Agoraphobia and Ecstasy Ch. 21-31

I spewed out a string of cuss words and turned down the next street, with the intent to circle back and come up the opposite end of her street but they had that blocked off by the time I got there too. I pulled over and slammed old Betty into park before jerking my door open, not even stopping to think about the outdoors, or my fears, or Jessica. I had to know what was happening. I had to see her.

"What are you doing! Hey, come back here!" An angry policewoman followed me as I raced up the street past their barricade. I could hear Siphon's footsteps behind me keeping pace. Then I heard the policewoman say something into her radio, but I could tell she was already panting for breath.

"Kenji, you're going to get arrested."

"She needs us, dammit." Despite what I knew. Despite what I believed to be true. Going against all the facts and the truth, I ran toward Daphne's house, sucking air into my lungs.

I started to lose steam about the time I noticed the police weren't parked in front of Daphne's house at all. They were across the street and down a few houses. The yellow house with all the flowers--the house the spindly brunette had come from.

Siphon passed by me as I slowed and turned up Daphne's driveway. I looked down the block and saw a detective standing in the street talking with Gary. He didn't notice me, but he had his press credentials pinned to his suitcoat, and I knew he was there on official business. I wondered if he'd been the one to call the police and then I cursed myself for not having the forethought to use my own press credentials. When I felt the eerie chill of the air blowing over my head I realized I'd overextended my welcome outdoors, and Daphne's germ-infested living room sounded really good about then.

30

"Drink this," Jaymee cooed as she leaned over me, holding a cup. I could see the string from a tea bag dangling over its edge and wondered what twilight zone nightmare I was living in to wake up and see Jaymee in my living room.

"What the fuck!" I said, pushing myself up to a sitting position. Jaymee sat across from me in my recliner and held the tea out my direction, as if I was going to have a happy conversation with her and chat about the good old days. Her fake smile was obviously forced. I had no clue how long I'd been sleeping, and she'd been in my house, but she'd amassed a collection of things and organized them on my table in front of me.

"You're sick, silly. This tea will help." Again she pushed the tea my direction, but I didn't want tea. I wanted her out of my house and out of my life. Why had she followed me to Siphon's house. Why was her face so triggering to my PTSD?

"I want you to leave, Jaymee."

"I've just made you some tea. You need to drink it. Besides, we have some catching up to do." She set the tea in front of me and picked up my old scrapbook, one I kept buried in my closet as hidden away from the world as I could manage. I hadn't pulled it out and looked at it since the day I'd been cleared to leave town and move to Utica.

She thumbed through it until it fell open to a picture of Nanette and me at prom, decked out in huge hair and dangly earrings. Our smiles sparkled with shiny metal--one week later and we both would have had our braces off for prom, but no the ortho wouldn't let us have them off early.

"Why are you doing this? Where did you find that? Why did you go through my things?" I shifted, turning my body to face her more directly. Then I noticed Nan's ring, the one my grandmother had given to her when we were just kids. Nan was fourteen and becoming a woman. Gram told her it was a promise ring, to promise to wait until she was married to give her body to a boy. Nan wore it every single day, until the day I'd taken it from her hand.

"It isn't obvious yet?" She flipped a few more pages and laid the book open in front of me. A newspaper clipping of the story of my arrest stared up at me. "Drink the tea, Daphne."

"I won't." I stared at that news story for a long while as Jaymee sat there nudging the cup of tea closer and closer. The mug shot they'd taken had me covered in Victor's blood. The picture they'd chosen for Victor was his senior portrait.

I always found it strange how in life and death even the most cruel, vicious, vile, and evil people got glamorized. They are always "the brightest student" or "the one no one would ever suspect." But Victor had been anything but. He had been the monster who crept into my perfect life and made it a nightmare. His eyes stared up at me from that paper and in my sick and weak state, I found the hatred I'd had for him rekindling.

I had no clue what game she was playing or what she was doing, but I wanted nothing to do with it. While anger bubbled beneath the surface, fear stirred in my stomach. I was so sick I just wanted her to leave. The door called to me, but it was so far away and my head throbbed so badly, I knew I'd never even be able to walk to it to see her out. I turned away from the newspaper clipping and forced my eyes to focus on whatever else might capture my attention and help me get my mind off Victor.

She had found my stash of moonrocks and had laid them out on the table in front of me. Nice, long, thin lines of powder, prepared and ready to run. I gritted my teeth.

"Is that what you use to forget?" Jaymee must have followed the line of my eyesight down to what I was looking at. Forcing my gaze up to her face, I noticed her smirk.

"Daphne, I've just been sitting here for an hour waiting for you to wake up so you could drink this tea I made for you. You will feel much better when you do. It will help you forget better than all these drugs."

"Get the fuck out of my house, Jaymee. The neighborhood council will hear about this." A coughing fit struck me, and I doubled over heaving, trying to stop the spasms and catch my breath. Each cough made my head hurt more, and I got dizzy again.

"Now, you listen to me, Ms. Collier." Jaymee reached behind her in the recliner and pulled out one of my kitchen knives. That was when I realized something was really wrong. The hair on my arms stood up, and I became suddenly alert to the flashing lights outside my front window, red blue, red, blue. "I've waited long enough for this moment." She thrust the knife at me and pointed it at my chest. I shrugged away and scooted to the end of the couch, but she stood, picking up the cup of tea and advancing on me.

"You will drink this tea, do you understand?"

"No, I won't." I threw the blanket off and tried to stand but she was on top of me in an instant, pinning me down, holding the tea over my face. "Get off me," I screeched, writhing under her bony mass.

Someone banged on the door and shouted, and I pushed at Jaymee's scrawny form. Still I was weak from being sick, and she had the advantage, a knife pointed at my neck now, and the tea, whatever it was, almost to my lips.

"Daphne!" Siphon's voice boomed from the other side of the door, and then I heard a slamming sound. Once, twice, three times the thumping sounded. Frantic shouts of my name were followed by a short silence and then the sound of a gun discharging. Jaymee's eyes grew wide, and she pressed the tip of the knife into my neck, breaking the skin.

"Drink the goddamn tea now!" she ordered, tipping it so that it spilled all over my face. I kept my mouth shut, turning my head away from it and blowing out with my nose, though some of it still managed to trickle into my nostrils. I heard a lot of shouting and felt Jaymee's weight being lifted off me, and I closed my eyes.

"Daphne!" Siphon's voice reached my ears, a symphony of comfort and strength, and I felt hands pulling me up, and a dry towel on my face. Before I even knew what had happened, Jayme was gone. My house was filled with police officers. Loud noises echoed around in my head, a stadium for the delusions from which I was obviously suffering. I pressed my hands to my ears and tried to block out the noises, but they were too loud. I tried to shut my eyes against the lights, but they were too bright. I wanted to silence the voices and shut the world out.

"I'm so sick..." I mumbled, and Siphon pulled me onto his lap on a barstool near my island and held me there. He sobbed into my chest as he held me. I was in a daze, my body still jittery and heavy. I watched a tall policeman put the cup that had once held Jaymee's tea into a plastic bag and carry it out of the house. The lights from the cruisers outside shimmering off his badge creating a light show on the ceiling of my house. More police filed into my front room, snapping pictures with a very official-looking camera, and making more noise my already pounding head didn't appreciate.

Then I noticed Kenji standing there with a dumbfounded look on his face, holding a brown paper sack. It was as if everything was happening in slow motion, the way people moved in and out of my front room, the way Kenji opened the sack and produced medicine, drawing me a cup of water from the tap and helping me take the medicine. Siphon held me the entire time, his tears freely flowing down his cheeks and dripping on me.

31

"I still can't believe you got a Pulitzer!" Daphne laughed wildly, her blue eyes as vibrant as I had ever seen them.

A breeze blew, carrying a wispy strand of her curly blonde hair into her face, and she smiled as she tucked it behind her ear, her ruby lips shimmering in the sunlight. She looked so pretty sitting there in that metal chair on my patio I'd loathed for so long. It was a cool autumn day, but not too cool. One of those days where you can sit and enjoy the sun, but you know when the light fades the evening will be perfect for a fire and smores.

"And look at you, sitting outside on your patio! I'm so proud of you, Kenji."

I felt my own pride creeping up into my chest making my heart inflate a few sizes. I'd been working with Dr. Haymer now for three months, and the therapy was finally working. What my good doctor Daphne Fox had started, Dr. Haymer was able to continue. Apparently after you are involved in such a dramatic and public criminal case as we both had been, it becomes unethical to be doctor and patient. I didn't mind. I much preferred Daphne as a friend anyway.

"Yes, Doc Haymer is really helping me. Though I know I wouldn't be where I am today without you." I felt heat in my cheeks, and maybe I should have been embarrassed confessing how I felt, but this was Daphne, and she was at my house.

"Yes, well risking your life to come save mine was very heroic."

"But all I did was bring you fever medicine." I laughed at myself. How ridiculous must I have been to everyone in my life, to fear being outside when it is such a natural thing that everyone does.

"But you didn't know that at the time..." The male voice from the doorway made my heart shrink back ever so slightly, but at the same time I felt comforted. Siphon, now dating Daphne openly, had become a dear friend of mine. I'd come to learn that he was a perfect match for my beloved Doctor. Besides there was no way she'd ever go for a loser like me.

"You're right. I didn't." I took the glass of lemonade from Siphon's hand, and he sat next to Daphne, resting one hand on her thigh and drinking lemonade with the other. It had been difficult watching their love affair play out, but it was for the best. I had heaps of therapy to go through still, and Daphne did too. We truly were better off as friends.

"Strange how she tracked you down, huh?" After learning that Jaymee was Victor's sister and that she'd changed her appearance, it all made sense to us all. "She planned to pin all those murders on you until she saw you happy with Siphon. That's insane. How as she going to get away with it anyway?" I shook my head, still baffled.

"Yeah, it kinda is. I was so careful to cover my tracks. But when Mira looked me up I knew it was only a matter of time before my past came back to haunt me. Who'd have thought Victor's sister would come after me for revenge?"

"Daph, you don't have to talk about this if you're uncomfortable." Siphon brushed the curls off her shoulder and patted her back.

"Yeah, Daphne. If this is too much, we can talk about something else." I felt uncomfortable with her just being in my house, so I totally understood if she was upset by the topic.

"No, it's okay. Jaymee is going away for a long time now." Daphne sipped her own lemonade and breathed out a sigh. "I'm still really sad that Mira had to fall victim to that sick bitch. It feels like Victor won again."

"Hey, pretty girl, I'm here." Siphon comforted her exactly the way I would have.

I leaned back in my chair and took a long sip of my drink before setting it down. "They say she wanted everyone to believe Daphne was a horrible murderer so her brother's name would be cleared. That she followed Daphne around and took her victims when Daphne left them. The woman you knew" --I pointed at Daphne-- "as Tricia, was Celia Brown. Apparently, she had been moonlighting as a high-class escort, and that is how her marriage ended. Sad really... Anyway, Jaymee used the flowers in her garden to create a tea that she'd give the victims as they came off of the drugs in their system--or alcohol--and it killed them."

"That's so scary..." Siphon held Daphne's hand and I believe we shared the same thought, how close Daphne had come to drinking that tea.

"I'm just glad Gary put the pieces together and called the authorities." And I was, despite having lost story to him.

I watched as Daphne shuddered, probably remembering the way Jaymee almost forced her to drink the tea. Oleander is a deadly toxin. Siphon's arm reached around her, and he rubbed his thumb across her skin.

"To think I almost died."

"But you didn't, and here we are enjoying lemonade on this nice fall day on my patio of all places." I looked up at the sky, for the first time in years feeling like I was in control of my life again. I might not have won the girl, but I won my freedom from some of my fears, and that was worth celebrating.

"Oh, who's this?" Daphne asked, turning to watch as Asshole scampered across the fence and dropped onto the ground next to me. His bushy tail flicked back and forth, and he stared up at her with his beady little eyes. She leaned down and held out her empty hand to him, but he remained at a distance. It wasn't until Siphon offered her a cashew that the rodent came closer.

"I call him Asshole. He doesn't really have a name."

"Is this the guy that attacked me that night? Oh, Kenji, he's so cute."

"And smart too. He had that cage figured out before I did. I may as well just feed him the birdseed and buy him frickin' peanuts too. He isn't going away any time soon."

Daphne giggled as the squirrel plucked the nut from her fingers and skittered away, his tail blowing in the breeze. I huffed out my distaste for my enemy turned friend and sighed. At least life was good. The only stories I reported on were the boring ones, the kind I could do from home, and the occasional sports column, but life was good. I watched as Siphon smiled at Daphne and she returned his affection with a pat on the leg. Then I lifted my drink, which was mirrored by my company.

"Here's to good friends, two-legged and four, and good relationships!"

Daphne offered a wink, and we drank to our friendship.