"MELANCHOLY DREAMS" by Sarah Ryniker

STORY LAST UPDATED ON 01/03/2003

Melancholy Dreams Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Epilogue

CHAPTER EIGHT: REVELATIONS AND PROMISES

I had just found Allen and was sneaking off to find someplace to be alone. We walked into the bathroom on the second floor, deciding that to be the best place. But neither of us had sex like planned. There, in the bathtub, in the same identical way I had described I'd found my mother, was my mother's and now my, husband. He was just hanging there, blood staining the porcelain beneath him.
    The only difference was that I found a note on the bottom of the tub. Ink and freshly bled blood mixed together to make the words difficult to read. Not that there was much, other than "I'm sorry, I just couldn't do it." I understood all too well, though nobody else in the family did.
    As fast as I'd become a wife, I'd become a "grieving" widow. Though there really was no grieving on my part, not on the inside, anyway. However, on the outside, I showed such sadness, I could have won an Oscar for all of my great acting. Eddie especially appreciated my loving support.
    Felicity, on the other hand, as always, seemed to see right through me. She grew annoyed at the funeral when I moaned and cried out loud. And I'm pretty sure she rolled her eyes when I "fainted" at the graveyard as his casket was being put into the ground. But how else was I supposed to act? I hadn't loved him; it had all been a lie that we had kept well, for the most part. I couldn't just suddenly change the story, whether Tomas was dead or not.
    Felicity seemed cold, however. She took care of all of the funeral arrangements and ordered people about, just like on my wedding day, like an army general. She took care of everything without a flick of her eyes or a single tear. Nobody could see what she was feeling, for there was no feeling in her eyes. How could anyone seem so heartless?
    Then the night before the will was to be read, I heard sobbing coming from the shrine room. I peeked in to see Felicity sitting in a chair, a drink by her side, crying. Her sobs shook her body, and the walls echoed every one of them. I suddenly felt sympathy for my older sister. Perhaps she wasn't as heartless as everyone assumed, just as Eddie promised that she wasn't.
    The next day, we all gathered into the front parlour to hear what Tomas had left to everyone. I sat nervously in one of the large, high-backed chairs, one leg crossed over the other. My hands clutched the armrests, trying to understand what was making me so nervous. I knew I must have looked snobby, cruel and uncaring, but so did Felicity. It made me feel only slightly better knowing that I wasn't the only one appearing to care only what he'd left to me. But that was the least of my worries.
    The lawyer, Mr James Cogwell, stood in front of us all holding a pack of papers in his hand. When all of us had arrived and been seated, he began reading without a single word towards any of us.
    "…'And to my daughter Felicity, I leave my home. She is my most responsible child and shall take great care of it. I also wish to apologise to her profusely'…" He droned on and on, and as he did I began to relax. Even in death he wouldn't let the secret loose.
    Oh, but how wrong I was. " 'Now I wish everyone to listen carefully as I make this last announcement. Cry, forgive me, but I cannot lie to my children. They were all I had left after your mother left'…" I watched as Felicity's eyes widened. Her head snapped my way. She had all too obviously not missed the "your mother" part.
    " 'Yes, Kassy, Eddie, Felicity, your mother left not long after the twins were born. She didn't die of any sickness, but of her own hand, I come to find, years later. She left here pregnant with your youngest sister, Cry'…" I never heard the rest. My world was spinning around. What was I ever to do now? I had wanted to earn Eddie's trust and love, hoping that maybe he could truly love me. Now it was all out, and he'd never see me the way I wished him to.
    "How could he do this?" I later heard Felicity's shrill scream filter from the room. We had all left Felicity to discuss things with the lawyer, considering that she'd inherited the most. But I was nosey and chose to eavesdrop outside the door.
    "Calm down, Ms Lavigne," I heard the lawyer try to calm her. "He just didn't want you children to grow up thinking the worst of your mother."
    "Well, as long as he was alive anyway," she muttered, her anger not hidden in the slightest.
    "He never meant to tell you, but Cry came back and he felt that it was only proper that he tell you. He had a feeling that the truth would have somehow come out with her being here, anyhow," he insisted.
    I heard footsteps moving back and forth in the room, and leaned over slightly to peek in. "And that makes it all better? He lied to my brother, my sister, to me our entire lives and suddenly he tells us himself so she wouldn't, and that makes everything just peaches and cream?" She threw her hands up in the air in frustration. She paced over to the window and peered out, just as I'd seen Tomas doing the first day I'd met him. "It's all her fault he killed himself, anyway. I wish she would have had some mental breakdown and had killed herself like that mother of hers."
    "Felicity," the lawyer began, but she stopped him before he could say anything by turning around and putting her hand in the air.
    "I don't want to hear it. As far as I'm concerned, my mother died just the way my father told it, and my father died of nothing more than a heart attack. I have no younger sister," she insisted.
    His eyes widened in surprise. "Felicity, I'm surprised with you. You are never one to give into fantasy. You know none of that is true. But there is something else you must know." He ushered her to sit down.
    She sat down into the chair I had been sitting in, with a sigh. She cupped her forehead in the palm of her hand. "What else is there to tell?"
    "Cry is like Kassy. She may not know it or even understand it, but she needs more care than she thinks. Felicity, I think she came here for help." I wanted to grow angry with him for saying such a thing, but I couldn't. I couldn't help feeling that perhaps he was right. My disorder, whatever it may truly be, was getting worse.
    "And what am I supposed to do about it?" she snapped. Her frustration showed brightly in her blue eyes.
    "Take care of her. Trust me, she is going to need you. I'll get a doctor in here to look at her here soon. Her disorder can cause nymphomania, which, by what you've told me, I've assumed has already happened." His compassion touched me.
    "I already spent the majority of my life taking care of Kassy. I still do because I know how Allen cheats on her. I don't know if I can spend the rest of my life taking care of another one." She was actually crying. And, to my surprise, I felt bad for her.
    He placed a hand on her shoulder gently. "You have a well of strength within you that is unbelievable, Felicity. You always find a way to pull strength from the very depths of your soul. That is something to be admired." With that, he headed towards the door. I quickly hid myself and watched him walk past me from the shadows.
    After that, I watched and listened to Felicity cry. Then, with shame in myself, I made my way into the room. "Felicity?"
    She wiped at her eyes quickly. "What do you want?" she hissed, embarrassed to be caught crying.
    "I want to apologise. I promise to be good from now on. I won't do anything bad to cause you trouble anymore, I promise," I insisted, feeling much like the child that I'd grown up to be.
    She laughed. "I believe that you'll try, Cry. But I don't believe that you can do that." She sighed and stood up to turn towards me. "But I promise to do my best to take care of you, no matter if I dislike you or not."
    It was a good enough promise. And I believed her with everything in my being. And she kept to it - just as I kept to my promise. I didn't do anything bad. I did my best to be a good person, for Felicity's sake.
    Seeing that Francine, Kim, David and Kylie were all still there, I chose to spend time with them all until they left. Francine lightened up to me, and even became nicer to me than she was before. I noticed the looks that she continuously gave Kim. And I also noticed the looks that Kim was giving back.
    Finally, one afternoon, as we all sat on the balcony in my bedroom staring out at the ocean below, I decided to ask about it. "What is with this look you two keep giving each other? Do you have something to tell me?"
    Kim looked down at her hands. "Yes, we do," she admitted with a sigh.
    "This isn't the time, Kim. She's been through enough trauma already," Francine insisted. That only piqued my curiosity.
    "What trauma? What are you talking about?" I demanded to know, fear making my heart pound.
    "Come on, Kim, you need to go rest." Francine ushered Kimberly out of the room quickly, not allowing her to tell me.
    However, it wasn't long before it all came out. Francine couldn't hide it from me forever, no matter how much she wanted to protect me. And I found that Francine couldn't seem to help wanting to protect me from everything. She didn't seem to want to hurt me.
    I grew impatient as it slowly came time for them to depart. By this time, I had grown to notice the looks that David kept shooting at Felicity. Even if Felicity was ignoring him, I was still insanely jealous. He had been ignoring me this entire time, even after I became a bride and a widow all in one day. It only aggravated me and made me more moody.
    And moody I was. I had been forced, by my promise, to avoid all contact with temptation. And at the moment, temptation was Eddie. Every time I saw him, my heart would jump into my throat and all I would want was to pull him into a room and seduce him all day long.
    Just as promised, a doctor was brought in to check me out. This time, unlike the times Mother had been to take me to the doctor, I was honest with my feelings. I didn't feel anymore comfortable, but I knew that it was crucial that I get it out.
    I was diagnosed with multiple personality disorder and nymphomania. When asked what that meant, the doctor, Dr Lavenia Thromwell, said that it meant that at times I would act very much like a child, seeing that it seemed that is where my mind liked to be. But I could also be very adult at times, switching from severe extremes to another.
    Dr Thromwell was to be my therapist, and, eventually, I became very comfortable. Yet even with all of the medicine and therapy, I only felt myself growing worse. I managed to keep my nymphomania at a standstill by avoiding men, mostly. However, the MPD was worsening. I even heard Dr Thromwell tell Felicity that there was truly no hope for me; I would eventually lock myself into a world of childhood completely for the rest of my life. The thought frightened me, and I begged Felicity not to make me see the therapist again. She, with some large amounts of pleading, agreed, and I never saw Dr Thromwell again.
    I kept my promise to Felicity because as time wore on, she began to be nice to me. I didn't understand it, and I don't believe that she did, either. But she took good care of me, and I started to feel comfortable with just being who I seemed to be meant to be.
    It wasn't until six months after they had left that I heard what Kimberly had been trying to tell me that day. I was sitting at my desk in the room, reading, when the phone rang. My heart pounded, as if I knew instinctively that it would be bad news. I answered it slowly, not wanting to hear the voice on the other line. "Hello?" I said, closing my eyes as if in excruciating pain.
    "Hello? Cry?" I heard Francine say. "Sweetie, I have bad news for you, and I think that you need to be sitting down for it. Are you sitting?"
    "Yes," I said, slowly sitting down on the bed.
    She took a deep breath and cleared her throat. She sounded like she'd been crying. "Honey, Kimberly died this morning. When we were there she had been trying to tell you that she had cervical cancer. She's had it since before we came to Las Vegas, but she hadn't told us. There was nothing they could do for her. I didn't want to tell you then. I just wanted you to enjoy it while it lasted."
    "Kim? She can't be dead. She's too young." I felt the tears being pulled up from somewhere deep within me, someplace where it hurt so badly that I didn't think I could stand it, some place I hadn't known existed.
    "She's gone, Cry. You need to come to the funeral. It's this coming Sunday. It'll break my heart if you don't come," she said.
    "I'm sorry." It was all I could say. Without another word, I set the phone back down. I didn't want anymore bad news. I refused to listen to it. It was much too depressing.
    But I was already depressed. Yet instead of crying, I went into the bathroom and threw up. Then I left the room on a search that I'd forced myself not to go on in months. I searched out Eddie, hoping that he didn't see me as his sister, but a woman he could love. I needed to be loved right now. And there was only one way that I knew how to show love.

Melancholy Dreams Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Epilogue

Back to Home