My mind is a highly specialized part of the smooth running machine that is MadChaseInk, my own private name for the convoluted organizational chart I keep safely tucked into a corner of my brain of the people, places and business entities that are my world.
Intense passions, both good and bad, can turn off the thinking part of my brain like flipping a switch and one of the most intense and difficult to control is my need for a daily dose of sex to keep my hormones in check. MCI Consultants have always been an effective antidote against the excessive amount of testosterone that floods my bloodstream whenever I go a day without connecting in every way possible with a woman.
But now, only hours after a strong dose of the Sonia antidote, a nuclear missile, a hormonal detonation in the form of a ripe, full woman with eyes that suck me into their depths like some irresistible black hole, has gone off in my brain and turned it to mush.
No evil mastermind could have designed a better weapon of sexually charged intellect to run my thinking ability right into a ditch. I’m acutely aware that my brain misfires at just the thought of Erica Palmer. The effect is that I’m not sure I can effectively anticipate and counteract anything that may be coming at me and my friends. Worse, I’m not sure I care anymore, so completely have I been drawn to her.
Is there against me and mine the threat she describes? Could enemies of such overwhelming power that it’s doubtful they can be stopped have any reason to bring their forces to bear against us?
And, it must be considered, could it be that, instead of being here to warn us and help us defeat this enemy, this woman is here as part of their plan? If so, it’s working.
The distance she sits away from me at the opposite end of the long conference table has, somehow, shrunk down to mere inches as I study the flecks in her eyes and the ripeness of her lips.
Brain: Don’t be stupid, Chase!
Sitting up in my chair, I break eye contact. “I’m not interested in cryptic and uninformative sound bites, Ms. Palmer. Show us what you’ve got and convince us we should take this tale of yours as seriously as you suggest. You’ve got two minutes.”
“It will take more than two minutes,” she replies, “and you'll hear every bit of it no matter how long it takes because you need to.”
Leaning back to mirror my own posture and folding her hands, she says, “You, Mister Madison, behind many layers of corporate obfuscation, bid on and won a 2000 acre property here in Oregon just over 27 months ago. The property lies in a sparsely populated area between two small towns of around 1000 people each, Timberline and Plainview. You grossly overbid for the property and, in doing so, outbid my former employer.
“You weren’t trying to beat someone out of something they wanted. Your reasons were sound and personal ones. Off in a corner of that property, in a rundown shack, you spent the first 12 years of your life as the only child of Jim and Mae Madison. He a drunk, she . . . well, she was your guardian angel.
“People from both towns knew and respected your mother as someone who had a good heart who would help anyone she could from what little she had. Her only flaw was her inability to break away from an abusive husband.
“Social Services took you several times into the care of foster parents when they deemed your home life detrimental to your wellbeing, even dangerous. Social workers were then, as now, overworked, underpaid and underappreciated. Too short of good foster families not to believe Mae every time she told them things were better at home, that her husband had stopped drinking and was driving twice a week the 50 minutes to Eugene for counseling, the case workers kept sending you back.”
“One night, when you were twelve, your mother came face to face with the reality that she had created a horror for you by staying with the brute that was her husband. So many times, she had pulled him off you. She had suffered many beatings in your place when her efforts to protect you only enraged him more.” The woman’s voice changes from the analytical tone she had been using and her look softens as she says, “A mother’s love can endure anything for her child.”
Clearing her throat and sitting more upright, she continues. “Then came that night the monster was impossible to stop. He had come home drunk after losing another job. What do you think, Chase? Could it have been the self-loathing of a man who could no longer look into the faces of the two people in the world who loved and believed in him no matter what he did that set him off?”
My heart is glass. I know because I can feel the cracks forming as she speaks. At any moment the heat of passion I feel for the woman and the cold brutality of her words will shatter my insides into a million tiny pieces.
Her voice soft again, she continues, “Whatever the reason, the monster pounced. Your mother tried to help you, but he ignored her slaps and screams as he continued striking her little boy as he lay defenseless on the floor. Your mother did what she had to do.”
With a faraway look in her eye, the woman looks to her right and, reaching out with her hand, says, “Mae took the knife from the counter where she had been trimming the meat for his favorite meal. It was meat she could ill afford on what she made cleaning houses and tending sick people.”
I see my mother’s chapped and bleeding hands. Her face is twisted in agony from the horrific back pain she suffers after a day scrubbing other people’s floors and toilets. More cracks form deep within my heart and I have to consciously force myself to take a breath.
The woman’s words drill into me still deeper. “Your mother realized that, this time, the monster would rage until you were dead. So, she stabbed him. She stabbed him again and again, but a body weakened from years of abuse and privation was unable to muster the strength to kill the beast quickly enough to save herself. He flung her off, and she slammed into the counter. The force of it shattered her neck. She fell into a heap, her body lifeless. Finally, the man collapsed and bled out on the cheap, misshapen linoleum of the kitchen floor.”
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