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He was haunted by the ghost of his father.
Patrick was confident the man's dark and unwanted shadow had lingered behind him since the moment his father had raised a hand to the pudgy flesh of his three-year-old face. It wasn't until he received George's call amid his sweet, languid heroin-induced high did the gossamer threads weave together the perpetually displeased face of David Melrose.
He was no stranger to aural hallucinations that often accompanied his inebriation, nor the risk of developing narcotic-induced psychosis. Patrick grimaced as he recalled the hazy conversations between himself, and Pierre as the Frenchman recounted his experience under the misapprehension that he was an egg.
Feeling his father's soulless gaze devour the flesh of his back, Patrick couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy for Pierre. Perhaps if he too felt like an egg, the memories of his father, of his childhood would mean nothing to him.
But life had always seemed to maintain a certain level of cruelty for Patrick. If his mother were here, perhaps, she would say something along the lines of him committing an atrocity in a past life, one cruel enough to invoke only a feeling of contrition and repentance within his current existence.
Christ, he hated his parents. Perhaps his only form of revenge against their misgivings would be to become a fantastic father himself.
This thought made him simultaneously feel like laughing and sobbing. No, he would not subject a child to the cruelties of life if he did not have to.
Returning to his studies, Patrick forced his eyes to linger on each word within The Rule of Law. With his Graduate Diploma in Law exam rapidly approaching, Patrick knew it was in his best interest to force every drop of self-loathing into passing the bloody test instead of lingering on the previous self-destructive hobbies he disowned five years ago.
Cacophonous cries of gulls made Patrick's stomach tighten as he underlined a sentence. It was getting more difficult to decern if the knot in his abdomen was from hunger or dread.
Patrick turned away from the open window, suddenly assailed by a piano's dark, alluring melody. He supposed it was only suitable for his mind to play such cruel tricks on him after the years he spent trying to silence it.
Silently, Patrick watched his father tame the boundless keys of the piano. It was odd how much he missed David's playing; he had never met another who possessed the talent his father did in his thirty-two years. It was both a blessing and a curse to be able to turn a melody into lead-antimony alloy, captivating all who heard to drown in the suffocating hostility of the instrument.
"I'm trying to study," Patrick finally sighed aloud. During moments like these, he was glad he lived alone, with no need for some poor bystander to get sucked into his conflict with a bloody ghost. "Can you go burn the seagulls with your cigar instead?"
David continued to play as if Patrick had never spoken at all.
Returning to his pointless attempt at learning, Patrick felt his father's Italian melody rapidly decomposing what little patience he had left. Italian had always been one of his father's more sophisticated methods of cruelties. He could still recall the hollowness in his stomach when he wrote to his father from a psych ward on the eve of his eighteenth birthday, trying to explain his reasons for being there. In response, he had received a short letter, written only in Italian, a language his father knew he could not understand. The note's contents had been simple, only holding a single phrase: considerate la vostra origine: non siete stati fatti per vivere come bruti ma per seguire virtù e conoscenza.
Only after he had been released did Patrick bother to translate the quote from Dante’s Inferno.
He wished the words had remained in Italian.
"Consider your decent," he muttered aloud as David continued to produce harrowing inflections only Patrick could hear. "You were not made to live amongst beasts. But to pursue virtue and knowledge."
With an exaggerated sigh, Patrick slumped back in his chair. Perhaps one day, virtue and knowledge would come. Yet, still caught in the claws of the beast, Patrick knew the only way he would succeed would be to acknowledge the ghost and speak his name aloud.
Without thinking, Patrick reached for the phone and dialed Johnny's number.