Page 25 of Vile Emotion
Sometimes, the ghost of my child’s laughter fills the room that I’m in and it makes me feel the guilt all over again; replacement.
There wasn’t a plan of adopting any child after mine died but then I saw Ricky in his little hospital bassinet. He was all alone in this world like I was. He had no one to hold him and he was going to have to face the hardship of life without any guidance.
There was a connection when I first held him and his brown eyes stared into mine. Ricky didn’t cry nor did he fuss, he just watched me as I watched him. The first man to ever hold him close and tell him that he would chase the monsters away.
The five years went by in a blur as I raised him. From his first walks to his first fever and hell, when he first called me dada. I couldn’t have wished for another outcome when it came to Ricky but in the back of my mind, I knew that he was attached to Juliana. I should have cared enough to not be close to Ricky but he’s my son through and through.
He may not make all the monsters I experience in my head go away but I make sure that every imaginary monster he thinks he sees in the shadow of his bedroom, I chase away. I protect him with all my heart while he holds my heart in his little hands.
The thought of his father coming to get him used to plague me at night but as time went by and that loser didn’t show up, I knew it was too late for him to try and take Ricky with him.
I would have sic’d all my 12 lawyers including Cassius on him.
And as his name crosses my mind, Cassius and the weight of my guilt towards him, unleashes for this brief moment.
Carmen was his baby sister. He cherished her and loved her. I lost a wife and children, yes, but he lost his family. The moment Cassius decided to stick by me after their parents blamed me for everything meant something to our long-lasting friendship.
Cassius was loyal to a fault. Even when I told him about what I was planning for Juliana before she got out, he put his anger aside for her and nodded in agreement. He, like I, blamed how fast Juliana was driving. Although in court, she said she was running from something, it doesn’t change that it was raining. It doesn’t change that she throttled her way past that red light at the major intersection—that I can no longer drive on—and hit Carmen’s car while all she was doing was getting our child home.
Home. The same home that I now share with Juliana and Ricky.
The same home that has ghosts of the past because that’s all Carmen and my children are now. Unattainable loves of my life. The only joy and happiness I ever experienced.
In this same home, I plan on dragging Juliana back to. Because I’m in hell, that is where I reside.
“Alaric!” Juliana calls my name loudly, snapping me out of wherever I went as she takes hold of the wheel shifting us out of hitting a truck head-on.
We swerve but finally find stability but then something else makes me hit the brakes hard. My arm instinctively stretches out to shield Juliana pushing her back with the help of the seatbelt to shield the impact of the abrupt stop.
“What’s happening?” Juliana asks in a panic while her hands fly up to hold my arm but my eyes can’t believe what they’re seeing.
Godric is standing there in the middle of the road, it looks like him but then it doesn’t. I don’t know what to do or say. Godric looks the same as when I saw him when I was younger. He doesn’t look so intimidating now, if anything, now he looks helpless. As helpless as he probably was when he was younger and my heart sinks as he smiles at me proudly but then, he disappears.
My body is frozen in place as I tremble, not at seeing a ghost but with anger. A type of fury that was a friend long before and came back for a visit.
“Alaric?” Juliana calls my name but I can’t answer her as I feel tears of anger running down my face.
I was robbed of a brother. One who cared about me and one, who is a fucking ghost. If God is playing a joke on me, it’s a sick one but it doesn’t matter.
Most people would freak out at seeing a ghost but being around my maternal grandmother, her romanian ways and the way she was raised in a town full of strange things before having my mother, none of this is a shocker. She’s always told ghost stories and her ways of thinking; that they lived among us and they are lost souls.
I’ve seen a ghost or two in my lifetime but never my wife. Never my child.
A hand wiping away a tear pulls me out of whenever I was going and I reach out gripping her wrist.
“Ouch! You’re hurting me!” Juliana yells out and I let her wrist go.
“Don’t touch me.” I grit the warning out.
“It wasn’t on purpose, I’m sorry.” She says in a small voice as she shoves my arm from her person.
I didn’t realize I was still holding on to her, shielding her from things when in fact, I should let her experience them.
Let her feel the pain that I feel.
We need to leave this ghost town.
19
