Page 36 of Contention

Face flushed with humiliation, feeling properly horrified, Kara hisses, “You’re overreacting,dad.” He’s acting like an overbearing father, she would know. “You don’t have to do this. Let me explain!”

A muscle in his strong jaw twitches as the elevator doors slowly close.

On the way down, Bianca purses her lips and gives Kara some serious side eye. She inhales to talk, but Kara cuts her off, staring at the opposite wall. “Don’t. Even. Start.”

Crap. It’s only her professional life on the line at the moment. He didn’t even let her explain.

Fuck.

That night, her dreams haunt her.

Her mother stares at her, pale, gaunt, and haunted. A broken shell of whatever she once had been. Her auburn hair flows in wild waves, framing the harsh expression on her face. Kara frowns, the dream appearing to be in her own condo. Clarity comes to her as a ghostly butterfly floats by her face, sparkles on its wings. “You’re dead, mom. You’ve never been here.”

It isn’t a memory. It’s an oddity.

The illusion of her mother cocks her head to the side, eyes narrowed, heavily lined with makeup. “Someone has to give you a strong talking to, little dove. You’ve finally found the perfect impression of him, is that what’s going on?”

Ugly words with even uglier undertones. Kara knows what this ghost in her mind is talking about, knows it’s something that bothers her in her waking hours. “It’s not…that’s not true…”

A cruel smile shapes those red lips. Her mother points one finger at Kara, hand shaking, fingernails broken and bitten. “But it is. I know you; I’ve always known you. I know what you’re thinking.”

“Because you’re a vindictive part of my imagination,” Kara snaps hotly. She swats at a purple dragonfly as it hums in her face. “This is a dream.”

Her mother is sitting on Kara’s light-colored couch, fingers running over the fabric, eyes now gazing out the window towards the cityscape. Sadness floods Kara in a wave; her mother would have loved this apartment. She’d always wanted to return to the city; Charlie didn’t.

And Charlie got what Charlie wanted. All. The. Time.

“Another unpleasant soul to treat you the way you feel you deserve to be treated?” Her mother laughs bitterly. “Does it help you to envision yourself as trash? Does that make everything alright in your mind? That it makes sense that someone can’t find anything worth loving in you?”

Kara feels her fingers dig into her palms. Discussing her fatal flaw is not high on her list of things to do. “You sound like that shrink I once saw. Have you been comparing notes with my subconscious mind? Just stop while you’re ahead. I don’t want to hear it.”

Subconscious illusion or not, her mother is the spitting image of her typical bitterness and misery. Those lips, bruised, curl cruelly. “He’s the right age too, isn’t he? Maybe a few years younger than Charlie?”

It’s sick and wrong and Kara feels the bile rising up from her stomach. Her mother was always keen on this; the idea that Kara’s been trying to emulate her father on every man that’s ever caught her eye. Like she’s trying to find the perfect replacement for a man that no one can ever replace. Except in her worst nightmares, of course.

Gritting her teeth, because it isn’t true, it’s not fucking true, Kara hisses lowly, “Shut up.”

The sitting room begins to darken, as though the sun has suddenly winked out. Ominous. Cold. Kara shivers. Her mother looks like a vampire, pale with pits for eyes as she stares across the room at Kara, still sitting on Kara’s couch.

“Well, little dove. You’ve found your villain. Now, all that’s left is for you to end up like me.” With those words, her mother holds out both of her arms, bare and pale. The skin slowly peels open, a deep red line running vertically up the length of both arms.

In slow motion, blood erupts from the deep wounds, draining away her mother’s life right before her eyes.

Kara feels her heart seize and the dream changes to what had been her mother’s townhome, the kitchen tiles, all red.

Everything is all red. Even the razorblades.

Chapter 11

Derrick’s cell phone is sitting on the long conference room table and Kara can’t keep her eyes from drifting to it every time a text or call comes through.

Her nerves are on edge, constantly dreading thata certain assholeis going to call Derrick to tell him where she ended up last night. Kara came into work practically sweating with fear, wondering if she still had a job. She’d spent the night nearly dry heaving into the toilet, terrified that she’d just let her career get flushed.

When Derrick called her over to one of the meeting rooms, she thought it was all over for sure.

Instead, he’s sitting calmly, gesturing to the conference room phone in the center of the table. His cell phone lying idle. “Want to call our mysterious woman and set a time to interview her this weekend? Sunday, was it?”

Kara blinks, feeling like clutching her poor heart, the one that has been banging around her rib cage since last night. The woman that the private investigator had found, the one who had been to The Room. “Uh. Yes. Absolutely. I’ll dial her now; I got the number the other day.”

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