? Or maybe now it’s “Daddy”?
STEEL: This is better than the other game his genetic material used to throw at us.
STEEL:
MIDAS: The screwdriver one scares me.
MIDAS: Correction. That whole row scares me.
STEEL: It should
MIDAS: Who’s next?
MIDAS: I’ll do mine.
MIDAS:
WATERS: Ok first one is Kubrick. Third one is Flame. What are the others?
MIDAS: Last four are Flame.
TB: What the actual fuck? How often are you talking to my woman?
MIDAS: When she’s writing, she sometimes asks me to put her on a timer so she remembers to take breaks.
MIDAS: The shoe used to be when she was buying new heels and needed an opinion.
MIDAS: Now it’s for when she wants my opinion on something she’s buying for you.
MIDAS: The face is when she -shows- me what she’s thinking of buying.
TB: Well, that’s awkward. I know what she bought me three weeks ago.
MIDAS: Tell me about it. I need eye bleach. Again.
MIDAS: Btw you can thank me for the color. I picked that out.
TB: Now I need brain bleach.
MIDAS: Waters?
WATERS:
MIDAS: What’s with the last one?
TB: I don’t think they have an emoji for it, so he shows her his “nose” is growing.
MIDAS: There’s an eggplant for that, you know.
WATERS: You asked for the first five. Not number 6.
MIDAS: Think I’m glad I didn’t ask for 7, 8, 9, and 10.
WATERS:
GOD: All right. Enough fucking around.
GOD: Knew nothing was ever going to be normal again.
GOD: Be safe. Try not to kill or injure your handler.
GOD:
–God offline
STEEL: Totally believe those are his top 5 emojis.
WATERS: I’m surprised he knew what an emoji was.
DEMON: C u idiots in Better yet hope u die in
WATERS: No time to die. We got shit to do. Take care of her or the women will do worse to you than God will.
–Waters offline
MIDAS: Do you guys think he got Kubrick off on that Houston leg of the trip and just didn’t tell us?
TB: Nah. Not his style. Besides, I was watching too closely, and Nemo would never have missed that for a million years.
–Midas offline
TB: He needs to get over this shit with his brother.
STEEL: He will. Give him time.
TB: New bet needed. Who gives in first? Demon or Midas?
–TB offline
STEEL: Is there surfing in St. Lucia?
DEMON: No big on W coast
DEMON: E coast bttr
STEEL: So… west coast should be good for beginners. Take Cherry. Teach
her. Might help her see you in a different light.
–Steel offline
Demon exited the chat. He contemplated Steel’s suggestion. It might work.
A glance to his left showed Cherry staring at him. “Talking to the guys?”
“Yeah.”
“Are they betting on how soon we’ll sleep together?”
Feck. This was dangerous territory. He didn’t know that’s what the bet was since he came in at the end of the conversation, but if he had to guess? Yes, that’s what he’d thought it was.
“Possibly. Went online in the middle of the conversation.”
“Well, since there’s only one bed, and I refuse to let you sleep on the floor, and I sure as Mary-went-to-the-inn am not sleeping on the floor, whoever said tonight is going to win. What did Steel say?”
“That fecker,” Demon muttered. “Steel said tonight. That’s now what they meant though.”
“No, but the phrasing of the bet matters, yes? So Steel will win.”
“Again,” they said in unison. There was the briefest of pauses before they both chuckled.
“You know what the others predicted, though, and what they’re assuming the bet is versus what it actually is.”
“My knowing doesn’t matter. Nothing happens if you don’t want it to, whether we’re sleeping in the same bed or not, and I don’t give a shite who wins the bet.”
She snuggled back into her pillow. “You should rest.”
“Are you inviting me to sleep with you, Mrs. McCarthy?” he teased .
“I guess I am, Mr. McCarthy.” She knocked on the table that formed a triangle between the two chairs. “This divider thing will keep you safe from me.”
“Hmm. I wonder? Will it keep you safe from me though? I mean… You feel any anxiety on the flight, I’m sure I could ease that. Should you need it.” He winked.
She smiled. “I’ll keep that in mind. Should I need it.” Snuggling back under the blanket, she closed her eyes.
While he watched her, his mind raced. She deserved a man who would give her everything. Love her within an inch of her life and beyond it. Walk through fire for her. Burn the world down for her. Absolutely put her first above all else.
Contemplating the seatback in front of him, he acknowledged it was time for him to get his shite together.
For six years, he’d hidden his fears and insecurities behind a gentle narcotic veil, even if it was only to himself.
He was about to lose the best thing in the world if he couldn’t straighten himself out.
It wasn’t worth holding onto anymore. He could withstand the physical pain for her.
His failure to straighten himself out would doom him to a life without her. It wasn’t worth it.
A quick glance to his left showed that Cherry was fast asleep.
As quietly as possible, he extricated himself from the seat—the throbbing in his back had upped to a dull, constant ache—and headed up to the lavatory.
Once behind the locked door, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a container of mints he carried.
He dumped out the contents—thirty white pills—into the palm of his hand.
Closing his eyes, he gripped the pills tightly in his hand and heaved a sigh of resolution.
It felt melodramatic, but he also felt like the moment needed something to mark it.
He flipped the toilet seat lid up and held his fist over the bowl. He opened his eyes, squared his shoulders, and willed his fist to open.
It stayed closed.
He concentrated all of his efforts on visualizing his fingers fanning open, watching the tablets fall in twos and threes into the bowl. But no matter how hard he concentrated, he couldn’t make it happen.
Only once he’d turned his fist right side up would his fingers flex open. As he stared at the pile in his open hand, he urged the other to rise and brush the contents off its surface.
Nothing happened.
He’d never prayed so hard for turbulence in his life. A sudden jolt in the atmosphere to cause the tablets to bounce out of his hand and into the toilet so he could flush them away.
The plane’s flight continued its smooth travel.
Something pushed forward through the mist in his brain.
A glimmer of who he used to be. Confident.
Easygoing. Quick with a joke. A memory of standing in the emergency room with his trauma team a few months before the tanker accident.
They’d had a hellacious day, but they all stood easily around the nurses’ station in the dark hours of the early morning.
Typical doctors functioning on too much terrible coffee and stale birthday cake from another doctor, but they were laughing and telling bad surgical jokes. They’d been like a family.
Now that particular work family was functioning without him.
Another memory popped into his brain. His solo form emerging from the sea, the lifeless body of a ten-year-old boy in his arms, the water sluicing off both of their bodies as he stumbled to the beach.
A woman screaming at him in Japanese, her tiny fists beating at his back as he laid her boy down gently on the sand.
A man yelling promises of revenge for killing his son.
A family in grief over the son they had lost.
Finally, another image presented itself.
Not one he’d seen in person, but one he’d envisioned in nightmares.
The blackness of a stormy night. Waves battering a tiny yacht.
His sister’s shriek as she was swiped over the side of the ship.
Her boyfriend screaming her name as he reached for her, then was swept over as well.
His mother praying in her native tongue as his father held her close, the water rising steadily higher and higher with them trapped below deck .
Another family ripped apart.
He had no idea how long he’d stood there, locked inside his head. When an insistent knocking at the door broke through his living nightmare, he quickly dumped the pills back into the tin, save two, and shoved it deep in his pocket.
Blood roaring in his ears and rushing through his system, he called out, “Just a moment.” His voice sounded shaken and vulnerable, even to him.
He popped the two oxy into his mouth, swallowing them dry.
He lowered the toilet seat, hit the flush button, and made quick work of washing his hands.
Before he left the bathroom, he scrubbed his face with the cool water and ran his wet fingers through his hair, trying to find some semblance of calm.
Who was he kidding? The real Aidan Parker was dead.
Not just his physical person, whose official death recorded him as being swept away in a surfing accident off the coast of Japan, but everything he had once been was gone.
There was nothing left of who he had been, and who had taken his place was a stranger to him.
A man consumed from the inside out by the demon of self-destruction. The very entity that gave him his name.
Cherry deserved someone real. Someone good. Someone who could stand by her side and be proud of the man he’d become. Not the shell of a doctor who’d promised to heal people and save lives but couldn’t live up to his words. She needed a man who could keep his promises.
Giving the tin inside his pocket a quick rattle to reassure himself that its contents were safely inside, he stood with a last look in the mirror.
Fingers through his dark locks one more time, he surveyed the face staring back at him and came to terms with the fact that he was who he was.
He would never be anyone else. He couldn’t change.
Not even for the one woman he wanted most in his life.