Unbalanced by Jason Parent

Author:Jason Parent [Parent, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mental illness, crime, murder, mystery, detective, thriller, suspense
Publisher: Red Adept Publishing
Published: 2022-04-04T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

Jaden wished he’d never grown up. Life had been so much simpler before responsibilities and expectations and rules crafted to conform behavior to what some faceless and timeless society felt was appropriate. They were hard lines with no give, even when flexibility and common sense should go hand in hand.

Pause. Eyes closed. Breathe.

God, how he wished Cass were there. He’d been sentenced to another month of anxiety, awaiting a trial he might not be strong enough to see through and might not even want to see through.

He froze on his apartment steps, closed his eyes, and concentrated on breathing, but neither his heart nor his hyperventilating would slow. The pounding in his head rumbled like a race car’s engine as the driver revved it over and over again.

“Cass?” He blinked through the pain. Her platinum hair swirled as she turned to face him, like silk dancing on the wind. She stood at the top of the stairwell with her arms crossed, frowning. Her pink scarf flittered in the same breeze as her hair, though he couldn’t feel it.

“It’s not my fault. I don’t know...”

Jaden shook his head, and her hair whirled about her and became translucent, turning the rest of her translucent as well, like clouded glass seen through a clouded mind.

He pressed his eyes shut. “What happened to you, it’s not my fault.” He choked on a sob. “You’re not real. Oh god, I wish you were. I need you so badly. But you’re not real.”

When he opened his eyes again, Cass was gone. He looked down the stairs but saw no one. White-knuckling the railing, he climbed one step then another on trembling legs and summoned the tiny reserve he had left to make it to the hallway. He wanted to crash onto his bed and close his eyes forever, safe from the outside world.

And maybe see Cass again. Truly see her.

His was a place that used to be safe, but the world had kicked and battered its way in, and he couldn’t wash away the stains. Worse still, a piece of his inner sanctum had gotten out. Jaden’s beloved cat, who was a piece of his sanity and sanctity, the glue that had held his tenuous connections, had been missing since that terrible night, and he hadn’t held out much hope of ever seeing him again.

But something furry lay outside his door. “Rascal!” Jaden sprinted down the hall, toward the lump of fur and paws curled up at its threshold. He cried with a new kind of joy, finally finding a spark of hope in a season of darkness.

He reached the cat quickly and skidded to a stop then jumped back a step, repressing an urge to scream. The cat didn’t respond to his approach. It didn’t move a whisker.

Jaden dropped to his knees, his lizard brain registering what his higher functions struggled to comprehend. At first, he thought maybe the stress of being outside had been too much for Rascal. After all, the cat had been very ill.

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