Rose and the monster, p.23
Rose and the Monster, page 23
“I trust him completely.” Amy concerned me, but it was true. I had no doubts about Andrew now.
She wasn’t convinced at my reassuring. “How long have we known him?”
“A while now, I just didn’t know…” There was so much that I didn’t know. Why was I really going back? Was it because I wanted to tell them what she was doing to time? Was it because I wanted to see him again? I hated Amy, but was he worth suffering for? A smile crossed my face. Absolutely, he was.
“Sometimes you don’t know until you miss them, and Christmas seems to be really popular time for that. Every year I have…” I knew she was still talking, but I had stopped listening. She sounded like she understood. I hoped she did. Now that I had my car, I figured I could get away to call her sometimes. It was hard not to cry. It was hard not to tell her that I was scared of never getting to talk to her again. If I was going back, then I was going back for good, and that was my decision. I was angry with Amy. She couldn’t hold them like this, and I wasn’t going to let her hold me. I had no idea what I could do to her, but something had to be done. They at least had to know.
“Are you ok?” Her words brought me back to the conversation.
“Yeah… I love you, mom. Thanks…”
“Love you too, sweetheart. Call me and let me know he hasn’t killed you, and you’ve not eloped or something.”
“Ok. I’ll call you later.” She didn’t seem at all worried about me now, but she would be if she knew where I was actually going.
“Sounds good, and send me pictures.” She added.
As I hung up, I thought about how much I would miss her. Everyone else would be hard, but she was my best friend. She was who I would miss the most. Thinking about Christmas again and all of the memories I had with her made me reconsider momentarily. As much as I cared for Andrew, was he worth losing my mom? As much as I wanted to right this injustice, would I no longer have a Christmas or birthday?
I shook it off. Why was I being so fickle about this? Probably because we were talking about the rest of my life. Even though I wasn’t marrying Andrew, I was marrying the idea of living there. Me going back was my commitment to him and to stay. I had no idea what today would look like. If three days for me was three years to them, would they even want me back? I had no idea what Amy would do, but I knew I had to try to return. If she held the three day thing against me, what could I say? I had a phone to prove the date but nothing else.
My mind raced with variables as I made the drive, and an eternity later, I saw their mailbox. What if Andrew was dead? What would I do then? I braced myself. All I could do was hope that Amy hadn’t destroyed him, and that he would forgive me. All I could do was explain.
I rang the doorbell, but no one answered so I tried looking inside. The curtains were all drawn, but nothing appeared to have changed since I left. I had started heading around to the back of the house to see if the backdoor was open. I had never seen it locked, and I guessed they left it open for Danny.
The front door opened a crack. “We’re not interested.”
I ran back to the door. “Jenkens, it’s Rose!” I hadn’t meant to yell, but I was definitely yelling.
The door opened, and there the clock stood. “I always hoped you would come back. For his sake. I hoped you would.” He looked older, but I guessed I was imagining things.
I wanted to hug the clock but decided that I needed to see Andrew before anything else happened. “Where is he?”
“Upstairs.”
I rushed past him and ran up the stairs. I had no idea what I would say or do or what would happen, but I knew I had to get to him. I got to the second flight of stairs and took a breath. I climbed them slowly. Three years, and all I had was a phone calendar. How could I explain this?
I didn’t even knock before opening the door. Andrew was sitting shirtless on the edge of the bed and stood up when he saw me. I should have known that he had been facing her due to his shirt off and his pants being torn, but I didn’t think to look for Amy. I ran to my monster throwing my arms around his neck and hanging on with all of my might.
“It was three days. I swear. It was three days.” He said nothing as he squeezed me. “What happened?” I tried to ask, but he didn’t let me go or let me pull away. I wondered if he ever would. “She told me I couldn’t come back for three days, but she’s got you in something where time is weird. It was three days.” I wasn’t sure if he could even hear me because he was holding me so tightly. He seemed confused but happy. He definitely looked happy, but not as happy as I was that he was alive.
“You weren’t supposed to come back.” Her voice made my face turn red with anger.
I pushed back from Andrew slightly and turned toward her. “What have you done to them?” I wanted answers, but it did concern me that she would turn on Andrew if I wasn’t careful.
She smirked. “I gave you three days.”
“And I returned in three days. You told me to leave on Tuesday the twelfth, and it is now Friday the fifteenth.”
“It has been three years.” She laughed and turned to Andrew. “You see now? She didn’t really care. And now she’s making excuses for her not coming back.” His face showed how confused he was, but at least he was still smiling at me.
I smiled back. I had missed him. “Then why was his sister a year late in arriving? She wasn’t. She arrived the next day. I was here almost two weeks, yet no one was looking for me because I had only been gone an hour.”
“It’s too late.” She gave me a smug grin, but Andrew walked up beside me.
“That was not our deal.” His voice growled through the room.
It was a frightening sound, but now I was confused. What deal?
“We agreed if she came back; we did not set a time.” He appeared to be in control of the situation now, but it worried me a little. I thought I knew what she was doing, but I had no idea what was going on anymore
“I gave her three days.” She spit the words at us angrily.
“Which I adhered to. In reality it was three days, just not in yours.” I felt stronger with Andrew beside me. “Ten days ago. A girl named Amy disappeared on the road. It wasn’t ten years; you’ve made it feel like that.” It hit me. “You’ve changed their perception of everything. Themselves, time, each other. Everything.”
“I made him what he really was.” She was livid now, and my legs shook slightly.
Andrew began growing deeper. “We had an agreement.”
“I own you.” She attempted to growl back, but it was too late. She was showing her fear of him.
Andrew fell to a stance of all fours and took a step toward the ghost. “So did you lie to me?”
She shrank back slightly and screamed at him. It was blood curdling, but I didn’t move. I was trying to appear strong, even though I was thoroughly confused. When she finally stopped, she glared at us. “You will always be a monster.”
My turn again. “No.” Both of their eyes were on me. “Andrew took care of me. He saved me from you. He’s put up with your punishments for ten years.” I stood up a little straighter. “You’re the monster.”
She looked like she might scream again, but instead, the mirror on the other side of the room splintered into shards. Amy directed them for Andrew and I, but he stood up again and placed himself in front of me. I placed my hands on his back and braced myself for their impact into his skin. I hadn’t missed this. I was terrified, but I had missed Andrew. Even with glass being flung at us, I was safe standing there behind him.
Instead of feeling Andrew’s body stiffen as it was pierced with the glass, I heard the pieces crashing to the floor in front of him. I peeked around his arm and saw that none had touched him. It was like they had hit a barrier that they could not pass through. Wouldn’t that be nice? Even if she was creepy, I could live in a house quite easily where she was powerless.
Andrew and I turned back to Amy. She was virtually nothing but a skeleton except for her eyes. Something about them still scared me. With her dilapidated state, it looked like they would fall from their sockets.
Andrew stayed standing. “We had a deal, Amy, and Rose held up our end.” It did not sound like the glass had fazed Andrew at all. In fact, he almost seemed happy.
“I own you.” She was trying to match his growl, but it fell far short.
My excitement was growing. Not that I wanted to get my hopes too far up but rendering her powerless made me fight the smile that was attempting to spread across my face. Whatever deal Andrew had made with the ghost had apparently worked.
“You own no one, Amy. And you know what? I’m not going to miss you.” He didn’t move, but he didn’t have to.
Amy began to disappear at her boots, and as she dissolved, she began screaming again. The noise rang through the room piercing every fiber of my being. I closed my eyes and could not help but wince. She may not have power to hurt us, but her scream definitely did. I brought myself to watch as she disappeared, hoping beyond hope that it would be the last time I would have to see her dreadful face again. When it finally reached her mouth, the room was silent.
I breathed a little easier when she was gone and reached for Andrew’s hand. This was incredible. As soon as my fingers touched him, I pulled away and looked down. I hadn’t touched fur; I had touched skin. I stepped back as the hair up his arms began disappearing. As Amy had disappeared into nothingness, the monster of Andrew was disappearing, but instead of nothingness, he was turning into a man. As it traveled up toward his face, I took another step backward. He was human. He touched the new skin that was his face and ran his fingers through his hair.
I stood there, jaw dropped, looking at him. I had come back for a monster, and now there wasn’t one. I had wondered if the real Andrew was handsome, but I had no idea he would be this gorgeous. I blushed as I found myself staring at his shirtless form, but I couldn’t speak. This wasn’t the man I had helped, this was… this was so different than what I had expected. As I looked closer, I saw that it really was Andrew. I saw the scar from when Amy had thrown the piece of glass at his stomach and all of the rips in his skin. Amy had not only sliced through the monster but had gone all the way to human form.
He took a step toward me, “I told you I had amazing hair.”
I hadn’t even noticed his hair, but I smiled, still unable to speak. He came and wrapped his arms around me, which I reciprocated, but I was shocked. He was real. I could see him. I could touch him. He was a human. No claws. No fur. No monster. This was Andrew.
He pulled back, and I saw he had tears in his eyes. “That was the longest three years of my life.” He was laughing and crying at the same time.
I pulled him closer again and held him as tightly as I dared. “It was three days.”
It was muffled, but I heard him say, “I believe you.”
“Did she hurt you?”
He didn’t respond, which I took to mean yes. I didn’t want to ask him how much it had broken him, but I didn’t have to. He stood there and held me as he cried, and I couldn’t help but hold him back. I knew it was him, it was so strange. Instead of my monster, I had a man. I had Andrew, but the real Andrew.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
When he finally let me go again, his eyes were red. After ten years of what he had been through, I couldn’t say I blamed him.
I looked around the room. “So is that it? Is she gone?”
He nodded.
“I don’t understand.” I didn’t want to be rude, but he could have told me he had made a bet with her. He could have said something to the effect of “come back and her little spell will be broken.” But he just let me go. He told me not to come back. The idiot. I wanted to throttle him, but I stood there in amazement that he was a human. That was all I could do. Well, that and try to keep my eyes from looking back at his scars… or how muscular he was.
“On the day that you asked her when she would stop, she came to me with a bet. If she made you leave, you would never come back. I was nothing but a monster, and no one could ever want to be here with me unless they were forced.”
Now, I really wanted to hit him. “Then why did you tell me not to come back?”
He bent down and picked up a piece of the mirror. “I wanted you to be happy.”
I waited for him to stand again. I was upset with him, but I was so happy that he was ok. It was hard to be mad. I reached up and took his face in my hands. “I was happy.”
He smiled an actual smile, which made me blush again. “And I bet that you would come back.”
“So her leaving was what you won?” I asked.
He wrapped his arms back around me. “I said that if you returned to me, she would have to leave and put everything right.”
My excitement grew, but I was miffed at him for telling me to leave. “And, what if I did not?”
He shifted his weight uncomfortably. “She couldn’t torture me to death before. That was what she would win. She could kill me.”
Every ounce of blood left my face. “What?”
“I figured out really early that there were things that she couldn’t do. She couldn’t lie, for one. For a while, she couldn’t draw blood. And she couldn’t kill me.”
“But she could draw blood. I was there.” I was confused again.
He hesitated. “I gave that up so she couldn’t hurt you.”
“What?” I said stunned.
“She could still beat me before, but that was all.”
I tried to hold back the tears that threatened my eyes. “No wonder Mrs. Jenkens was mad at me.”
“Hey.” He put a finger under my chin and lifted my face. “It was worth it.”
I stood there staring at him for a minute. This was everything I had every hoped for, and so much more than I had imagined. I brought myself back to what was happening. “But, why would you agree to let her kill you?”
He pulled me closer to him. “I was a monster. It had been seven years for me then, and death sounded like a pleasant thought. I wanted you to come back, but if I couldn’t be free… Death was better than living under Amy’s thumb.”
“I’m glad I did.” I didn’t want him to have to think about it.
He leaned in and kissed me very softly. “I am too.”
It wasn’t a huge surprise that he had kissed me, but I must have looked shocked.
“I’m sorry. I was never able to even try that before.” He was blushing this time.
I was turning red too. “It’s great. I just… I know it’s you, but you look so different.” I pulled back and punched his arm. It was a playful punch, but I was still aggravated. “How could you have agreed to that? She would have killed you.”
He put his hands on my sides. “I was a monster.”
“I think I’ve already refuted that.” I didn’t mind being close to him, but it was strange now that he was a man. There was no fur between us, and I’m not sure him having his shirt off was helping either.
He smiled and stared down at me with the bluest eyes. They had been black when he was the creature, but now they were human.
I held him closer. “The last time I saw you, you could barely walk.”
“That’s right.” He said slowly, as though he was trying to remember the event. I couldn’t believe he had forgotten, but it had been a while for him.
I was still befuddled. “Why didn’t you tell me that you would change back, and she would be gone if I came back.”
He appeared struck. “Did you think about not?”
“You told me not to.” I argued as softly as I could. I didn’t want to admit it, but it was a thought.
“She made me promise to say that. It was part of the bet.” He answered sadly.
“When she made me leave, I thought it was Christmas Eve, or it would have been if time had been moving the way it should.”
His eyes got big. “I haven’t missed a Christmas?”
“It’s the fifteenth, so technically no.” I wasn’t sure if he heard what I had said.
A huge smile crossed his face. “This may be the best Christmas I’ve ever had. Wait, you didn’t tell me it was Christmas Eve that night, did you?”
I shook my head. “I couldn’t.”
“Was that why you thought about not coming back? Because of your family?” The pain on his face made me want to say no, but I couldn’t lie to him.
“It was nice to be free of her, and I didn’t think I would see them again. Thinking it was Christmas made it harder.” I didn’t want to hurt him, and I watched as my words sunk in.
He brushed my cheek with his thumb. “Why did you come back?”
“When I figured out what she had done to time… I came back as quickly as I could.” I was blushing again from his touch. “I didn’t miss Amy and what she was doing to you, but… I missed you.”
I held him tighter. I couldn’t believe he was human. I couldn’t believe Amy was gone. I hoped that he understood why I had debated not coming back, and that it hadn’t hurt him. It was so strange holding him now compared to days before. Without thinking I took in a deep breath. He smelled the same. When I pulled away, he let me go enough to look at me but wouldn’t take his arms away.
“I can’t believe it.” He whispered looking at me. I couldn’t tell if he meant that I had come back or that he was human.
I reached up to his face. His cheeks were soft. Not that I minded petting him, but this was better. “Me neither.”
He looked like he was going to cry again. “I thought I would be a monster forever.”
I brought my other hand up and held his face while squinting at him. “You weren’t a monster.”
The corners of his mouth pulled up slightly, “You screamed at me.”
I had to smile back at him. His face was so amazing, and I love the way he looked when he was teasing me. “That was before I knew you.”
“So I was a monster…”
I didn’t let him finish. I wrapped my arms around his neck and brought my face very close to his where our lips were touching. “You are no monster.” I let my mouth brush against his as I spoke, which culminated in him pressing his lips against mine quite passionately. I stood there smooching on my new, and quite handsome, man. This was perfect.
