Chapter 8: Darker than the Devil
The night was his refuge.
Tom knew that he was being illogical. Daisy was his friend and he shouldn't push her away but why would she hide something like a wedding from him when she even shared her mother's disease and her sister's pregnancy. Something wasn't sitting right with him but he knew full well that the woman stirred desires in him he didn't want to have. He didn't want because he knew they weren't meant for him. He wasn't natural. He was not supposed to be born. Yet he was and the world was a darker place because of it.
Tom downed another shot at the bar which he owned. He had a strict policy of never touching his own liquor but sometimes certain policies had to be abandoned. Now was one of those times. Alcohol always brought out the worst in him. He remembered the first time he had blacked out from the poison. He woke up cuddled in the naked arms of a woman he had been fantasizing over for a very long time. He was only fifteen years old at that time. He never knew that underage drinking would get blood on his hand but it did. He was a monster at the best of times and his desires were twisted and polluted. He never remembered what truly happened that night. But the reports of the suicide the following day proved to him that he was the one at fault.
The dark alleys always gave him shelter when he wanted to embrace his dark side. The occasion had come now and then when propriety and gentility became too much for him to live by. He was a wolf living in sheep's clothing. His friends helped him to hide himself a lot. But he couldn't really change his nature.
After several drinks when the haze seemed to be fogging his mind enough to not hurt with every thought of Daisy, Tom decided to visit the street that started his pitiable existence. Ralph Street. It was the red light district of the area. It was dingy and highly populated. It was bordered by a cemetery on one side and a slum on the other. Every night the street was lined with a number of women, young, old and in-between offering services for a price. The activities proposed on these streets was enough to make the dead squirm in their graves. The cemetery was accompanied by a small chapel where Father Monroe had once given him his name before disowning him when Tom had started to ask the wrong questions.
Tom staggered on his feet as he walked along the notorious pavement lined with several prostitutes. Some scampered at the sight of him. Some drew closer at the smell of money that oozed of his expensively cut suit and some whispered among themselves in alarm. He wasn't an unknown face in these parts. Here the people didn't know the facade he wore during the day, but the face that lay beyond when he took off all masks. He was a sick beast and his sickness was contagious.
Many of the girls who had chosen to go with him despite ample warning by others had been so terrorized by the prospects that they never dared to step foot in these pavements ever again. A few were heard to have suffered PTSD. Some, the fresh ones were never located, as if disappeared into thin air. Everyone feared Father Monroe's son, the son who shouldn't have been born.
He never hurt the ones that were new however. He gave them a fresh start far away. No one knew that. All his darkness was aimed towards the old and the willing. Tom preferred women his age or older but he was bordering forty now and women that age stop hounding the streets and move to more discreet locations. Tom could however never bring himself to visit a brothel. It was a brothel where he woke up the night after he lost his sanity.
It was a time when he did not hang out with his current group of friends. The only friend who had persisted beyond the years was perhaps Robert, his namesake. Then also Robert was only a classmate back then. The others, Sam, Diego, Ralph and Eduardo were either in prison or dead in a gang war. On his fourteenth birthday Father Monroe had handed him a picture, a picture of a woman. What bothered him however was that he had seen the woman before. She lived in an upper room in a house facing Ralph Street. Tom had often wondered if he could walk up to her and introduce himself but he desisted. It had been a year of such fruitless pursuits. It was his fifteenth birthday when they decided to do something about it.
Alcohol wasn't new to Tom but being the adopted son of the local priest he avoided it like a plague. So it wasn't surprising that he couldn't realize that the drink was spiked with vodka till he was drunk to the point of unconsciousness. When Tom woke up he lay naked with the woman in the picture wrapped in his arms. Anyone who would see the scene would say that the woman was old enough to be his mother. The tragic truth was that she was.
When Tom managed to realize the gravity of the situation he called her a whore and a demon. She had taken advantage of his vulnerability and corrupted his soul with darkness forever. The only biological parent that he knew of had tainted him for life.
Rupert spent the next few days washing himself. He spent so much time in the bathtub that he developed a skin condition and was hospitalized. His friends shunned him calling a lunatic. The only friend who stood by him was Robert. It was in his nature to take responsibilities and Robert took the responsibility of bringing Tom back into the world.
Father Monroe home-schooled Tom for the rest of his school years and Robert would come everyday to play Badminton with him. That was the only human interaction he had. Tom stopped going to church since the incident because he was convinced that he had fallen beyond saving. His adopted father and his friend couldn't really convince him otherwise.
When Robert managed to get Tom to go to college with him it was an achievement. Still he was the boy who sat in the last row and never talked to anyone. Fred was the mafia's son and he had to maintain a low profile. They hit it off from there. While Tom was convinced that he was nonredeemable, Fred on the other hand made amends for his father's sins by handing him over to the police and turning his business 100% legit.
Tom's final blow came when Father Monroe suffered a severe accident in the third year of his college life. He was run over by a bus and his kidneys were badly damaged. Without thinking Tom offered his kidneys, hoping that it would save the only family he knew. A DNA match done to ascertain his compatibility revealed a 100% genetic match. He was the biological son of Father Monroe, a celibate catholic priest. Confronted with the truth the Priest not only forbade Tom from donating the kidney but disowned him altogether.
The following day Tom didn't try to wash the darkness off of him. He wasn't morose or sad because his father disowned him. He had fully accepted his place in the world as an outcast and built his life accordingly. He never tried to connect with anyone ever again unless instigated by the two friends he did have. That didn't let him connect with many people till one lonely face in a crowd captivated him. It was the sadness more than anything that inserted a ray of light into his darkened soul.
As Tom walked the path he kept reminding himself that he was darker than the devil himself and everyone was better off without him. Then suddenly his feet came to a stop as a familiar face stood before him on the street.
'Tom' a familiar voice called out.
'Let's get a room you bitch. I will show you your fucking place.' Tom seethed out pulling her hair into a fist.
'What are you doing? You are hurting me.' she gasped.
'Nothing that you don't deserve.' Tom raged and wobbling against her weight and his dragged her towards the brothel where his life was once changed. He knew the owner wouldn't dare stop him.
As he pushed the woman onto the bed the only thing he remembered was the fact that he didn't deserve a chance with her and it was her fault. It had to be.
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