Turned off

"He hasn't said anything since I found him here," Suzanne said to Julian. "He just sits there with his eyes open. His lip was bleeding and I cleaned him up a little. His neck is all swollen like someone choked him." She moved up and pointed at my neck. "See? You can still see the hand prints."

"There's no one at his house either," Julian said, staring down at me worriedly. He looked down at my duffel bag. "What does he have in the bag?"

"Just some clothes and his diary," Suzanne said kneeling down before me and running her hands through my hair. She started crying. "What happened to you, Harlan? Please talk to us." She began to kiss my face.

I could see them perfectly. I simply had no desire to talk to them. It was as if I was watching this whole scene on a TV screen miles away. I couldn't feel anything. I couldn't even feel anger any longer. I didn't want to talk to them and I wished they would go away.

"How long has he been here?" Julian asked as he paced around the room. He looked towards the window. "Wait a second. Someone just pulled into Harlan's house. I'll be right back."

I heard the front door open.

Suzanne continued to kiss my cheek and cry all over me. I tried to tell her to just leave me alone and I was startled to find out I couldn't speak.

After a few minutes, Julian came back. "Well, I found out what happened. Harlan attacked his father with an iron. His mother said she's worried about him. His father's over there with a bandage wrapped around the side of his head."

"What the hell is his father doing there?" Suzanne asked him, her voice filling with alarm. "I don't fucking believe it."

"I know Harlan's father abused him," Julian said. "He never liked to talk about it, though."

"That bastard abused him for fourteen years," Suzanne whispered, her fingers rubbing my cheek gently. "It's taking everything I have not to go over there and finish what Harlan started." I just noticed that she was wearing a clown suit and make-up. I had no idea why, though. In my mind I had totally forgotten about Halloween. "Do you think we need to take him to a doctor?"

"No," Julian said and some part of me was relieved. "Actually I have a better idea. I know you're not going to like this seeing how close you and Harlan are and all, but I think we should call Samantha."

"Samantha?" Suzanne asked. "That girl he started seeing about three weeks ago?"

"Suzanne, you don't know how close those two have become. Have you ever seen Harlan smile? I don't mean that smile he uses just to be polite, I mean truly smile. A smile so real you can see it in his eyes. Samantha can make him smile and that's a difficult thing to do. Harlan is one bleak and cynical bastard, you know it and I know it. He truly loves her."

Suzanne got up and grabbed a cordless phone. "I'll do anything if you think it will make him better. Do you know the phone number?"

Julian said he didn't and Suzanne got him a phone book. I vaguely heard Julian telling Sam to come down. I didn't care either way. I had retreated into myself. Crawled deep into a safe area of my mind and stayed there, not wanting to come out.

I heard parts of the conversation between Suzanne and Julian. Something about putting me to bed. Unable to protest, I felt Julian lift me into the air and carry me into the bedroom.

"Jesus, he couldn't weigh more than a hundred pounds," Julian said as he walked.

The next thing I knew, I was staring at the ceiling and the lights went out in the room.

After a short while, I found myself staring into Sam's face. She was whispering something at me and pushing my hair back from my forehead. She kissed me gently on my split lip as she called my name.

"He's not going to hurt you anymore, Harlan," she said, her eyes tearing up. "I promise you he's not going to hurt you. Julian and Suzanne told me about your father." She leaned down and slowly kissed my forehead, letting her lips linger there for a few moments. I felt her teardrops falling into my hair. "Harlan, come back to me. Come back to us. I love you."

I was beginning to feel something, a tiny stirring from somewhere deep inside of me. I felt my hand move over to hers and then I squeezed tightly. She was my strength. I somehow felt whole with her. Almost as if I was only some strange sort of half person without her. No one had ever needed me. Certainly not anyone in my family.

I felt her stiffen as I squeezed her warm palm.

Then I lost control.

It started with a heave in my body, followed by an involuntary shudder. I felt a sob escape my lips almost like a cough and then I just completely fell apart. I began to weep so hard it took all my physical energy just to do it. Fourteen years of holding back with no one to help me. Fourteen years of pain poured out of me while Sam held me that morning. She held me tightly, her arms shaking with strength.

In that brief moment, I had returned and felt emotion with every cell of my body. I felt myself wailing inside with relief at the avalanche of pain that I had held inside of me. Sam held my shivering body and refused to let go. I held her back feeling like I would not be able to survive without her.

I felt that I was no longer Harlan, but some strange mixture of herself and I. She gave me strength at a time that I would have died without it. I realize now that had she not been there for me, than I might have never returned. I might have stayed at that safe place deep within my psyche, refusing to come out into a world that would only try to hurt me again. I would have stayed in the place that little Harly had visited so often when things got too dark.

I fell asleep soon after, completely exhausted. When I awoke, she was still there. Sam seemed to sense that I was awake because her eyes opened instantly.

"How are you, Harlan?" she asked.

I actually did feel much better. "Thank you, Sam," I said, stretching. My back was still sore where my father had thrown me into the wall. I wondered just how badly I had mangled his ear. I hope I mutilated the bastard.

"Don't you dare thank me, Harlan," she said, rolling to the side and putting her arms around me. "I love you. I couldn't have done anything else. Of course, my Mom is going to kill me when she finds out that I didn't sleep at home last night."

I frowned. "You didn't call her? Great, she's going to love me now. Good old unstable Harlan Sexton."

She kissed me and got out of bed. "I'm going to go now, but I'll be back in a couple hours." She stopped and stared at me oddly as if I was slowly fading away or something. "Are you going to be all right, Harlan?"

I did my best to smile, but I'm not sure if I pulled it off. "Yes." That was the first major lie I had ever told Sam and it made me feel guilty. I still felt a little weird—like I was some sort of jig saw puzzle that was missing some of its pieces. Many pieces.

Isn't it normal to throw away a puzzle that has too many pieces missing? Scary thought.

After Sam left, I wrote everything down in my journal. Reliving the incident with my father made me feel better somehow. It distanced me from the whole thing and made me feel like a visitor. It made me feel as if my journal was a work of fiction, that I had merely created this suicidal main character named Harlan Sexton. Somehow I don't think that's a healthy attitude, thinking of yourself as a fictional character. Oh well, whatever works.

After a few hours, Suzanne came into the room carrying a tray. She had made me a cheese omelet and some toast. At first, the very thought of eating made me feel sick, but after a few moments I realized I was famished. Over the last few weeks I had barely eaten anything, surviving mainly on strong coffee and some bagels. Suzanne sat and watched me as I ate, every once in a while offering me an odd smile. I knew she wanted to talk to me and I was glad she waited until I had at least finished eating.

"I just saw your father," she said after I had wiped my mouth and took a sip of the coffee that needed way more sugar. I grimaced.  "He has a bandage over the top of his head. It appears that you messed him up pretty good, Harlan. If ever there was a son-of-a-bitch that deserved it, it was him. It's a good thing you didn't kill him, though. They sewed his ear back on."

I put the tray on the bedside table. "That's the scary thing, Suzanne. I was trying to kill him. If he hadn't moved his head he would probably be dead. I lost it last night." I shuddered. "For the first time in my life, I completely lost control. The only thing that I could think of was hurting him."

She put her hand on my leg. It wasn't sexual. We had left that territory now, and we both knew it. "You're welcome to stay here as long as you like. I mean it, too. I'm not going to let you go back home to that monster."

I smiled weakly. "Thanks. If I do have to go back home, I will kill him. I know it."

"I like her."

For a second I had no idea what she was talking about. I looked at her foolishly. "Sam?" I finally asked. "Yeah, she's good to me."

"She really cares about you, Harlan. I could see it in her eyes. I always told myself we would never work in a relationship. Our twenty-year difference would ultimately hurt us. I wanted you to find someone that would care about you in the same way I do. Sam does. I only talked to her for a short while, but I could already see that she was intelligent and confident. All of that and pretty as hell."

I moved closer to her and put my arms around her in a tight embrace. After I squeezed her for a few minutes, I looked into her eyes. "Thank you, Suzanne. Without you in my life these last few years I know I would have fallen apart. You held me together. You've always done this. You're doing it again now. I'll always love you no matter what happens."

"Sometimes right is wrong and wrong is right," she whispered into my ear. I could tell she was crying.

I embraced her. "Fuck it, baby, hold on tight. We going for a ride."

"Fasten your fucking seat belt," she said.

After a few minutes we were laughing uncontrollably. Not because anything was hysterical or anything, but simply because we had each other. It was happy laughter, even if the very term is redundant.