She is perfect. Her laugh, that melodious tune, keeps me warm as I lie in bed. Tossing and turning, monstrously turning. I wish I could tell her that from that very day she stumbled into my mother's gallery, asking to speak to the artist, I would never love another. I'm sure she didn't expect me to be so—
Mother said I shouldn't call myself a monster, but she's gone now. Even she left me. I really shouldn't waste my lucid moments writing in this soiled book. I'm almost out of pages as it is. But I suppose I need to remember.
The Evermore home was dead. Father lost to the wind, Mother to her sorrows… and the boy, Jay, lost to himself. He sat perched on the balcony railing, fearful of everything but death, it seemed. The wind carried the salt from the ocean, a taste he had come to find comfort in. He stared into that abyss. He could barely make out the roaring waves.
"She starts tomorrow," he whispered to himself.
Dr. Preti had been very insistent he find a caretaker for himself since his mother's passing. It had been three months since he had left that meeting, three months since he stopped picking up her calls, but somehow a notice was made, a candidate found, and a decision made. He remembered the girl in question. He had heard her introduce herself as he stood transfixed in the gallery, hyperfocused on his final piece—in commemoration, in jest of his pain—a burning heart.
Mother…
Jay was not entirely normal. He was deceptively mundane, practically mute most days.
Most days.
On others, like today, he would write, and paint, and sing to the ocean. But no painting today, not since he shed all his blood on that heart and paraded it for the world to see. So when Kaela walked in and asked the gallery manager who the artist of the centerpiece was, all he could do, after branding her image into his soul was make a hasty escape into the waiting car. Now, looking at Preti's text, a resumé, on it- that very same face that has haunted his dreams since he could read. Caretaker.
Tomorrow.