RfH Ch. 08: Infidelity

What does it mean to be loyal? For a virtue so vaulted and valued in every society, it's not a very well defined concept. Must one be unconditionally honest, holding not a secret to their name? Must one follow every order and whim with out hesitation? Or must one trust every word without question?

Is that what loyalty is? Candor, obedience, faith? To be the perfect soldier? To be the perfect slave? Or is it something more?

Maybe loyalty is more than compliance and belief, maybe loyalty is to dedicate yourself completely to the well being of someone other than yourself. To at all times hold their needs above your own, to be ready to do what ever it takes to protect that person when the time comes.

If so, then I had already failed. I had failed to protect my fiancée, my partner, my soul mate. The time came, and I fucked up. The unholy warlock powers that haunted my once mundane existence were irrefutable proof that I had let her down. I would have spent my entire lifetime trying to make up for that one mistake, but life doesn't give you a second chance.

Or does it? Cindy had been dead for almost a year, and I still missed her like it had been yesterday. But whether I liked it or not, there was a new woman in my life now, Melissa.

A mere month ago, she'd only been my strange and reclusive roommate with whom I wanted nothing to do with. Yet in the time I've lived here, I have been through more perilous situations with her than I'd hoped to go through in a lifetime, Through it all, we'd become physically intimate on a regular basis.

After Cindy, I'd been told time and time again that I had to move on, and some part of me wanted to do just that with Melissa. But another part of me was asking if that was really the right thing to do. How much did I really know about this woman? I knew that she was a witch and she killed people. I also knew she had a rocking ass and a killer pussy to match. But did I really know her?

She had told me I could develop my powers as a warlock by retrieving Cindy's Athame, a ceremonial spell dagger, but how did I know that she wasn't just using me to get her hands on my late fiancée's powers? What would Cindy have wanted me to do?

Even if I knew the answer to that question, I'm not sure if I would have been eager to honor it. Unbeknownst to me, Cindy had been a witch the whole time, just like Melissa. She kept that secret from me all those years. She lied.

As far as I knew, Melissa had never lied to me. She had many grievous faults, but at least she had been honest thus far. Right?

What does loyalty mean to me? To whom am I loyal? To whom should I be loyal?

To Melissa? Or to Cindy?

To the present, or to the past?

To the living, or to the dead?

These were the questions that had been plaguing me for the past two days, and I guess that's why I hadn't opened the file yet.

This and more was on my mind when I returned from work. Sure enough, my roommate was sitting on the couch watching re-runs and eating another bucket of fried chicken. I tried to enter quietly and slink back to my room without a confrontation, but she wasn't having any of that.

"Where the fuck have you been?" She demanded.

"I had to work late." I explained.

"The boss still holding your leash?" She chided. "That fat fuck needs to ease up that grip on your balls so I could get piece of them too." She added bitterly.

"Yeah, but it's late, I've had a long day and-" I began.

"Bullshit!" She bellowed, hucking a chicken thigh across the room at me. "You've been too tired for days! What does it take to get a good fucking around here?!" She pressed.

"I'm sorry Melissa, I'm a bit tired from work, and you'll have to excuse me for still being a bit sore after you crammed a spider down my peehole." I responded with a hint of my own bitterness.

"I saved our fucking lives David! And this is the thanks I get? Not even so much as a quicky?" She countered, standing up and closing in on me threateningly. I wasn't lying about my dick still being sore, it's not every day you have a proboscis unceremoniously plunged down your urethra. But truth be told, on any other day, you would have had to cut my dick off to keep me from sticking it inside that woman. Even as she stood there with chicken grease dribbling down her chin, wearing not a scrap of clothing over her stunning body, allowing her breasts to tremble angrily as she spoke, my roommate was still sex incarnate.

Normally, I was never not interested in what she had to offer, but right now I just wasn't sure how I felt.

"Look, I'm sorry Melissa." I averted my eyes. I'll be the first to admit that I've made some pretty stupid decisions in my life, but I'd seen what the bitch could do and I was smart enough not to push her. "I'll be ready to go again soon, I just need a little more time." I offered.

"You fucking better David." She seethed as she reached and grabbed me by the scalp. She was intimidating as fuck for someone barely more than half my height. She yanked my face away from the floor so she could look me in the eyes. "I don't need you David. Without your Athame, you're just as useless to me as any other man, and just as replaceable." The witch threatened.

"Then why haven't you?" I retorted, expecting her to use her magics, weapons, or monsters to tear me to pieces. She'd certainly killed people for less.

Despite that, she only sneered in disgust. "Fuck you David." She spat, tossing my head away furiously as she stormed off to her room and slammed the door.

I took a moment to catch my breath until she started loudly masturbating from her room. Sighing, I picked up the bruised chicken thigh, and tossed it into the corner where that strange creature who infested our building dwelt.

"Eat up Hank." I told him as those unblinking ocular growths all focused upon the greasy treat. A slithering tentacle crawled out and enveloped the breaded fowl meat, pulling it back into the corner where it subsumed the morsel into its wriggling sodden mass.

At least someone in the apartment didn't hate me. I took issue with only one member of the house, and for once it wasn't the oozing monster in the corner. Ironically, he was actually an ideal roommate. Super quiet, kept to himself, and would even help clean occasionally.

He'd been noticeably more animate lately, maybe because the living room wall had finally been repaired, and maybe because he had been getting plenty of nourishment from the fast food leftovers Melissa refused to pick up. I had been worried that his injuries would keep him indisposed for a longer period of time, but now that he had his old spot back, he was recovering nicely.

With a friendly nod to my strange companion, I retreated to my room and flopped down on the bed. I was just about to relax when I remembered that folder and groaned. Looking over at the dresser where it leered at me, I recollected how I'd come across the damn thing in the first place.

In our attempts to retrieve Cindy's Athame, Melissa and I found ourselves breaking into the police station back in my home town. While digging through the evidence locker, I stole a case file relating to the accident that had taken my fiancée's life. For reasons I did not fully understand, I had chosen not to reveal this file to Melissa.

Perhaps it was distrust, perhaps it was resentment for how she had treated me. A part of me wanted to take the folder to her, have a good laugh, and go back to the way things were. Another part of me wanted see what was inside of it without her. But to do so would be to admit that I couldn't trust her, and so it remained on the dresser as I vacillated on the implications of my decision.

I tried to tell myself that I could take a peak at the file before showing it to Melissa, that it wasn't already a betrayal for having kept the file from her this long in the first place, and that it wasn't too late to turn back. It might have stayed there forever if not for the upcoming meeting with Melissa's most deadly rival coming up this weekend. I needed to have my loyalties worked out before once again putting my life on the line for this woman, and I was running out of time.

Just as I was dwelling on this, the report was tossed off the dresser and across the floor in a cluttered pile. Through the gloom, I could see Hank's telltale tentacle slithering back into the wall. Perhaps he was trying to tell me to make up my mind already. Perhaps he was just sick of watching me glower at it every night. Either way, I knew what I had to do. I'd waited long enough.

Scooping up the pages, I straightened them out and sat down on the bed. Reluctantly opening the folder, I was immediately faced with the images of my truck's remains on the side of the road.

I'd spent so many years with that vehicle. It had taken us so many places both safely and reliably. I felt indestructible at the wheel. Yet there is was, bent and smoldering on the side of the road, a warped and corrupted shell of its former self, serving as a flaming coffin for what mattered most to me.

I closed the folder and sat there trying not to cry. My heart was pounding, this was not a part of my life I was ready to revisit, but I had no choice. Steeling myself, I opened the folder once more and skipped the cover photo.

Now I've never been one for paperwork, and I'm certainly no criminal investigator. But if I was reading this correctly, this was not an accident report, but a criminal investigation.

The executive summary began with the crash on April 13th, and described signs of arson found at the scene.

"Arson?" I mumbled in bewilderment, but kept reading.

It went on to describe interviews with witnesses and suspects, including me.

"I was a suspect?" I remembered the detectives asking me some questions, but I thought they were following up on an insurance claim. I wasn't really paying attention when they talked to me. I wasn't really paying attention to much of anything back then.

I skipped ahead to the interview reports, finding mine described right next to a credibility assessment that read "I consider David not to be a reliable interviewee based on his behavior. He had motivation to falsify information if he knew anything about the arson. However he had a prior relationship to the victim, and seemed genuinely upset by her passing. He was showing signs of severe emotional trauma, and possible brain damage. Considering the fact that he was the only one in the vehicle not wearing a seat belt a the time of the accident, it is unlikely that the crash was premeditated. Due to the extent of his injuries, it is also unlikely that he would have been capable of the subsequent murder, despite being found at the scene holding the murder weapon."

"Murder weapon? What the hell do you mean murder?!" I demanded, flipping the pages frantically. Sure enough I got to the evidence document, and there were pictures of the crash with highlighted sections and arrows pointing to where the gas cap had been forcibly opened with a sharp instrument and ignited from the outside.

I saw the picture of myself, crumpled into a pathetic pile on the side of the road. There was an arrow pointing to my hand, in which I was shown unmistakably holding my late fiancée's Athame. The arrow was labeled "murder weapon."

"Why was I holding Cindy's hunting knife?" I whispered, trembling now.

The picture itself was labeled "Suspect," but that had been crossed out. The word "accomplice" had been written underneath, but that too had been crossed out and finally replaced by the label "fall guy?"

Upon the next page, I found a series of photos following some footprints photographed at the scene. I had a hard time following the diagrams and arrows, fortunately there was a report at the bottom of the page.

"David's footprints are shown leaving the crash and end where he was found at the scene. The victim never left the vehicle. A third party approached from the woods, stopping at the vehicle. There was some commotion before the tracks lead away. The trail abruptly stops with no apparent cause."

Sure enough one of the pictures showed some footprints leading away from the crash before inexplicably stopping in the middle of the ground. The bewildered detective had noted on the photo "How did he disappear without leaving tracks?" But I knew exactly how a person could make their tracks disappear like that, because I'd seen Melissa do it before. She could do it by flying.

Someone else was there that day, someone had deliberately set the truck on fire, and who ever it was had been a witch.

I turned the page once more, expecting to find more footprints and case notes, but what I found staring back at me caused me to throw the entire folder across the room. Choking back screams to keep Melissa from hearing, I ran into the bathroom and violently emptied my stomach into the toilet between sobs. Once I was finally done heaving, I rolled onto the floor and just cried.

I don't know how long I stayed in that bathroom. Hiding from Melissa, hiding from the file, hiding from that fucking thing in the picture. But if I had really seen what I thought I'd seen, I had no choice but to go out there and face it. Crying and shaking, I opened the door and crossed the room.

Clenching my eyes shut, I picked up the photograph one more time, and sat down on the bed. I took one deep breath trying to stop the shaking, and then another. When it appeared that it wasn't going to work, I just set the picture down on my lap and faced it.

"Oh god, please no..." I pleaded as my worst fears were confirmed.

Looking back at me from the image was the charred face of my lover. Cindy's face was scorched and deformed, he hair had been erratically seared and crumpled under the intense heat. Her jaw lay open in a breathless postmortem scream. Her expression was contorted and stretched across her skull into a tortured grimace of eternal agony, but there was still enough flesh remaining to recognize the horrendous slash across her neck where her throat had been slit.

The love of my life had not been lost to an ill fated accident. She'd been killed. My Cindy, my love, my soulmate, had been murdered. And whoever had done it was still out there.

I let the picture fall to the floor as I collapsed onto the bed, broken and numb. I laid there in shock trying to comprehend and accept what I'd seen. My fists clenched and my blood surged as the shock was slowly replaced with rage.

I had blamed myself all these years. But not only had she not died in an accident, someone had taken the love of my life from me. Someone had set her on fire and mutilated her body. Someone who was going to pay.

The case was nearly a year old, and if the police hadn't had any luck, there wasn't much any ordinary man could do. But I knew things that they didn't, and I was no ordinary man, not anymore. I didn't want to believe that Melissa had known anything about this, but considering her uncanny abilities to obtain information across the ethereal pathways of the digital network, it was a possibility I could not ignore.

I needed answers, I needed a window into her world, and as of tonight, she was the last person I could trust to answer my questions. I needed a third party source of information, someone with no ties my past and no motivation to cover for Melissa.

There was only one person I knew that could help me, but would she? Did I really have any other choice?

To say I'd been shaken by these revelations was an understatement, but with a clear course of action and my adrenaline coursing thought my veins, I strode into the kitchen with quiet determination.

Normally it was not uncommon for me to receive calls from work. But because I had been working over time ever since the station incident, they hadn't had any reason to call me in for extra shifts. On top of that, I hadn't really made any friends in this town, and my father and I weren't on speaking terms. While I couldn't be sure that Melissa never used the phone while I was gone, she didn't seem like the talkative type.

All these factors added up to one likely conclusion, the last person to call this house was none other than Melissa's most ruthless enemy, Samantha Flenecwalt. Melissa had her scrying magics through the strange and mysterious force she called "the internet," but I was not without my own tricks as I took the phone and dialed star sixty nine.

It was dangerous to even try talking to her. If Melissa ever found out I'd made contact with this woman without telling her, she'd undoubtedly kill me, assuming Samantha didn't kill me first. But I needed answers, and that was a risk I was willing to take to get them.

The phone picked up after only one ring. At first I was concerned that I might have dialed someone else, until that disarmingly lurid voice came over line.

"Hello Melissa, calling to cancel on our little get together?" She inquired sweetly, it was like drowning in molasses.

"This is David." I revealed simply.

"Oh, David. I didn't expect to hear from you so soon." She responded uncomfortably. Our last conversation had been a little... Awkward. This phone call wasn't going much better with Melissa still spitefully moaning curses and obscenities from her room as she angrily pleasured herself.

"I need to talk to you about Melissa." I explained.

"Melissa? Surely you two are close enough to discuss this amongst yourselves. She is okay, isn't she?" The witch asked with feigned concern, while subtly prying for information.

"It's about the Lymantria you two have been looking for." I told her.

"Oh really?" She began, her growing interest audibly piquing. "Are you saying that Melissa doesn't have it?" I'd already revealed too much. I didn't want to actively harm Melissa, I just wanted to know the truth.

"She might." I lied. "That depends on the information you can give me. Can we meet?" I asked. This was an especially dangerous choice, as luring victims into meeting in person was this woman's primary method of attack.

"Well I'd love to talk to you honey, but I'm not sure how Melissa would feel about that. I don't want to get her angry." She whispered furtively.

"Melissa doesn't know. It's just you and me. Can you be on the rooftop in one hour?" I suggested, knowing she would feel safer convening somewhere that she could fly away from if things got too dangerous.

"It's a date." She answered eagerly and without hesitation. "I will see you soon David. Don't keep me waiting." She added flirtatiously as she hung up.

Melissa came violently as I put the phone back on the receiver, and an eerie quiet overtook the house in absence of her frustrated moans.

I glanced at her bedroom door. Some part of me worried that she had overheard my clandestine phone call with her hated nemesis. Some part of me expected her to burst out the door, knife drawn, eyes blazing, cutting and hacking me apart into nothing but a bloodstain on the floor. Some part of me wanted her to, but there was only silence.

Eventually convinced that she wasn't coming out again tonight, I grabbed my sweat shirt and went upstairs.

The night was damp but refreshing after having worked at the steel mill during a heatwave for an entire week. The humidity in the midwest never really went away at this time of year, but at least it wasn't as hot after the sun set. I couldn't really enjoy it much though, as all this alone time was allowing all my thoughts to fester unchecked.

Was I really doing the right thing? What was the right thing to do anyways? Stand by the woman I lived with? Or keep pursuing the truth regardless of the cost? And what exactly was too steep a price for the truth? My safety, my fond memories of Cindy, or even Melissa's life? Was I really willing to betray Melissa? Was this really a betrayal? Was it too late to turn back?

"Good evening David." My reverie was politely interrupted by a soothing voice from above. "Fancy seeing you here." Samantha Flenecwalt greeted me cordially. Too late to turn back now.