Page 21 of Crazy Rich Monsters (Necessary Evils 1)

Within the confines of these white walls, I lose track of time and space, drifting away into the recesses of my mind as a multitude of scenarios play out. One minute, I’m standing alone in a graveyard watching a pastor pray as my mother’s casket is lowered into the ground. Nobody else is there. Why would they be? She’s been dead to the world for so long, there’s nobody left to call. And then I’m standing in the wreckage of our house, surveying the irreparable damage. She’s standing beside me with a bottle of whiskey in her hand. She lost the last damn thing she had in this world, so there’d be no point in giving up the alcohol now.

I can’t shake the image of Nick from my mind. He’s standing across the street, his body barely concealed by the windblown smoke, embers and ashes falling from the sky. I can’t know for certain that he was really there. I’m not the most reliable person in the world. I have memories that I struggle to reconcile with reality and sometimes I just flat out lie.

I come to a crossing, where two hallways merge with each other. Down one hall, there’s an emergency exit. I could run out of this place. That’s what everyone would expect me to do. It’s what I’m good at. Down the other hall is a waiting room with vending machines and coffee. I opt to head for the front exit in lieu of making a dramatic exit that would spurn the alarms.

Four in the morning, most of the world is sleeping. Somehow I get unlucky enough that there’s someone else outside. She’s dressed in blue scrubs with her back to me. She stretches one arm outwards and flicks the ash from the end of a burning cigarette.

I could really use a fucking smoke. It’s like my mother is inside dying and her soul is somehow finding its way into my body. I decide to approach the woman and ask to bum a hit. It’s not like I run around with my own pack. I must alarm her as I approach because she tilts her head ever so slightly to the side, but it’s enough that I can make out that it’s not a stranger at all. It’s my former best friend, Paige.

She turns fully as she raises the cigarette to her mouth and takes a drag. “You look like you could use one of these.”

“Read my mind,” I say deadpan, raising my arms to caress the front of my body.

She holds the cigarette between her lips as she reaches to retrieve another. “I was going to call you, but I was told that you were already here. Sorry to hear about your mom.”

I reach out and collect the cigarette from her, placing it between my lips as she flicks a lighter and lights it for me. “I didn’t know you worked here.”

“It’s been a long day,” she says quietly, void of energy. “I’m actually getting ready to head home, but I needed some time to decompress. I come out here for a good half hour at the end of every shift.”

I understand the notion and respond with a nod as we stand side-by-side, each of us exhaling cancerous smoke in tandem into the night sky. Sirens wail down the street, the sounds loudening until an ambulance pulls into the bay to the left of us. I take another drag, the lit end of the burning cigarette creeping ever closer to my lips. It’s harsh, no flavor, dry. Growing up, we only smoked the good menthol shit.

“What happened to us?” I question with a hushed tone.

“I don’t want to get into that right now,” she says, turning away from me.

“We were inseparable as kids.”

She sighs deliberately. “You ran away without saying a word.”

“Can you blame me?”

“The more that time went by, the more I realized that you weren’t coming back.” Out of the corner of my eye, I catch her gaze upon me. “Nobody knows what really happened that day, but it’s hard to believe that it played out exactly the way you said it did.”

The words hit me like a ton of bricks, and my body is already broken and bruised from the fire. The story goes that Carter and I were hanging out at his pool when someone jumped the fence and stabbed him in the gut. As I was rushing him to the hospital, I lost control of the car and crashed through the pier. I tried to rescue him from the blazing furnace, but I couldn’t. And then I watched him burn alive until the screaming finally stopped. It’s a fantastical story. Nobodyshouldbelieve me and yet it still somehow hurts to know that there’s not a soul alive that believes my lies. The people I grew up with, the people that I loved, are too quick to discount my stories about that night but they’re not accounting for the sweet girl I used to be before Carter turned me into a monster.

“So you think I killed him?” Her intuition is right, but she can’t ever know the entire truth. “I need to know why you asked me to come back here.”

She points inside, as if she’s pointing straight at my mother through the exterior walls. “Because I was worried this would happen. I didn’t have a mother growing up. She was the closest thing I had. After you left, I stopped visiting. It’s not my place to try and fix her. That’s your job. I thought that maybe if you came back, if you took care of her, that she’d get better.”

“What about me? You had to have known what this place would do to me?”

“The truth is that I didn’t care.” She shrugs with apathy, cold and vicious. “We’re adults now. We have to take care of our own, and we have to take responsibility for the things we do.” She flicks the cigarette butt onto the ground and grinds it against the asphalt with her shoe. “You asked me what happened to us?” She turns to face me fully. “I grew up and faced the world. You ran away instead of facing the truth and you didn’t stop for one second to think about the collateral damage. You’re not the sweet, innocent girl I used to know. There is a cloud of darkness around you and the worst part is that you don’t even pretend to care that you destroyed countless lives.”

After what happened with Carter, I became a noticeably angrier person. I no longer cared to fight battles with my words, instead opting to lob punches at the people that angered me. I imagine my hands around Paige’s throat, clenching tighter the more she tries to pry away at my fingers in order to breathe. The only thing my quack of a therapist instilled into me was that I was much better at fighting battles with my words. I guess he saw me with one too many black eyes.

“What about you?” I ask. “You’re literally married to the best friend of my enemy.”

“That right there…” She points a finger squarely at me, loaded with accusation, “proves that you’re not remorseful. Carter wasn’t your enemy. He was a selfish asshole who terrorized every kid within a fifty-mile radius, but he’s dead and you still want people to see you as the victim here.” She scoffs and shakes her head. “I’ll be praying for your mother. When she gets better, I think it’s best if you just leave before you end up killing Nick too.”

And then she’s off, running away like I’m known to do. I could give chase and make her pay for the vitriol she’s spat at me but deep down, I know she’s right. If I find out that Nick lit that fire, I’m going to burn his world to the ground and this time there won’t be anyone to protect, so I won’t need to lie.

I take one last drag of the cigarette before heading back inside.

The halls are just as quiet. Nothing more than the occasional announcement over the intercom. As I approach the waiting room, I run into a doctor wearing a long lab coat.

“Miss Davis,” he questions, but it’s only to begin the conversation. He knows exactly who I am as he brushes his hand upon the back of my shoulder and guides me towards the wall. Everyone knows me in this fucking town. “I’m Doctor Richards and I’m taking care of your mother.”

I exhale sharply, scratching at the back of my head. “How is she?”

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