The Chamber of Sins

“Do you know her?” Margo inquired.

The boy nodded.

“Sweetheart?” the patient suddenly said.

“Shh,” Lionette said. “I am here, sweety,” she added, throwing a sad look at Robert. The boy moved by the window, giving them some space. The patient shored her weak body on the elbows and looked straight at Margo.

“Baby? It is you?”

Margo froze in her place. She stood like that, her mind trying to find a reasonable explanation for how somebody human besides Robert could see her. She didn’t dare to come closer. The older woman’s stare waved between her and the woman struggling to stand up.

With incredible force, the patient lifted from the sheets and put one foot on the floor. Before Lionette got her back, she was sitting in front of Margo. She reached out for her profile, a skeleton-like hand trying to pet the energetic form of the girl’s face. Cristal tears drip on the woman’s cheeks.

“My girl, you grew up so well. I’ve missed you a lot,” the woman confessed.

Lionette stopped in the middle of the room, trying not to tangle, convinced that it is another nervous breakdown.

“Psst,” Robert said. “Let’s go. You are upsetting her,” he whispered.

Margo agreed and vanished, followed conveniently by Robert.

“She can see me. How-” the girl said, leaning her back against the hallway wall.

“She is not well,” the boy replied, tempted to believe that was something else.

A beastly scream followed by a rattling in the massive metal door disrupted their conversation, and Lionette bustled out of the room, her face in immense distress.

“Call the nurse,” she begged.

Robert ran down the stairs, aimlessly.

“We need a nurse,” he yelled. Two nurses - a man and a woman, detached from a compact group of people. The man drew Robert’s attention. Even if his white gown was impeccable, his shoes were dirty, and the seal between the rubber and the fabric, destroyed by excessive wearing, let the poor stocking out. As the man ran past Robert, their eyes met for a split second. Peculiar energy flew through the boy’s veins, and his pendant burst in flames, like in the beginning, when Margo touched him for the first time. But now he knew how to control his emotions, and slowly the fire was suppressed.

“Robert!” Margo’s voice echoed in his ears.

“What?” he asked.

“You are flying,” the girl answered, her eyes bulging at the boy five inches above.

The morning frost settled on the grass, freezing it and making it bend in an eternal obeisance. The sun was ready to pop up from under the horizon, colouring the sky in exquisite shades of orange rays. Margo was listening to the morning silence, sliced from time to time by a melodious tweet. She had been thinking all night about the strange woman in the hospice. The girl touched her face, the warmth of the woman’s touch still lingered on her cheek, in her heart.

Robert groaned, and Margo came close to him. She loved his messy hair, tamed by the hair mousse, his pale pink eyelids accommodating exaggerated long eyelashes and the slight depression above the superior lip, which seemed to elongate it.

The boy was still asleep, and she got the need to kiss those protruding lips. She leaned over his body, his warm breath caressing her face. The fine smell of aftershave invited her, and she pressed her lips against his. She kept them linked as her mind tried to memorise the sensation. Had she ever felt something like this before? Maybe when she ate honey for the first time or when she had her first pistachio ice cream? Or that fantastic hot chocolate with double cream and marshmallows she had last Christmas?

She detached with difficulty, trying to understand if it was a proper kiss or she just imagined. Two powerful arms grabbed and kept her close as the boy’s burning lips merged with hers. It was real; she thought. The girl got a burning sensation in her stomach as his tongue slipped inside her mouth. Margo patted the boy’s cheeks and pushed herself into him, craving for more. She wanted him to love her, to give her the last gift before going.

A few hours later, the vernal sun was already up, warming the room and enlightening Robert’s face. The girl tittered as seeing the boy annoyed by a witty ray, and she lifted her arms to protect him from it—all in vain. She sighed and looked at his naked body, and she waved at the thought they had been so close. How is this possible?

Robert moaned, kissed her shoulder, and pulled her close to him. A silent knocking on the door made Robert turn. He covered his lower body as the door opened.

“Hi,” Adrian said. “Lionette called. She said she couldn’t reach you.”

“What happened?” Robert asked as he was looking for his phone. He located it under the bed. He ran his hand through his hair - seven calls, three from Lionette, the rest from Dubois.

“Damn,” Robert said while looking for his trousers.

The boy knew something was off as soon as he arrived at the Ordin’s house. Instead of hiding in their den, the entire team of the Ordin was in the living room. Dubois was drinking from a crystal glass full of scotch while Lionette was browsing through some documents lying on a coffee table. Opposite her, Stephionee was cleaning her gun, small intricate pieces shredded on the mahogany desk.

“Hi,” the boy saluted. Only Debois nodded.

Robert looked around. Lionette didn’t greet him, and Stephionee was too concentrated on the work that she could do with her eyes closed.

Robert strode towards Dubois. The man had an indifferent attitude and just offered him a drink, which the boy had to politely refuse.

“So,” Lionette spoke. “Now that we are all here,” she said turning the laptop towards the group, “I have a favour to ask you,” she said.

“I need you to find this man,” she continued while standing up and giving them flyers. The portrait was accurately drawn, the man’s face partially covered by a hoody. Two piercing, elongated eyes were staring at them. A dense beard enclosing a pair of generous lips was covering the bony cheeks.

As he looked at the picture, memories of a particular person came to Robert’s mind.

“I saw this man somewhere,” he said.

Lionette turned in his direction.

“Where?” she asked, her guttural voice echoing in the room.

“I cannot remember, but what did he do?”

Lionette didn’t answer.

A car tooted in the distance, and the boy got distracted. The morning came to his mind; his heart trembled, full of a cocktail of emotions. Margo’s sensual smile as she received him entirely, the energising fluid getting through him as he gave her his heart.

He smiled before realising that everybody was glaring at him.

“Are you alright?” Lionette asked.

“Yes, why?”

“You look different. Is everything alright?”

“Aha,” Robert said, suddenly getting the need to hide somewhere.

“Where do you think you saw this man?”

Robert tried to review everything he had done in the past few days. He had run away with Margo and Derek, fled to Heaven, met Lionette at the hospice.

“The hospice,” he said. Lionette looked confused.

“He was there that day,” he continued. Lionette’s face hardened.

“Who is he?” Robert asked again, hoping to get an answer.

“He is someone that could give me some answers.” Someone that could end my torment.

“Are you sure that he was there that day?”

“Yes, I am sure,” the boy said. “He was one of the nurses,” the boy said.

“We have to go back,” she said and left the room, followed by Dubois and Stephionee.