I immediately bristled. He had no right to come into my home and speak to me in that manner. “Get out. I don’t have to listen to this crap.” I’d lost all familial ties to him and had no reason to put up with his gall.
“I’m not leaving until I talk some sense into you. We were connected as kids. I know you always felt it.” He tried to placate me, the fool. The only connection we had as kids was his obsession with putting me down and making me feel like a fat, frumpy fool.
“Connected how? You’re crazy.” I moved toward my cell phone. I wanted to be able to call Arch if Mitch’s words grew any more insane.
“You can’t tell me you didn’t feel the connection. You’re lying if you say it.” His breath came more rapidly. I’d never seen him so openly agitated.
“I’m going to need you to give me a little more information. You treated me like a dog for the time we lived under the same roof. How were we connected?” Perhaps he considered breaking my things and leering at my friends a connection?
“Ellie.” Mitch’s voice started to sound whiny. “It was a forbidden love. We dared not explore it. But now, our parents aren’t married anymore! We don’t have anything holding us back.” My brain refused to work. Once the word love came out of his mouth, I went into shock and denial.
My eyes couldn’t have opened wider if an optometrist used his special tools to do it. My mouth gaped open; I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “Forbidden? Love?”
“You were attracted to me. At first, I wasn’t attracted to you, but your grace—poise—I was drawn to you. And knowing you returned my affections… I used to ache for you if I brought home a date. I didn’t want you to imagine I cared any less for you because I was keeping up pretenses. But we’re free now, Ellie. Free!” I didn’t process nearly everything he said. As his voice rose in pitch, it reminded me of prepubescent Mitch, ripping pages out of my favorite books—books my mother gave me—and leaving them under my covers.
My mouth wouldn’t form words. He took it as permission to continue. “I can get my mom to give me the company if you give up your claim.” He moved away from the window to stand between the entryway and me. I regretted walking away from my only exit. He cut off my escape route.
My emotions bounced from irritation to anger to panic, but mostly anger. After I tried for years to separate myself from him, I was angry he was still a stressor in my life. I was irritated I’d allowed him to come between the door and me. And I was panicked because I didn’t know what he was capable of if he believed the insanity coming out of his mouth. “Then we can get married, and you can help. You can plan the events and host dinner parties. Like my mom did for your dad. It’ll be the ideal arrangement. And our children would be perfect, Ellie, think about it!” He’d gone off the deep end.
The mention of children—and what I’d have to do with him togetthose children—shook me out of my stupor. “Children?” I asked, incredulous. “Married? Dinner parties? Oh. My.God!” By the time the second ‘god’ left my lips, I was shrieking. “Get out of my house, you sicko!”
“Ellie, what’s wrong with you?” He definitely crossed into the land of whining.
“What’s wrong with me?” My voice, quiet and deep, dropped its shriek. Danger ran through my veins. He had to leave my presence before I lost it and ended up in jail. “What’s wrong withyou? I never had forbidden feelings for you, you perverted weasel.”
“Why are you being hurtful about our love? We were kids. There’s nothing perverted about how kids feel, they can’t help their growing emotions and attractions.” He inched toward me.
“Hurtful? I’m being hurtful?” My eyes darted around the room, trying to find an escape.
“Why do you keep repeating everything I say?” His voice turned superior.
“Because I can’t believe the words coming out of your mouth! Who are you? You can’t be the boy I grew up with. You werehorribleto me!” Images flashed through my mind. Years of verbal abuse and bullying. Taunts about everything from my hair to my weight. The barrage of hate Todd also endured on his visits. This was all compounded by the actions of his group of so-called cool friends, who blindly imitated their leader.
“That was a ruse! You had to have known. I kept up pretenses so no one would figure out our true feelings.” He pleaded with me to understand his side. The only side I could understand was he’d gone completely insane.
“Mitch, get out! Get out!Get out!” With each repetition, my voice rose in pitch until I screamed at him, and I didn’t care.
“I’m not leaving, Ellie! You must admit you care for me. I can’t leave until you admit it!” Now, Mitch screamed at me.
“I hate you. With a burning passion, I hate you. I never thought I could hate anyone until I met you and your family. And now, I hate you more because you’re stark, ravinginsane, and you won’t get the hell out of my apartment!” My eyes darted, searching for a way around him. He was too close.
He started walking toward me again. His eyes were crazed, and I could see sweat beading on his overly large forehead. “Don’t come any closer, you...you…” I searched for another appropriate word. “Pervert!”
“My patience wears thin,sister.” He grew angrier, which scared me to death. He was unpredictable, totally off his rocker, nothing like the boy I knew. “Stop calling me crazy. I didn’t imagine our flirtations. I didn’t invent you staring at me across the room, lust in your eyes. You were a little young to have steamy thoughts about me, but since we didn’t act on them, there was no harm.”
I had no words for the idiocy spewing out of his mouth. “Those weren’t lustful thoughts. They were murderous, they were angry.” He started toward me again. I put my hands in front of me in the universal stop gesture. “Don’t come any closer, Mitch, I mean it!”
He rushed at me and put his arms around my waist before I could flinch. He pushed me against the half wall separating the kitchen from the living room. “You can’t deny me, Ellie. We’re meant to be. Our future will be perfect together.” His fervent attempts to kiss my neck broke his words apart.
Screams ripped from my throat the moment he touched me. I tried to fight him off, but I’d never gotten any real self-defense training. I always meant to. And though I owned a gun for home protection, it was all the way across the room.
I managed to get my knee into his groin, putting him on the ground, but not before he touched me in too many places. I slid along the wall to get around him and ran for the exit.
I screamed my way across the room, mostly incoherent sentences about Mitch’s insanity. When I opened the door, I found Arch in the hall, panic on his face. I ran straight into his arms and instantly calmed in his safe embrace.
“What’s going on? What’s wrong? I heard you screaming from my apartment!” He sounded frantic. I couldn’t imagine the scenarios running through his mind.
“He’s crazy! He’s in my apartment, and he’s crazy!” I began to cry, overwhelmed by the madness of the morning.
