The Bride Collector

12
ROUDY SAT IN the corner of his room, hugging his knees close to his chest. His hair looked like a twister had passed through it overnight, his face was as blank as a bleached sheet, his lips moved in a rapid inaudible whisper. Paradise stood at his doorway, doorknob in hand, momentarily frozen by the change in him. It wasn’t often that this kind of depression overtook Roudy, but when it did he spiraled to the lowest of lows.
“Oh, no.” Andrea stared at the tossed room from behind Paradise. Roudy’s white bedsheets lay in a heap next to three books spread open where they’d been dumped. A bowl of uneaten Cheerios sat on the desk, surrounded by spilled cereal from a tipped yellow box.
“Oh, no, oh no…” Andrea had woken in a state of terrible anxiety herself, and seeing Roudy in this state would likely push her even deeper into her own fear and misery.
“It’s okay, Andrea,” Paradise said softly, stepping into the room.
“No, no, no.” She rushed past Paradise and flew to the corner, where she dropped to her knees and threw her arms around Roudy, weeping. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Roudy mumbled softly, but otherwise gave no indication he was even aware they’d entered his room.
Paradise walked halfway to them and stopped. She’d come to inform Roudy that the FBI needed her. That she, Paradise Founder, the simple twenty-four-year-old girl who’d supposedly suffered a psychotic break at age seventeen, was finally valued by someone on the outside. The world needed her.
The FBI had brought a body for her.
It was exhilarating! Downright terrifying. They were looking to her, Paradise. Special Agent Brad Raines, a real man who pressed his clothes and wore cologne and who was a star in the real world, needed her.
She’d come for Roudy’s enthusiastic support or maybe a bit of his jealousy, honestly she didn’t know which. Instead, she’d found this—a shell of a man stripped of his sense of worth. He would have nothing for her, and for a moment she resented him, sitting there so helpless and feeble, whimpering with grief.
To make matters worse, Andrea would join him, leaving Paradise to glory in her small spotlight alone, which made it no spotlight at all.
When Roudy didn’t respond to Andrea’s weeping, the girl sank to the floor, curled up in a ball, and continued crying softly.
“The FBI are bringing me a body, Roudy,” Paradise said. “They want my help. Maybe you could help, too.”
At any other time, Sherlock would be consumed by his own delusions of grandeur, pacing, jabbing the air, insisting that he join her. That without his help all would be lost. That not to include him would be criminal, prosecutable.
Andrea would be snapping at him, telling him to mind his own business. That this was Paradise’s time for a little attention, although they all knew that Mr. Raines only had one thing on his mind. Still, it was something.
Instead they were both ravaged by the monsters inside them.
Paradise’s empathy for Roudy washed away her own need for attention. Dark depression was a beast that visited many here, a debilitating illness that could be managed by drugs at times, but never at the expense of human touch and love.
The FBI could wait.
Paradise walked up to Roudy, settled to her knees, and gently rubbed his back. The only time she could hold a man was when he was broken and in need of comfort.
“It’s okay, Roudy. It’s going to be okay. This will pass.”
In response he just moaned.
“You have to get better quickly, Sherlock. They’re going to need you. They’re at their wits’ end and they’re going to need the best.”
He began to relax, then slowly he turned his wide eyes to look at her. She believed his mind was working, screaming for him to acknowledge her wisdom, but his emotions had shut him down for now.
She kissed him on the forehead and gently placed both arms around his shoulders. “This is the price we pay for being so good at what we do, right? But it’s okay, because you help so many people, Roudy. I’m very proud of you. We all are.”
He went limp, and she let him lean into her. Andrea was looking up from the floor like a puppy who wanted some attention as well. Paradise stroked her hair. “We’re so proud of both of you.”
They remained on the floor for several long minutes, letting the pain work its course, and for a while Paradise forgot that she had been on her way to the front office. Her ability to bring comfort to a few here at CWI had become the greater part of her identity. The attention from the FBI, however flattering, was only a recent and likely passing distraction in her world.
But they were waiting. Brad was waiting.
“I have to go, but I’ll be back,” she finally said. “This will pass, Roudy. And when it does, we’re going to need you.”
Andrea pushed herself to her knees, then stood and walked out of the room like a zombie. Headed to her own room for a shower, undoubtedly.
“I’m the best,” Roudy mumbled.
Paradise returned her attention to the man who was staring at the wall. “Yes, you are. You always have been.”
He looked at her, lips quivering. “Tell them I’m sorry. I’m not so good right now. I’m very sorry, maybe later.”
“I will.”
She stood, patted him twice on his shoulder, and left. She closed his door behind her, slipped down the hall, and hurried through the hub. Francie Horner stood in the middle of the floor with her hair teased up into an Afro, staring. Flower sat next to the wall tracing something on the window, watching Paradise along with half a dozen other residents. Was her reputation getting out?
For a moment she was tempted to run back to the room and stay with Roudy where she belonged. What did she think she was going to do, anyway? Touch the dead and give them the name of the killer? She was almost certain she couldn’t help them. Truth be told, she’d gone along with all of this because of him.
Because of Brad Raines. The first man in her memory who had shown the remotest interest in her beyond the kind Casanova routinely offered.
But they were waiting for her. She’d put herself in a predicament, and now she had to finish what she had started.
She walked down the path and entered the front reception area. The nurse, Jonathan, was waiting for her. “Hey, Paradise. They went to the kitchen.”
“Behind the hub?”
“Something about refrigeration. Allison said she’d meet you there.”
“They have the body in the kitchen?” She was dumbfounded. It would mean going back through the hub! Jonathan must have seen the look of concern on her face.
“Come on, I’ll take you around through the delivery entrance.”
“It goes by the fence,” she said.
“It’s either around the wing or through the hub. Your call.”
“Fine, around the wing.” But she never liked being so close to the fence, the only thing between her and the outside world.
Jonathan led her back across the lawn, around the building, and unlocked the entrance used for deliveries. “You know where you’re going from here?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, see you around.”
“Yeah. See you.”
At the moment she felt like anything but a ghost reader. She’d make a complete fool of herself.
Paradise walked down a hall littered with boxes of olive oil and soups, a few crates of onions and potatoes. She stepped through the kitchen’s back door and studied the scene before her.
The kitchen had a large center island covered in stainless steel, which was used for food preparation. Utensils and pans hung from a rack overhead. The stoves lined the far right wall; a large walk-in fridge opened on the left. There was no sign of a body anywhere, so Paradise assumed they put it in the refrigerator to keep it cool.
Brad Raines was talking quietly to Allison, both of them with their backs toward her. Something about the funding behind the center and cost of operations. He stood a full head taller than Allison, blond hair neatly trimmed around his ears, above his collar in the back. He wore a white shirt with sleeves rolled up. Black slacks and shoes. A belt. Very neat, very ordered.
Paradise stood still, aware that they hadn’t expected her to come through the back. She could turn and sneak out, avoiding the embarrassment of talking to him again after running away. Did he think she was crazy? Surely, he did. She’d lectured him and then fled at his mere mention of leaving her safe haven.
Maybe she really was crazy. But she wasn’t, she knew that. She was, however, intimidated by the man who stood across the room. He completely outclassed her. He, the specimen of perfection, standing head and shoulders above her.
He had watched her with sincere interest. And honestly, that was the real irony, wasn’t it? He had no business looking at her with any kind of interest, because she neither deserved nor wanted it. She was dirt in his world.
Paradise had no adult experience in that world, and looking at Brad now, it occurred to her that the only way to cope with him was to bring him down to her level, even if just a little. Not by being mean to him, but by pretending to be his equal, maybe even his superior in some respects.
Wasn’t that what she’d done during most of their first meeting? She’d protected herself by coming off distant and in command of the situation. She had to do that again or risk falling apart in front of him.
She couldn’t let him know how much she liked him.
Paradise gasped and jerked back into the hall. How could she think such a thing? It wasn’t true, of course, not in the faintest. She liked him, but not in that way.
Allison called out. “Paradise?”
The thought that she might actually be attracted to this man terrified her. It made her feel like a worm, knowing that he couldn’t ever, under any circumstances, bring himself to return any affection for a piece of waste like her.
“Are you there?”
She had to control herself!
Paradise took a deep, calming breath, absently smoothed her hair, and stepped out. They were both looking in her direction. She thought she should say something that demonstrated anything but the fear she felt, but instead she stopped and stared at them.
Mr. Raines (she couldn’t call him Brad any longer) smiled. “Hello, Paradise.”
“Hello.”
“Thank you for coming.”
The way he was looking at her… She knew it was just normal and friendly. After all, he needed her help, so he was being nice. But it was so easy to misinterpret his look as something more. As interest. She had to gain control!
“Well, I doubt I can be of any help,” she said walking forward, hoping that he didn’t see the slight shake in her hands. “But so that you can get this off your mind and move on, I’ll do my trick for you.”
“Trick?”
“Trick, show, whatever. I’ll be your monkey in this little zoo you’ve set up so you can get down to real work.”
“Paradise…,” Allison warned her.
“Sorry, but it’s true, isn’t it?”
Mr. Raines looked tongue-tied, and that gave Paradise a moment’s encouragement. She might be nothing in his world, but here she could still be somebody. And was. Roudy and Andrea might even be proud of her.
“So where’s the body?”
The walk-in refrigeration unit was around the wall to the right, and Mr. Raines called to someone. “Steve?”
A few moments later, a paramedic wearing a stethoscope wheeled a gurney around the corner. The body was covered in a white sheet, but the woman’s form was unmistakable.
Paradise stared at the body and let her mind go where it wanted to go, into the hidden folds of story behind what her eyes saw.
I see the woman rising from the sheet, swinging off the gurney, stepping backward toward the door. The sheet becomes a dress on her fair frame. Back through the door, then fast through the city to her own house and inside, where a man is waiting for her. She is kissing the man, turning in circles like they are lovers dancing. But then he comes around again, and I see that he isn’t a man at all. The woman is kissing a gorilla who suddenly bares its fangs and…
“Paradise?”
She looked at Allison. “What?”
They just looked at her. She had to get back on track. She felt panic crowding her mind, but managed to push it back.
“There’s too many people here.”
The paramedic glanced at Mr. Raines, who nodded. “I’ll just step outside,” the medic said, then left the three of them with the body.
“Is that better?” Allison asked.
Mr. Raines—Brad to those closer to him, to his friends, his peers, and his lovers—was watching her. She had to stay strong.
“Yes, that’s better,” she said, moving forward. “So what exactly do you want me to do, Mr. Raines? Fondle a dead body in front of you?”
“Paradise!”
“You’re right, that wasn’t called for,” she said, horrified at her choice of words. “Sorry, that’s not what I meant.”
“No need to apologize,” Mr. Raines said. “Trust me, I’m grateful that you’ve agreed to try to help us out. I realize that this is unprecedented. I feel a bit awkward myself.”
“Why, because you’re not used to working with monkeys?”
“Well, no, that’s not what I was thinking.”
“But it’s at least partly true. You could never feel comfortable in the company of people like us. We’re all just too weird for you.”
Allison tried to steer her right again. “Please, Paradise, this isn’t time for—”
“For transparency?” she interrupted. “No, not in front of real people.”
Even as she spoke, Paradise heard the unkindness of her own words and wanted to take them back. They even seemed to jolt Allison. For a long time she stared at Paradise while Brad shifted his eyes between them.
“You’re right,” Allison said. Then, turning to Mr. Raines, “She’s right. This whole thing is absurd. You’re using her for your own selfish purposes without rightly respecting her own needs. I think this is all a mistake. Maybe you should just leave.”
What? No! Not yet.
“I’m sorry.” Brad—Mr. Raines—looked dumbfounded. The poor man must be thinking he’d entered the twilight zone. “I thought we had an understanding. We went to considerable trouble bringing the body here.”
“But you see, that’s the problem,” Allison said. “To you this is all considerable trouble. Where does that leave Paradise? I think we need to consider her needs in this exchange, don’t you?”
“Yes. Of course, but I wasn’t aware that we’d failed to do that.”
It occurred to her that they were both treating her like a child. She wasn’t a child. “I don’t have any needs you can take care of, Mr. Raines. And the last thing I need is for you to play matchmaker, Allison.” Too much information. She couldn’t seem to stop putting her foot in her mouth! “I don’t have the slightest interest in that aspect of this encounter. But you’ve come all this way, so let’s finish.”
Before I ask you to hold me, Brad, because the truth is I would dream about a man like you every waking moment if I allowed myself to. I would lay myself on a sacrificial altar to float through space with you. But I can’t so I won’t, not ever.
Nonsense! It just wasn’t true!
She stepped around the stainless-steel island and approached the gurney.
“I’m sorry, Paradise. Really, we don’t have to do this if you feel uncomfortable.” Brad, yes Brad, because his name was Brad, stepped to the other side of the body. Allison seemed content to remain where she stood.
“It’s fine, Mr. Raines. I just don’t know exactly what you expect me to do.”
“You said you saw these… ghosts… a couple of times before. Twice when you came in contact with deceased bodies.”
“Yes. But I have to tell you that most of the ‘ghosts’ I see are just figments of my imagination.” Blue butterflies flying through the window behind you, sailing to space, singing wonderfully. “I can’t explain what I saw or why I saw it.”
“What did you see?”
She hesitated, reaching back for the memory. “I saw the ghost of the paramedic leaning over one, telling her that everything was going to be okay. I saw his ghost.”
“Or the dead person’s last memory of him,” he said gently, with true interest.
She nodded. “Or her memory of him.”
The exchange bolstered her all of a sudden. And Brad Raines was a beautiful man. She couldn’t pretend that he wasn’t. It was no wonder that Andrea was so suspicious of him. His face was smooth, like a boy’s, even though his jaw was strong and he was maybe thirty. His brown eyes looked like dark amber crystals, his lips were smooth, and his hair looked soft. She would like to touch it in her dreams of him.
She was ashamed that she was still looking at him. Why didn’t he look away? Was he so amazed at her courage, staring back at him even though she couldn’t measure up? Was he surprised that she didn’t understand her place as the rag he used to shine his shoes? How dare she stare into his eyes!
The moment of silence stretched and Paradise fought an urge to run away.
“Thank you for doing this, Paradise,” Brad said. “I realize how awkward this is for you, and I want you to know that I don’t expect anything. It doesn’t matter if you don’t see anything.”
It was kind of him, and she thought he meant what he said.
“But since we’re here, why don’t we give it a try?”
She nodded.
Brad reached down, took the hem of the sheet in his fingers, and pulled it down. Her eyes were on his fingernails, how clean they were. Being clean and tidy must be important to him. She didn’t know how to be like that, and she hated herself for it.
“Her name is Melissa,” Brad said.
Paradise blinked and looked at the dead woman’s pretty, pasty-white face. There was a cut above her right temple. Perfect lips, perfect skin.
She hated Melissa.
But that was ridiculous. She hated no one, not even her own father. What was getting into her? “She died last night,” Brad said.
Her mind began to fill with the circumstances surrounding the woman’s death, abstract images that come from her own imagination. The dancing lover and the ape biting off her face.
Paradise was suddenly unsure she could go through with this. Mnemophobia offered only a fine line between the fear of bad memories and the fear of creating new bad memories, and though she’d worked through it all with Allison, she now felt those old fingers of fear reaching up inside of her.
It should be me, she thought. I should be dead instead of this beautiful woman. I’m not even a woman, not really.
But she was here and he was waiting and the fear of disappointing him was as great as her fear of creating a bad memory by touching such a beautiful dead body. So she stretched out her hand, tried and failed to still her quivering fingers, and gently touched Melissa’s white cheek.
She felt only the bloodless skin, chilled by the refrigerator’s cool air. She saw no ghosts. No visions. Not even an image spawned by her own overactive imagination. Just a dead girl on a gurney, cold to the touch.
Paradise left her fingers on the face and glanced up at Brad, whose eyes rose to meet hers, searching.
What did you expect, a butterfly to fly out of her mouth when I touched her? A frog to leap out of my shirt? A ghost to pop out of her? I never did deserve to be in here with you, so may I crawl back into my corner now? I’ll just rock and moan for a while like a good monkey.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Nothing, huh?”
“I told you.”
“Nothing at all? Not even a… thought?”
“Nothing.” She removed her hand. “I’m s…”
But she didn’t get to say sorry, because in that moment her vision suddenly went black. A voice echoed in the darkness, speaking to her. “I’m going to drill some small holes in your heels, about half an inch wide, but don’t worry, as soon as your blood drains out, I’ll plug them back up. You’ll still be beautiful. Perfect. Okay?”
A woman’s voice: “Okay.” Melissa’s voice, only it felt like it was coming from Paradise, because in this moment, Paradise was Melissa.
Her mind reeled with objection and she reached for something to steady herself. Flesh filled her hand. Melissa’s flesh. But Paradise was in a full panic and felt like she was going to fall, so she held tight.
“Melissa?” A man’s voice filled her head. His voice. Did she know this voice? Had she heard this voice, felt this hot breath on her cheek?
A face filled her vision. His face. A handsome clean-cut face with strong cheekbones and dark hair. Genuine, smiling eyes as he reached a gloved hand for her cheek and stroked her skin with his thumb.
“So beautiful, my dear. You are his favorite, remember that. And that makes you my favorite, because you were lost but now you are found. I found you. Think of me as God, it will help you.”
Horror at the sound of that familiar voice slammed into Paradise and robbed her of breath. She tried to pull her hand away, but her fingers were latched on to the body’s cold flesh as if they wanted more. A part of her needed to know more.
Paradise screamed and jerked back with all her strength. Her hand slipped free and the blackness cleared, but now she was reeling backward, tripping. She crashed into the stove behind her and fell to the ground, hard.
The landing knocked the wind from her, silencing her scream. She lay on the smooth concrete floor, shivering. Allison’s calm voice reached out, but Paradise was already clawing on her belly for the safe place.
For the white fog, where all that was bad would not find her. Slowly, she inched toward it, desperate to reach the safety before the monsters grabbed her legs and pulled her back into the darkness.
Dear God, save me. Don’t let them get me. Take me in your arms, hold me, don’t let evil eat me. Please, don’t reject me!
She struggled to all fours and crawled forward as the first wisps of white fog drifted past her. She was shaking on the kitchen floor, and two voices, a man’s and a woman’s, were trying to calm her, but in her mind she was entering the fog.
The monsters nipped at her heels, ripped off one of her shoes. She crawled faster, on bloody knees now. And then she was in the fog and she zigzagged to her left and right to shake any final pursuit.
Bloodied, winded, and too weak to crawl another foot, she collapsed in a heap and hugged the earth, relieved, so terribly relieved. She’d made it. The blackness was gone. She was safely in the fog that had protected her for so long. And Paradise began to cry with gratitude.
Gradually, calm settled over her, like the loving breath of God. The monsters were gone. She couldn’t even remember what they’d looked like.
Thank you. Thank you, my savior. Thank you for taking my pain.

BRAD STOOD BACK from Allison, who sat on the floor with her legs folded behind her, comforting Paradise, rubbing her back. “It’s okay, honey. Take your time, it’s all gong to be okay.” Paradise lay on the ground, crying softly.
He wanted to do something, help in some way, but he was at a loss. Whatever had just happened, he was neither trained nor prepared to process it. His professional boundaries felt confining. They were silly borders meant to help ignorant people cope with complicated life.
Paradise had either had a psychotic episode that resulted in a powerful hallucination, or actually connected with some thing that had caused her to react immediately and violently to its threat.
Ghosts did not exist. But the idea that she’d suffered nothing more than a hallucination made foolishness out of his bringing the body here in the first place. The fact that he had brought the body meant he was willing to consider that Paradise could connect with these so-called ghosts, however impossible it seemed.
A dozen times on the ride here, he asked himself why he was willing. It certainly wasn’t because he’d suddenly developed a belief in the supernatural. Nor because they just might get lucky.
Really, he’d come because of her. Because of Paradise. Because of the way she’d looked out the window earlier today and told him about another world. Because her eyes had scanned him once and told him who he was with unnerving calm and precision.
There was mystery in her eyes. It was as if her mind really did open to another world, and he’d been given just one glance into that world. Into Paradise.
He’d brought the body to Paradise for her sake. Because she deserved the chance to complete what he’d asked her to do. Having asked once, he could not turn his back on her decision to help him. Whatever else he did, he could not hurt Paradise. She’d suffered too much.
So he’d brought the body. And despite her insistence that she would not see anything, Paradise had seen something.
Now what? He wanted to reach out to her and assure her the way Allison was, but that would be inappropriate. He was a special agent, not her psychoanalyst.
Allison looked back at him. “It’s okay. Just a simple defense mechanism. It’s the way she’s learned to cope.”
“She’ll be okay?”
“Of course she will.” Allison lovingly drew a strand of hair off Paradise’s cheek and tucked it behind her ear as she might her own daughter’s. Paradise calmed. “Every mind has its fuse. Every circuit has a reset. The more powerful the computer, the better the firewall must be. One of our residents taught me that.” She smiled and looked at Paradise with gentle eyes. “Paradise has a powerful mind. She’s just protecting it.”
For the first time since coming here, Brad considered the possibility that he had entered a world where the minds were not sick when compared with his, simply greater—and learning to cope. Like Paradise, they were so powerful they required special systems that lesser minds, like his, did not.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Well, like I told you, she sees ghosts. Don’t tell me you don’t believe in ghosts, Mr. Raines.”
He didn’t know what to say.
“Not to worry. Learning to love is more important than learning about ghosts.”
“Whatever she saw—”
“Is probably gone by now,” Allison said. “Unfortunately, her experience appears to have been a bad one, which means it probably involved a man. The killer perhaps. Her mind’s probably erasing it now, as we speak. Her defense mechanism isn’t always useful, but until she can learn to cope…”
Paradise’s eyes suddenly opened and she sat up, looking like a small child who’d woken from a long afternoon nap. She stared at them, then at the floor, confused.
“What happened?” Her eyes settled on the gurney and recognition filled them. “It happened, didn’t it? I saw something.”
“Yes, I think you did.” Allison smoothed her hair.
Paradise brushed Allison’s hand away and pushed herself to her feet. “Now that I’m totally mortified…”
“There’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” Brad said. “This is why we brought the body.”
“Then I guess it was a waste of time. Even if I did see something, I can’t remember what it was.”
“You remember touching her?”
“Yes. And I remember standing here making a fool of myself before I touched the body, but that’s all I remember. I’m sorry to say that I can’t help you, Mr. Raines. This has all been a mistake.” Strong emotion was creeping into her voice. “Maybe Roudy can help you.”
Brad felt his heart tighten with empathy. Paradise walked toward the door trying to hold her shoulders square, but she walked as if she herself were a ghost.
“Paradise, please…”
She left without looking back.