Chapter Six
Lilith
Three Years Later
“Ihad another dream last night.”
I hate how weak I sound. It’s been so long, but I’m still haunted daily by ghosts of the past.
“The same one as before. Flashes of what happened, mixed with my imagination running wild.”
I feel sick just thinking about it.
“It usually starts the same. Panicked breathing and wrestling with the ropes. I’m lightheaded and dizzy from whatever drug Tom gave me screwing with my head.
I feel Tom’s body weighing me down; his hands are feeling me up like I’m some damned trophy.
Faceless men surround us on all sides, chanting garbled sounds. ” I continue. “Then he arrives.”
Dr. Vivienne Rice sits opposite me, her legs crossed at the ankle, jotting notes as I speak. There’s no rush, no judgment, just watching and listening.
“Go on?” she encourages me.
“Then… there’s the mask.” I gulp as the image flashes in my mind.
“It’s expressionless and smooth. And that’s where my imagination starts playing tricks on me.
There aren’t eyes behind the sockets, only two black holes that seem to stretch out to infinity.
They hold me there as he does his dirty work on Tom and the others. ”
“Does he ever hurt you in these dreams?”
I shake my head. “Never.”
She writes down my answer.
“Why do you think this dream is significant?” she asks.
Calling them dreams instead of nightmares was Dr. Rice’s suggestion, during one of our earliest sessions. She said it would take the power away from them if I used kinder language. Said I’d be able to come to terms with it more easily, if my viewpoint wasn’t purely negative.
I don’t buy it myself. Dreams, nightmares, sleepy time hallucinations; call them whatever you’d like, they terrify me all the same.
“I don’t. Not usually, anyway. But it ended differently this time,” I say.
Honesty in therapy is the only way to overcome the problems, even if it means saying things you’d never say otherwise.
“It didn’t fade to black when Tom fell over.
I didn’t wake up in a cold sweat or feverish panic.
This time he crawled onto the altar with me still on it.
Started touching my thighs, my hips, my breasts. ”
The part I find most fucked up is how much I enjoyed it. Not only in the dreamscape, but even after I woke up. My pussy tingled with a hot throbbing want, and I had a hand halfway down my pants to satisfy it.
“Am I broken, Doc?” I ask, leaving out some of the details of the dream. I painted a good enough picture without having to tell her it ended with his mask between my legs.
Dr. Rice smiles. “No, you’re not broken, Lilith. Consciously or not, you’ve been fixated on this for years. In some circles, dreams are considered a way for us to process trauma and consolidate memories. In your case, they’re one and the same.”
I can’t imagine what my cheeks look like as I process my next question, and if the scorching heat radiating off of them is any indication, I’d have to guess two big, juicy tomatoes. “But why was it a sexy dream? With him…”
She opens her mouth and I regret the question immediately. No answer will change how crazy I sound.
“It goes back to what I said earlier about fixation.” She’s incredibly calm when we talk about serious topics. It’s one of the reasons I like her so much.
Another is that her office has become somewhat of a safe haven over the years.
It’s the only place in this godforsaken city where I can speak freely and not feel judged.
Dr. Rice has spent years in this room with me, and she’s the only person who has heard my side of the story and didn’t jump to the conclusion that I’m batshit crazy.
It shouldn’t have been hard to convince the rest of the world about that, either.
But somehow, the man in the mask made it so.
News outlets reported on it in the weeks following my visit to the Henderson mansion.
I’d spoken to two of them to get my story out, but I got brushed aside and labeled an attention seeker because of it.
What they want people to believe is that Tom and his frat buddies were abducted.
Boys being boys and all, they were messing around in the trees around the mansion, when some terrorist cell snatched them.
This, even though no proof was ever brought forward about the claim and no ransom was ever asked.
I remember one time that Maxwell Henderson appeared on TV for an interview.
He looked awfully stoic and not sad in the slightest. It was almost as if he knew that Tom hadn’t been kidnapped.
His matter-of-fact language reaffirmed that, to me at least. Right at the end of the interview, his face started twitching.
The reporter was saying something along the lines of it’s a real tragedy, the way reporters do.
But Maxwell’s face just couldn’t stay still.
Then he turned directly to one of the cameras and started shouting at it.
He didn’t demand anything, just started yelling threats at whoever the person was who was responsible for his son’s death.
It was a short rant, directed at the man in the mask, saying he was going to use every resource at his disposal to get justice for Tom.
I felt bad for him.
Funny how that works, isn’t it? Being sad for the dad, knowing his son was a total piece of shit.
Nothing ever came of it after that. The searches continued for a while but, just like everything else in Midnite City, Tom’s disappearance became old news in a matter of weeks.
“The man who saved you—“ she starts up again, noticing I’m drifting off to my own little world inside my head.
“If murder counts as being saved,” I say, not thinking much about it before I speak.
“He stopped the assault and pulled you away from danger. Whatever his motives and methods, he saved your life.” Even given the rude way I cut her off, Dr. Rice’s tone stays calm and reassuring.
She’s right, but that doesn’t make it any easier.
“He didn’t hesitate,” I say, as if it’s going to change her mind about him saving me. “Not for a second. Cut them down like he was mowing his lawn on a Sunday morning.”
“Does that worry you?” she asks. “That you were spared and they weren’t?”
I shake my head, burying my face into the cushion. “What scares me is the reason he let me live. I wonder why I’m a special one who deserved to be spared from his slaughter.”
“A fear of the unknown then?” She writes and speaks in tandem.
“Yes.”
“What if there’s nothing else to it?” She looks up, smiling. She has a warm, pretty smile. Motherly in a way. “What if this stranger just caught wind of what was going to happen and decided to enact his own brand of vigilante justice?”
I perk up on the sofa, pressing myself up by my elbows to look at her. “I haven’t thought about it that way.”
Her question is supposed to make me feel better; to give me hope that there’s something good in the bad.
I’m glad I got out unharmed, but we live in a world with laws and rules. No one person should feel confident enough in their own sense of justice to take matters into his own hands. The five men who died should have had their day in court, facing justice the way everyone else does.
Right?
“I used to be na?ve,” I shift topics. Partly because I’ve barked up this tree many times before, but mostly because I’m afraid she might convince me otherwise, if I’m not careful.
“I used to believe I could be like my mother. That I could conquer men with my keen mind and beautiful body, the way she does.”
I groan as I journey down memory lane. “The whole reason I went there was to find a way to get into Lux-Peak. Who better to give it to me than the heir, right?” I shrug, collapsing back into the sofa.
“I was blinded by the ambition to take control of my life, so I couldn’t see the threat that was right in front of me. ”
I’ve learned a lot about myself over the years. My goal of being successful and standing on my own two feet remains, but I now know that it will never come from being like Mom. I don’t have her cunning intuition when it comes to men. Or people in general, I guess.
“It’s not naivety that led you down that path, Lilith.
Children are a mirror of their parents,” she says.
“Believing that you could do as she does isn’t a reason to think this is your fault.
It’s why keeping your head held high is so important.
Use the horrors of the past as fuel for a better tomorrow. ”
“How do you do that?” I sigh. “I’ve done everything you’ve suggested. I keep a journal; I get more sun and exercise. I even got a boxing bag to get my frustration out. No matter what I try, I can’t get him out of my head.”
That last part wasn’t meant to come out. I switched subjects with the specific intention of not talking about him, and yet, the man in the mask has managed to surface yet again.
“It takes time. Some wounds heal in weeks, others take years. Everyone’s different. As long as you’re focusing on today, tomorrow will reveal the fruits of your labor.” She takes a sip of water from a glass next to her.
I do the same with the plastic bottle she set on the table for me before I got here.
“May I suggest something?” she asks, once we’re sufficiently hydrated.
“Anything.” My desperation is showing a little too much today.
“Instead of focusing on the worst, why don’t you tell me about what’s gotten better for you since that night?” She sets the clipboard on her lap and leans back in her chair to create the impression that we’re just chatting.
I have to think about it for way too long before something springs to mind.
“I love my job. I get to spend my days surrounded by a lot of different animals,” I say. We’ve spoken about it before, but working at The Barkhouse is one of the best things in my life. “And I’ll have my degree by winter.”
Animal studies and biological conservation.
Humanity is a lost cause. We overpopulate, pollute and kill our Earth with disregard for future generations. Our habits are unsustainable and will someday lead to our demise. But nature will endure, and I want to play a part in seeing it prosper and thrive, when that time comes.
She flips the pad shut. “See? There is more to life than one bad day.”
I smile, but don’t say anything. She’s not wrong, but she isn’t right either. One bad day is enough to define the rest of your life, whether there’s more to it or not.
“May I ask you a personal question?”
I face her. “Sure.”
“Is your mother still going through with the wedding?” I regret giving her permission to ask.
“Unfortunately.” I swallow hard, nearly choking on the bitter pill it is to admit that.
Dr. Rice chuckles to break the tension. “Have you had a chance to finally meet the groom-to-be?”
“Funny you should ask.” Not really. I’ve expressed my dissatisfaction to Dr. Rice before; that we’re only days out from the wedding and haven’t met the guy.
That’s probably why she’s asking about it now.
“We’re having dinner with him tonight. I am not sure I like that.
Stringing some guy along is one thing, but going through with a marriage to do it? ”
“Perhaps your mother has found real love this time.” Dr. Rice is doing everything in her power to flip my viewpoint, and I try to hear her as well as I can.
Not with this, though. Not with Mom.
She doesn’t know my mom apart from what I’ve told her.
Nothing Mom does is done out of love. Her eyes are set on some distant horizon, that’s impossible to attain, yet she toils on to reach it.
She has more cash than one person needs, and she got bumped up to Vice President of MilGen not long ago. Mom doesn’t need to get ahead anymore.
She simply wants to. Some people are just born with that killer instinct.
“Maybe,” I reply. There’s no use in arguing. Not until I’ve seen their love with my own eyes.
A buzzer goes off on a small table next to Dr. Rice. She reaches over and silences it.
“Can you believe it’s been an hour already?” she asks.
I really can’t.
We say our goodbyes, and I head out.
As I step out of her office and onto the street, an uneasy tickle crawls over my skin, making the hair on the back of my neck stand upright. It’s not a feeling that’s born out of danger, at least I don’t think so. The street’s too busy for anyone to move on me. Nor is it from paranoia or dread.
However, as I scan the sidewalk, I can’t shake the uneasy feeling that’s taking hold of me. The feeling that a set of eyes is holding me in focus.
Watching.
Waiting.