“Why are you a bitch most days?”
Cereus studies me for a moment. “I find it hard to relate to people. Especially people my age. I prefer to lose myself in my artwork than do the usual teenage things. This trip to the cinema, for example, was Stacy’s idea. She freaking begged me to come and then left me there alone.” She throws a chip back on her plate and rubs her hands together to remove the salt and grease.
“You paint?”
“I can but I prefer to draw. I like to create the world how I see it. I know it’s a lot different to how everyone else sees it,” she says shyly, and my curiosity to know if she sees it like me is almost consuming.
“I draw, and I see the world differently too,” I say.
Her eyes dance with inquisitiveness. She pulls the bun from her burger and eats some of the lettuce inside, slowly chewing it while she studies me. I stare back at her with the same look. Shifting forward in her seat so her arms rest on the table, she asks in a lowered tone, “How do you see it?”
“In shadow,” I reply without pause.
She sits back quickly as if I struck her physically with my answer. “Like everything and everyone is a back drop, and your heart beats alone despite the thumping of all the others’ surrounding you,” she whispers.
My pulse quickens and the world around me doesn’t just sit in shadow, it completely obscures. Cereus becomes the only one left in color amongst the darkening fog that is me threatening to devour the world. She’s different; she has my blood in her veins. I always knew she was unique like me from the first time I saw her picture.
After chatting more about her artwork for an hour, we both finish eating I walk her back to the cinema and cab for her. She agrees to meet me the next day to show me around an arts and craft market she likes to get supplies from.
The day turns into a couple of weeks of us spending our evenings together. There’s a sense of ease in her presence, and she must feel it too because she initiates us spending the time together. I learn a lot about her, soaking up everything she tells me and storing it for later use. She tells me about her teacher giving her a hard time, and she mentions the boy, Matt, she’s dating although she hasn’t spent any time with him in the past few weeks because she’s been spending all her free time with me.
We stand on a platform, waiting for the subway to take her back to school after her couple of hours recess.
She’s wearing jean shorts and a top that shows her midriff. She’s coated her lips in a gloss that makes them shine. It’s as if she wants to get my attention as a man looking at a woman. Sexual attraction isn’t something I feel. Whenever I see a woman who is attractive, my mind thinks of ways to ruin her and degrade her sexually to make her unattractive to herself. I don’t like the idea that Cereus wants me to see her in a sexual way. I see her for the brilliance she is. As much as I’d like to think she’s different and just like me, there are traits in her that are entirely foreign and absent in me. She has a conscience and doesn’t have the pulsating need to act out the depravities we entertain in our thoughts. She’ll mock someone for their stupidity if they mess up our order or if they’re driving erratically, and she has little to no patience for most people when they strike up a conversation with her. She excels in school but hates going. She hates authority and is very mature for her age. She has some darkness in her, but like with her father, it doesn’t command her. She can control the urge to do bad things.
She’s just told me about the only time she lost control, and it was on one of her cousins because he lifted her skirt and pulled down her underwear when she was younger. She described her rage like a red cloud fogging her sight just like mine. The punch to the face she gave him knocked him on his back. The way she relived his screaming brought a smile to her face, and when I saw her demons holding her in their grip, it was glorious.
“I stood on his balls,” she gloats. “It took both his Mom and Dad to pull me off him. That was the only time I lost control of myself. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted to stamp all over him.”
I wish she had. She could have been committed with me.
“They put you away for thoughts like that, Cereus. They did that to me because they said I was sick.”
Her intake of breath makes me pause. “They put you away for wanting to stamp on someone’s balls?” she jokes, trying to make light of what I said.
“Unlike with you, my compulsions are more demanding. They need to be fed. It’s like something inside claws at my skin.” I shiver. “I only ever feel a release from the empty darkness consuming me when I feed it by inflicting some form of hurt or humiliation on another.”
It’s risky telling her so much, and I don’t know what she knows about me from Melody and Blake. When she knows I’m the demon, not just hosting one that lurks inside, she might abandon me and tell her parents I sought her out. They’ll never let her see me again.
She must sense my hesitation because her palm slips into mine. “Why do you like spending time with me? You’re clearly not a pervert because you’ve never tried anything with me. I wore this outfit to draw you out, and you barely care that I’m half naked. Is it because of these compulsions you have? Did you see something in me, something telling you I’m like you?” she asks, genuinely interested to know if I think we’re the same.
“It’s not a coincidence that we met.”
Her hand drops from mine and I breathe in to steady my satisfaction of her wary stance and the small hint of fear in her eyes. I don’t want her to fear me but my own ego still gets off on the fact that she does.
“What does that mean?” she asks.
“What do you know about your father’s brother?”
She looks perplexed then a small chuckle rattles from her chest.
“What’s amusing?” I ask, angered by her reaction.
“I’m sorry. It’s just, my Dad doesn’t have a brother.”
Her Dad doesn’t have a brother? I shouldn’t be offended or surprised but I am. He never told her about me? The cunt so easily replaced me with his own child, and wiped me from his family and thoughts! I should throw her in front of a train and watch him drown in grief but I don’t want to hurt her. She’s a part of me. She understands on some level what no one else has, me.
“What about your Mom? Has she ever mentioned a brother or her parents?”
I have her attention now and her arms wrap around her stomach in a protective gesture.
“My Mom’s an only child. Her parents died in a traffic accident before I was born. Ryan, what is this? Who are you?”
“You’re right about your Mom not having siblings. She had a fake brother for awhile but he doesn’t count. Your Dad, however, has a brother. A younger brother called Ryan. Me.”
“That can’t be right. I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t he tell me about you?”
I roll my shoulders. “Because I was put away for a long time and he forgot about me.”
She shakes her head in disbelief. “He wouldn’t just forget he has a brother, Ryan! There has to be more.”
“I did some bad things and that’s why I was put away. With him being a detective, it looked bad on him and he was angry with me.”
Cereus looks down at her feet. “How bad were the things you did?”
“That depends who you ask.” I smirk and shrug my shoulders. She doesn’t smile in return; her face is stone.
“I’m asking you.”
“Then not that bad at all.”
She nods in understanding.
“You can’t tell your parents about us spending time together, Cereus. They won’t allow it if you do.”
“Okay,” she agrees, and then shyly smiles up at me, her hands dropping to her sides.