Prolouge
Soulmate. A person with whom you have an immediate connection the moment you meet, a connection so strong that you are drawn to them in a way you have never experienced before. As this connection develops over time you experience a love so deep, strong, and complex, that you being to doubt that you have ever truly loved anyone prior to him/her.
Love. Love is passion, obsession, an addiction, something you can’t live without.
*ROBERT*
They say love hurts more than it heals a person. Sappy romance movies makes us believe love makes one cry more than it makes one smile.
I never believed in any of those theories.
I never cared.
Up until now...
Up until today...
Present day...
“How long has he been like this?” mum’s voice echo from behind my door.
“Weeks. He won’t eat. He won’t sleep. He keeps breaking things. He keeps hurting himself.” Grandma sighs “He never stops screaming. He keeps calling her name every single time...”
“The girl?” Mum asks, cutting her off.
“The more you keep her from him the worse he gets. You have to let him see her. At least just once”Grandma says.
“I can’t and you know that. She’s not right for him. She’s a broken child. She ruined my son!” Mum whispers apprehensively.
“Your son was already in a mess Johanna don’t blame the innocent girl for what she didn’t do.” Grandma scolds.
“So what am I supposed to believe? That this girl has the key to making my son’s condition less severe?” She huffs.
“He needs to see her Johanna. If you and your husband keep doing this, keeping him away from her I’m afraid what’s going to happen next.”
They think I can’t hear them, that their words don’t pierce these thick walls. I don’t listen anymore, their voices turn into a burble as I keep splashing various paints on my wall, using my paint brush to create lines and disconnecting everything around me except the painting of the one girl who is always on my mind. The one girl who has the very key to my happiness. The one girl capable of freeing me from this emptiness. The only girl who can complete me.
The door of my room softly creaks open and closes, I hear shuffling from behind me but I don’t turn. I hear the cracks of broken vodka bottles I broke out of anger but I don’t pay attention. I hear the silent almost whispering click clack of heels echoing the room and I still don’t turn. I couldn’t care less of everything and anything around me at the moment. My shoulders are being held by the familiar comforting hands of my mother but I brush them off and she finches.
“Son-”
“-GO AWAY.” I cut her off harshly, stepping away from her to bring another bucket of paint.
“You need to eat something.”
“Didn’t you just hear what I just said?! GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!” I bark, aggressively knocking down a bucket of paint and spilling the dark color paint on the tiled floor.
“You’re ruining yourself.” Her voice turns wobbly but I don’t care. They should have known better taking her away from me.
“You ruined me the day you and dad decided to take her away from me! You ruined me the day you two decided to take my only happiness away from me! I was happy before this! I was happy having her with me! I was happy having her as the only family I got!”
I’m maundering now, my hands shaking profusely, my body burning with nothing to calm myself down, and the only person capable of doing so hidden from the people I once called my family. I look up to my mum, her choked sob makes it clear that she sees the anger in my eyes. I can see the fear in her eyes, could see her body visibly shaking under my gaze, her lips moving uncontrollably and muttering inaudible words as I began to walk towards her as I speak. Her backing away from me as I advance towards her.
“And now what did you guys do? You two took her away from me!” As I scream out the words my fist aims towards her, having a mind if it’s own. It doesn’t hit her but the wall behind her and she let’s out an audible whimper.
I don’t feel anything, I don’t feel any pain. I should be feeling something, I should be feeling pain but I don’t, I can’t. I move away from her and turn my attention to the half finished mural and begin to lay my aggression on it, continuously hitting to feel the pain which my only source of happiness is feeling right now but I don’t. Nothing is compared to the pain she’s feeling, nothing is compared to the losses she has witnessed, no one is able to understand that except me.
“Robert please stop!” she sobs.
My hands hold my head from the million thoughts that rushes through my mind, a little too much that I can handle. They tell me things I don’t believe, I can’t imagine.
They tell me Claire’s never going to be okay.
They tell me the girl I’ll forever and always love is gone and would never be the same again.
Mum’s voice is a soft whisper to the ears, begging me to stop, to stop hurting myself. I open my eyes and see the stream of tears the flow down her cheeks, watching her only son destroy himself in her very presence.
But she caused this, herself and her husband I call parents.
They both did this to me.
They both did this to her.
“Give her back to me!!!!” I scream.
“I can’t. They won’t let us see her. She isn’t stable enough...”
I don’t let her finish cause I give her the greatest shock of her life as I go on my knees in front of her.
“Robert...”
“Please, please take me to her. I can’t stay another day without her. I’ll do anything, anything just to see her. I can quit painting if you want me to, go study business like you and Dad want me to. I’m so empty. Am so lost. I’m nothing without her mum. I can’t...” I clutch my chest with my hands. “It hurts. it hurts so fucking much mum.” I say, tears already making their way down my cheek. I couldn’t bear it any longer.
“Hey, hey it’s okay. It’s okay.” She crouch down to me holding my face with her slender hands making me look at her “Am here okay. I’ll never leave you again. Your father and I promise we won’t ever leave so please...”
“I don’t need either of you mum. I need her. Only her. No one else.” I croaked.
“If you promise me you will eat something and get some rest we will go see her Okay?” she says caressing my cheeks with her thumbs as she gives me a faint smile.
“Okay.”
I don’t think I remember the last time I entered my en-suite, everything seems so new, strange, foreign, like I’m an alien entering planet earth for the first time. The boy looking back at me looks different from the mirror. His eyes are swollen with dark rings underneath them; the stubble on his chin was prominent showing he haven’t shaved in a while. His lips are cracked and dry, his chestnut brown hair aren’t so brown anymore and I don’t think his eyes has enough energy to decipher the color to signal my brain cells. His skin looks like some corpse from how pale and untanned it looks. In one word I looked like a walking zombie.
I wash my face and brush my teeth. I don’t bother taking a bath and wear my hoodie and a pair of pants before heading out.
No one protests of my outfit, I don’t think they have the guts to as I enter the limo parked at our driveway and we drive off. The drive is silent. Way too quite as Mum keeps stealing glances at me, waiting for me to say a word but I don’t. My head is leaned on the window as I watch the beautiful city which I grew to love when she was with me.
I spot the paparazzi few miles and I mutter a curse. How did they find out I was coming here? Why won’t they leave my life the fuck alone? Why won’t they stop using my life as a form of entertainment to the media? Don’t they have better things to do with their lives?
The endless flashlights from different cameras almost blind me and I pull my hoodie over my head as our escort leads us into the hospital. A female nurse greets us at the lobby, I feel her eyes on me the whole while she talks.
“Mrs. Parker. Robert. Wow we’re honored having you here.” She gushes as she tucks a hair under her ear “What are you guys doing in a place such as this?”
“We’re here to see a patient.”
“A patient?” Her face turn to realization “Oh I almost forgot you mean the girl?”
“Yes the girl.” Mum answers in a warm smile.
“Follow me.”
I remain mute as we walked, stepping inside the elevator and heading to the top floor. I take in the people here, the lives condemned in a wrecked place such as this. Claire shouldn’t be here, Claire isn’t insane like they assume she is. She may have a few breakdowns, a few tantrums, a few phases but I know she isn’t insane. I know since I’m the only one who can stop it, I’m the only one who can calm her down and one thing I know for sure is that it hasn’t come to a stage where she should be sent here.
We walk into a dark isolated room, Claire’s in a plain white room motionless when the lights come on, the only thing keeping us apart is the strong plastic wall I can’t break through.
I watch the girl I love and risked my whole life for stare blankly at me. Those eyes which brightened when they met mine are cold and distant. Her ginger hair which glowed were faded. Her very soft lips were chapped. Her hands were handcuffed and her wrists full of slit marks that I could have prevented. Her smile is gone, her body weak and thin showing she didn’t eat much. Everything about the strong, energetic, rude and sarcastic Claire Anderson was gone and replaced by the weak, fragile, broken girl looking at me.
Through her cold blank stare I see a steak of tear slowly trailing down her cheek as mine did the same. It hurts so much seeing her like this. It hurts freaking much to see her in so much pain and I can’t do anything about it. It hurts so much that I’m helpless in this situation and it hurt more knowing she’s hurting more than I was.
“Is she going to be okay?” I ask mum never breaking my gaze on her.
“I don’t know. No one knows.”
As the words go off her lips Claire screams, holding her head with her handcuffed hands like it’s about to explode. I walk towards the door leading to her room, my steps quicken, eager to close the distance between us.
I know I can calm her down, I’m the only who can and I have a couple of times. I reach the door to open but it’s locked, I bang at the door but it doesn’t bulge. I began kicking, kicking and kicking with the last strength I have screaming out in frustration but it doesn’t open.
I feel a presence beside me and soon I’m dragged away. I struggle to break free as a handful of medical personnel rush into the room, holding her still to inject a dose which weakens her to the knees. Her eyes are on me as darkness pulls her in, two words are mouthed as she gives in to her demons. She falls unconscious.
I’m carried away from my girl as I scream on top of my lungs struggling to let go, tears running down my cheeks like a flowing river...
"Help me”
