Page 30 of Two for Joy

Romeo shook his head. “Like I’d tell you.”

“You and he are odd.”

“Why? Because we don’t conform to normal rules.”

“I just don’t get it. You tried to kill him, and now you’re … what, exactly?”

“Too complicated for simple minds to understand.”

“Fuck you. If you have such a complex mind, then why didn’t you kill him in the farmhouse. You had him for weeks.”

“It wouldn’t have fit my pattern.”

“Why bother with a pattern?”

“To keep my desires in check, to have a rest period for anticipation and excitement to grow, to insure I was less likely to get caught.”

“But you did get caught, same as me. I stabbed two men to death, you killed four people over an eight-month period. Both of us ended up here.”

“You ended up here because you were reckless, the attack was unplanned, frenzied, in daylight, in front of witnesses. I’m here because I underestimated someone, got lured into a false sense of security, and got caught.”

“Same result—”

“But the execution was different. You were an idiot, but I got outsmarted.”

“And now him and you are buddies?”

“Something like that.”

“It’s just … not normal.”

“That’s why I like it. Fuck normal. There’s too many normal people, normal desires, normal jobs, normal relationships. I liked being the abnormality.”

“You like being messed up in the head.”

Romeo lowered his gaze. “At first I didn’t, but I’ve come to accept it. Come to like it. I am what I am. What about you? Do you like being messed up in the head.”

“I’m not messed up. I’m the only sane person here.”

“And Holly thinks I’m in denial.”

****

Romeo had been sixteen when he went to his first funeral. He’d go to more, but it was the first he remembered most vividly. It had been his nanny’s funeral on his mother’s side. The atmosphere was sad, dull. People were crying, hanging their heads, walking slowly, whispering. Romeo hadn’t experienced anything quite like it.

She’d been a nice nanny, they visited her once a week, and she always gave him boiled sweets. She’d been a smoker, and the smell of smoke smacked him in the face like a physical force when he went into her house. She’d told him it was good for his lungs, completely ignoring all the scientific research and reports.

Romeo would play with bubbles in her yard, and when he got older, he’d sit beside her and watch her fill in the crossword.

He knew he should’ve felt something when she died, but there was nothing, only an emptiness in his chest. She died post-magpie after he’d accepted he wasn’t going to feel anything, had stopped trying. It was who he was.

Romeo saw the slight confusion in his mother’s watering eyes, it was the first time she’d come close to seeing the monster. She didn’t understand why he wasn’t crying, or showing any emotion, and instead of admitting the truth, and telling her he was void of all feelings, he wrapped his arm around her shoulder, and whispered that he was being strong for her.

The suspicion vanished, and she cried harder while attempting to tell him he was such a good son.

Both his mother and father loved him, but he couldn’t return that love, and had tired of trying to force it, bring it to the surface—it wasn’t there. He decided that day he wouldn’t shatter their lives, destroy their love, by letting the monster out.

He would lock it away until after they died.

---