SICKER: Psychological Thriller Series Novella 2 Read online

  SICKER

  Sick Psychological Thriller Series Novella 2

  Christa Wojciechowski

  Copyright © 2016 by Christa Wojciechowski

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof

  may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever

  without the express written permission of the publisher

  except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design by Christa Wojciechowski

  A special thanks to:

  My sisters

  Gina Jaramillo and Tia Wojciechowski

  who are always the first to see my work

  when it’s at its messiest.

  My beta readers

  Joan Neptune, Roseanne Wojciechowski,

  Angie Mauro Sanders,

  author Shonda Brock, and author A.R. Rivera

  for their encouragement and

  for being brave enough to volunteer

  to help me with this series.

  My editor

  Candace Johnson at Change It Up Editing

  for her diligent work and positive attitude.

  “You want to be sick?” she shrieked. “You want to be sick?”

  My Susan transformed into an angel of vengeance. I will confess my secret to you: I was excited in the most carnal sense. The pain aroused me, and she was overcome with anger, possessed by the demon of wrath.

  Her face was tight and contorted. Her cheeks were flushed, and her body was rigid as she swung the ball peen hammer into my face, one, two, three times. She said it over and over again: “You want to be sick?” Her voice cracked at the top of each threat.

  I heard the crunch of my skull as the hammer crushed my left cheekbone—ghastly, sweet sound. I felt like I was laughing, but I heard myself as an animal yelping. Then I felt another explosion of pain. Excruciating. Unbelievable. Exhilarating.

  I had always hurt myself, but as earnestly as I try to give it my all, there’s a natural holding back. There is also a pesky leverage problem. You can never get enough momentum going with your own arm. I hit myself with a hammer as part of my daily routine for years, but rarely did I ever get past some mediocre bruising before my nerves overrode my desire for injury, blocking me from ever using my full force. I had to get help with that, especially when I was young and weak, which I will tell you about later.

  But little Susan was now swinging with all the power her petite body could muster, and her small, short frame allowed her to wind up a surprising amount of torque.

  “You want to be sick, John? Is that it?”

  For a moment, I felt concern and wondered what I was feeling. Fear? Fear of Susan? And I almost thought the pain might become more than I could take. Maybe there was a limit after all. And maybe she would even kill me.

  Still, I laughed between the blows. I felt a swirling euphoria inside me that bubbled out through the blood in my mouth. Behind the blinding pain and the strange noises I was making, I thought maybe I had just died and gone to heaven.

  This was the crescendo of Susan and me.

  Oh, marriage. It’s such a boring word. Whenever I think of it, I sigh as if some long lecture is about to follow. My parents had a marriage like a purgatorial sentence. So let’s not call what Susan and I have a marriage. Let’s call it a divine union. No, I don’t believe in God or any of that superstitious garbage. But I do believe in Nature, and nothing is purer than the flawless symbiosis of Susan and me. Our pathologies and neuroses interlock with precision; even the most brilliant scientists couldn’t replicate our bond. Nature brought us together in its random way, like the primordial soup that was electrified into life; we melded together to form a love, a partnership, a true completeness that is divine because it is like the birth of existence.

  Though I was always conscious of the reasons we needed and wanted each other, she was not. She operated on the mundane level of the middle class, believing what she was told by talk shows, the newspaper, the latest books, and especially by my doctors. She did what she was told by the government, the experts, the IRS, and the landlord. She lived life by going through the motions. Being a good person, a good wife, a good citizen. Playing by the rules.

  Susan didn’t allow herself to be vain or important. She thought of herself as plain, mousy, and underserving of anything extraordinary. This added to her beauty, made her approachable and comfortable to be with. She was malleable and people pleasing. These qualities made her a good nurse, but I sensed an anger simmering underneath her calm practicality. I noticed it the first day I met her when my mother made one of her usual disdainful remarks to me. Suze whipped her eyes at Mother with such malevolence, I thought she might sprout claws and rip my mother to pieces. I fell in love with her that instant. Since then, she has been my protector.

  Now we’ve entered a new frontier in our marriage. I felt the warm blood spread over my face.

  “You want to be sick, sweetie? Is that it?”

  Yes, baby. Yes.

  The hammer made contact again with my jaw. How stubborn it was. Shouldn’t it have crumbled by now?

  I’d always known she was vaguely aware of the unrest inside her but was unwilling to acknowledge it and terrified to turn around and face it. She kept it restrained and unreachable. I had been tempted to trigger a breakdown of sorts, to bait the beast within her, but that part of her had remained hidden from me, and I wanted all of her. I wanted for both of us to let out our Mr. Hydes to play together, but I knew her intrinsic Christian ideals would force her to fight herself and, in doing so, deny me. It was like being forbidden to ever see your wife naked. Can you imagine? We were together yet separate, and we would never truly be one until we stripped off our day-to-day costumes to expose those dark secrets that all couples hide from one another, those secrets that fester like pockets of disease and slowly decompose a marriage into tedium.

  “I’ll show you sick!” And here she was as Nature intended. I saw the hammer and her twisted face through the blood in my eyes. At some point, the sweet delirium of pain faded into darkness. Whether she continued to beat me after that, I did not know.

  *

  I woke up and shuddered from the pain in my face. It was nauseating, and I was giddy with the chill that spread over my crumpled body. I heard Susan weeping, a disembodied sound from some indistinct part of the room. I opened the right eye, the one not caked shut with dried blood. An eerie pink light infused the room. Sunrise? No. The light glowed from the west window. It was sunset. I rolled my eye around as best as I could to find my wife. I saw a dark figure huddled in the corner. I tried to open my mouth to call to her, but I was startled by the amount of pain that accompanied that maneuver. I laughed through my nose—again excruciating. I had never damaged my face like this before, and the pain delighted me with every breath.

  “John?” I heard her say softly.

  I mmm-hmmed the affirmative.

  She crawled to me sniffling. “Oh, John. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  I wanted to say I was quite all right and had never been more content in my life. I would have loved to have just lain there awhile like a smashed piece of road kill, my head in her lap with her salty tears stinging my pulpy face.

  “Oh, John. Look what I’ve done!”

  She was inconsolable. Her eyes were puffy from crying, her face sticky with snot. Her thick saliva stretched betwee
n her tongue and the roof of her mouth. I wanted to tell her I loved her. She was beautiful. Above all, I wanted to thank her, so I patted her reassuringly.

  “What do I do? What do I do?” She started looking all over my body, summing up the damage. “I just don’t know what to do? Do I call the cops on myself?”

  “Mmm-mmm,” I said in the negative.

  “I don’t know what happened to me. I think, I think I blacked out. I … I became a monster.”

  She looked me in the one eye. Then caved over my chest into sobbing. There must have been some bruising there too because the small pressure of her hands and forehead created a delicious soreness. I knew she felt my erection growing under her forearm because she looked up at me, then at my groin, then back at me.

  “John!”

  I made a crooked smile with that half of my mouth I could move. I felt somewhat apologetic, but more than that, I wanted more. I thought, If she could just move a bit downward and take it out.

  “John!” she admonished as if she read my mind. She really couldn’t be that shocked. I knew what she did when she thought I was sleeping. She’d hold it in her small, warm palm while she masturbated. That one secret I already knew.

  She stood up and then looked out the windows. “Do you think they heard anything?”

  I shrugged.

  “I have to call you an ambulance. I have to tell them everything about it. About you … about … about me …”

  I tried the best I could to form words with the amount of movement my bruised jaw permitted. “Don’t, Suze,” I said, sounding slightly retarded. “I love you.”

  She dropped back to her knees. By that point I was able to see through a slit in my swollen left eye, too. She looked down at me. All was ripped from the shadows. We were truly naked. This was real, raw Susan. She frowned and trembled. Her manner was despairing.

  I grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “I love you.” I said again.

  Her gaze hardened for a second. “This is not a joke. You’ve put me through hell, John.”

  I blinked slowly in acknowledgement. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “What is going on? I’m so confused.”

  Maybe it was my pathetic speech impediment, but her face softened, and she slumped again in remorse.

  Forgive the cliché, but Susan had been a ticking time bomb, and I’d known she’d lash out if I provoked her, but I had not been expecting this type of outburst. I was planning on a subtler way to break the news, but she’d walked in on me at the most unexpected moment, just before I shot up the putrid milk. The laughing must have been what had set her off. I shouldn’t have mocked her when she discovered the filthy needle, but she had seemed so genuinely shocked. She was truly revolted. Was she really that surprised? Thinking on that moment when she froze like a startled cat, I fought the urge to laugh again. Instead, I spoke.

  “I’m sorry I put you through all this,” I said, feeling the blood cooling and congealing under my tongue, “but I couldn’t help it. I thought you knew deep down inside. I always thought you were playing along.”

  She removed her hands from me. Her eyes widened as she gazed blankly at the floor. “My god,” she said. “Maybe I was.”

  I didn’t want her to be sorry. I didn’t want her to call the cops. I just wanted us to stay like this.

  I swallowed the blood that was in my mouth and worked my jaw around a few times to loosen it. “Can you help me to the bed, Suze?” I asked. “Let’s just think this through.”

  Somehow I managed to stand up with Susan’s help. Only my face was truly bashed. The rest of my body was full of the mildly painful contusions I had created just before she surprised me.

  She pulled back the bedding, and I sat down. Then she helped me lie back into the pillows. She disappeared into the bathroom for a minute and returned with a vial. I didn’t even have to ask for it. She administered the Demerol calmly as she would to any other patient.

  “Thank you.” I said. “You’re my angel.”

  Something was different now. The world had altered, and we were two untethered souls who had to find a common, comfortable ground again. I couldn’t speak to her in my whiny, baby voice anymore. It seemed ludicrous that I ever had, and she had changed her manner toward me completely. No indulging, no pandering. Sober.

  As the opiate rushed through my veins, my vision blurred in and out. Her face was serious and pensive, but she seemed to have matured in some way. Not on the outside—her face was still youthful in its shiny wetness, her lips swollen from crying. The transformation was on the inside. She was a woman, and what a woman. I was intimidated and wary. I felt like maybe I was having an affair.

  She disappeared again. I heard the water running. The throbbing of my face eased, and I drifted a bit in and out of a euphoric drowsiness. She was very generous with her shot, and the effects were always more noticeable to me when put in contrast to severe pain. She returned with a warm, wet washcloth and one of the kidney bean-shaped plastic buckets from the hospital. She tossed rumpled clothing from the cushion of an antique chair and brought it from the corner.

  She sat at the bedside and sponged my forehead firmly—there was no injury there—and then moved her way down to the tender spots where she dabbed with the greatest care. I flinched.

  “Just keep still,” she said without any pity. She became so quiet and absorbed in treating me; it was as if she was just here alone with my wounds, simply at work, like a woman mindlessly washing the dishes.

  I was concerned. Was this whole revelation too much for her?

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She continued to dab my face, more aggressively now. She hit a sore spot.

  “Ow!”

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “Suze, what are you thinking about?” I slurred a little bit, but the pain in my face had diminished, and my speech was beginning to improve.

  “I don’t know what to think.”

  She threw the cloth into the bucket and set it on the nightstand. She picked up a bottle of Betadine and a huge wad of cotton and started dabbing my face again. The sting of the antiseptic sent endorphins rushing through my body. I panted and waited, and soon the sting dissolved into a familiar flushing sensation, which I was quite accustomed to and even fond of.

  “I know you must be mad at me,” I said, trying to extract some bit of feeling from her, but she wouldn’t look into my eyes—or eye rather, because the one was hopelessly swollen, and I felt it like a big carbuncle protruding from my face. Maybe I was so hideous she couldn’t bear the sight of me. I almost chuckled again, but I dared not. “I didn’t expect you to find out like that,” I said. “You’re angry with me. You have every right to be.”

  “I don’t know who I’m angry with.” She finally glanced at me, and then went back to her dabbing. Dab, dab, dab, dab, the cotton leaving moist kisses on my face that cooled in the air. “You are obviously a very sick person.”

  A small, ironic snort escaped me.

  “You’re sicker than I can even comprehend right now.” Dab, dab, dab, dab. “But I’m mad at myself, too.”

  I wasn’t sure if any more dabbing was necessary, but it seemed to be helping her talk through her feelings somehow.

  “I should’ve known what you were up to,” she went on. “I’m a medical professional. I don’t see how I never picked up on it. Unless ...”

  “Unless?”

  “Unless,” she paused, and looked thoughtfully at a henna-colored drop of Betadine streaming down her wrist. “Unless, it’s like you said. I was participating somehow.”

  I rejoiced inwardly. “Participating.” Yes, my dear. If I hadn’t had that Demerol, I’m sure my position toward this thought would have been revealed in yet another hard cock. I thought of the last time we’d made love, the way she looked at my body in the shower, the way her fingertips traced my scars. I sensed her fascination with them. I groaned a little. The desire was there, tingling below, but the enthusiasm, though fervent, was not stron
g enough to cut through the drugs.

  “John.”

  “What?”

  She eyed me suspiciously. Maybe I was enjoying this too much. I had to let the idea work into her slowly. I didn’t want her to be overwhelmed, afraid, and risk her retreating back into her old self, denying what had happened between us in that moment she’d bludgeoned me half to death. I replayed her expression over and over again in my mind. Under the anger emanated a wild gusto. The pitch of her voice was unreal. I’m sure she’d never uttered such a loud sound in her life. She was the embodiment of freedom, but I knew it couldn’t be easy to accept this kind of thing. I had discovered my true nature before puberty and understood myself long ago. Not Susan, and to realize you glory in the beating of your husband with a hammer is a lot for any reasonable woman to digest.

  She stood over me and blew on my face to cool the sting, and I inhaled her sweet breath. The chair creaked as she sat back down.

  “How did you get like this, John?” she asked. “What happened to you? What makes a person like this?”

  “Well,” I said, “If you promise not to call the authorities, I will tell you.”

  “You’re not bleeding, but I’m worried about your head.”

  “I think I passed out from the pain, not the blows.”

  She winced. “God, I can’t believe this. I still think we need to get you to the hospital.”

  The Demerol had leveled off in my system. The pain was muffled, and I was lucid and eager. “Please, Susan, I’m at fault here. It’s time to tell you the truth. Please allow me that before we face whatever mess awaits us.”

  “How long will this take?”

  “Not long. I promise.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Tell me then.” She leaned forward, knees on elbows with a serious, expectant expression that made me nervous.

  “Very well.” I said. I cleared my throat and shifted in bed. “Like every human being’s story, it began with my mother.”