They pulled over to the curb in front of Aunt Vickie's house. Every house in the neighborhood was identical to every other house on the street. Only the house numbers made it possible to tell them apart. It was a place where teenagers would either grow-up stupid or procreate to create more idiots. Either that or turn to violence and vandalism after years of boredom.
A perfect garden—one of many similar gardens on the block—met them as they walked up the driveway to the house. The door was open, and no one answered their call, so Sal and his party stepped inside, calling out for Vickie, once more.
The place was dead silent, and there wasn't a neighbor in sight. Somewhere, further into the house, a table appeared to have been knocked over.
Sal felt his mind take over in the same way it had when he'd seen Louise, and he panicked slightly. This was bad.
He took a few deep breaths, which calmed his mind a little. No one spoke a word. He felt Carl breathing heavily, close behind him. Rosie clung to his t-shirt, causing it to sit tightly across his neck.
Someone was sulking in the house. The party froze and cast uneasy glimpses at each other.
“Let’s do this,” Jack said, and he stepped further into the house. Sal, Rosie, and Carl followed Jack like a couple of ducklings following their mother to water for the first time.
“Are you all right?” they heard Jack say.
“Who are you?” a female voice answered anxiously. “You’re not supposed to be here.” Vickie stopped talking when she saw the rest of the group approaching slowly.
“What are you doing here?” Vickie said, her expression changing from anxious to surprised. Her face looked as if it had been in a fight with those flights of stairs she usually blamed for her bruises. The red and purple marks at her neck looked like they'd come from choking, and she had a broken wrist, indicating she'd attempted to defend herself. She also had a black eye, showing she'd taken a hard blow to the face.
Sal cleared his throat. “We came to talk to you, Aunt Vickie. What happened to you?”
Vickie shrugged her shoulders. “I can’t lie to you, can I, Sal?” She appeared frightened and exhausted at the same time.
An image of Ted and his obsessive need to have intense control of the woman he claimed to love burned a hole into his skull. Vickie's recent beating had been the result of her failing to empty the lint from the filter in the clothes dryer. Ted had felt justified in his behavior, and so far, society had failed to prosecute him for his actions.
“Why not get a restraining order, Vickie?” Rosie asked.
Vickie stroked her wrist. “A restraining order is nothing but a feeling of false security. You're not necessarily safe if you have a restraining order or a protection order. The abuser may choose to ignore it, and the police may do nothing to enforce it. My friend, April, learned that the hard way.”
“Leave Ted, Vickie," Carl pleaded. "You don’t deserve this.”
“Where would I go?” Vickie said, tears filling her eyes.
“It's the fear of the unknown; sometimes leaving the abuse and being alone is more frightening for the victim than remaining in the relationship,” Sal said, staring right at Vickie.
He fought the horrible images of Vickie's miserable life with Ted, pressing into his mind. He saw how Ted had lashed out at her, watching her crumple with grim satisfaction, enjoying the sting on his knuckles and the anger built up inside of him.
Sal was angry at his parents for having allowed this to happen. He was also angry at Ted, but mostly, he was angry at himself for buying into all the lies.
Vickie looked at Sal with tired eyes. “Like I said, I can't hide anything from you, Sal.”
Carl tried again to convince Vickie to go along with them, but she just rocked back and forth in her chair.
“We’re losing her.” Carl was frustrated. “Can’t you do something, Sal?”
Sal sat down in front of Vickie with no more than a few centimeters between them. “Look at me, Vickie,” he commanded softly.
Vickie slowly lifted her head, doing what he'd asked.
Sal looked into her eyes and beyond that and inside of her. He felt his body shaking. To be honest, Sal didn’t know what the hell he was doing. He just let his mind guide him. Sal soon experienced a detachment from his body and from the surrounding environment.
Vickie began to speak to him in a thousand different ways. Non-integrated parts of the self, started to fall into place, and Sal realized he was prying inside Vickie’s soul. He knew it was possible he'd see things that might scare him—he might see an angel, or he might see the devil.
There was nothing but darkness inside.
He saw a confused child, running on a meadow after her brother, chasing a flying kite. He saw a heartbroken teenager, longing for her first kiss. Then her soul darkened, and he saw some sort of devil, full of hate and anger, covered in swastikas.
The devil put her down constantly while poisoning her, taking away all of her hope. A demon followed the devil, a sweet-talking demon who promised the world but turned out to be just as bad as the devil.
Sal's mind connected to Vickie's, taking her back to the meadow from her childhood. It was the only place that seemed to have any sort of light.
"You will leave Ted," he thought to her. "There is no doubt in your mind that this is the right choice. Rosie will help you pack your things, and you will get on the bus and leave Ted forever. Whatever Ted will say or do to convince you to come back, you will know it's a lie. Ted no longer has power over you. You will get over his terrible abuse and live a good life. You will patch things up with your brother and get your family back. You won’t remember any of this. You will remember only that we came to visit and you decided to come back with us."
A great force started to pull Sal backward as if a huge vacuum cleaner was sucking him up. He was pulled brutally from his condition and pushed backward harshly. Sal tumbled onto his back.
"What the hell happened?" he said, but then he realized—the demon had entered the premises.
Rosie was next to him, shaking him, begging him to wake up.
Sal looked at her and the others. They were all holding their breath, daring not to make a sound. Each second seemed to last an eternity. They were all staring at the door, all of them listening to the footsteps of the intruder.
Ted soon appeared in the living room doorway. He leaned against the doorframe, his arms crossed. “Well…well…well. Uninvited guests. Why don’t you get the hell out before I call the cops?” Ted snarled, cutting right to the chase.
Sal rested his head in his hands. His body had drained of all its energy, and his mouth was dry, and he tried to stand. “Rosie,” he said, “help Vickie pack her things and escort her to the bus.” “But…” Rosie said, gazing in Ted's direction.
“Just do it,” Sal insisted.
It was funny how they hadn’t taken into consideration what might happen if Ted had shown up. They'd assumed he'd be at work the whole time. “You won’t stop Vickie from going, will you, Ted? I mean, you're nothing special, so why even try?"
Ted’s facial expression shifted from superior annoyance to the look of an enraged panther. “You're not going anywhere, Vickie. You're my wife, and I'm not letting you leave.” Ted leaped into the living room.
“I am sorry, Ted, but I am leaving you. Have a nice life,” Vickie said, casually. She seemed hypnotized, completely in a world of her own.
Fires of anger and hate smoldered in Ted's narrowed eyes as he seemed to be weighing the pros and cons of the situation.
“Help Vickie, Rosie,” Sal insisted again. Like Bambi on the ice, he tried to stand up and couldn't.
Jack came to his aid, whispering, “What the hell are you doing? That guy's crazy.”
Sal panted as if he'd just run a marathon and broken the world's record. Yet again, Sal encouraged Rosie and Vickie to leave the living room.
Ted was furious. He was crazy—as crazy as flies in a fruit jar. Ted pulled a gun from his pocket, raised his red-laced eyeballs, and looked at the people who had invaded his home. His fingers curled tightly around the gun. Sal detected Ted's vision of Sal’s blood on the wall in his mind and how good he thought it felt. He also thought he could always have Vickie paint the walls red to cover it up.
Gasps went through the room. The feeling of being caged-in lingered in the air, as each of them imagined their own funerals.
Sal ran a hand through his hair like he always did when he was flirting with someone, and he spoke soothingly, “In my opinion, Ted isn’t a cold person, but he's more likely seething with distressing emotions, and it's gotten out of control. Ted's suffering, aren’t you, Ted?” Sal got to his feet and looked right at Ted, knowing he had the upper hand.
“You have your own deeply personal experiences with rejection from the incredibly painful childhood abandonment of your father. He was ashamed of you because you constantly disappointed him. You were reared in an environment where violence was accepted as a proper method for solving problems and enforcing the rules.”
Ted would never, in a million years, admit his fear. He was at a level that induced paralysis in others, yet he carried on as if nothing was wrong.
No one spotted his tension except for Sal. To him, Ted looked fragile, inconsequential, and common. Sal could see the hurt in his eyes when the others couldn’t, and he took a few steps so he would be face to face with the man.
“You're not going to hurt us, are you, Ted?” Sal said condescendingly.
From the back of his mind, the shadows became vengeful form. Sal smiled a sugar-coated smile at Ted. He bent his head back and head-butted Ted in a targeted strike. There was a crushing sound when bone clashed with bone.
Ted dropped the gun as blood ran down his face and into his eyes, and he took a few steps back, leaving the doorway open to pass.
Sal kicked the gun further into the living room and ordered the others to leave, which they did without hesitation, passing Ted in the kitchen as he tried furiously to stop the bleeding with a dishtowel while trying to control his pain and surprise.
When Sal was halfway between the house and the bus, something inside him made him stop. Damage control. He had to stop Ted from causing trouble for them in the future.
The worried faces in the bus asked him not to turn back, but Sal didn’t care. He walked back into the house, where he found Ted dialing on his cell phone. Sal picked up a nearby coffee mug and threw it at the phone, which fell, cracking the display. Ted was a wounded animal, and that made him dangerous.
There was stillness on both sides. Sal had the exit through the door covered. He stood, folding both arms over his chest. Sal didn't fear Ted. He wanted him smashed, with nothing left to bury.
In that frozen second between standoff and fighting Sal’s eyes never flickered. His face was unreadable, without fear or an invitational smirk, unlike Ted, who was screaming with blood running down his face from the encounter with Sal’s forehead.
Ted charged at Sal with a mighty cry, fuelled by rage.
Sal dodged to the side in one fluid motion and punched Ted in the ribs as he staggered past him. Ted fell flat on his face on the floor. Sal’s next move was Ted’s downfall. He took a kitchen knife from the counter and stabbed Ted in the hand, nailing it to the floor. His wound began to bleed.
Sal spat on Ted. “So, this is how this is going to go down,” he said calmly. “You're going to tell whoever you meet that you, in a drunken state because Vickie left you, tripped, fell, and cut yourself. Only God knows what I'll do to you if you say otherwise.”
He yanked the knife out of Ted’s hand, causing him great pain, and placed his foot over Ted’s mouth to keep him from making noise. “Fuck you, Ted,” he said.
Sal washed his hands and face by the kitchen sink and left Ted crying on the floor as he closed the door behind him.
Worried faces met Sal when he returned to the bus. “Don’t worry. Ted's fine,” Sal said, buckling his seatbelt. "Let’s get Vickie home.”
“What happened in there, Sal? Are you all right? You just cracked another man’s skull,” Carl shouted.
“I’m fine. I’m just tired. I'll fill you in later, okay? Sal put the bus into gear, and they started the journey home to Strong Edge.