Super Bad (Completed 2013)

‡ Chapter 8.5 ‡

"Uh-huh," Brian said. "Jessie was abducted by aliens."

"Shut up!" Rivyn snapped. "Like you know what happens in outer space."

"I wouldn't have been surprised if you knew," he muttered. She shot a cold glare over her shoulder.

Isaac cleared this throat. "How can you be so calm about this? Jessie disappearing and all..."

Rivyn curled the cigar between her fingers. "Honey, when you've been through what Brian and I have been through, you learn how to keep your emotions internal and not let them surface. We've struggled many times, and once you reach that certain point, your body is too exhausted to break down again. You learn how to let your emotions simmer."

His lips fell, scooting closer to the table. "I don't understand. Jessie told me that you guys met very easily and had no trouble falling in love."

She rumbled a deep belly laugh. "She tells you everything, doesn't she?"

Well, she wouldn't have anyone else to tell, Isaac responded to himself.

"If you must know honey, that wasn't how Brian and I met. Our love story isn't exactly a good role modelling story, that being the reason why we didn't want to tell Jessie."

Rivyn didn't understand why she was telling Isaac this, but with the bundle of emotions boiling inside of her, she had to let it out somehow; through the truth perhaps. "When you have a child, Isaac, you have an instinct to keep them safe. You want them to become good, well educated children who stayed out of trouble and take the right paths. Brian and I were not those types of kids back then; the opposite to be exact. And telling Jessie our real story wouldn't be a positive example."

He nodded, still unsure where this was going.

Blowing another puff, she carried on with revealing the true love story. How Brian was Rivyn's brutal enemy in high school and because of their past, the two never got along and were forced to live under the same roof. How forgiveness played a crucial role and was the glue to their relationship. But what stunned Isaac the most was Brian's past.

He was on the edge of his seat by the time she was done, still wondering about Brian. "So let me get this straight," Isaac said, carefully eyeing her. "When Brian was in his late seventeen's, his mother brought him to brain surgery, where they could extract specific memories from the brain?"

Amber lights crinkled at the tip of her cigarette as she puckered for another blow. "Yes." He coughed as he inhaled the smoke cloud. She apologized and shifted away.

"But why did his mother want his memory erased?"

"Brian and I don't know much because his mother refuses to tell him what happened during those memories he lost, but we do know Brian was very corrupted when he was young. Growing up without a father and influenced by their rough neighbourhood, Brian had gotten into crazy trouble that no teenager should be getting into. Apparently they were terrible and every mother's worst nightmare. Point being, his mother didn't want him to be corrupted and didn't want him haunted by those horrifying experiences. She decided it would be best if they just erased them all-including some of his childhood."

"Did it work?" he asked.

Brian laid his paper on the new coffee table and perched his reading glasses on his head. "What do you think, Isaac? My mother raised me well: Look at this stunning home we have, the beautiful daughter we raised-"

"I wouldn't say that," Isaac blurted. He suddenly wished he could die.

Brian's eyebrows skyrocketed. "Are you saying my daughter isn't beautiful?"