Good Intentions 3: Personal Demons by Elliott Kay Read Free Book Online Page A

stuffed himself with a holiday dinner. Now he felt hollow inside.
    Setting the plates down involved standing next to Roy. He managed it. He also managed not to punch his grandfather. “I’m, uh, gonna go hit the bathroom, sorry,” Alex mumbled.
    His walk took him down a short hall. He needed distance, walls, and a door between himself and his problems. That was completely impossible, though. This problem wasn’t in the kitchen or the dining room. It lived in his head.
    Alex gladly took advantage of the twist handle lock in the doorknob. He dropped the lid on the toilet and sat down with his head in his hands. His breath shook. His lip quivered. He tried to keep quiet, not wanting anyone who might walk by the bathroom door to hear if he started sobbing.
    He’d thought he had this problem licked. Friends and lovers had helped with the unwanted memories of the people he’d once been. He’d mourned and moved on. Memories still caught him off-guard now and again, but never to the point of causing stress. Pieces of lives he couldn’t fully remember sometimes spoke up when confronted with a problem or challenge that his memories could handle. He remembered skills, talents, and the basics of his previous lives, but nothing like a full narrative. In truth, Alex didn’t even want to dive down that well. Those lives were over. He was Alex now.
    Except tonight. The last young man he’d been felt all too near. Certainly a key figure in his death was close.
    This is Christmas , he thought. 21 st Century Christmas, and my family, and my grandfather.
    “Oh good,” whispered a familiar voice. Alex nearly jumped to his feet when he saw Rachel’s face—and only her face—poking straight through the still-closed bathroom door. The rest of her faded through a second later. “Sorry. I didn’t mean, ‘Oh good, you’re having a mindfuck,’ but, ‘Oh good, I’m not walking in on a bombing run.’”
    The explanation added a new dimension to his confusion. Rachel shrugged. “Okay, I may be shameless, but even I’ve got some standards. Don’t want to walk in on that , y’know? Anyway, hey,” she said, crouching in front of him and taking his hands. “What’s going on?”
    Once again, her touch helped. He simply breathed as she calmed his nerves. “It’s my granddad.”
    “I figured that. Lorelei and me both. Drew caught on, too. None of us knew why.” She squeezed his hands. “I know it’s nothing abusive. He never hurt you. I can read that much from him, and from you.”
    “Huh. Right.” His voice dropped. His inflections changed. “Guess that all depends on what kinda shit you call abusive.”
    “Oh this is some past life shit, isn’t it?” Rachel asked. “That’s why I can’t see the problem.”
    “He was…he was my boss in Vietnam. Will’s boss,” Alex corrected in his own voice once more. “He was horrible. All the time. He did his job, pulled his own weight and then some in the bush, but he was such a bigoted asshole. Called me and the black men in the company every dirty name in the book like it was normal. Nobody with authority over him ever did anything about it. I guess back then that really was normal for a lot of people, but him… Hell, even some of the white guys called him Cracker Carlisle.
    “And at the end…” His voice cracked. He tried again. “In the end…”
    “Sshh.” Rachel leaned in and kissed him gently. Even an angel’s touch could relieve only so much of this burden. “Hold still for a sec, babe.” She went back to the door, fading through once again. Alex watched, still amazed every time he saw such things no matter his mental state.
    As promised, she wasn’t gone long. This time she faded in through another wall with a thoughtful expression. She didn’t look at Alex right away, processing whatever she’d seen when looking at Roy until she asked, “You were Will? You were being chased, Roy fell behind, and then you and Darren went back for him?”
    He shrugged.