A Dancing Monkey, page 17
“My goodness, ma’am, are you alright? You look awful.” she cuts, now in with a concerning tone as she gets a better look at me.
What the hell is she talking about? I turn to look at a framed mirror hanging behind her on the wall to see my tossed hair, tired eyes, and make up blotches all over my face. She’s right.
“I uh, I kinda spent the night outside waiting to ask you about someone.” I shakily respond with frailty.
“Oh my. Well do you have an appointment with the therapist?” she asks.
“No, I don’t. I just wanna know about a patient you guys had at one point. His name is Demitri Markov.” I ask with a hint of desperation. My chest starts to get a little tighter.
“I’m sorry ma’am, but those records are strictly confidential. He would need to sign a release of information to-”
“Ah ha! So he was here before.” I say with wide eyes and satisfaction, “Please, I just wanna know if he was successful in whatever treatment he came to you for.”
“Uh ma’am, I gonna need to ask-”
“Please?! Please don't ask me to leave. I need to know! I’ve been losing my mind over all of this.” I respond manically, gripping the counter beneath the glass. My whole chest pounding like it’s going to implode at any minute.
The surprised woman puts her hands up saying, “Ma’am, calm down. I was about to say that I need to ask for your name and I.D., that’s all.”
Almost keeling over, I hold myself up, trying my best to catch my breath. “My… my name is Melissa… Melissa Landry.”
The woman’s fingers click rapidly on her keyboard, her eyes squinting at the large monitor tucked behind the counter. “My name is Kacie, I'm the office receptionist and coordinator. Let’s see here…”
I barely pay attention as I straighten my posture and fix my hair, trying to regain some kind of composure.
After she clicks her mouse a few times, “I see now…” She then glances back up at me, dumbfounded. “Well, this is interesting.”
-Chapter 32-
“Interesting? What do you mean interesting?” I ask Kacie, taking out my driver’s license and showing her.
“Well, the thing is…” she says handing it back to me, “Mr. Markov signed the release for Melissa Landry. But, it was nearly 3 years ago.
I look at her, stunned. Demi was planning on showing me absolutely everything, after all.
The numb sensation of helplessness flows throughout my body. I want to feel glad or excited, but it’s more like I just forced a victory on an opponent who’s already dead.
“So the doctor who was in charge of his case file was Dr. Emma Slate.” Kacie continues to type behind her counter. “I’m setting up an individual session with her now. When she comes in this morning, she’ll go over his treatment plan with you.”
I slowly turn around with a blank expression and a slight nod.
“She will be here in about 30 minutes, so you should take a seat.” Kacie explains while I make it over to the closest chair.
This is what I’ve been looking for, right? Some sort of closure is what all this has led up to. This will be about the real life Jon I’ve studied and followed. A full on report of what it took to change him from Jon, the stalker… to my boyfriend, Demi.
My Demi…
My love…
This is the man I fell in love with.
The man who would do anything for me.
What am I…?
What am I actually doing?
I should be here with him.
Do I really not trust him?
Do I really not know him?
…No.
No, of course I do.
“Of course, I do!” I shout.
Kacie responds, “Um excuse me, ma’am. Did you say something?”
“I don’t need a doctor to tell me about Demi. I know him already!” I continue saying to myself. “I… I need to see him. I need to let him know.” I mutter.
Kacie stands up to see me over the counter, “Let who know what now?”
My shaking hands dig out the phone from my purse, but it’s dead…
I look up to the receptionist, “Kacie, thank you so much for putting up with me, but I gotta go. I need to tell him.”
I quickly wrap my purse over my shoulder as I get up off the chair.
“Tell him what?” Kacie asks with curious wide eyes.
“Yes! To tell him yes. That I will marry him! Thank you, Kacie!” I yell barging out through the door.
After I squirm back in the driver seat of my car. My right hand frantically feels around for the phone’s charge cable. “Gotcha!” I say happily, pulling it up to plug into my phone.
It’ll be a little while for it to recover from a completely dead battery, so I’ll just head home. I start the car and punch it into drive, smoking my tires and hauling ass around the corner of the plaza. The next major street is 35th Ave., so I can just take that to my familiar side of town.
After a few blocks, I grip my phone’s power button, forcing it on. “Come on. Come on.” I groan, watching it light up again. As soon as I see the text notifications, I scroll to Demi’s and dial the contact number, switching it to speaker phone.
“Hello?” Demi says, trying to mask how tired he really is.
“Demi!” I shout.
“Mel.”
“Yes, Demi!”
“Mel, where on earth are you?”
“I just had to take some time to myself. To think.”
“Listen, everyone’s worried sick about you. Liz and Gabi won’t stop lecturing me and-”
“Demi, are you listening?”
“What do you mean, what’s going on?”
“Well, if you were just listening, you big dummy, I said yes.”
“Wait, what? Yes?”
“Yes, Demi. I will marry you.”
Demi’s voice trails off in disbelief. It’s hard to tell if he’s crying or just out of breath. In the background I can hear Gabi and Liz clapping and squealing.
“Listen, I’ll explain everything when I get home. My phone’s on life support right now, so I’ll be home soon. I love you all!”
The call drops and the phone goes dead. I quickly check to see that the cord has fallen off.
“No, just let it die. Don’t let this be a distraction to cause you to crash before you start your life with him.” I say to myself, gripping the wheel confidently.
For the next 15 minutes or so, I drive carefully, filled with excitement. Every so often, I catch myself smiling in the mirror. Strangely enough, I’m taken back to the smile on that little monkey figurine. The desk ornament that made me smile every time I felt down at work. As it danced, I let go of all the bad things in my life. So now I figure Demi’s diary was a testament to all the bad things in his life; a way to let go. His mother believed that everyone needs a vessel to count on to help take on those bad things. He carried on that tradition trying to help me.
The first time I proudly showed him to my desk in management, he got me something for it, knowing that I was going to feel stressed and bewildered.
“For every time you feel the bad things, keep this monkey here on your desk. And if you let it dance, it can make you smile.”
So, I had it dance every time anything got me down. And as I smiled , it helped. But, I had to first let it help me.
-Chapter 33-
“Wow, that’s incredible news, Melissa. Congratulations!” Ethan says excitedly over the phone.
“Thanks Ethan. How are you doing on your recovery?” Demi asks into the speaker phone.
“I’ll be right as rain soon enough. I just need for these skin infections to settle with the medication.” Ethan replies.
“Well we’re glad you’re well enough to be back at work again. Just take it easy out there for now.” I say feeling concerned.
Sounds of a festive party can be heard drawing closer in Ethan’s background. “Oops, that sounds like my cue to go. I’ll call Elizabeth later tonight. Again, congratulations! Bye!” Ethan says, and the call cuts out.
Demi and I giggle saying “Bye Ethan.”
I get up from the bed and throw on one of Demi’s collared shirts, buttoning just one button to barely cover my nipples. I pick up a black pair of my panties laying on the ground and slip it on. My fingers do their best to fix and tease my long mess of hair as I go out to the kitchen.
“Hey Mel?” Demi asks from the bedroom.
“Yeah?” I shout back.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said you felt as you read through the diary.” He says.
I quickly grab a cup of yogurt and a spoon and skip back into the bedroom. “Yeah. I heard strange voices, blurry vision, time slowed down. I even saw weird stuff like your face in the ceiling and blood coming from the counter. It was like I was under some kind of spell.” I explain climbing back into bed.
“And you said things actually happened around you just like what I wrote happened to me?” he questions with a higher pitch in his voice.
“Sure did… Well, kind of. Like, they were very similar?” I reply while sticking a spoonful of strawberry yogurt in my mouth looking up at Demi. “But it was probably because I wasn’t eating well, and you know, alcohol.” I shrug.
“Yeah… yeah, that’s probably it. Or maybe my diary was doing all that.” He says performing an overly-dramatic contemplative look.
“You think your diary was enchanted by magic?” I laugh nervously at the idea, “ And so whoever reads it will be under some kind of inter-dimensional-time-line curse?” I joke motioning my shoulders back and forth..
“Yeah, that would be so crazy.” Demi shrugs.
I quietly eat my yogurt while staring off into space. After a minute, I ask, “So, I gotta know; what really drove you to stalk that woman Jane? She must’ve been really really pretty. Her name wasn’t actually Jane, right?”
“Her real name was actually Jane Claire Williams. The Jane I had that crush on back in high school was actually named Jill Evergreen. But anyways, Jane really did remind me of Jill only all grown up. Every time I saw her, I kept imagining that Jill never left my life. I guess I was trying to bide my time until I worked up the balls to properly talk to her. My problem was instead of planning how I’d finally talk to her, I just stayed in my imaginary world. I didn’t want to leave it because there was no risk of her breaking my heart. I called the shots of everything that happened. Everyday I’d need to refresh my imagery of her and build my fantasy based on how she looked, so I kept following her.”
I nod slowly, listening to Demi while spooning more yogurt. “So, your behavior and attitude with me the whole time we’ve been together. I owe all that to your therapy sessions?” I ask.
“Most, I guess. And you’re not the type to just run from problems or ignore issues.” He answers.
I put a spoonful up to his face. I pause for a moment with a strange urge to keep asking questions. Demi looks down at the spoon and extends his neck forward a bit to lick the yogurt off. After a few seconds, I realize my spoon is clean and I drop it into the cup.
I straighten my posture, turn to Demi and ask, “Hey, you listed all that stuff you brought with you to Jane’s apartment. What exactly were you planning to do to her, anyways?” A rush of goosebumps hits me right after I ask, making me question myself if I really want to know.
Demi sits up resting his back on the headboard and hails a deep rumbling sigh. “Well. At first, I wasn’t sure. I mindlessly grabbed every random thing I saw in the maintenance tool box at work. But eventually, as I was listing them off in the diary, I thought of different ways to persuade her. Maybe some intimidation. Or, maybe I might have hurt myself as a way to force her to have pity on me. Let’s just say I was on my way to snapping from the frustrations of not achieving happiness. I didn’t even realize how close to the edge I was until I was in therapy.”
I slowly move my hand on top of his as I grip his fingers. “But you didn’t.”
Shrugging my right shoulder, I look up into Demi’s eyes, saying, “Maybe when you depended on the diary too much, it slowly led you to become someone you are not. I guess crutches in life like that are designed to only take a person so far before they turn bad.” Demi shrugs with his left shoulder and looks down at our hands.
After a moment, I hang my head with another unnerving question, “So uh, where did your mom get that diary anyways?”
Demi thinks for a bit and answers, “I think it was from something named Eldridge. Yeah, the Eldridge Estate sSale; like a huge auction back in my hometown. I remember it being some kind of a big deal.”
My eyes are caught in a stare at Demi’s face, “El… dridge? What the hell is that? Was that a store or something?”
He thinks for a minute, “No, it was a family name. Master Eldridge was a war hero turned politician. Legend has it that Madam Eldridge had an affair and became pregnant, but she died giving birth. They say he tried sacrificing the son to the devil to bring her back, in a way to cleanse her of the infidelity. The whole town knew of them. They lived in a huge creepy mansion near the waterfront. Every Halloween, we’d dare each other to go up there. Schoolyard rumors talked about witches who stayed up there practicing magic, drawing their demonic powers from the Eldridge boy’s ghost.”
Demi leers at me drawing his face closer to mine. I stare back at him, stiff as a board and my pulse rising.
“Boo!” Demi puffs. My body jolts up with a loud squeak almost tossing my cup into the air.
“Hey! You jerk.” I plead poking at his stomach with my spoon. Demi lightly laughs with a stupid grin trying to avoid my jabs.
“But it’s all just kid gossip, or stories the grown ups would say to scare us, that’s all.” Demi tries to assure me. I shrug at him, “Well, if it was all true, then that would coincide with all the weird things I saw when I was going through your book. Maybe a piece of your magical home town came here to Mandaville with you.”
Demi rolls his eyes at the idea. I try to brush it off as well. But for some reason, the feeling of curiosity won’t seem to go away, like there’s way more to that story. Finally, I get up off the bed and head towards the door to get rid of my cup. Pausing for a moment, I turned back to my fiance, “Hey, you mentioned that we should go on a vacation.”
Demi turns to me, “Yeah, that would be really nice.”
I whisper, “Yeah. I think I know just the place.”
* * *
[1]revisit the structure
C T Micheal, A Dancing Monkey
