Mercy

It was oddly gratifying to watch the methods in which the old bastard chose to settle himself into a comfortable state of slumber. At first, he turned away from me and curled his body into a tiny ball, groaning as the physical strain of motion caught up with him. I thought to offer him something to ease the pain, but I just as quickly recalled the empty pill bottles sitting useless on a kitchen counter and serving as nothing more than a painful reminder of Joey’s vicious, drug-induced downward spiral. Only the potentially dangerous world of prescription medication could help Billie Joe at that point, and even suggesting the meager painkillers Tylenol or Advil to the feeble old man would be as malicious as trying to convince him that a simple glass of orange juice would have cured his cancer. Neither would make him feel any less pain, though perhaps the former two, pathetic as they both would be, could serve as a placebo. I had never seen one work firsthand, but I would be the first to tell you that it’s frighteningly simple to fuck with someone’s mind into believing they’ve been given a legitimate remedy. It’s frighteningly simple to fuck with someone’s mind, period.

As the idea of giving the old bastard a placebo began to sound less and less cruel, he whimpered again as he attempted to draw the covers over his nearly naked body. The sound died rapidly within his throat, however, and he continued to burrow himself beneath the layers of blankets and sheets until only a small portion of his head peeked out from below, just enough to keep himself from suffocating. Once he was concealed in his cotton cavern, Billie Joe inched closer to me until the blankets covering him pressed snugly against my side, yet he didn’t stop wriggling until he was as close to me as two people separated by blankets could possibly be. A final sigh of contentment escaped his lips before he came to a complete rest, and in that position he drifted peacefully into somnolence.

My eyes filled with tears when a specific realization struck me. The old man had been just as desperate to receive physical contact as I had been to give it, and the only way to achieve anything remotely close was to barricade himself in blankets. His desperation, his undeniable need for my consolation, was enough to confirm what he felt for me. Love. I’d finally entered a relationship in which my feelings of affection were unconditionally reciprocated and void of any violence or fear. I should have been delighted by my realization, but the reality of our situation was what ultimately brought the tears coursing down my cheeks.

I was going to lose him.

Slithering as cautiously as humanly possible from the bed as to not disturb the man asleep at my side, I managed to keep any sobs locked within my throat until I was safely hidden away behind the closed door of the bathroom. Knowing that Billie Joe’s eventual death was unavoidable shouldn’t have hurt as significantly as it did in that moment, for I’d been well aware from day one that his case was terminal. The only difference between what I knew from the beginning and what I knew in that bathroom was that his demise would actually strike me as a genuine loss. If you had asked me the day I became Billie Joe’s nurse what emotional toll I would sustain following his passing, I would have feigned remorse while silently seething that I did not have the balls to kill him sooner. It was alarming how rapidly the old man had won me over with his spiteful remarks and uncanny aptitude for using my own painful memories against me.

Just as I felt my body tensing in preparation for the sobs that were sure to overwhelm me, I felt a shift in the air around me. I grew inexplicably hot despite how frigid it was in that bathroom with Billie Joe’s body no longer huddled against mine, and the burns on my shoulders began to twinge with an odd form of discomfort similar to what I experienced when Frankie’s ghost attempted to hold me. An altogether sense of apprehension towards the abrupt shift in the bathroom’s atmosphere was what brought my weeping to a screeching halt. The breath rattled in my chest as I waited for something, anything, to lurch out at me from the shadows. Nothing did. I whirled around, halfheartedly expecting Billie Joe to be standing behind me with his arms crossed over his chest and smirking at my ridiculous paranoia, but my eyes were met with nothing but a bathtub and a toilet.

“He don’t love you,” a voice whispered, though as I desperately spun in place to catch a glimpse of whatever entity was spying on me in that bathroom, I continued to find no one there.

“Frankie, this isn’t funny!” I whimpered, absentmindedly scratching at the handprint burn on my left shoulder.

“You sure as hell ain’t watchin’ the same flick I am, then, ‘cause this shit’s hilarious,” the voice chuckled, its disembodiment enraging me more by the minute.

“Just show yourself already! I need you to take back whatever it was you did to make me hurt Billie Joe every time I touch him!” I whined. My eyes frantically flicked from one side of the room to the other in hopes of catching the teenage ghost as he materialized before me. The stubborn little bastard chose instead to remain invisible to me.

“Sorry, Sug, only you can take it back. I can’t do a cotton pickin’ thing about it. I mean…why bother? Peach’s only tryin’ to save you ‘cause he feels guilty,” Frankie explained knowledgably, and in my fragile state I was inclined to believe him.

“N-no, that’s not true. He…he loves me,” I mumbled, eyes falling to the floor as my confidence swiftly began to wane. The instant I looked up once more, I was met by Frankie’s icy blue gaze as he appeared mere inches from my face.

“I already tol’ you he don’t love you! It’s his fault you’re crazy, ‘n’ he’s tryin’ to make it go away by fixin’ you all up good as new…but guess what, Sug?” Frankie demanded, a smirk dancing its way across his lips as a raging thirst for my full attention radiated from his translucent form.

“What?” I whispered, and I clenched my fists in anticipation for whatever it was that Frankie had to say.

“The pieces don’t fit right. You’re broken, ‘n’ it’s his fault,” the ghost sneered, stepping away from me and grinning smugly as I lapped up his every word.

“I was broken before I even met him. It’s not Billie’s fault,” I murmured, but Frankie would hear nothing of it. He appeared absolutely convinced that the drivel he was feeding me was the truth, and his confidence compelled me to wonder if the old bastard really did have a hand in writing my past.

“Wrong!” Frankie giggled. “It’s all ‘bout the girl he got inked on his arm, Sug. She’s the cause of all your problems.”

Before the phrase, But I don’t understand! had the chance to tumble from my trembling lips, Frankie disappeared, leaving me in a fog of confusion so thick I didn’t know what to do with both the information and lack thereof I’d been given. All I could do was wait until Billie Joe woke from his nap before I could question him about the tattoo-woman’s involvement in both our lives. I already knew she was the mother of the old bastard’s sons, but there had to be one hell of a story behind her considering his sexual preference did not include those with female anatomy.

Sighing in frustration, I turned towards the mirror above the bathroom sink and glared at myself for being naïve enough to have confused a romanticized love for me with the old bastard’s guilt. It should have been obvious. I wasn’t exactly desirable enough to be anything more than someone’s fucktoy, and I was a fool for even briefly believing otherwise. My own feelings for him must have been what brought my mind to the automatic assumption, the longing, that Billie Joe felt the same. Disgusted with myself, I gripped the corners of the sink for balance as my legs grew nearly too weak to bear my own weight. I panted in my pathetic struggle, bringing my eyes up to the mirror once more to glower at the waste of human flesh gaping back at me, but a flash of metal behind me and the sound of running water which followed it caught my attention first.

“Relax, Sug. Ever consider the reason Beej don’t want you touchin’ him is ‘cause you still smell like a goddamn graveyard?” Frankie asked as the water steadily filled the bathtub.

“Are you trying to seduce me, little boy?” I growled, not entirely amused in the teenager’s blunt choice in words.

Frankie giggled madly before he replied, “Yes,” and demanded that I relieve myself of what little clothing I was wearing. Dazed, I merely stood there and allowed for the basin to overflow. Nothing good came from baths, after all.

“The water ain’t boilin,’ ‘n’ I ain’t the tattoo-bitch. You got nothin’ to fear now, Sug,” Frankie reassured me after immediately noting my hesitance, but I just couldn’t do it. He set me up once before and would surely do it again, so why would I even consider trusting him when he didn’t even have the balls to remain visible to me?

“Look, your skin’ll keep burnin’ him if you don’t wash me off of you, y’dig? I was tryin’ to be all cryptic on you, but you ain’t sharp ‘nuff for thinkin’ straight right now,” the ghost groaned, intonation suggesting that he was a bit more than frustrated with my wariness.

Throwing all reservations aside, I removed my boxers and took a step towards the bathtub at the mere prospect of being physically close to Billie again. If all I had to do was scrub Frankie’s indescribable, plasmatic consistency off my skin for it to cease in burning every time I touched the old man, I would do it.

Even with a horny teenage ghost raptly gawking at my naughty bits.