4. Chapter Three
Chapter Three
Kane
The subway is always sparsely populated at this time of day, though the closer you get to the city, the crowd gets thicker.
It’s one of the reasons I chose a place outside the city when I moved here.
I don’t mind the quiet. Sometimes it helps me think, helps me relax, process things.
Other times, it’s a demanding silence, one that unearths everything I try to keep buried, no matter how hard I try.
Aside from Mrs. Burnside and her Cat-topia, not much happens out here, and I like it that way.
Most of the time.
I don’t remember a lot about my childhood because several therapists have said I purposefully blocked it out. But I remember bits and pieces. Moments.
Like walking up and down the street and looking at homes like mine, making up stories about who lives there. Mama was always doing stuff like that. Imagining things. Creating stories. Sometimes I think they were fantasies—things she wished she could have had instead of what she did.
She wanted tall ceilings and potted plants on the stoop. She wanted soft pillows and sunrooms, and what she got was a tuna can in Queens that barely fit the three of us.
I never questioned it, though. It was my life.
I didn’t know we should have had more, didn’t know I was missing out on anything. Not until Jasper fostered me, and I went to school—a private school, nonetheless—for the first time ever.
The shadows dance across the worn, dirty floor of the subway; mimicking the bars of a prison, and I can’t help but wonder sometimes if he did this, too. My father, the Rose Red Killer.
How many times did he ride this very subway, watching from the shadows; studying the people on it like prey while they looked on in ignorance?
Is that how he found his roses? It would be easy, I think.
If one comes at the right time, it would be hard to notice anyone specifically.
One could slip in and out easily with the crowd, and no one would be the wiser.
Though no one knows for certain how he chose his victims, or where he did it, or why, because my father didn’t keep detailed logs like some killers do.
At least, not in our home. Aside from the preserved bodies downstairs—bodies encased naked in glass coffins, like preserved goddesses; save for the blood-drawn roses on their abdomens, there was nothing substantial. No journals, no photographs, no video.
Just some medical equipment and embalming chemicals, which wasn’t strange enough to raise the alarm because my father, Cydney Rose, was a registered mortician.
Plenty of people theorize that he picked his victims randomly because they were all so different.
Different ethnicities, different socio-economical backgrounds.
Jasper says serial killers tend to have a type, a fixation, if you will.
But my father’s victims were all so drastically different, which has been a bone of contention in his case for years.
Of course, I have a theory, but I’ve never actually shared it with anyone, not even Jasper. Because anything I say to him has to be factual. And the only fact he’s interested in is the one thing I can’t remember—exactly what happened the night my mother died.
Jasper says my father’s release is because he didn’t have enough damning evidence to keep him caged beyond circumstantial.
As if the dead bodies encased in glass coffins were somehow not good enough; the entirety of my father’s sentence was—and maybe even still is—on me.
Because I was the only witness to my mother’s murder, the only witness to see the monster he truly was, and I can’t remember.
Yes, I know I was there, but when I try to recall what happened, things are… Fractured. Confusing.
My therapist thinks my inability to remember what happened is a form of self-preservation. Like my brain is somehow forbidding me from remembering what happened because it’s too bad, too traumatic, and reliving it would be akin to reliving the trauma itself that’s shaped who I am.
My former therapists said the same thing, but lawyers and detectives don’t care about how your trauma affects you. All they care about is exploiting it.
But I don’t want to think about such things.
Certainly not right now, of all times. Because I have therapy, and then group afterwards this evening, and I need to keep a clear, steady focus.
I need to be as present as I can be; not for me, but for the others who come here.
To talk, to listen. To be the support they need.
Sometimes that’s all people really need—to know someone’s there. That their voice isn’t falling on deaf ears, that their pain is witnessed, and they aren’t suffering alone, even if it’s for an hour or so.
There’s not much I can do to rectify what my father did.
I can’t bring back the dead; I can’t bring my mother back.
I can’t even remember what happened, though I wish I could.
It would make my life a lot easier, no doubt.
Maybe even bring me some form of relief.
But I can’t focus on the should haves, could haves, would haves.
What I can do is try my best to atone and make amends for the sins of my father. What I can do is put one foot in front of the other. Sit still for an hour or so, and not feel so isolated in this fucked up world because I’m not the only one who wishes it could have been me in her place.
Sometimes, I wonder if there will ever be a day when I won’t feel this way, when I won’t have to go to therapy twice a week and group once a week to sit and stew in the sparing truths I let out, drip by drip.
If one day I won’t soothe the ache with domination or drinking until I can’t see names or hear faces because it’s the only way I can let myself lose control. Blame it on the alcohol and bad decisions, not on me and my fucked up needs and trauma.
Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever be free of these invisible chains.
I’m not sure that day will ever come though, to be honest. This is real life, not some Lucky Charms commercial. There are no pots of gold at the end of my rainbow, just pain, guilt. Loneliness.
So much fucking loneliness…
Another heavy shadow looms over the corner, painting a tall shape that looks far too familiar, even though I haven’t seen him in over twenty years, since that night.
I see him in every shadow, every six-foot-tall man with dark hair.
I feel his gaze on me even though I know he’s nowhere near me.
I don’t even know if he’s alive, to tell the truth. No one knows.
Still, I can’t escape him. I dream of his wolfy growl, and his wicked tongue. I dream of his warm yet harsh palm, or the crisp sting of his belt against my skin as he reminds me that he brought me into this world, and he can take me right back out.
I believed him. Hell, I always believed my father was capable of scary things, I just didn’t know until that fateful day how horrifying he truly was.
Does Unknown know this terror, too? Did they know him at all? Or are they blissfully living their life unaware that they share the blood with a killer, or with me? I don’t know, and the thought makes me as remorseful and guilty as it does envious.
I haven’t been able to find much about Unknown, and I’m not exactly an expert hacker like my former acquaintance, Robbie. Who’s apparently serving time for kidnapping and attempted murder of his former boss, Sloane Pierce, owner of one of the biggest security software companies around.
Just my fucking luck.
I stare at my hands, trying to steady them as they shake. No matter how many times I do this, no matter how many times I come here, the anxiety never goes away. The paranoia that I’ll suddenly remember what happened.
Which is what I want, but…
But there’s also a sort of sombre contentness to not remembering, too.
I know soon enough the relief and self-loathing will rise, threatening to devour me when I can’t, and the guilt and remorse will stab me like a knife because I can’t.
Finally, my stop arrives, and I get off just as a dense crowd of people bottleneck into the car.
The air is putrid and thick; the stench of the sewers mingling and making my stomach roil. I shove my hands in my pockets and head up the stairs, out into the chilly, unforgiving air.
It doesn’t take long for me to get to Margaret’s building, mostly because I’m too anxious and too cold to take my time.
The only good thing about coming here is that my therapist’s office isn’t too far from the building where group meets, which is why I try to schedule my appointments in the evening on Tuesdays.
I’d rather not do therapy at all, but Jasper has insisted I go most of my life, so it’s more of a habit than anything else at this point.
Though I’m not a kid anymore; I’m thirty-seven. I don’t have to do anything for that asshole. But for some reason, I keep coming even though I know I could just stop doing so. Maybe one day I’ll figure out what that reason is, but today probably isn’t that day.
I find my seat in the corner, sprawling out in the squeaky leather chair.
Her waiting room smells like lavender and sage, which isn’t terrible, but it doesn’t help my migraine.
A moment later, the door opens, and Margaret glances at me over her big oval glasses, her silver Tiffany chain glinting in the low light as a young woman leaves her office, her eyes rimmed with tears and her cheeks flushed.
She speeds out of here fast, and if that isn’t an ominous omen, I don’t know what is.
“Mr. Carson,” she says, her tone neutral as always. The woman never smiles. But I guess if I had to work with people like myself every day, I’d probably adopt a resting bitch face, too, out of necessity. Call it self-preservation.