Page 97 of Monstrous Travels as Wicked as Sin

“I still don’t know what it was,” Joe said. “Whether it was a control issue for her. If being cruel to me gave her power over someone, at least. Or over something at all. Because she never stood much of a chance from the day she was born there. And that must have been hard.”

He reached for his glass again, but didn’t take a sip this time. He only held it there, toying with the stem. “She didn’t hit me as hard as he did, because she couldn’t physically do that. Even if she tried. But the thing is, he never hugged me afterwardsthe way she did. He never apologised and promised me he’d never do it again. He never held me and told me we’d run away together, only to tell me on the next breath he wished I’d never been born. That I had single-handedly ruined her life. Done that to both of us. It was that sort of… long-term mental abuse that really messed me up. I didn’t have siblings. It was just me. So she was my only hope. And every time…” The glass raised to Joe’s lips, set down again without a sound. “Everybody knew what she was dealing with at home. With my father. Everyone in town saw my mother after she’d been beaten. Saw her staggering about the place. Saw me trying to help her, with my own cuts and bruises. But no one thought she did that to me, too.”

Joe could feel the tension in Percy’s taut arms. The impotence of inaction. No one to take the anger out on, no means to jump in and stop Joe from experiencing it. All of it done and over, and no long-distance vengeance to be exacted. What was there, stuck inside him, circled and swirled, giving vent only in a black glower directed at Giordano.

Joe’s hand slipped down to Percy’s knee, and his thumb ran small circles there as he talked on, trying to get it all out as quickly and clearly as possible. “My mother would take me to church regularly, and that was a respite. Of sorts. She always acted the doting mother there, in front of everyone. Except when she thought no one was looking.” He let out an empty-sounding laugh. “I used to believe her when she did that. When she would smile at me and act so kind, I thought maybe she’d forgiven me for whatever it was I’d done wrong that particular morning. But then, when no one was looking, she’d give me this death stare, from across the room, just to remind me that she hated me. Just in case I ever forgot for a few minutes. Then she’d turn back to the others, the picture of the loving mother. She was that sort of…” He reflected a moment to find the words. “She wascalmlymanipulative. And it never stopped. She’d do that at home, too.Just turn. Very suddenly. It was more stark when we were at church or around people, because at home I’d learned not to trust it. But outside… It got so… I think I didn’t know what kindness was anymore. Whether I could trust it in anyone, or if there was broken glass hidden in it. I couldn’t trust anything. It was…”

“Fucking hell,” Percy whispered. The admission put their entire relationship into perspective, and only then did Percy really understand the depth of Joe’s doubt in him so many times. He wondered if Joe even knew how far it ran. His fingers curled over into Joe’s palm, and he took his hand to his lips, where he kept it, needed there for his own benefit as much as Joe’s.

“It’s okay,” said Joe, but he didn’t pull it away. He looked up into Percy’s eyes. “You’re the only person who’ll know this, what I’m about to tell you.” His eyes ran over to Giordano’s, dark and hooded. “Well, you’re about to be the only two people.” Joe swallowed hard against the truth that was so desperate to spill out of him. So desperate, after such a long time hidden in that dusty chest.

In a low, shaky tone, he said, “I took oleander, and I boiled it down. I was only twelve, but I knew it was poisonous from history lessons. I boiled it into a concentrate, maybe a shot worth. I did it down by the cemetery, in an old tin can. I added more and more leaves and seeds and flowers and water, and boiled it again and again. For weeks, on and off, whenever I could get away. I don’t know if I thought I’d really ever go through with it. It was sort of… meditative. Like a comforting daydream. I imagined how nice I’d make the place if they were dead. How calm it would be. I don’t know what I thought I’d do for food or money… But it was a peaceful place, in my mind, whenever I boiled that pot.”

Joe took in a deep breath, which he let go slowly, until he was completely empty. “This one night, he beat me, which he’d donebefore, but not this bad. He beat me until I could barely walk. They’d been fighting with each other all evening, and I tried to sneak out, but I got caught. I just remember being so scared. So, so scared there on the floor, and he made it long and sustained, and I begged her to help me. And do you know what?” Joe’s eyes hazed over as he looked distantly into the past, nose crinkling with disgust, a slight arch in his lips. “She was smiling. A cruel, spiteful smile. She was enjoying every second of it. Whatever was broken in her, she’d lost all pity. She enjoyed the brutality of it. And that’s the thing people don’t understand. Because unless you’ve lived through that, Giordano, people don’t think a mother’s capable of that. They think she’ll be there to help you. That she’ll bleed for you. Every time in my life I’ve ever tried to tell anyone, they think I must have been mistaken. ‘Mothers don’t do that.’ But that night, it wasn’t just me being belted in the heat of passion. It was cold. And I just knew, by that look in her eyes, it was me or them.”

Joe leaned back, staring up at the chandelier. “I never felt bad for what I did. I still don’t. I know that’s ‘wrong’. It’s what we’re all taught from day one, ‘don’t murder your parents’. Or anyone, but to be specific… Anyway, that night, when they were done, I pretended I was asleep on the floor where they’d left me. This time she didn’t come with a hug and an apology. She just fell into a drunken stupor in her bed. And some time in the night, as terrified as I was of what would happen if they caught me again, I snuck out. I went, and I got my oleander extract. And I poured it into their wine. Then I went to bed. Cigarette?”

Percy flicked his case open and lit two, passing Joe one, pushing the case and lighter over to Giordano.

Joe breathed deeply, in and out, with the steadying plume dancing in the soft light of the luxurious apartment, so different to the place his mind lingered. “When I woke again, which wasn’t until late the next day, my mother was screaming inagony. Throwing up, so, so sick. My father was sick too, but not like she was. She was thin, frail.” He tapped the smoke with a sharp strike of his index finger. “And she died the same day. I wish it hadn’t been so cruel, but I didn’t have a gun. I didn’t have the strength to get rid of her by any other means. I was twelve, and I had nowhere to go. So I feel the guilt of her suffering. I do. But not of her death.”

Percy blew out his own breath of spiteful smoke. “She deserved that and worse.”

Joe checked each of their eyes. Giordano’s sympathetic with a wary note. Percy’s faithful. Quiet. With that spark of warmth he’d always kept burning for Joe since that first day, even when they were at their worst, in no way dimmed. The story, which Joe told with comparatively sparse detail, was only about to get worse, but that ember kept him going.

“My father, he wouldn’t die,” he explained. “He kept drinking until he finished the poisoned bottle, then he drank more. He kept vomiting. He was so angry and so sick. He was terrifying. But he wouldn’t die. She was dead in their bed, green, and he wouldn’t do a thing about it. He laid there next to her corpse because he was too drunk and too sick to care. And after three days, after he’d long since finished the poisoned wine and moved on, he slept. So soundly, once the poison let him. So peacefully, without the fever of sickness.” Joe’s eyes hardened in a way Percy had seldom ever seen. “And I thought, this isn’t going to work. What should I do? Spend weeks making more poison? Try again? How much would I need? He was huge. And maybe it wouldn’t work again. But what scared me most was thinking,knowing, if he gets better, and he figures out what I’ve done, he’ll really kill me this time. And so, I felt I had little choice.”

The soft touch of the cigarette on Joe’s lips broke the silence. “He slept on, and I got a knife, and I did it. Like I’d seen my mother do to our sheep. I put it in one side of his neck, just asdeep as I could, and ripped. He woke up, and he choked on it. And he rolled out of bed, and the last thing he ever saw was me. My hands red with his blood. And I was happy he knew it was me.”

The phantom of a smile played at the corner of Joe’s lips, soon broken by his sharp laugh. “I was so stupid. I put the knife in his hand when he was dead. Dabbed some of his own blood on there. It was supposed to look like he’d killed himself after finding her, but no one would ever have believed he cared that much.”

He crossed his arms, letting the hand holding the cigarette tilt back. “I went to the church, and I told the priest that I’d found my mother dead, and that my father had committed suicide. I said I thought he may have poisoned my mother.” Joe turned his hand over, studying it. “I still had his blood on me. It was so, so obvious, what I’d done. He went, and he saw it, that ridiculous, horrifying scene, and do you know what he did? He cleaned me up. He gave me the first good meal I’d had in months. He told me to tell the police I’d been living with him. I didn’t want to lie like that. I didn’t want to involve him. But he said I’d be paying him back for his kindness if I let him save my soul, and that prison would only make me worse.”

Joe shifted the papers Giordano had brought about the table. Headline after headline, page after page. Giordano had done his research. Enough to convince Percy, no matter how hopelessly in love with Joe he was, that his fiancé was a killer. “As you can see, there was a huge media circus. Everyone knew about it. Everyone in town knew I did it, but just like when they’d let me go through the abuse alone, the same parochial behaviour reigned, and they said nothing after the fact either. Nothing to the police. Nothing to the media. And I went about with Father Milton, my hair brushed, clean-faced, looking like an angel. Nothing like the filthy urchin I used to be.” Joe ran his fingersover one of the grainy images, as though even now he wanted to make sure that every lock of hair fell just as it should to give the right impression. “Such a respectable-looking boy.”

He considered the picture a while longer, speaking absently. “I took confirmation when I was told to, and I got the Church on my side. The police investigated me, and they knew I’d done it. They pressed charges, obviously. But they couldn’t pin it on me, because Father Milton swore up and down that I was with him when it happened. Had forensics been better back then… But ultimately none of it mattered. Thanks to Father Milton. He pulled strings, he spoke for me, he called in favours. And because of him, this gilded cage closed around me, and so long as I stayed there, singing the song the Church wanted me to sing, I was safe.”

Percy’s eyes sparked as that piece of the puzzle finally slid into place.

“I was declared innocent. Even if no one believed it.” Joe glanced briefly at Giordano before returning his gaze to Percy. “And when I walked out of the courtroom that day, there wasn’t any question about which path my life was going to follow from there. I’d never had any dreams of my own. And I had a debt to repay. A big one.”

He watched the light reflecting in his wine as he swirled the glass around. “I would have done anything for that man. When he moved to Rome, he took me with him. When he asked me to work towards becoming a priest, that’s what I did. I lived with him and he taught me kindness. He taught me trust. He made me the person I am today. When he moved overseas, I went with him, and up until the day that demon took my hands and murdered him, I was wholly devoted to him. I owed him my life, and to be the person who took his…” During the entire tale, Joe had trudged on with barely the raise or shake of his voice, untilnow. Now the tears rushed fast to his eyes, and he stared down at the table, his hands shaking.

The tips of Percy’s fingers slid beneath his locked jaw, cupping Joe’s cheek. He shifted close, turning Joe’s face towards his. “Come back.”

“It doesn’t stop.” Joe’s voice broke on the words, and Percy shifted his head down, resting his forehead against Joe’s, stroking his cheek, as tears forced their way through his tightly shut eyes.

“I know,” he said gently. “It won’t. But you come back to me.” The final word was firm, and Joe opened his eyes to find Percy always, always waiting for him. Clear, capable, ready to take it all in his stride along with every other thing.

Joe wrapped his fingers around Percy’s, holding them to his cheek. Joe’s eyes, wet with those last memories, brightened. “That’s when you came along. When you turned up at my place that first afternoon, everything was more fucked than I can ever describe to you. I was so, so alone. I didn’t know what to do, because the one support I’d ever had in my entire life was gone. In such a horrible way. Then you were just… You were Percy. You lifted me out of it. It was so easy to fall for you. And when I told you how I felt, it was so simple. And when?—”

“Giordano, fuck off,” said Percy.

Giordano, caught up in the drama, had forgotten his own presence, and that he was the ball that had set the lot in motion. “Fuck. Sorry,” he mumbled. “Um… Fuck off, like out of the apartment?”

“No, just…” Percy muttered. “Just go somewhere. For a few minutes.”

“In here!” Leo called.

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