Chapter 25 – Psychological Warfare

“Eat something.”

He jumped when the white paper bag landed in front of him, the ice cubes in his glass clanking up against the sides.

“I'm not hungry,” he replied.

“Oh, that's right,” she said, bending down to pick up the plastic and glass bottles up from the floor, holding them up by the necks in her hand. “These days, you drink your dinner. I forgot.”

Ignoring her, he sunk deeper into the hotel's leather recliner, lifting the glass to his lips. The ice stopped at his lips while he let the liquid fall into his mouth, biting and burning at his throat as the rough, cheap vodka went down.

“What is this crap?” he asked, sneering at the glass in his hand. “I thought I told you to get me the good stuff, Mackenzie!”

She turned from the trash bag, where she was stuffing a week's worth of alcohol bottles and fast food trash in, and narrowed her eyebrows.

“My apologies, sire,” she said, placing her hand on her hip. “Doing your bidding incognito limits my goddamn options a bit!”

She was startled when he lifted his arm and threw the half-full glass across the room, letting it hit the wall as it splashed vodka and ice everywhere.

“Clean it up,” he said gruffly, turning to look at her.

She huffed a breath, a mixture of shock and anger running through her. After a pause, she sat the trash bag down on the ground beside her and walked over to the corner next to the chair, bending down to first pick up the glass, then the cubes.

He watched her a moment, and after he was sure she was doing as he asked, he lifted himself off the chair. He walked over to the dresser he had turned into a makeshift bar, pulling out another short glass and placing three ice cubes in it, then pulling out the bottle of Jack Daniels.

“Did you deliver it?” he asked as he cracked the seal and started pouring it into the glass.

She looked up, sighing when she saw him pouring. “Yeah, I did exactly as you asked, Marc.”

“Knife and all?” he asked, spinning the cap back on the bottle and swishing the liquid around the glass.

“Knife, article, note and all,” she responded, finally leaning back up once the last cube was picked up off the carpet.

“Did they bite?” he asked.

“I don't know,” she said. She walked to the bathroom and grabbed a dirty towel off the linoleum tile in front of the shower, checking to see how dry it was before bringing it back to the room to sop up the vodka from the carpet. “I didn't invite myself in to see their reaction.”

“Well did anyone see you?” he asked, his tone already becoming impatient.

“No, I don't think so.” She knelt in place again, placing the towel on the floor as the liquid soaked into the towel. “Their new apartment building is quiet. Not like their old apartment – they always had that neighbor girl nosing around...Mel? Whatever her name is.”

“That nosy neighbor is the key to our success, Mack,” he said.

“Don't call me Mack,” she said. “God, Marc, you know I hate that nickname.”

“Hey,” he said forcefully. “As long as I'm in charge of this operation, I'll call you whatever the hell I damn well please...Mack.”

She sighed, turning away from him to go back to soaking up the spilled vodka.

“That nosy neighbor is the key to our success,” he repeated as he sat back in the leather recliner.

“How?” she asked. “How does that girl have anything to do with this? She wasn't even around until they moved back to New York. She knows nothing about the affair or the divorce.”

“The beauty of it is, that doesn't matter,” he said. “They're friends. The minute Loverboy hinted at any disdain towards neighbor girl, Addy turned on him. She always has been a bit of a pitbull in sheep's clothing.”

“They fought for a week straight,” she stated. “Even after he apologized to the girl and got an ass made out of himself, she still wouldn't talk to him. It went exactly as planned – with a little bonus.”

“And yet...” he said, then paused. “And yet, our plan didn't work, did it?”

“No,” she answered. “It didn't.”

“Why do you think that is?” he asked.

“Because it was a half-assed plan thought up in the middle of one of your cheap vodka-induced, drunken stupors?” she asked, a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

“No,” he sneered, glaring at her from his chair. “It didn't work because we're targeting them.”

“You're drunker than I thought,” she said, rolling her eyes, then sighed heavily. “That's the point, Marc. Conjure jealousy and mistrust, drive a wedge between them, get her to leave him, yadda yadda...unless I missed something along the way, they were supposed to be the target.”

“The plan's changed,” he said, lifting the glass to his lips again.

“Again?” she asked, exasperated.

“The girl,” he said, pausing to savor the taste of the Jack versus the cheap vodka. “Follow her.”

“Marc, no,” she said, throwing the towel in her hand on the foot of the bed and shaking her head. “No. This has nothing to do with her. I didn't sign up for this. In fact, I didn't sign up for any of this – I'm only doing this because I need the money. Money that I haven't seen a dime of, by the way.”

“You will,” he said with a nod, looking deep into his glass. “You and your mom will be plenty taken care of, Mackenzie. I promise. But you have to work for it first.”

“This is...fucked up, Marc,” she said.

“Life is fucked up,” he responded, setting his glass down on the side table next to him. “It was pretty fucked up when my only daughter died. It was fucked up when my wife left me for a guy from a boy band that she worked for. It was fucked up when life dealt me this shitty hand of cards that I'm expected to play with!”

She jumped when, with a swipe of his hand, he knocked the glass off the table in a fit of anger.

“I just want my payday,” she said lowly.

“We all just want our payday,” he growled. “You'll get your payday when I get mine.”

“I still care about him, Marc,” she said. “He doesn't have to die. We can walk away from this.”

“I don't walk away from anything.”

Growing tired of his drunken temper tantrums and erratic behavior, she let her arms fall down to her sides.

“Have it your way,” she said. “I'm not standing here watching you spiral tonight.”

She breezed past him to grab her coat and purse from the bed, throwing them over her arm before turning to the door.

“When you're finished dicking around, call me and let me know the new plan so we can finish this,” she said, opening the hotel door. “I'm tired of waiting around and watching you drink yourself stupid.”

He grimaced as the door slammed behind her, the loud bang making its way to his head. It throbbed as the echo rang inside.

It was a simple plan, and a good one; why she had to have such a bad attitude about it, he didn't know. It wasn't as if she had anything more important to do with her time. Her acting career was on the downfall, her father dead and her aging mother in full-time hospice care. She had nothing else good going for her. A jilted lover like he was, he would have figured she would relish the opportunity to get back what was stolen from her.

Once the ringing in his head stopped, he looked down to see the second glass on the floor, the Jack soaking into the carpet and the ice cubes already melting. Groaning, he lifted his aching body from the chair, walking over to the dresser to pour yet another glass.

Hopefully he could control his temper and not use this one to decorate the room.

“Stupid fuck.”

He had pulled out the glass and spun the cap back off the bottle when he heard the voice. In an instant, he grabbed his knife from the dresser beside him and spun around.

“Who's there?” he asked.

The image in front of him looked down at the outstretched knife in his hand with his deep, sea green eyes and laughed.

“You think that will help you?” Lance said. “You're stupider than I thought, Marc.”

“Where did you come from?” Marc asked, pushing the knife a couple inches closer.

“Your head,” Lance responded, smiling.

Marc blinked his eyes a few times, hoping that the image in front of him would disappear. There was no way it could be real.

“You're delusional,” Lance whispered as he took a few steps toward him, confirming Marc's suspicions. “Out of your mind.” He twirled his index finger in a circle near his ear. “Of course, your three-way relationship with Jack and Jim isn't helping, I don't think.”

“What do you want?” Marc asked.

“How insane does one person have to be to talk to his own hallucinations?” Lance said, smiling as he passed by. “Then again, you're getting answers...you must be beyond help.”

“What are you doing here?” Marc asked again. “What do you want from me?”

The dark blonde-haired man turned from his saunter across the room to look back.

“I don't want anything from you,” he said. “I already took what I wanted. She's mine now.”

It was then that Marc felt his anger start to boil.

“Get out,” he said.

“Oh, now you're trying to kick your own delusions out?” Lance said with a laugh. “Sorry to burst your crazy bubble there...but it doesn't work that way.”

“Get out of my head,” Marc said, reducing himself to a whimpering.

“No can do, Marky Mark,” Lance said. “You carry me with you everywhere. Your little grudge. It's what drives you to keep going...and to keep drinking.”

Even though Marc thought it was impossible, he watched as his own personal delusion of his arch-enemy picked up the bottle of Jack and held it up to him.

“This stuff might kill you, you know,” he said. “I mean, actually kill you – not like that pathetic attempt at an alibi of throwing yourself off a bridge you concocted. You think I'm a stupid boybander, and even I could have come up with something better than that.”

“Why are you here?” Marc groaned, his voice growing louder, his hands reaching up to grasp his head – hoping to knock himself straight.

“I told you, you carry me with you everywhere,” Lance said, setting the bottle down. “It's finally driven you nuts – the idea that I have everything that was once yours. I took it all. I'm the one who puts flowers on your daughter's grave now. I have a re-blossoming career while yours fails. Oh, and there's one more thing I have of yours...”

“No,” Marc begged, his hands squeezing the sides of his head.

“I'm the one who gets to fuck her every night,” Lance said, his voice turning to an evil growl as he whispered in Marc's ear. “She calls out my name now. Over...and over...and over again.”

“Stop it.” Marc shook his head. “You're not real.”

“I'm only as real as you make me,” Lance whispered. “It's not me...it's you.”

Marc squeezed his eyes tightly, hoping when he opened them that the image in front of him would be gone. When he did, and his vision cleared from the blurry mess the influence of the alcohol had created, Lance was no longer in front of his face.

But it didn't take him long to realize, to his horror, he was not only not gone – that his mind had added one.

“Lance,” Adeline said, her voice low and sultry, hanging her arms around his shoulders.

“No,” Marc responded forcefully.

“She can't keep her hands off me,” Lance said, smiling as she ran her lips and tongue up his neck, moving to his ear.

She moaned, looking over at Marc before he watched Lance pull her towards him, leaning down to take over her neck, pulling her hair slightly.

“Mmmm,” she moaned, her eyes closing.

“Stop it.”

Grasping his head as tightly as he could in his hands, his world now spinning no doubt due to the overload of alcohol he had consumed that day, he couldn't make the visions stop on command. Even with his eyes closed, he could hear them in the room – or in his head, rather, taking over his sanity.

He heard her moan again and opened his eyes to see him lifting her shirt to reveal a lacy bra, cupping a breast in his hand as he glanced back at Marc.

“You like that?” he whispered in her ear.

“Mmm-hmm,” she answered, her head falling back against the wall at his touch.

“Get out of my head,” Marc said, his knuckles turning white from his tight grasp on the handle of the knife.

“You want him to watch?” Lance asked her, a small grin coming to his face.

She only smiled back and let out a giggle before letting his lips fall to hers again.

As he saw Lance reach down and grab her leg, bringing it up to wrap around his waist, Marc closed his eyes and let the anger take over him. He adjusted the knife in his hand, bringing it up to his chest.

“Stop it!”

“Marc!”

He didn't know what it felt like to black out, but he must have done exactly that – because when he opened his eyes, he saw Mackenzie standing in front of him, a bewildered and terrified look on her face. He had lost all sense of time – he could have been out for seconds, or hours.

“Where are they?” he asked her. He noticed he was standing in front of the wall they had been leaning against. He turned around to get a full view of the room – no sight of them anywhere.

“Where are who?” Mackenzie asked. “Marc, what the fuck are you high on?”

“They...they were here,” he said, pointing around the room. “Both of them. Taunting me. He was...he was right here!”

“You're out of your ever-loving mind,” she said. “We're completely alone. I came back because I heard you screaming. I walked in and all you were saying is 'get out of my head' – and then you charged at the wall and...well, look.”

She pointed at the wall where his delusions had once been, and he saw the knife he had been holding – at some point, he had stabbed it clean into the wall, with enough force for the tip to go in several inches.

“You're psychotic,” she said. She grabbed the bottles of Jack and vodka from the dresser, tucking them under her coat on her arm. “Last call, Marc. Get some serious help.”

He was still recovering from confusion as she walked out of the room, leaving him alone yet again. He took in deep breaths and wiped the sweat that had gathered off his forehead, collapsing in the recliner.

He would never be able to escape the grasps they had on him.