☾ My head

is

a very dark place ☾

--- *** ---
--- A Day Later ---
--- 28th of October, 1964 ---

Within the approaching morning which elapsing sooner than a mild summer breeze, tickling and fanning playfully the surroundings, it the elapsing hours were a dynamic roller coaster in your and the members of the clergy's cases.

The arranged release. A medley of genuine felicity to savor the freedom's true taste and despondence, not due to anything else than missing the friendships you made with Kit, Shelley, Pepper, Grace and most of all, one more person who wasn't part of their common guilt. The one who took an adequate care of your freshly sore wounds, left untreated and menacing balefully to engulf the immune system and its stability after plaguing with a difficultly curable infection. The one who has even confronted the woman of the cloth back to the night of your false commitment to Briarcliff. The one who cared even more about you rather than himself. The one who will genuinely miss you and rot after your disappearance. The one you felt desperate spiritual connection with, due to sharing a few things potently in common. It was Timothy Howard. The name laced your tongue sweetly and bitterly in the same time with amalgamating flavours which you still questioned.

It was almost approaching noon and one of the orderlies was securing the room where you were getting ready to flee the mental hospital within a couple of minutes only. At the moment, the ambitious Monsignor was waiting outside the room with the staff member patiently, fidgeting his fingers and the taxi was about to arrive past the mental institution's grand massive stone stairs outside.

In spite of nobody acknowledged the kiss which you surreptitiously mottled in with the pious sister of the church, nevertheless, you sensed how bizarrely monstrous the kiss affected you and most of all, yet questioning how you didn't even venture to stop in a halt the process.

Notwithstanding the circumstances, the lusciously cherub, attractively roseate lips of the former promiscuous jazz nightclub singer yet haunted you and the silky softness grazing the delicate raw spot of your pair of lips yet lingering. You were far from oriented how to feel about the arcanely lustful moment which was a pure manipulation to drag you out of the infernal ruins of the retribution which she considered you deserved due to your disappearance overnight. The solitary.

Even when you had modicum of trust in the aspiring Monsignor, you were far from determined and cocksure to inform him about everything, taking its place in his rare bird's office. You sensed a fountain medley of sheer mortification, stark nonplus and mild irritation brewing and cooking inside you with adrenaline pulsating into your figure. Exquisitely contaminating your vortex of thoughts with questions whose answers were begging for bonus time whether to object your versatile abstinence or on the contrary risking ominously to open in front of Timothy about anything that puzzles you. Even though you weren't quite close to one another, you still doubted you might encounter him except in a local church or hallowed site ever again. Your vast enthusiasm to get to know Timothy as much as his luscious covet to discard the cloak of your enigmatic character was still a challenging, dithering mental agony.

There was a wardrobe with opulent attire choice where you could choose and try on anything that is sufficiently comfy to hug your petite-frame, although the limited time you've until the taxi's arrival at last.

The amalgamating soundtrack of wall clock's uneasy ticking, despondently high-pitched inmates' bewails and the heavy rain, overally pelting down the small city or Massachusetts and its luxurious beehive of raindrops slapping the closed windows and walls of the old, grandiose asylum's façade.

In the meanwhile, you were standing beside the monumental round-framed mirror, smartly primping yourself after gathering an exquisitely matching attires and subsequently contriving via improvising and using your fashion taste's philosophy to determine which kind of garment may match with, judging its true color, design and pattern nonetheless.

Your petite-frame, baptized in freshly healed and disinfected plum bruises was donned in nothing else than plain, sheerly oyster-white underwear, cozily covering your most intimate parts and sufficiently bland and slightly outdated to be far from authentically eye-catching. Scarce glossiness glimmering past the brilliantly crystal mirror reflection, manipulating in cloning your figure. Your disheveled (H/C) mane was bouncing unevenly after you pulled over your arms into the pumpkin orange cashmere top's sleeves, peeling heinously your arms like shed snake skin. Thereafter you hopped up in comfy, practical jet-black pleated skirt, flaring slightly above your youthfully round shaped knees, matching with thin, graceful jet-black stockings, embroidering your legs with thin fabric, engulfing the common chilly climate and stilling the body temperature. Last but not least, you paired your outfit with ebony black, dashing Mary Jane shoeing your feet and a charcoal gray autumn coat hugging your frail skeleton along with black and pumpkin orange doted scarf, casually elegantly tied and swaddling warmly your delicate neck.

You snatched a comb to comb your frowzy, lacking of gloss unruly strands and raking the knotty, kinky wires as your nubile, weathered hand grasped the comb, manipulating to untie and neatly dolling up your greasily lifeless mane.

Shortly after dolling up your appearance within a handful of minutes and examining in a scrutiny from head to toes, in case, if your expectancies to meet the proper combination with colours and designs even patterns weren't extravagant at all, a weak, complacent smile with rigidly woeful texture ingrained your grin, opening in a wide O your mouth, subsequently you casted a wink, glinting back at your manipulated reflection for last time, relishing the photogenic tones of heavy rain.

Your childlike euphoria to accomplish the ultimate freedom of beholding the light and joining the general population beared a semblance as if you're in seventh heaven clamped your leaping frail heart in the rhythmic pulsations, throbbing into your ears at the elapsing limited time until you can get into the taxi to your dream destination and never turn your back to still live for your past.

As soon as you retired from the grandiose, round-framed mirror and snatched your purse from the oak wood dressing table's counter with a couple of remarkable paraphernalia being part of your golden journey such as a wallet with money, keys for your flat, a small notepad, a pen and so forth, the docile, feather drums of your Mary Jane clacked against the dully concrete flooring, your solely free hand manipulating to reach for the door handle and swinging open the door in the turn as you were embraced by the sight of the clergyman and a sanitarian. A huge, vaguely benevolent smile was tattooed on the British aristocrat who inspected your petite frame warily in a scrutiny from head to toes, admiring and being in awe with every advancing second of the elapsing hourglass with your youthful, femininely defined looks, illustrating with sheer luster in its style and casualty. His chocolate brown gems pierced through your {E/C} gems with benevolence, whilst the elasticity of the silence was glimmering its stretching line and tightening your very essences.

"You okay, Timothy?" Suddenly the sharpness of your snap powdered severely your inquiry, being far from careless about the older man's current condition, battering its reflection mirroring his porcelain, still young-looking complexion, squinting up his smoky quartz jewels at yours.

"Yes, I'm totally fine, {Y/N}!" Meantime, the young man shook his head to try his best to cleanse his impure thoughts of you, immersing his vortex of thoughts and the absent-minded dark silhouette thickly, elegantly cloaking his charming facial attributes, readable like a book with its spread pages to you. "You mustn't be so fearful about my condition."

Without any further verbal elaborations, gearing your tongues and vibrations scarcely simmering to be conjugated until they roll from the tongue tip effortlessly deft. Managing nods in agreement seconds before departing altogether in the same direction with regard of great respect to you and didn't want even to dash up to the taxi all alone at all.

In a handful of minutes after descending the spiral stairs which owned a prominent name with its own owner Sister Jude Stairway to Heaven, subsequently the humdrum choir of footsteps echoing against the concrete and smoothly brattling restlessly shortly after the mid-autumn gentle breeze softly fanning and dancing its invincibly invisible ticklish waves.

At the moment, the Monsignor retrieved a pocket classy midnight black umbrella spreading its own flapping ebony wings, guarding onward your heads from the rich heavy rain, slapping the umbrella's fabric clumsily, stubbornly. Further, you just bobbed your head in expression of your gratitude, vaguely blooming your cherub, chapped lips, steadily curling your dainty fingers around the purse's strap, supporting your shoulder blade.

"Thank you so much, Timothy!" Meanwhile, the taxi driver held steadily the passenger back seat's door gentlemanly for you, stepping aside to give you ginormous empty space to readjust once or twice your seating posture at least after bending to take a seat in the vehicle. "I don't even know how grateful I'm for everything you did for me." Shortly before bending to seat on the passenger back seat, you could scarcely crane your gaze, engulfed into guzzling greedily the British aristocrat's handsome facial features which were readable like widely spread book's pages from the first ever page up to the final one. Wry woefulness embellished his facial features, stickily veiling with almost invisible luminosity his coffee brown embers with crystalline, lapis lazuli translucent tears, blurring his perpetual vision. You could tell something was tearing off his heart on millions of shattering flimsy glassily pieces and even when the man of the cloth opted to mask surreptitiously his sorrow and homesickness over the brief, nevertheless, prominent moments you shared together in the orderliness a few minutes or slightly more were the most precious you've ever shared with somebody inside an ironically sinister mental hospital, well-known residence for criminally insane who were the outcast of the general population and their isolation was in institutions to seek cure and guidance to the light and God. Last but not least, your great deal of efforts to astutely shrouding any allusions of sorrow and heartbreak, overally written across your youthful facial attributes and you didn't have anything to be part of your complacent initiative to return the favor to the priest except being all ears always for his stories or anything fundamentally importuned for attention.

"I'd rather be extremely thankful to you for listening to me and understanding me, {Y/N}! You did everything what you could." In the interim, his solely free colossal, dumbfoundingly warm and solacing hand managed to reach for your upper back, thus maneuvering his pristinely masculine, milky fingers to work on kneading solacingly the sensitive skin of your fleshy upper back's site, diminishing the low spirits invading you with guilty conscience for your spiritual poverty to equalize your selfless generosity and gratitude to his. "But {Y/N}, I've something for you!" Suddenly whilst the pads of his fingers supported lugged the pocket umbrella's handle, his only free hand slithered from your upper back down to his jet-black rigidly wool, conservative blazer and retrieving clumsily a midnight black single rose, the pads of his virginally lactescent, creamy fingers' only free hand warily mooring the handle with cluster of spines the smooth area where he wouldn't welt or scrap ferociously his delicate skin. "It's for you!" The older man handed you the naturally midnight black rose to you as paradoxal paroxysm glazed icily your bones and muscles with tranquilizing sedation, contaminating your muscle nerves and bone structure in possibly most agonizing strategy. Your {E/C} embers flamed vague discomfort, sheer inspiriting and childlike embarrassment blandishment, tickling with unblemished crimson powder your well-sculptured cheeks and sweltering heat trudging beneath your facial skin vastly.

"Timothy, that's tremendously," Your hitched breathing whilst examining in a scrutiny in awe the black rose which you've seldom behold in the absolute reality sheened its true nuances of pulchritude, esthetically battering the uniqueness of the one of a kind single flower with its uncommon colour that was flourished unlike the original red, white and roseate. "Tremendously nice of you and I couldn't be more thankful about everything you do for me even this rose," Shaking your head in failed attempts to cleanse your tantalizing medley of fantasies and unimaginable scenarios with the devotional clergyman, crystal, translucent tears were gradually, persistently clouding your vision, resembling the heavy rain staining the windows' flimsy glasses with its own salty, stark tears and wetness christening the material after the natural phenomenon marked its own celestial culmination. Tearful, ruefully content smile roughened your neutral lips' texture and graining them with a salmagundi of happiness, melancholy and soul-stirring ballad, chanting inwardly its tuneful tones and throbbing into your ears with the heavy heart pulsations and the heavy rain. The stability of your smile was irreparably untainted wight of the sequence of Timothy's heartwarming gesture. "But it's quite unnecessary all this! I'm just a-"

"Shu, shu, shu, {Y/N}, do not say it's unnecessary! Every lady deserves a flower especially the one who's capable of altering somebody for better with her own presence!" In the interval, your {E/C} bijous wrenched lowered lingering in the scrutiny prospect to inspect the black rose and the ornately enveloped thin scarlet bow, lashing the handle with a special label of a short precious message for its receiver For you, dear {Y/N}. Your heart skipped a beat after scanning the special message, labeled with the enveloped bow and glimpsing back, subsequently transfixing your stare at his cocoa brown bijous, sobbing quietly, sticky snots bawling faintly your sensitive, tiny nostrils and tears trickling downward your cheeks fatly, lubricating with its own dew of moisture the marked territory of a savage beast after slaughtering his own chased for a longtime prey. "I know you like different things and the common ones bore you to death. That's why I've chosen this black rose, reminding me of your one of a kind soul, full of warmness, goodwill and honesty!" Little did you know how the priest has sneaked subtly during his hectic daily schedule to stop in front of a flower store occasionally or intentionally even spending a couple of minutes choosing the exact flower or rather reminiscent present for farewell. Why he's being readily amiable and selfless to you even sacrificing modicum of his spare time just to please you and to behold the moment of tugging the content smile, curling upon your lips? Why a holy man would be interested in anybody, howsoever, a former drug dealer who's a full orphan? It was a sheer taboo dilemma. There were fewest cases where the priests were head over heels in love whether with a sister of the church or just a woman from the general population, regardless how young or old she's actually in the reality. Your berry-coloured tongue could barely elaborate any vowels and syllables and gearing them in a constructed rational response to his gentleman gesture and farewell present, measuring how speechless you were eventually and the sequence of the platonic gesture tempered your vocal stings, ebbing off from its genuine vital stamina.

"Thank you for everything, Timothy! Farewell!" Seconds before hopping up in the vehicle, you stilled your ogle at the aspiring Monsignor, grazing with his coffee brown irises your petite-frame from head to toes and beaming ruefully at you.

"Farewell, {Y/N}!"

Within a couple of seconds, you hopped up in the taxi car and readjusting your posture as you unwrapped your purse's strap from your shoulder blade and gliding alongside your left side after the taxi's door was slammed stormily and the driver ventured back to his driving seat, whereas you looked out the window, darting your big round {E/C} cabochons to the tall, masculine figure, donned in cloth of chastity not retiring back to the monumental building's front door to resume his business or tasks' process. S

"Where to drive you, Miss?" The owner's enquiry, begging for your direct response was a man in his early fifties with grizzly hair with baldy spots and chestnut highlights petering out its own lavish due to the merciless aging process. His bulky body-structure and noteworthy height, objecting no shorter than 5'10 were finely adorned with casual hipster garments, indicating his fashion style and matching interestingly with his thick, hoary beard and fair skin tone.

"To Casino Purple Firework!" Even when your absent-minded state of utterly focusing your attention to the British compatriot, lingering your spidery slim fingers around the single rose's handle, drawing the midnight black rose to your nostrils, inhaling admirably the alluring fragrance of its flower once it delicately abraded your upper lip, you tried your best to guide the cabdriver your actual address's impending destination, clearing your throat softly shortly after admiring the alluring fragrance of the flower, squinting up your eyes at the British compatriot who was daubing his own tears, pouring down his lower eyelids and taking a notice of the lavish rivulets, beleaguering his smoky quartz cabochons.

"Alright, Miss! We'll be within a half an hour to the destination."

When the cab's engine commenced buzzing with its dreary ode, hammering into your ears and the car was pulled off with a moderate speed, megawatt horsepowers pressed into the cab and you could find yourself sobbing silently, reclining on the window, side eyeing the notorious asylum and its figures, whether pacing or scarcely changing their own apex's location to favoring miniature physiques until they were eventually out of your sight. The juvenile man of the cloth was your amnesia's second choice or on the contrary third wheel to escape from your obsession with him and the moments you shared along.

Once you get back at your flat and encounter your friends, the fresh start begins and opening a new chapter in the book of your life to erase the nightmare you've been through just days ago with exception of certain moments which were far from futile to vanish in the bimbo. 

Author's Note: Since it's the 10th chapter of this book, what are your thoughts on this book up to now? Do you still like and enjoy it, in spite of utterly focusing on the reader and somehow accenting with a spotlight Timothy and some other characters which take somewhat minor or major part of the storyline? 

If you aren't a keen fan up to now, I'm not blaming you, because it's just the beginning of the saga and the sequence of some actions, taking its place whether in this chapter or a few chapters ago will be part of major or remarkable plot twists in the sequel. I hope you liked and enjoyed this chapter! :))