Melodic Madness Read online

  Copyright

  Melodic Madness by Natalie Bennett

  © 2021 by Natalie Bennett. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying without the written permission of the publisher or author. The exception would be in the case of brief quotations embodied in the critical articles or reviews and pages where the publisher or author specifically grants permission.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design: Jay Aheer—Simply Defined

  Editing by: Pinpoint Editing

  Blurb

  There’s a method in his madness.

  Alaric is as brilliant as he is beautiful and twice as deadly.

  He’s been watching me.

  Studying me.

  He’d planned to keep me long before I arrived on his doorstep.

  His chaotic world is now the prison I’m forced to call home. A place where nightmares and reality are indistinguishable.

  As I struggle to find some clarity in the lies and darkness that surround me, Alaric continues to manipulate from the shadows.

  He knows exactly how to make my demons rage, just to soothe them with his opaque melodies.

  I’ve never hated anyone more.

  But he’s the one thing I’d happily die for.

  PLAYLIST

  (Spotify)

  Faouzia—Bad Dreams (stripped)

  Cameron Hayes—Drown

  Ashlynn Malia—Desperate

  PVRIS—Hallucinations

  Elita--Sober

  Lacuna Coil—My Demons

  Post Malone—Take What You Want

  The Sweeplings—Under Your Spell

  Billie Eillish—Everything I Wanted

  EPIGRAPH

  “There’s a rhythm to my chaos and it’s you.”

  ~Beau Taplin~

  Recap

  My body ached with every breath I took.

  Alaric was gone.

  He’d left me in his bed to sleep when I’d passed out with him inside me. He fucked me like a demonic beast. I’d gotten what I wanted. My pussy bled for him. I came more times than I could count.

  The only thing I hadn’t done was choke on his cock, although I’m sure that was coming eventually

  Moving from the bed, I made my way out into the hall wearing nothing but the come dried on my skin and the bruises from being fucked so hard I couldn’t walk straight.

  Down the stairs, through the foyer, and into the great room.

  That’s where I found him.

  At least, I assumed it was him.

  He was staring out at the water with a drink in his hand, the sky a deep gray from the start of dawn.

  “I’ve been waiting for you to wake up,” he stated, not looking at me.

  “I’m awake?”

  “Are you?” He turned to face me, his expression obscure as his gaze traveled over my nudity.

  I turned my head left to right, looking at my hands for a hint of what was going on.

  My lids fluttered with the flash of a brunette, her wails echoing in my head.

  “What have you done to me?” I whispered, rubbing my brow.

  “You’ll feel better soon. I’ve administered the…let’s call it the antidote. Think of this as a withdrawal process.”

  “Withdrawal from what?” I choked out, moving to sit on the nearest surface.

  “Your trial runs. I’ve been giving you a special sort of two-part cocktail. Created it myself. Tested it out three weeks ago at DG.”

  “What are you talking about. What trial runs?”

  He tossed back a healthy amount of his drink.

  “None of this will make much sense right now. I haven’t been letting you remember.”

  I shook my head back and forth, gripping the sides when it felt as if my brain rocked with the motion.

  “See, I don’t want to overwhelm you. Or bore you with a long, villainous speech. The logistics are simple. I purchased you. You’re mine. I’ve finally figured out what it is you need.”

  “What I need…?”

  He moved from the window and offered me his drink.

  “Have some.”

  Seeing he’d drank it and was fine, I snatched the glass and took a generous sip. I nearly coughed up a lung with the first swallow.

  He laughed softly, pulling the glass away from me.

  “You don’t need pills. You don’t need therapists. You just need me.”

  Was he saying he’d taken my pills? A dull, throbbing sensation began at the back of my skull.

  He reached out and ran a fingertip from the crook of my neck, down between my breasts. “Turn around, Catalina,” he ordered softly.

  Without questioning why, I turned, sliding my legs beneath the piano.

  “We’ve got company coming tomorrow night. I want you to have a clear head. Play this piece for me.” He tapped the sheet music on the shelf, the same sheet that had been sitting there since I’d arrived. Feeling like I was living an out-of-body experience, I read over the notes and different chords.

  My fingers began to move. He stood behind me, tracing my bare skin with his fingertips, taking his time to move lower and lower.

  My reality melded with my nightmares. The nightmares bled into my reality. I could no longer tell the difference. I wasn’t sure it mattered. I’d become addicted to his exclusive dose of madness. Caught in his web of insanity.

  The piece was familiar. It needled the demons he was so determined to wake.

  It filled the hole in my head and the emptiness within the house. A melody that haunted my dreams,

  Beautiful, yet sinister. Like the man who asked me to play it.

  Tragic, like the woman I pretended I wasn’t.

  PROLOGUE

  The live feed showed everything.

  She was crying, but there were no tears left to spill, only empty sobs wracking her naked body so hard she almost looked as if she were having a seizure.

  “It will all be over soon,” I soothed through the intercom. “You’ll be all better.”

  She yelled something I didn’t bother attempting to make sense of. If she would hurry up, I could get home and be asleep at a decent hour.

  “You’ll love me even when I’m gone?” she questioned the surrounding darkness.

  I grinned and leaned forward.

  “Of course.”

  I didn’t hear her last words. She put the gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger before I had a chance to make her repeat herself.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Insanity.

  The one thing I feared above all else.

  Imagine being locked inside a wooden box lined with holes, floating in the center of a fog-covered lake. A sequence of questions rapid-fire through your brain.

  How did you get here?

  Was this real?

  Why was this happening to you?

  Now picture the box beginning to sink, your makeshift prison beginning to fill with cold, murky water. That’s when it begins to sink in, how dire your situation is. You desperately search for a way out but there’s no way to open the box.

  Dread envelops your chest.

  In a state of sheer panic, you seek out anything or anyone that can help you, desperately trying to see through those round holes. When you hear someone whistling in the distance, false hope has you believing that they’re your lifeline.

  It’s fleeting.

  No matter how much you scream, cry, and beg for them to help they suddenly go silent. They know their incapable of rescuing
this person calling out to them, so they turn a deaf ear to your pleas. Water is up to your knees now, and you know. You know you’re going under and there’s no one coming to save you.

  You’re going to drown.

  Deep underwater where it’s cold and dark you’ll be all alone as you run out of oxygen. You’re acutely aware of everything happening. You know in just a few minutes your lungs will begin to ache and burn, desperate for air. It will be a quiet death, but that only makes the situation even more petrifying.

  Suffering in silence.

  It's a hellish nightmare you want to wake from but can’t. You’ve been wide awake the entire time.

  The evolution of insanity, this is how I perceived it to be. It was agonizing and lonely. There wasn’t anyone reaching an understanding hand out to help because no one could ever understand the chaos wreaking havoc on you from the inside out. They left you to stand in the rubble of a ruined mind all by yourself.

  Lyssophobia.

  That’s what my mother self-diagnosed me with. It wasn’t from a place of love or concern, but frustration during one of our weekly disagreements. More of her trying to force me into a situation I wasn’t comfortable with. She did that quite a bit.

  I’d looked this phobia up after the fourth time she proclaimed that I suffered from it.

  This lyssophobia was an intense terror of becoming mad, insane or having a nervous breakdown. I’m sure my mother came about this by stringing all the adjectives she felt described me into one search engine. She conveniently left out that it was also a fear of rabies.

  It was these kinds of moments that convinced me my mother was ashamed of who I was. I’d seen so many doctors at her urging before refusing to step foot into any more sterile waiting rooms just so that I could be picked apart by another stranger. I didn’t want to keep popping different serotonin inhibitors into my mouth.

  They couldn’t solve all the issues I had. No drug would. That’s how I knew—why I had a valid fear of going insane. I was a prime candidate for the affliction.

  I lay staring at the wall of an unfamiliar room, knowing I was dangerously close to that very precipice. The one that would see me plummeting towards an extremity that had no return. I was scared—terrified of what it would feel like to hit rock bottom.

  Who would I become when everything that made me sane was stripped away? I breathed in deeply, inhaling citrus and spice instead of the sea scent I longed for.

  Naked and half-buried beneath a plush dark-colored duvet, rays of sunlight warmed every exposed part of me that could be reached through the sheer canopy cocooning the large bed. It was this small, trivial thing that reminded me of my cozy little house.

  I never thought I’d miss it so much.

  My life was drastically different before I took that call after midnight. There wasn’t anything remarkable or enviable about it.

  Things were…bleak. Grey and extraordinarily ordinary. There was little to no excitement.

  I spent almost every waking hour with a furry rodent or Chloe when she had time to spare. I would trade this ominous silence for all of that back in a heartbeat. I rolled my lips and swallowed, trying to cure my mouth of its heavy cottoned dry spell. I had no recollection of how I wound up like this.

  I didn’t remember taking my clothes off or climbing the stairs, much less getting into this bed.

  Had I drunk another glass of Alaric’s special poison? An experimental cocktail, that’s what he had called it. I had no idea how long he’d been giving this to me or why. The night before was mostly a blur but two distinct moments stood out against the backdrop of darkness.

  Alaric taking full possession of my body and me playing the piano. I’d done as he asked and given him a private performance.

  The hauntingly beautiful melody he asked me to play was still resounding in my head, trapping distress in my troubled heart. I flexed my fingers and toes to try and get a feel for how my body felt. There was a lingering soreness between my thighs, but otherwise, I felt fine—physically. Pain or not, I had to get up and sort this situation out.

  I needed to gather the fragments of memory swirling through my head—bring back even a little of the clarity that was missing.

  Rolling from my stomach to my side, I placed myself in a sitting position, legs now hanging off the side of the bed. It was centered against the same wall the main doorway sat off. Directly across from the foot of it one of the doors leading to the balcony had been light slightly ajar. That’s where the breeze was coming from.

  The sheer drapes fluttered silently as another brush of wind blew gently through the room. Everything in here was simple in a refined wealth sort of way. I had expected Alaric to have a bit bolder of a style. The black furniture all had a chevron type pattern engraved into them, the dressers, and the thick upper portion of his bed posts.

  A deep burgundy chaise was caddy corner near the footboard.

  On the back of it rested a familiar, neatly folded robe. I got up and pulled it on. As I was tying the silky grey sash, I spotted my cellphone face down on one of the nightstands. I lowered my arms and took another glance around the room. Was this a test? I couldn’t remember the last time I saw my phone. Alaric hadn’t outright taken it away but with what I knew had transpired between us, I thought he would have…

  I could see from where I was standing that he’d gone as far as plugging it in to charge.

  It felt like a taunt of sorts. A man concerned about how I would react to his confession wouldn’t freely give me access to my phone knowing I could call the police. He was right, I wouldn’t. There wasn’t any visible proof I could show to back up any of the accusations I had against him. On the tail end, Alaric had money which alluded to certain connections.

  If I challenged him off or threatened his livelihood, I’m sure things would go very badly for me.

  I could still get help, though. At least I hoped. With one last glance at the closed bedroom door, I rushed towards the nightstand. I yanked my phone from the charger and quickly entered the unlock code. I realized right away that the phone had been tampered with. The call log was entirely foreign. I scrolled and scrolled seeing only Alaric and my mother amongst a few unrecognizable numbers.

  There was so much wrong with this. I could count on one hand the number of times Alaric and I had spoken on the phone since before my arrival and after. The repetitive logs of my mother were more believable. I clicked into my contacts and found more of the same.

  The complete absence of Chloe’s information and texts solidified someone had somehow gotten into my phone.

  I never would have done this. Chloe was my best friend, my only friend. I re-checked the door as I pulled up the keypad and entered the digits I knew by heart.

  Almost immediately an intercept message carried through the speaker. "Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number and try again."

  I hung up and did just that, getting the same message. After my third try, I quit and made my way out into the hall more confused than before.

  Why wasn’t her phone working? Did she not pay the bill? That wasn’t like her at all. And her cell being off wouldn’t erase contact information from my phone. I didn’t have any explanations to make sense of this. My mind raced with theories, nothing it presented was logical.

  Hearing Alaric’s familiar baritone voice carry from below, I stopped and placed my hand on the wall, feeling a chill skirt down my spine. I wasn’t ready to face him, but I didn’t have much of a choice. The alternative was hiding out upstairs until he came to find me himself and I really didn’t want that. So, with bare feet padding softly over the polished oak floor, I made my way down the stairs while keeping a death grip on my cellphone.

  Following the sound of his voice, I located Alaric in the kitchen, his phone pressed to his ear. A mug of coffee was resting on the counter beside him.

  His striking blue eyes met mine and anything I thought to say fled in a state of turbulence. How did I begin confronting him? What w
ould he do in response?

  I’d already accused him of having a room of horror down in his basement.

  He’d laughed it off leaving me to believe that my mental woes had gotten the best of me. But now? I couldn’t be one hundred percent sure if what I saw was real or not.

  One glance at the door leading down to the lower level showed it was armed and secured as always. Alaric continued his conversation, his eyes still trained on me. I swallowed, anything I thought to say failing to come out of my mouth.

  I could barricade my logical side behind the emotions threatening to spill over but that would be taking too much of a risk. Alaric was adept at wielding words and making me question things. I couldn’t afford to go for any more rides on his carousel.

  Holding myself together was just as important as getting the hell out of here while my sanity was intact.

  “And you’re sure it’s a match?” he asked whoever was on the receiving end of his call.

  His gaze didn’t waver even when he picked up his cup of coffee and took a sip.

  I shifted uncomfortably beneath the weight of his stare. Seeing as he wasn’t going to end his conversation just because I was awake, I assumed that meant I could go outside. Like with the phone, he hadn’t gone out of his way to prevent me from doing this, but the dynamic between the two of us was anything but normal.

  I took a step back and then another before turning away altogether. I made my way through the great room, bypassing the beautiful piano to get to the patio.

  Outside, I kept walking until I was on the other side of the pool.

  I unlocked my cell and checked to make sure I hadn’t been followed before placing my next call. I didn’t know if this was the best move to make, but I was running out of options.

  I took a breath and tapped the icon to dial my mother. She answered before the second ring was completed.

  “Kitten, I was wondering when you would call me,” she enthused. “How have you been?”

  “Mom, I need you to listen to me,” I spoke low, yet firmly to get her full attention.