Experiment in Terror 06.5 And With Madness Comes the Light Read Online Free PDF Page B

sun
streaming through them, unable to stop my mouth from going on. “She
makes me want to live life as it should be lived. By the balls, you
know.”
    “Makes,” he mused, stretching his
hamstring.
    “Makes?”
    “Yeah man. Makes. Present tense. She makes you want to be a better man. She’s still your light,
no matter what the rest of this shit is. That’s pretty deep.”
    “Balls deep?” I asked.
    “Dude, enough with your balls. Maybe that
should be your next tattoo.”
    I raised one brow. “Balls deep. I guess it
would be applicable to the ladies.”
    He sighed impatiently. “No. Perry is your
light. She helped you lose the madness. Something like that. To
balance out the other one.”
    “Dedicate a tattoo to her?” I asked.
    He shrugged. “You’re still in love with her.
She makes you want to live life. Personally, and this is just me,
man, if I ever met a woman who saved me that way, I’d devote some
temples to her or something. That’s how the Taj Mahal got started,
I’m sure.”
    We hadn’t even left the park before a phrase
started floating around in my head— Within your light, I lose the
madness.
     
     
     

CHAPTER FOUR
     
     

    Even though my man Dean had been the one to
give me the tattoo idea, I decided to take Rebecca along to
accompany me during the procedure. It’s funny that I already had
two tattoos and this one would also be simple cursive behind my
shoulder, yet needles kind of freaked me out. I didn’t like to
admit it, but hey, the whole becoming a new man thing had me
spewing a lot of shit I used to keep to myself. Which was just what
the world needed—an even more uncensored Dex Foray.
    I didn’t know if I was just on a down day or
if I was jonesing because I’d just quit smoking, but I was a pile
of nerves as the tattoo artist did his work on me.
    Rebecca noticed. “Does it hurt?” she asked
as the first few words were completed.
    I shook my head. It didn’t. Didn’t mean it
was comfortable and it didn’t mean I liked it, but it definitely
didn’t hurt.
    She pursed her lips and looked me over
inquisitively. “Do you mind if I get Perry’s address off of
you?”
    I flinched. Luckily the artist was fast
enough to feel it coming and lifted the needle away just in
time.
    “What?” I asked.
    “Are we okay?” said the tattoo artist.
    I nodded quickly at him and the machine
resumed its buzzing.
    I lowered my voice. “Why do you want her
address?”
    “It’s not like that,” she said, taking a
tube out of her bag that probably used to be a hamster and dotting
sticky gloss on her lips. “Em and I might be in Portland soon and I
was thinking—”
    “Don’t you dare,” I warned her. “Don’t you
dare go see her.”
    She lowered her brows and snapped her purse
shut with a deafening click. “Dex, please. She was my friend,
too.”
    “I’m your friend first.”
    “ You’re not going to go see her.”
    “Obviously not, she hates my guts.”
    “But you’re getting a tattoo because of
her.”
    “Well I’m not dragging the tattoo artist
over there and getting it inked on her forehead, am I?”
    “I just want to see how she’s doing. I’m
worried about her.”
    I wished she hadn’t said that, because I was
worried as hell about her, too. Over the last week, I’d thought
about Pippa’s message again and again, trying to figure out what it
all meant. Why it was a warning. How Perry was doing. Just because
I’d been mercifully free from seeing ghosts—despite no
medication—it didn’t mean Perry was. I couldn’t imagine how she’d
deal with it all alone. Even though, looking back, I hadn’t been
much help—partially because of the medication, partially because I
was afraid—I knew she had felt safer with me. Because I always
believed her and I understood. Now who knew what was going on? I
had little faith in her younger sister, Ada, and zero faith in her
parents.
    “Fine,” I said. “But I didn’t send you.”
    “I know you didn’t. And I know