An Angel's Hell - A Novella

Summer, 1998

A story inspired by the motion picture and the graphic novel, "The Crow," and by Brandon Lee.

Special thanks to Colby, Becca Davis, and my brother, Steven.

An Angel's Hell

by Katherine Jeffries

She walked slowly, with a quiet grace that screamed of a vicious femininity. Beautiful she was, painfully so, and she was almost torture to touch because skin against skin wasn't close enough. And so she moved toward him with extravagant fluidity, allowing the wind to string locks of hair over her exotic features, between her full lips. With a toss so tempting he trembled, all of her hair flowed down her back, and the breeze complied. Everything seemed to obey her. The very ground beneath rose to meet her feet, the sun fell upon her with warm caresses, the branches of trees seemed to bow as she passed. And so there was no shame in his worship of her, no question as to why, when she was close, he felt too weak to retrieve his breath. Even after years of the same soft kiss, the same sweet greeting, a part of him could barely feel it, barely believe she was there, that he was that lucky, because his heart pounded so hard it was all he seemed to know of her. When she was close, when she placed those tender fingers to his cheek, all he knew was that his heart thrashed. It was a sweet pain.

"Late again?" she asked, backing away from him after their usual, shameless greeting.

He took a moment to recover from her kiss--no matter how brief it had been. "I like to make you miss me," he told her, brushing his knuckles against her cheekbone as she watched his eyes.

With a slight smile, that creased the corners of her mouth just enough to make him crazy, she said, "Even when you're here I miss you, Mitchell."

She was teasing. He could tell by her voice, her mocking stare.

"You're a cocky boy," she told him as he slid his arm around her, she, in turn, putting her arm over his shoulder.

"With reason," he told her, guiding her into the restaurant.

She almost laughed. She was close, but then her eyes settled on her in-laws--the same in-laws that insisted she only had beauty going for her and that Mitchell only married her because he wanted an ornament. Fact is, Mitch could have had any girl he wanted. Any qualities he desired, he could have. Any flaws he disapproved of, he could discard. He could have found a frilly blonde on a park bench, smile at her, and she'd be at his whim, ready for him to mold her to any form that fit him.

But he didn't. He picked the beautiful smart-ass from LA complete with a brain. Gwen wasn't surprised when her in-laws decided to hate her. After all, she had the audacity to make the decision (making a decision in and of itself somehow bruised their egos) not to kiss their asses or pretend she was something she wasn't so they could pat their son on the back and buy them a Porsche for their first family car. When the subject of bread-winning came up and Gwen announced that she'd be the career-woman while Mitch completed his Ph.D., his father only stared at his son, asking him if that's what he wanted. Mitch let out a laugh, looking to Gwen as a sort of apology for his father, and then said, "I think it's great, Dad. Gwen's got her Master's in English and she got a job at UC Davis, so while I finish up at the D, I can have lunch with her. No, I think it's great. She's always wanted to teach." She could tell their placid grins were forced, and the sigh that followed his son's encouragement only drove the disapproval deeper. And then it happened. Before they were even married, only weeks after he had proposed, his mother asked her about children. Doesn't she want children? Of course she did, and she answered her just like that, with just a little more spite. But she sure as hell was not going to pump out a honeymoon-baby. She and Mitch at least agreed on that. They needed time to...uh...get to know each other. She had waited her entire life for one person, one man, and she was not going to make intimacy a function quite yet--not while they were still young enough to make it a pleasure.

"Why do they want me to come anyway?" Gwen mumbled to him as they approached the table. "They have nothing to say to me. All I'm gonna hear about is how they're now too feeble to hold a grandchild."

He only laughed, for they were too close for him to plunge into an abiding argument.

His mother stood and hugged him while his father shook his hand. They gave Gwen a nod. She twitched the corners of her mouth in an attempt to smile. It didn't take.

"Do either of you want something to drink?" his father asked, only looking at Mitch.

"No thanks," Mitch answered, and then he looked to Gwen, who stared at his father and said, flatly, "No, thank you, Mr. Childers."

He then looked at Mitch, who straightened his tie as he sat back in his chair, not bothering to get comfortable. He knew this wouldn't take long.

"Son," he began, giving Gwen a glance and a nod of regard before lowering his voice. She sat back, much as Mitch did, crossing her long legs against her husband's thigh, tempting him purposely to place hand on her knee. He did. They were joined, she was a part of the conversation, and so she listened with intent. Like hell he would nod her off.

"Son," he began again, somewhat distracted by the legs that flowed through the slit of the long, tight black skirt she wore. "We're worried about..."

Mitch shook his head. He didn't want to hear it. "Who have you been talking to? Jared?"

His father nodded.

Not able to say it out loud with his mother there, he turned to Gwen as his lips formed the words "son of a bitch." She tightened her lips in recognition of his aggravation.

"What about..."

"There's nothing to discuss."

"I can pull some strings," his father told him. "I can get you something better."

Mitch laughed in disbelief. "I like what I do. I like where I am. I wanted this over anything else."

"But, Mitch..."

"When are you going to accept that I am twenty-eight years old, that I'm in control, and that my life is my life?"

"I have..."

"I don't think so," he said, his hand becoming increasingly tense on her knee before he took it from her to gesture at his parents. "You want a son that's gonna work at some hot-shot clinic in New York, reviving Chihuahuas and hamsters, and doing major surgery on Donald Trump's prized poodle. I don't want that."

"We want what you want," his father said. "But is this enough to support a family?"

"In your standard of living, no, it's not. We're not gonna have a Mercedes and a Condo in Palm Springs, but we decided, a long time ago, before this job even came along, that we don't want that."

His father sat back, looking at his mother and shaking his head.

"What?" Mitch asked, indignantly.

"Nothing," his father sighed.

"When are you gonna be proud of me, Dad?" he asked, leaning forward on the table and staring his father straight in the eyes. "When I'm making the big bucks and living on 5th avenue, like Jared? When I marry some numb-skull girl that'll gain fifty pounds and bare me strong children?"

"Mitch," he sighed, as if he were being ridiculous, but he wasn't, and all of them knew it. It was just the first time it was voiced.

"The day you knew I'd disappoint you was the day I decided to marry Gwen," he said. "You gave up on me the minute you met her. But do you know what you never asked me? And it's surprising, because it's the only thing that matters. Do you?"

He shook his head.

"You never asked me if I was happy," Mitch told him, his face hardening in the sudden confession that, for the first time, someone was disappointed in his father. "And I am. I'm glad to be a large-animal vet for people who can barely afford it, and I'm glad Gwen wants to keep teaching, and I'm glad as hell that we don't have children yet--after four long years. Do you want to know why?"

His father sat still, but it was obvious Mitch wanted a response, and so Mr. Childers gave him a raise of his eyebrows.

"Because I'm happy, Dad. I'm glad we have a small house and a farm truck, and I'm glad I can come home from a long day at work and make love to my wife on the kitchen floor, if I want. And I do." Gwen looked between the two. They were uncomfortable with that last one, and they writhed in their seats. "And it seems like your happiness depends on whether or not I make a name for myself among your Wall Street comrades. I obviously won't. I'm obviously one of your most pointless children because you'll never be proud to introduce me to any one of your associates at one of your high-rise parties. That's fine. At least I still love my wife..."

His mother lowered her eyes to the table, to the bowl of chips left unsalted.

"At least I still love my job..."

His father didn't falter in his gaze.

"And at least I love everything important in life."

Gwen's eyes kept shifting between the two. Neither seemed to move. Both were frozen in some strange moment of revelation, a cathartic moment that would end in next instant, when the waitress wedged between the two couples and asked if they were ready to order. His parents didn't respond, and Mitch said, as nicely as possible, "We're not staying. Thanks."

"We should talk about this, Mitch," his father said, surprisingly calm.

Mitch stood, looking back at Gwen to make sure she followed.

She stood beside him and took his strong hand in hers, watching him carefully as his fiery eyes again settled on his father.

"I told you there's nothing to talk about," Mitch said, sternly.

"Mitch, if you walk away, that's it. If things go bad, don't even think about coming to us because I tried. I tried to keep you from making the biggest mistake of your life."

"And what mistake is that? My wife or my job?"

His father stood to see his son eye to eye, for the first and last time. Never had he seen him so defiant, so ready to fight for what he wanted. "She was a mistake we were willing to overlook because it was..." He looked her up and down, almost snarling at her elegance. "...it was understandable. But this is your livelihood, this is what you've worked so hard for all your life. You're throwing it away because your wife wants to live on a ranch with a bunch of ponies. It makes no sense."

This wasn't Gwen's fight. She understood this. She let that one slide because she knew Mitch wouldn't.

"Not everything is logical. Not everything fits into a double-breasted suit or a memo, Dad. And you don't have to like Gwen, because she sure as hell doesn't like you. And you don't have to like my job, because it's not yours. And you don't even have to like me, Dad, because you're not the one that matters to me anymore. I have someone that loves me, that understands me, that won't disown me if I'm not the man that can shower her with diamonds or get her into parties with Tom Cruise. She loves me because I love her the best way I know how. She loves me because I have dreams, Dad, and they're simple and real, and they're mine."

His father's eyes settled on her, trying as hard as they could to burn through her, but she simply stared back at him with a subtle smirk only he could see. Mitch had shut him down.

"Then that's it," his father said.

"Have you been listening?"

His father simply stared at him. "You walk away, and that's it."

He hadn't heard a thing and so Mitch began to walk, guiding Gwen as his hand held hers.

With an angry and booming voice his father asked, "Where are you going?"

The pizza bar fell silent, and Mitch turned to all of his compatriots with a smile of triumph and he looked at his father for the last time. "I'm going home to make love to my wife, in the kitchen, on any major appliance of her choice."

And then he gave his love a glance and a cocky grin before leading her out. Everyone, besides his parents, burst into laughter for a few moments before some started hollering, whooping, and clapping. The cheering continued, even after the EXIT clicked shut.

 

******

 

They laughed for a while, completely avoiding the subject that weighed their lungs. It was obvious to her that he was tense, that his hands gripped the steering wheel a little tighter and that his brow hung a little lower. And she noticed how he glanced around the LEXUS his father had given him as if he would miss it, as if he were enjoying it one last time.

She didn't mention it. He didn't want to talk about it yet--it had to sink in. So she said nothing for the rest of the drive, letting the music do the talking and healing. It would hit him in a few minutes. Meanwhile, he would replay the entire encounter over and over in his head, picking it apart and then standing from a distance to see it more clearly, to catch every blink, breath and murmur. And to reassure himself that things weren't that bad, he'd take her hand and squeeze it whenever he needed the reminder.

No, things weren't all bad. He had everything he had ever wanted. Despite what he had told his father, he had quite a large house, and the farm truck was a brand new FORD F-150 short-bed--something he could never have under his father's wrath--and he had his wife, his beautiful, brilliant wife.

She was every dream he ever harbored, every fantasy he ever hid, everything he had ever worked for. He became somebody the day he met her--suddenly so full of purpose and drive to make her dreams come true. She insisted, however, that she had few. The only desire she openly admitted was to love him forever. Forever. If he'd let her. And if he did, then forever wasn't long enough, and she'd really have to learn to dream.

He promised to teach her.

He squeezed her hand again as they made their way over the gravel road. He drove fast, hurling pebbles into the underside of the car and not caring. With another squeeze, he slowed and calmly turned down the path that took them to their house--their crystal house of windows. So many, many windows and so few people around to see what they displayed.

The house was large. Almost huge. And it was her joy.

When they were first married, they decided, right then and there, that despite her nice paycheck and his well-paying part-time with the Biology Department, there would be absolutely no luxuries. They agreed, because they wanted a house of windows with white furniture. With that, they moved into an on-campus one-bedroom apartment with no air-conditioning and barely survived four years of the desert onslaught of snow-scalding-freezing-sweltering-etc. In short, it was hell with a deadbolt and a ceiling fan, with no escape from the elements--or each other. But they weren't looking for solitude or respite from the privilege of marriage. The only luxuries in which they indulged were of a physical sort, and neither of them seemed to mind. Never was there a complaint or a refusal, a persuasion or coercion. Both knew. They just knew, and they'd gravitate. But those times were rare, with his intense schooling and her insane teaching, it almost seemed that they had to schedule time for one another, even for a simple conversation, and both were almost too exhausted to do anything but lean against each other and breathe. One thing was for sure, throughout those oddly lonely days, at ten o'clock every night, they fell into the couch together and let things happen--even if the most common activity was sleeping.

But now they were comfortable. After those years of self-inflicted suffering, they found the house they had worked for and bought it. It was theirs--almost. But to them, it was their castle, their kingdom, their every escape toward every fantasy--the honeymoon had begun and hadn't even begun to slow. Routine set in, sanity resumed, and life was there to be tasted. And they came home everyday to shut out the world and lock into each other--an unyielding, powerful and exhausting exploration, but sweet and anticipated.

The car stopped, gently heaving them forward and then back into their seats. It was a quick enough of a stop to let her know he was getting angry, but not angry enough for her to question yet. The silence grew, and she waited for him to leave the car before she even motioned toward the door.

"Are you hungry?" he asked, looking over at her with that damaged pride that made her ache. But the sternness in his face made his chiseled features all the more appealing, and she fought back the urge to lighten the mood by saying he looked cute when he was mad. Instead, she only shook her head and hid the sweet delight she took in his masculinity.

He would be alright. He had made the right decision. And he would see it when he finally talked to her about it, but right then he wanted to be mad, just plain mad, and nothing she could say would clarify the victory.

"Well," he said, sitting back in his seat and sighing. "I am."

"I'll make you something," she told him quietly, as if she had planned on it.

He looked over at her and smiled at her offer, knowing that she really didn't want to, and in a playful tone said, “We'll order pizza."

Half-laughing, half-crying, she shook her head and looked out over the acres of their front yard, right down the middle of which strode a rifting driveway. Oh, God, I love him. That was her only thought as she shrouded her face with her hair, and when she felt his fingers on her face, turning her to face him and pushing back her hair, she swallowed her tears and smiled bravely. He could tell, though. He always could. And concern only tensed him for a moment before he joked, "If it's really that important to you, we'll get extra pepperoni."

When she opened her mouth to protest, he shushed her.

"You don't have to thank me," he said, laughing when disgust filled her eyes at the thought of eating something as horrid as bovine-leftovers. "C'mon," he said, getting out of the car and rounding to her side as she exited, putting his arm around her and pulling her against him as they walked. He was so strong, and he didn't have to be rough with her to show it. He just held her firmly as they walked, and she leaned against him, smoothing her hand over his ridged stomach and around him. Pressing his lips into her hair, taking the scent of her shampoo, he couldn't help but quietly thank God for her. It was habit.

After a few moments of settling, after the jackets had been tossed, after the pizza had been ordered, she found him lying on the large white couch, staring up at the ceiling blankly. He had sat on the arm and fallen back into the pillows. His feet still dangled. And so she stood in between his feet and rested her hands on his knees as he adjusted to look at her. He reached up his hands and she took them so he could pull her over the arm of the couch and upon him.

Her soft brown hair fell all around him, and he didn't mind smoothing it back and holding it against her head so he could stare at her. And that's all he did for a few moments. He just wanted to look at her, and, yet again, be pounded by her beauty and the reality that she looked back at him with just as much awe.

"You did the right thing," she finally whispered.

"No, I didn't," he told her matter-of-factly.

"Well," she said, stretching her arms over his head and settling her elbows above his shoulders. Feeling the way her body arched against him made him ache, but it was a calm, precious ache that simmered when she wove her fingers through his hair. "Does that mean that your father was right?"

"No, it doesn't," he told her, smoothing his hands down her sides and then up her back while she pushed all of her hair to one side of her neck so she could see him. "But what if I'm wrong and we need their help?"

"We won't," she said.

"How do you..."

"I don't know that for sure, Mitchell," she told him, and he felt her fingernails tickling his temples. "But you did what was right. The truth always comes out first, always. If you had taken time to candy-coat it, we'd still be there, and he'd convince you to start a chain of veterinary clinics or become a celebrity pet-doctor, and you'd be humiliated. That's not what you want. You wanted a huge plot of land with a house and a barn and you wanted to reach up horses' butts for a living."

He laughed. He couldn't help it. Her smile was contagious.

"And you've got it. At twenty-eight, you have everything you've ever wanted in life. It's all right here, and he wanted to take that away from you."

"What about what you want?" he asked, giving her a serious stare that made her think.

"I don't know, Mitch," she said, uncomfortable with the notion that she wanted anything different.

"I want to know what you want, Gwen," he said, reaching up and touching her face as tension crept into her.

"I have everything," she told him, staring into his eyes with such conviction that he knew she was avoiding something. Whenever she lied, she made a point of staring him down.

She understood that he didn't believe her by the way his expression went flat.

She let out a guilty sigh and fell to the side of him, her chest against him still, only now her elbow rested on his ribs.

"I don't know," she said. "I can't just leave it that vague, I guess. I just... I don't know, I just... I'm happy, you know?"

He grinned at her struggle to say how she felt.

"What? I just don't know how to say what I feel without being cheesy."

He actually laughed at that one, giving her an endearing look. "Just say it."

"Okay," she said, sighing and stopping to think about it for a moment. "My whole life, all I heard was fighting, you know. My parents never got along, and sometimes he would slap her. Nothing big or fatal, but just enough to scare me to death. And that's what I thought love was, and I was afraid of it my whole life." Tears clouded her crystal-green eyes, and she stopped looking at him and focused on the finger that traced patterns on his chest. "All I wanted to do was teach so that I could spend my nights reading and writing and feeding my dog. I didn't want to get married because I didn't want anyone to hurt me." When she blinked, the tears fell into her hair and upon his crooked tie. He reached up and stopped her finger from twirling by taking her hand in his. Their gazes locked. "I'm not afraid of you," she whispered, her lips quivering in her secret sorrow. "I'm not afraid of anything when I'm with you."

Gently, he asked, "Why didn't you ever tell me?"

Through her tears, she whispered, "Because I didn't want to break anything."

His hand cradled her cheek and his thumb brushed away her tears. "What we have isn't as fragile as you think."

"But happiness is," she told him. "Perfection is."

He looked into her, deep into her for a few paralyzing moments and whispered, "What do you want, Gwen?"

"I want you to love me forever," she told him, more tears streaming into her hair. "I want you to want that. I want you to want me forever."

His lips didn't curl into a smile, and his hand didn't leave her face, but he remained very still and very intense until he whispered, "You got it."

And then he moved his hand to wipe away her tears, to push back her hair and again take her hand in his.

"I'll never, ever hurt you, Gwen. I want you to believe me."

"I do."

"Do you?"

She nodded.

"No one will ever hurt you. No one. I won't let them."

She lowered her eyes as more tears choked her and he rose just enough to embrace her.

"What?" he asked quietly.

After a few deep breaths, she managed to whisper, "Thank you."

He hugged her tightly, tighter until she felt that eternity could start there, then, and never change a thing.

"I love you," she told him.

"I love you, too."

He fell back into the couch, reaching up to touch her hair and asked, "Are you alright?"

She gave him a smile, a clear and brilliant smile that made him burn inside. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah," he said, as if he were surprised. "I am. I guess I just needed to know that you were okay with things."

Her eyes fell into his when she said, "I'm proud of you."

"Yeah? Why's that?" he asked, seemingly disinterested yet in desperate need of reassurance.

"Because you stood up, that's why. Because you said 'no.' You didn't care what he thought, what he would take away, or whether you would ever see him again. You told him that this was your life. You stood up. Tonight, your father was just a man. That's all he ever was, but not to you. Somehow, to you, he was a god. I suppose he is to a lot of people. But you finally looked past all the charm, the money, the pseudo-wisdom and you told him what you wanted. You took control and said, 'to hell with him.' And you've wanted to do that for so long. You realized that you're a man, too, and you've accomplished a lot, and you've become the person you've always wanted to be. You realized that your father doesn't have to sign it for it to be true, and that you don't have to become your father to be as successful, if not more successful, than he is. Besides, he's just jealous."

Mitch let out an incredulous chuckle. "He is, huh?"

"Sure."

"Why? What could I have that my dad doesn't have?"

That mischievous smile of hers stretched her soft lips. "Me."

"Damn right," he told her, finally unleashing a kiss on the mouth that had taunted him all night. They didn't mind the time, the flood of light upon them, the open curtains, or the approaching pizza boy as they became entangled on the couch. Only when the doorbell sounded did they realize what they had overlooked, and the fact that the delivery boy stood behind the crystal window of the front door, which served as a direct lens to the front room. She scrambled to pull herself off of him as he tried to rise to the door. Once they were on their feet, she walked back to the kitchen to straighten her clothing while he let the boy in. He was grinning bashfully while pulling the pizza out of it's insulation.

"How're you doing?" Mitch asked him, pulling his wallet from his back pocket.

"Good, sir," the boy answered, handing him the box as Mitch handed him a twenty. "How are you?"

Mitch gave him a grin. "From the looks of things, I'd say I'm pretty good. Wouldn't you agree?"

Nervous laughter rang out as he dug in his pockets for change.

"Keep it," Mitch told him, giving him a wink. "Guess you're feeling pretty lucky, too, huh?"

More laughter and Mitch closed the door without another word.

When he turned, he saw Gwen in the kitchen, sizing up the refrigerator. "I've decided!" she shouted as he watched her from the door.

He started toward her and asked, "On what?"

"On the major appliance," she told him.

"You're thinking about the fridge, I guess."

"Yeah," she answered as he stood behind her and slid his arms around her.

"That's very ambitious."

She let out a laugh, leaning back against him. "I'm feeling acrobatic."

 

******

 

She lay, curled on her side, wearing only his button-down white shirt as the moonlight showered through the window of the back room. Looking out over the peaceful lawn of the backyard sent a smile to her face, and when her eyes fell upon the distant barn her smile spread. Above the barn, high above the barn, with extravagant clarity, the moon hung and slowly sank. All was at peace. All was at sleep. Except for her. She lay, curled to cradle the warmth within, smiling in the moonlight as her love lay beside her, gently stroking her back or following the curve of her hip with gentle fingers that found their way down her thigh and back again.

And then he moved close, his form following hers, his body engulfing hers, and the warmth within began to burn.

She felt his breath, diffused by her hair, warm her neck, and then he whispered, "What are you thinking about?"

"You," she said, a blushing grin brightening her face.

He buried his head between her shoulders and pulled her even closer. "Go on."

She slid out from against him so she could lie on her back and look up at him. "It's stupid."

"Not if it's about me."

His smile made his eyes dance. "Cocky boy," she whispered.

"What were you thinking about?"

"This," she told him.

And he watched as her smile faded. He could look at her for years and never get sick of it. He could hold her for days and never get as close as he wanted to be. And he could make love to her for the rest of his life and never get enough. The feeling had only gotten stronger, after these four long years, and it would suffocate him even more tomorrow--the constant frustration that comes when love is almost unbelievable, when he has to convince himself that someone as wonderful as her chose him, when he can't thank God enough. With that purity, that painful pleasure, something holy happens--and eternity begins.

"Mitchell, I wasn't kidding when I told you I missed you all the time," she told him, staring into his eyes almost as if she were pleading. "Sometimes it's like there's no such thing as 'too much.' Sometimes, I swear, I'll go crazy if I'm without you another minute. And when you're here, I want to be just like this, just this close, even if that seems like you're still too far. Is that stupid?"

He shook his head, taking her hand into his and pushing his fingers between hers. "I feel the same way," he whispered.

With a shy smile, she said, "I don't know why I told you that."

His kissed her softly, briefly, "I'm glad you did."

But she wouldn't let him pull any farther before she brought him back down for a kiss--longer, fuller, harder. And before either of them knew what had happened, the shrouding clothing they had worn was thrown aside, draping the furniture in their mad passion to be skin to skin. So quickly, they were intertwined, tasting, savoring, and smiling. They were close, without shame and somehow within each other--knowing how to kiss, how tightly to hold and what to say.

They were one, in that time, they were whole with each other and they both knew it, and it struck them with such a severity that neither could catch their breath. She could barely whisper and he didn't try to speak as the connection was made and the two became complete in and through each other. And in that moment of revelation--that moment of powerful and relentless release of all fear and pain--tears, tears he did not allow her to see, burned his eyes and he felt her grip him so tenderly that he swore she embraced his soul. There was nothing beyond her--no need that eluded him, no desire that cursed him, no emptiness that froze him. She stood at the end of the tunnel, and, beyond that, only light engulfed them--the both of them, together.

Neither of them moved--they could only stare at each other as she pushed wet strands of hair back from his beaded forehead. The moonlight crystallized her eyes and danced upon her skin as her sweat slowly faded. Halloed, in his arms, smiling that child-like smile at him, he swore he saw God's majesty before him. The very fact she existed was enough to believe in the Divine, and the fact she lay in his arms was enough to worship Him.

 

*******

 

She awoke to sunlight and blinding white sheets, to which she gave a groan before rolling over to reach for her husband. "Gone running" the note read.

It was close to sunset, that much she could tell, with the sun hovering just above the distant, emblazoned horizon, embracing the last warmth she'd know until morning. With hazy and heavy eyes, she watched the hills consume it. The day was wasted, for her at least. But winter days were never long, and so part of her almost felt robbed of something beautiful that could have been made. Whether or not the days were long, she knew she wouldn't make much of them, much less a Saturday after such a long Friday night.

She smiled the smile of a child with a secret, and hugged the pillow with the fury of a girl with a kiss to tell. And then all went calm, and she sighed as if it were her first breath before pushing the sheets aside and leaving the bed to burn in the twilight. She didn't skip or hop or even prance to the mirror. She simply stood before it, brushing her thick brown hair while grinning. No, she didn't jump around or fall to the ground giggling--she danced. That's all. She just danced to the music her heart played upon its strings, to the voices of the angels' song. Heaven seemed so close.

And then she stopped, leaned forward on the counter and stared at herself in the mirror. She looked younger, so much younger.

And she felt free.

She took her time dressing, and didn't bother showering. She had showered that morning, before she went to sleep, and as she soaked her body beneath the stream of warm water, the shower curtain peeled back an a blushing boy stood before her. But just as soon as he had appeared, he was around her, washing her hair and rinsing her off, spitting water in her face before she pushed her thumb against his lips. Her laughter echoed against the tile and his smile gleamed in the water.

With a tight white tank top and a pair of wide-leg jeans, she wandered into the kitchen with a stack of folders and a red pen. She set her things on the table with a dreaded sigh and headed for the refrigerator, pulling the door open with a haste that spoke of starvation. And there it was. The uneaten pizza from the night before. Not even touched. She took the box out and slid the pizza onto a large metal sheet before shoving it in the oven, leaving the temperature at WARM.

Sitting at the table, before the stack, was almost a chore, and as she started sifting through the mounds and mounds of "personal narratives" she almost let out a whimper. But it was easy reading for her, just a little overwhelming at first. She dove in, wielding the red pen with vigor, defacing even the best papers with scribbles, check-marks and punctuation. "Freshmen," she thought. "You wouldn't even think they spoke English."

Two hours passed, two long hours, and the stack had been struck down by her mighty hand, and she had even finished reading for her Creative Writing class. She decided to save her graduate course for the next day, and began to pace.

He had been gone well over three hours by then and the darkness had become rich with fear. Trying to brush it off with simple excuses didn't help. "He must have bumped into an old friend," she thought, with the afterthought of, "Maybe that old friend decided to run him over with his truck." She shook herself from her worry by sprawling on the white couch and staring out the window to no avail. The lights were too bright and the window had become a mirror, and so she stared herself down until she saw someone much younger and angrier than who she was now.

With a smile, the image shattered, but the memories flooded her with the warmth of a childhood blanket.

She was working as a waitress in a worn down bar just outside of campus--which is the first place most people go after class, after meetings, and especially after tests. Most guys that hit on her were exhausted, disillusioned Daddy's-boys who had failed yet another microbiology lab and had nothing left to lose--including dignity--and they'd make grabs and slur sad come-on lines that left her feeling as though she needed an exorcism--she left feeling dirty. A few of the only good things about the job were the recognition she got from working there and the rare chances she took to help solve someone's problems. When crossing campus, someone would yell that she deserved the tip or that the only reason they still go to that shit-hole was because she worked there and was funny as hell. She guessed they liked their waitresses with spunk, and she had plenty of that.

Except for once. Just once, when she was too tired and too low to fight anymore, and one of those failing pre-law students grabbed her from behind and pulled her into his lap. She struggled slightly, and pulled herself away, heading for the bar to get his table another round of drinks. And he watched her, smiling at the tight black vinyl pants that crumpled as she walked.

Her boss told her he wanted his waitresses wearing tight clothing. Tight black pants with dark tops--preferably mid-drifts. She never went that far. Tight pants she had, and playful pants--like the vinyl--sprinkled her wardrobe with personality--not lewdity. She got enough of that from customers when she was fully dressed, why beg for more.

When she turned from the bar, tray in hand, a set of eyes settled into hers and she quickly looked away. Somehow, though, the eyes still gripped her and pulled her gaze back to them. And when she did, and allowed him to give her a smile, the exhaustion faded and her heart sprung. Her eyes fell over the rest of his face, so rugged and smoldering, and he never looked away from her, but just watched her as she froze. But thoughts are cruel when the world has beaten someone down, and the first thought in her mind was that he wanted to get laid, and waitresses are easy targets for fantasy--and then crudeness.

She set the edge of the tray on the table, the edges of the glasses clinking gently without spilling anything, and as she unloaded the searing cargo and placed it in front of the obnoxious customers, she felt the gaze of the failing pre-law on her.

She glanced over at him, for he was right beside her, and he tipped back his shot-glass with a stare that made her cringe. When she placed the last glass in front of a math-major with coke-bottle glasses, she took the shot with grace and ease, and then looked to the pre-law with a smirk, as did the rest of the table. And then she felt his hand hook into the back of her knee and she looked at him with a streak of panic disguised as anger.

"So, Gwenyth," he said, with indecent seduction. "Tell me what you'll do for a good tip."

She tried to stand back, to pull out of his grip, but he took her forearm and pulled her down to his face.

"I asked you a question," he said, sternly.

She stared at him with narrowed eyes and took a whiff of his tainted breath. Understanding, almost too well, how guys like him worked, wisdom told her to soften her face into a smile.

"Serve you your drinks," she answered, wryly.

"Whatever I ask for?" he asked.

"That's right," she told him, standing up straight.

He yanked her arm down and she complied, face to face yet again.

"What if I don't want drinks anymore?" he asked, almost angrily.

Her face hardened again. His grip was tight and it burned to twist her wrist. "Then you can leave."

"But what I want is right here," he told her, moving his hand up the back of her thigh. "I want you, right here, right on this table.”

His friends, including the coke-bottle bitch, started laughing, mumbling encouragement.

"C'mon, Gwenyth," he said softly. "I'd tip you enough to pay your rent for a year."

She found her fury and yanked her hand from his, stepping back from the table to free her leg, and, in doing so, bumped into the table behind her, sending the drinks to the floor. The assaulted residents stood with a shout at being stained by whiskey and bourbon, and she turned to apologize and set fallen glasses on their ends. And just when she turned and gripped one of the beer mugs, the pre-law seized her with a strength she could not match and proceeded to sway back and forth, as if they were in an embrace set to music. It was seemingly harmless to those who watched, some even laughed at the scene of a drunkard front-to-back with the pretty little waitress, nuzzling her neck with his raunchy mouth. She wriggled feebly, just trying to keep his hands from wandering too far. Before she knew it, though, his hand took tours over her breasts, down over her hips, and it all seemed to be happening too fast, to cutely for anyone to notice or think anything of it. To them, he was just flirting, just having a little fun, and they paid no attention to her revolted and panicked eyes.

"Excuse me," a voice said, and the swaying stopped long enough for both of them to look at the man that stood before them. He was tall, broad, and pissed. That was clear, right off the bat, and it made the pre-law's grip somewhat tighter. His eyes burned into hers and she didn't bother hiding her fright as the man against her did his.

"I was hoping you wouldn't mind letting the girl go," he said, sternly, yet with such courtesy that Gwen wondered how in hell he thought that would work. Wienie-ass, she thought. And to think I hoped you were a prince.

"Not your problem, man," the pre-law slurred, the playfulness leaving his embrace and the possessiveness moving in to where she could have sworn her ribs cracked.

When the man put a hand on his hip and brought the other to his face, as if in thought, she noticed his firm, muscular build and the way his body bulged beneath the black T-shirt he wore. "It is, because I'd rather you let her go."

And so he dropped her, not as a favor, but as a prelude to a bunch of shit-talking that would make him bleed. The man saw this, and he took Gwen's hand to guide her behind him. The pre-law made a grab for her, but the man swiftly pushed her behind him a few feet and said, "Get through me and then you get to fight her."

"What's it to you, Mitch?" the pre-law asked. "It's not like you can't nail any one of these bitches. What's one less?"

"Go home, Chuck," he said, giving his friend a slug in the shoulder. "You're drunk as hell."

The bar was silent, completely still, and Gwen stood the few feet away and waited, her arms crossed and her weight shifted.

"I am not," he said. "I know what I'm doing. And all that whore is good for is her ass, and you know it."

Mitch had turned away from him, ready to go home himself, and his eyes had locked into Gwen's, and when that comment pierced the air he saw a part of her go dark. And with that sight, with the idea that a raving beauty like her was hurt, a rage flew into him and he swung his fist into Chuck's bony face. With all of the momentum of turning around, and all of the strength in his powerful arm, Chuck didn't have a chance and he fell between the tables and hit the floor with a sickening thud. Mitch stood and stared at him, not paying attention to the shooting pain in his fist or the burning that came when the blood swept through it. He turned as the cheering swelled and saw the girl he had defended--her brow tense and her lips slightly parted in shock. Walking to her, in his masculine and arrogant gait, he passed her while asking, "Are you alright?"

But she didn't answer. She only watched him pass, pull his coat from the chair, and head for the door. She ran after him and caught his elbow just as he stepped outside and he turned to see a face of angered confusion.

"Why did you do that?" she asked.

He didn't have to think about it, really, but he hesitated because he wanted to make sure she was listening. "Because it looks like no one has ever really paid you a compliment."

She let him go and he didn't try to stay.

That night, when she got off work, it was almost two in the morning and she was worn to tears. And she knew that she'd go home to an empty apartment, and she'd hear terrible messages on her answering machine. But her trek home was interrupted by a gentle voice just outside the entrance. When she turned, it was him, Mitch, with the same fervent stare.

"I couldn't sleep," he told her.

She only stared at him.

"I wanted to make sure you got home alright."

Regardless of her fighting, a smile curled her lips.

"Does somebody take you?"

She shook her head. "No, I walk."

He walked toward her, stopping only a few feet away, shoving his hands into his pockets as the cold of winter clung to his fingertips. "My name is Mitch."

"I'm Gwen."

"I know," he said, not faltering or blushing at his enchantment.

"Can I walk you home?"

She actually smiled. He had never seen that before, and it made him weak. She had dropped all defenses the moment he defended her, and she never again fought the urge to show him every part of who she was.

He walked her home every night that week, until he convinced her to take a night off work so he could show her that there was more to life than The Pub, that there was more to him than being an exhausted pre-med boxer. There was, and with every word he said, she fell more and more entranced with him, and with every smile he gave her she felt more and more safe to laugh...and possibly love.

One night, only a few weeks after they had met, she got a message about her mother. She was in the hospital suffering from a severe and mysterious assault. It wasn't mysterious, and when her mother failed to wake up, her father took a pistol to his head. The message played just after Mitch had kissed her goodnight, for the first time, and she didn't leave the apartment for two days, when a pound sounded and she opened the door to see him there. Her best friend had come for her, and he didn't hesitate to take her in his arms when tears burst into her eyes. He asked no questions, he made no effort to find the right words--he only held her tightly until she finally, after two days insomnia, finally she slept against him, within him, and didn't wake until the phone shrieked and called her home.

When she returned to school, a message from him sounded from her machine, and only minutes after she had listened to it, there was a knock and he waited for her with flowers in hand--and he never left, ever, and promised her his life if she'd only give him hers.

He taught her that a touch doesn't have to hurt, that a kiss meant love, that an embrace held friendship. He taught her that she was beautiful, that her life was interesting, and that she was worth fighting for.

And then he gave her a crystal palace.

In that instant smile during that wonderful thought, the front door slowly crept open and he staggered through, drenched in blood and mud and sweat. She watched him with disconcert until it registered that his blue athletic pants were splattered with filth and his gray T-shirt clung to him as the blood dried to his sweaty stomach. A furious hysteria strangled her as she ran to him, asking him what happened, pleading with him to tell her he was alright. But he didn't say a thing. His eyes burned with tears and his face contorted in his grief, and he simply pulled her close and cried as she broke into fearful tears. He held her so tightly it almost hurt, and he was shaking so badly she almost had to hold him up. When he pulled away, his face glistened with rivers of tears, and she quickly put her hands on either side of his face to focus his eyes.

"Mitch, what happened?" she whimpered as his face fell to tears again.

"I don't want to tell you," he said with a shaky voice, his eyes refusing hers as he sniffed. And then his head bowed as more tears came and she put her arms around him again as he quietly cried.

When he pulled away from her, he wiped his face of his tears and pulled at his thrashed clothing. "Let's get you changed," she said, taking his hand and guiding him back to their room. She pulled off his shirt and he dropped his pants, and she told him to shower. And so he did, quickly, as she sat on the bed and sobbed at the secrecy and fear in his eyes. Something frightening pulled at her stomach, something terrified hooked her heart and she felt like her chest would crack.

The water stopped abruptly, and he stepped out of the bathroom, still damp from the steam and sweat and still shaking. His exhaustion showed in his slumped walk, and she helped him pull on a clean pair of jeans and another gray T-shirt.

"Do you want to eat?" she asked, thinking of the pizza warming in the oven.

He shook his head. Words escaped him and it pained him to think. Every image scalded his mind and every touch made him flinch, and he didn't want to inflict that on her as she stared at him with such pleading eyes.

"Was it a patient or a person?" she asked him quietly, fearfully.

He lowered his head and started to walk past her when he said, "A little girl."

Those words heaved her chest, and she stood stunned as he made his way to the living room, falling into the couch as she entered on unstable feet. She approached carefully and stood in front of him as he slouched in the cushions.

"There was blood everywhere," he whispered as she sat on the edge of the coffee table, taking his hands in hers. "There was nothing I could do. She was crying from the pain, and I wanted to go get help, but I didn't want her to die alone. So I stayed."

His hands were trembling, and she gripped them tightly as he made himself breathe. His tears were dry and none seemed to threaten. She wanted to ask questions, but he seemed calm and she didn't want to disrupt that. She only sat, her hands on both of his knees as he rubbed his face and regained his composure. With a look of defeat, he put his hands on hers.

"I should have called," he whispered.

"Don't worry about it," she said, trying so hard to smile.

"Are you okay?"

"Are you?" she asked, squeezing his knees with urgency.

He nodded. "I'll be fine...someday. Someday I'll forget her face."

Gwen remained silent.

Beneath his voice, he said, "She was beautiful, Gwen. Such a beautiful little girl. And she was all alone. And she looked at me as if she had known me her entire life."

She didn't understand, so she said nothing. She wanted to tell him that if someone, no matter who it was, found her and held her while she died she'd see someone to regard as a friend. It didn't matter what they said, who they had been, just so long as they were there and strong and crying for her pain, she'd love them with everything she had left. That little girl didn't have much, but she would have given the rest of it to him had he needed it.

To see that grief, that empathy in his face, made her ache with a devotion that reached far beyond anything her heart could hold. What was sadly splendid was that he didn't ignore it or try to push it aside as something unfortunate, but he grieved for the life that he cradled until her final gasp, and he watched that life flee the eyes of something soft and sweet. And he accepted his helplessness in order to love her when she feared, to hold her as she hurt, and to say goodbye when she died.

In that moment of silent memorial for something lovely lost, an explosion shook the stillness and sent the glass walls inward.

Both of them jumped from their seats to see the three front windows and the front door, blown in, the glass of which danced upon the hard-wood floor of the entrance with delicate shimmers.

Instinctively, Mitch blocked her from the openness, guarding her as three shadows approached, luring the darkness into their home.

Masks shrouded their faces and blackness draped their shoulders as they faced the two children who searched for a clue. But they saw nothing as enlightening as the three shotguns the men rested back against their shoulders as they stepped through the three collapsed windows of the front room.

The first, the largest, the one that looked around their home as if it would make a nice prison, said, in a gritty voice, "Those who live in glass houses should be wary of the stones." With that, he lowered the shotgun to aim at Mitch's chest. "You're lucky she died, Mitch."

Those words hit him in the stomach and knocked the wind out of him.

"Want some fun, boys?" he asked, his eyes still focused on Mitch's as they widened in fear.

Mitch started pushing Gwen behind him, backing up until she hit the wall and he pressed back against her. There was no where to go as the men stomped toward them, their shotguns now swinging by their sides as they lurked.

"She's a pretty thing," the leader said, and the other two let out a laugh.

"She doesn't know anything," Mitch told him calmly. "I didn't say anything to her."

"Oh, but, Mitch," the man said with mock sincerity, "didn't your mommy teach you how to share?"

"Don't touch her," Mitch growled with such a fierceness that the men paused. Gwen lowered her frightened eyes and buried her head in his shoulder as the guns were raised. Very quietly, with a sob choking her throat at the thought of the worst, she whispered, "I love you, Mitch. I love you." No one heard but him, and he didn't respond. He simply pushed back against her, resting one hand behind himself and on her hip with the other outstretched toward the men, warning them to keep their distance.

His lack of fear, his readiness to fight sent rage into the leader and he lunged at Mitch, holding both ends of the shotgun while sending the butt of it into the side of Mitch's head. He fell to the side, and she clung to him, falling beneath him as he rolled over on top of her, sprawling over her and raising his hand yet again.

"Don't fucking touch her!" he yelled, with more wrath than before.

But that was answered with a rib-cracking kick and another swing of the shotgun to his head, sending him into a daze that made him limp. With that, one of the other men pulled her from the floor and pushed her against the wall to size her up, to stand back and admire the beautifully sculpted creature before him with perverse eyes and callous hands. "Are you ticklish?" he grunted as his hands ground into her. She pushed at his hands and then shoved him away.

He again threw himself against her and she let out a whimper of frustration--not fear.

"Get off me!" she shouted, shoving him again, adding a blind kick to his knee.

She didn't see his fist fly toward her, but she knew she had been clobbered when she felt her husband beneath her, and she clutched him fervently. Shaking him, examining him as long as they would allow before dragging her away from him, across the floor and onto her back, she refused, all the while, to scream or beg or cry.

Only one dealt with her, while the other two nudged Mitch and taunted him with comments like, "Your bitch just might taste as good as little Ashley," and "We're just showing her how real men feel." He tried, over and over, blindly and clumsily, to sit up and get to her, but the men simply pushed him back into the carpet and held him there with heavy boots. Slowly, he was regaining his senses, his rage, his awareness of some strange violation he couldn't quite see. They wouldn't allow him to raise his head.

"Hey, man!" one of the men yelled. "Take it in another room so she won't be scared to smile!"

With a laugh, he dragged Gwen to her feet only to have her immediately start swinging and kicking at him until he slapped her back against the wall. She was dazed but capable until he slammed a fist into her face and she collapsed to the floor, balancing on all fours as a stream of blood from her mouth poured into the carpet. He then grabbed her hair and started to pull, but she simply fell back into the carpet, letting the weight of herself yank her hair from his hand. Cursing her, spitting on her chest, he grabbed her wrist and started to drag, and the carpet stung her bare lower-back and trailing elbow.

She could hear Mitch by then, screaming her name and saying "Oh, God" with such grief that her heart bled.

They wouldn't do this. They wouldn't take this from them. And so when the door clicked shut and the man fell to his knees, she remained limp and bleeding, unmoving and apathetic.

"All you have to do is scream," the man said, almost compassionately as he stared into her eyes. She looked up at him, at the two holes in the mask that allowed her to peer into his soul.

"Why?" she asked, not bothered that he was on top of her or that his face was so close to hers she could feel the fuzz of his mask brushing her nose.

"Because we're not here to punish you," he said.

She didn't like that answer. "What did he do?"

"He heard our names," he told her. "Did you?"

"And if I did?"

"You die."

"Then I did."

"I believe Mitch," he told her.

She wasn't ashamed of the tears that reddened her eyes. "You kill him, you punish me."

"So be it."

Terror clutched her at his severity and she struggled viciously. He wouldn't allow it and his fists started pounding into her with such violence that she swore there was more than one of him. She didn't scream or whimper, but she let the tears go freely at the grief she knew she could not avoid. He kept kicking, pulling her from the floor and throwing her into walls, or trying to strangle her. And just when she thought he'd give up, just when she thought he'd take a knife to her throat, he braced her head with his hands and pulled her face to his.

"Just scream," he told her. "Just fuckin' scream."

She clenched her teeth at the pain that crippled her.

"Why won't you just scream?!"

With a sob as her breath, she said, "Because I know who will hear it."

He stared at her, at those glassy green eyes, and his anger melted to surrender. Slamming her, mutilating her brought him no pleasure. Watching her delicate features swell into black and blue made him cringe, but watching her bear her agony in silence for the man in the front room made him ache for escape. Sadly, he knew that his only escape was through her husband's death and her only love was in that very life he would take. Such sacrifice and fidelity made him wilt, and the innocence in the eyes of the woman he had crushed made him cower.

He let her collapse into the carpet before the door, and then he stood, unbuckling his belt as she watched. She rolled over, quietly whimpering, "Oh, God, no," and she finally begged, "please," to her captor as he leaned down to unbutton and dishevel her clothing. He didn't fall to his knees, as she had expected, but stood and turned away from her and opened the door to the savagery of the front room, where her husband was on his knees and beaten beyond bloody. His eyes fell upon his wife, weak and bruised and curled in pain, while her clothes were torn and stained.

"NOOOOOO!" he howled from someplace deeper than his lungs, from someplace stronger than his heart, for his soul was wrenched and crushed at the sight of her corrupted innocence.

She let out a sob and started to crawl to him, "Mitch!" she screamed, reaching out for him as the other two men took the place of the one and slammed the door between them.

The man who had been with his wife stood behind the kneeling man and kicked him between the shoulder-blades, forcing him face first into the carpet with hands too weak to fight. His boot nailed him to the floor through his back and the barrel of the shotgun dug into the back of his head.

He willed his body to move, his fists to clench, his muscles to fight, but nothing happened. His torture lay in his helplessness. All he could do was lie there, weakly, and bleed into the rug.

"How could you, you fucker?" Mitch groaned. "How could you do that to her?!"

"Speak what you know, boy," the man said.

"Which one are you?" Mitch asked with venom. "Boyce, Josh or Gage?"

"Why's it important?"

"Because I want to say your name when I gut you."

"Funny, Mitch," he sneered. "That's real funny."

There was a long pause, and the only thing either heard was Mitch's panting.

"She didn't do anything."

"But you did."

"So hurt me."

"This is hurting you."

They both listened as things in the bedroom shattered, caved, collapsed, but never once did they hear a scream, sob or plea.

The men started taunting her, and they could hear their voices.

"C'mon, hon, we just want a little fun."

"Yeah, gorgeous," another said. "It doesn't hurt to play. Your boyfriend don't mind."

There was a murmur neither could decipher.

"Oh! Fuck me?" one said. "I think that's an invitation!"

And then it happened—she cried out in fright as the man pounced.

With that testament of horror and pain, rage surged into Mitch's veins and he suddenly found strength to lurch from beneath the boot and burst through the door to see one of them upon her, pulling at her jeans while the other sat on the edge of the bed with a grin pinching his eyes. Maybe it was instinct, reaction or pure bloodlust, but both men swung their guns at the infuriated man and they exploded into him—twice each—bringing him to his knees in defeat while pulling a scream to his wife's lips. Stunned, he fell back through the doorway and into the white of the living room rug, panting weakly, hoarsely, while staring at the ceiling.

With a laugh, the man turned back to her and started pulling at her again. She shoved his hands away as she sobbed and yelled, "You've taken enough from me!"

He paused and stared at her for a moment and the leader stood from the bed as a hint to leave. "You've had enough of that bullshit today," he told him, striding from the house with his shotgun hanging from his hand. The other two stood and stared at her for a moment as she painfully crawled across the floor and through the doorway of the bedroom. When she beheld her husband she let out a tortured scream and scrambled toward him as the two men passed her by and left through the windows they had destroyed.

She called his name but his eyes wouldn't focus on anything but the white of the ceiling. Placing both hands on the side of his face, she leaned close to him and begged him to look at her, and he did. In that moment, that fleeting moment where the connection was made far more intensely than the night before, it seemed as though his every pain was hers and his every fright tore through her, and every answer to every doubt suddenly rang loud in her ears and the seconds started counting down before her eyes.

“No!" she whimpered as his gaze became increasingly vague. "Nononononoooo!" And she slid her arms beneath him and with an exhausted groan she lifted him from the floor, propped him against her bent leg and wrapped her arms around him. "You fight it!" she screamed. "Mitch! Mitchell!"

His breathing became rapid and panicked and his body tensed violently against her. But she held on, sobbing and pressing her hands to the gushing wounds with a weakening will to stop the blood. It kept coming—coating her hands, staining her shirt, pouring into the carpet and from him. With one last effort, one last need, his hand searched blindly until she gripped it in her own. He held it for a moment, and then he gave it a squeeze.

"Oh, no!" she sobbed when his breaths came in extended intervals.

"No! Mitch!" He let out a long sigh, letting it linger for a moment before sucking in a breath and exhaling again. She pinched her eyes shut, clearing them of tears as they blurred her view of his calm and paling face. "Mitch?" she whispered. He was so still, just staring as if he saw someone familiar above him, and that confused him momentarily before his face softened. His expression left him so completely, so suddenly, and with one last sigh his eyes no longer mirrored her soul.

She shook him, hysterical and tortured, and let out a shriek, a shriek so savage and shrilling that the devil cringed. And then she bowed her head into his shoulder and cried like a child, like a little girl shut inside a dark room. She sobbed with a brutality that made her blood burn her veins as she held his lifeless body close to hers, while it was still warm, while there still may be a chance that he'd look at her and say something arrogant about her crying for him. But he never moved, and though she held his hand, it would never again hold hers in return.

 

******

 

THE HAPPIEST DAY

The happiest day--the happiest hour

My sear'd and blighted hearth hath known,

The highest hope of pride, and power,

I feel hath flown.

 

Of power! said I? Yes! such I ween

But they have vanish'd long alas!

The visions of my youth have been--

But let them pass.

 

And, pride, what have I now with thee?

An other brow may ev'n inherit

The venom thous hast pour'd on me--

Be still my spirit.

 

The happiest day--the happiest hour

Mine eyes shall see--have ever seen

The brightest glance of pride and power

I feel--have been:

 

But were that hope of pride and power

Now offer'd, with the pain

Ev'n then I felt--that brightest hour

I would not live again:

 

For on its wing was dark alloy

And as it flutter'd--fell

An essence--powerful to destroy

A soul that knew it well.

--Edgar Allan Poe

 

******

 

The police lights flashed relentlessly, and she sat, in the doorway of one of the ambulances, mesmerized by the cargo it carried. Gently, most reverently, they lifted a burdened gurney through the doors and rolled it to a halt before stepping back momentarily, long enough for her to shed a tear for the sheet-shrouded man inside. She fought the urge to run to the doors and pull them open so she could throw herself upon him one last time and look at his face for one final moment, so she could prove to herself that this was real, that this pain was here to stay. But she sat and bowed her head, tightening the blanket around herself to hide her agony as curious neighbors leaned against the police tape.

"What happened here?" a man in a suit asked, approaching the scene and ducking beneath the tape. He looked up at the house, the only house to be seen for at least a mile. It was white, pure white, inside and out, and light burst from it with an intensity that made him squint. But then he noticed, with a shaking of his head, that the windows were shattered.

"Remember Ashley Sorensen, sir?" the uniformed officer by his side asked.

"The little girl from this afternoon?" he asked.

"Yeah," he answered remorsefully.

"Remember the guy that was with her?"

The suit shook his head.

"Mitchell Childers, sir" he told him, hoping that stirred something. It didn't. "Apparently, he was on his jogging route, and he came upon fifteen year-old Ashley Sorensen—raped, stabbed, beaten to a pulp. So he stops to help. He figured that by the time he ran for a doctor, she'd be dead, so he just sat down with her until she finally gave it up."

The suit remembered, and he lowered his head in regard for something so noble. "Let me guess," he said, almost as if he were about to be sick. "Ashley's savior was crucified tonight."

"Yes, sir," he answered somberly. "Right in front of his wife." And with that, he gestured to the broken woman in the doorway of the distant ambulance.

"She have much to say?" the suit asked.

"No, sir," he told him, still staring at the woman. "She said they didn't use names and that her husband didn't mention any. She said she's never heard the name Ashley, but she knew something terrible had happened while he was gone. From the looks of it, sir, Mitchell Childers knew he was in something deep and he was scared as hell."

After a long pause, where both of the men gazed at Gwen with pity, the suit asked, "What did they do to her?"

"Roughed her up quite a bit," he answered. "Don't know why they haven't hauled her off yet. She kept saying she wanted to wait for something. Maybe she wants to follow his ambulance. I don't know. But she's severely hurt. They knocked her around a lot, but she said they didn't rape her and barely attempted to when..."

"He started to fight," the suit finished, shaking his head sadly, his eyes again finding the woman in the ambulance. They had started to poke at her and persuade her to lie back while they gave her all sorts of shots and gasses to keep her calm. She was dignified in her hysteria, yet completely uncooperative and distracted. After a time, she fell listless and the medics were free to jab and bandage whatever they pleased. First thing was first, though. An oxygen mask hid her cut and bleeding mouth in hopes of preventing unconsciousness with the way she was panting and sobbing. The doors closed as two concerned middle-aged folks approached the two officers with pleading in their voices.

"What's going on?" a man asked, and the suit turned to see a corporate lawyer with his plastic wife. "This is my son's home, can you tell me what happened here?"

The suit looked to the blue and both lowered their eyes to the floor. "Mr. Childers?"

The man gave him a nod, his brow barely loosening.

"Mr. Childers," he said sadly. "There was a break-in and..." He was stumbling over his words, trying to find some poetry that would glorify his son's death. "Your son died protecting his wife."

 

********

 

She stood alone, all alone. No one approached her or braced her as the mortician moved the flowers aside and propped the lid open with a tenderness that left her feeling somewhat calm. When he turned, he gave her a nod of deference, moving away from the casket as a sign she could approach. And so she did--slowly and solitary. The doors were closed and it was only her, as it had been days before, and she kept her distance, just as she had done days before. Her hand did not reach for him, her lips did not burn for him, and her body no longer ached for him. What he was, before her, was not who she remembered, and so she did not appease her loneliness by touching him. Instead, she simply stood above him and refused to lower her eyes, but stared at the glowing lid as the florescent lights fell upon it. It was white, pleated, fresh and soft, yet when she touched it, it repelled her with a hardness that stiffened her back with dread. He would lie, all alone, in something that wasn't a far cry from a crate--only draped in silk, not filled with it.

Finally, after a brutal internal fight that pushed tears down her face, she looked to the mortician and said, in a broken voice, "I'll be alright. I just need a minute alone."

He gave her another nod and left, closing the door gently.

Her face was bruised and cut and it hurt to walk, but she let no one know of it. She walked with the same exceptional grace as always and carried herself with the same strong exquisiteness that defined her. But only because appearance was her only tool of deception and there was no one with her that cared enough to look deeper--until she stood by him. When she was alone, she finally let it come and she braced herself on the open ledge of the casket as grief swept over her.

She said nothing. She only cried.

After a moment, she took a deep breath and wiped her eyes with a child-like tantrum, and then looked down at him, at his face, and burst into torrential tears that could only be released with echoing sobs.

The door of the church-room swung open and the mortician started through, only to be stopped by another version of Mitch, who then came to her aid with a gentle voice.

"Gwen," he said, putting an arm around her waist before she folded into him, crying with no shame.

"His lips aren't that color!" she sobbed, burying her face in his shoulder.

"What?"

"His lips!" she said, pushing away from him and motioning angrily at the casket. "They aren't that color! They're darker than that!" She stopped for a moment, looking at him and growing very calm, very still, almost completely hypnotized by the man that stood before her. Quietly, weakly, she whispered, "They're like yours."

He understood that she just realized who it was that stood before her, and it left her quite confused.

"Hello, Jared," she said, as if they were meeting at some unexpected place on the street.

"Hello, Gwen," he said, with a sorrow that reminded her of why she was there, and she peered down into the casket as tears choked her.

"When did you get in?" she asked, still staring downward.

"Yesterday," he answered.

She nodded.

"I was with my parents when...uh...when we dressed him."

She gave him another nod and then they stood in silence, a silence draped in tears. After a long time, where they stood in separate worlds and cried all by themselves, she turned to him and reached out a hand for him to take. He took it, and they both stood, connected, yet isolated, crying in the coldness that shattered hope brings.

"God, Gwen," he said, shakily. "I'm gonna miss him so much."

She looked at him as he stared at his brother, his face burning from the tears. With a squeeze to his hand, she whispered, "He's too close to ever miss you."

They're gazes locked, and more tears overwhelmed him as he said, "He loved you so much, Gwen."

Her lips pinched.

"He was ready to die for you the moment he saw you."

She looked away from him and down to the floor.

"His worst fear was your pain," he told her, stepping closer and putting his hands on her shoulders. "He knew what was behind that door, Gwen. He knew he had to stop it, and he did. And he did it for you."

She shook her head. "Cocky son of a bitch always has to be the hero."

She let out a sob, right there, in front of him, and didn't flinch when he pulled her close and held her tightly, swaying with her as she cried.

"I can't do this," she moaned. "I can't survive this, Jared."

His grip strengthened, almost lifting her from the floor. "Yes, you can."

Quietly, desperately, she whispered, "I don't want to."

He said nothing to that, but buried his head in her shoulder as they swayed to music they couldn't quite hear, in a rhythm that wasn't quite there.

 

 

******

 

The questioning had stopped. There was nothing else to tell, nothing more they could gather from the crime-scene, and when she finally returned home, when it was finally hers again, and not some blood-drenched stage where she danced through the happenings over and over again, she sat on the white couch and smoothed her hand over the spots of blood that didn't quite rinse.

If she wanted to remain sane, she'd have to burn the couch and replace the carpet, because the slightest taint remained--she could see it as brilliantly as the night it spilled even though only a barely-cream color remained from the cleanser they had used. It didn't matter whether it was blood or chemicals--it marked the spot and it brought an echo of screams to her dizzying head.

And she heard them in her sleep. Those cries ricocheted off the walls and stabbed her dreams.

He was supposed to be there. Everyday, at about this time, they'd find each other and settle into the couch. It was almost ten o'clock. He was late.

An ache struck her and thrust tears into her already scorching eyes. He would never come home. She had to remind herself of that. He was lying somewhere, alone, in the dark, in a box with six feet of security. She'd never reach him. And if she did, it would hurt too much to touch him.

If only once more, just once more, he could come through that door and wrap himself around her. If only once more she could feel his lips, she would be satisfied. Somehow. And that desire flared her insides and made ash of her heart, for she knew she'd ache for that forever.

He would never come home.

And with that denial of that one favor came the insanity of understanding. She knew something terrible, something dark and cold that drove her to the brink of seppuku. Ready to mutilate herself, ready to slam her head into the wall over and over, ready to rot in a pool of acidic disgorge, she found herself shaking from self-restraint.

She fought it and became very still, swallowing her wallowing and only allowing a tear--a single to tear show her grief. No blood, no razors or pills, just a tear to bear witness of the thrashing frustration within.

He would never again, ever again, come home to her.

She would never again, ever again, feel him around her.

As she sat there, in the dark, masking all signs of savagery, headlights stung her eyes and dimmed just as quickly. She rose as the figure approached, striding toward the door with an intent she could not guess. When he knocked, with a force that rang out thunder, she hesitated to move.

"Gwenyth?" the voice boomed. "Gwenyth, it's Mr. Childers."

Her body convulsed slightly as it relaxed in recognition yet tensed in aggravation.

Opening the door took every ounce of courtesy, and inviting him inside only consisted of a gesture, for words would speak of her vehemence. He entered, heading for the middle of the living room and standing with an apathy that made her chest heave. But in an instant, he softened, almost as if it were the mere sight of her that made him melt, and he sank into the couch as tears overwhelmed him.

She watched him, her brow tensing in recognition of his grief while nothing else moved. It wasn't awkward or even surprising that he had finally broken down--even if it was in front of her--for this was his son's house, and he sat before the very place where his son had died, in the presence of the very woman that had held him.

He raised his head, tear-burned and despairing, and he asked, in a breaking voice, "Did Mitch know how much I loved him?"

The question struck her in the chest and the truth strangled her. She swallowed the words that rose and waited for others to come. After a long pause, where she tried to prevent tears, she answered, "Yes."

The desperation in his gaze didn't leave, and she knew he wanted to hear more.

"He idolized you," she told him. "Nothing could ever change that."

He shook his head, lowering his face from her gaze and saying, "I can't believe I said those things to him. I can't believe I made him choose."

She didn't say anything, but lowered her head in response to his remorse. That night seemed so long ago, though barely a week had passed. She seemed so much younger then, so much stronger. And Mitch was...he just was.

After a time, his father raised his head and looked at her with such pity that she almost felt nauseous. "What did he say?" he asked.

The question struck her in the gut and writhed her insides. Those last moments came flooding back, where only her frantic pleading rang out. No good-byes or testaments of love, just his sigh. His final sigh.

"Nothing," she whispered. She took a deep breath and exhaled harshly. "But we had talked about you the night before."

His eyes were suddenly shadowed by his curious brow.

"He thought he had made a mistake," she told him. "He wasn't sure there was really an ultimatum."

"There wasn't," his father sighed. He paused for a few more minutes while she still stood in front of him, her arms crossed and her head bowed. "I wanted to believe you were a phase," he told her, looking at her with eyes that apologized. "I didn't want to lose my son to someone that would feed into his impractical decisions or dreams."

He looked up at her, and he saw a woman unmoved by his opinion or confessions. She saw him for what he was, and that almost frightened him. Truth was the only thing she would accept and fantasy was the only thing he wanted to see. She wanted the reality, right then and there, and he wanted the ideal, no matter what he would have to destroy to get it. His son found the perfect balance between the two. His dreams were as sensible as any she had ever heard, but he made them romantic poetry. When she first met him, she wanted to know who he really was, only to find that he was more of an angel than any man she had ever met, and his beauty grew with each word he spoke, each smile he flashed, each touch that graced her skin. When his father looked at his son, he saw someone that could be king, but wanted to be a farm-boy, and with each disappointment he became less of a leader, less of a success, less of a person, less of a son.

"I was wrong," he said, snapping her from her daze. "I was wrong about you and him. When he told me that I don't love the important things, I knew he was right, but I didn't accept it until I learned of how hard he had tried to protect you. You were his life, and I tried to buy that from him, and I tried to take that from you. My son is more of a man than I taught him to be, and I'm sorry I can't take more credit for who he had become."

Her expression of indifference was soon soaked with tears--tears of anger and confusion and pure despair.

"I'm sorry, Gwen," he told her, standing and holding out a folded piece of paper. "I hope you will accept this..."

The rest of his words were inaudible as the seven figures on the check screamed out at her. Quickly, without a thought, she folded it and handed it back to him. He put his hand up in refusal.

"No, it's yours."

"Mr. Childers, I can't possibly accept this."

"Mrs. Childers," he said so forcefully that she swore her head caved. "My son loved you enough to give his life for you, and I want to make sure you're taken care of now that he's not here to see to that."

She lowered her head, anger and humiliation knotted her throat. "Why are you here, Mr. Childers?"

It seemed as though he expected that one, though he didn't answer her.

"You have never liked me, whether or not your son was involved," she told him. "In fact, you hated me and made every effort to drive that home with me. On top of that, you have treated me as an inferior simply because any woman your son has dated has been a silly little toy, so don't treat me like you suddenly care because you're making me feel like a jack-ass. I'm not as stupid as you think."

"Just keep the check," he told her. "There's no date on it, so there's no pressure to cash it. Just keep it, please. Just in case."

She dropped it on the coffee table and scowled at it.

"Gwen, things left unsaid, things left undone leave a father feeling hopeless and furious, and if there's anything I can do to ease that, I want to do it. I haven't treated you the best, but my son loved you, and anything my son loved is so precious to me now. If he was killed trying to catch a baseball, I would save that baseball and make sure nothing ever happened to it--and I hate baseball. It's a bad analogy, but it holds true. I don't want his sacrifice to come to nothing, so, please, invest that money or something. I just want you taken care of."

She didn't watch him as he stepped past her and toward the door, and so she didn't see him when he stopped and turned.

"I love Mitch very much," he told her. "I was always proud that he was my son. And I always will be."

The front door opened and closed and she remained in front of the coffee table, staring down at the folded check with narrowed eyes. As it sat, somewhat opened, she caught sight of the words "Gwenyth Childers." Gwenyth Childers. Never would it be anything different. That was the sacrifice she would have to make for him.

 

*******

 

She entered the Department Office, lugging her bag full of marked papers on her back while carrying a Styrofoam cup of coffee. When she entered, the Department Secretary and the little student receptionist both stared at her with gaping mouths.

"Hello, Professor Childers," the receptionist said in an empty voice--trying so hard to act as if it were any other day.

"Hello, Kate," she said despondently.

"Hello, Gwenyth," the Department Secretary said with such concern that Gwen wondered if she were bleeding. All of her bruises had faded and her cuts were close to healed, so she looked at the both of them with confusion.

"Hello, Joyce," Gwen said, putting her back-pack on of the chairs lining the wall and fishing out her textbook order forms for the winter semester. When she handed it to her,

Joyce's face was so paled by shock that Gwen almost rushed to brace her.

"What are you doing here, love?"

Gwen looked at her for a moment, trying to figure out what would be proper to say without making her feel like an idiot for asking. When she looked at the receptionist, she was fully aware and eager to listen. Gwen was only used to

Kate in a sleepy or startled state--sleepy until someone asked her to do something she had no idea how to do, and then she looked like a kid that just wet her pants.

"I have class in an hour," Gwen answered as Joyce took her order forms from her.

"Are you sure you're up to that?" she asked. She was talking so slowly, so gently that Gwen wondered if there was worse news she hadn't heard yet.

"I'll be fine," Gwen told her, turning back to the bag of papers to zip the zipper.

The door that ran along the same wall as the chairs swung open and a middle-aged athletic man peered out at her with the same expression of shock as the rest.

"Gwenyth," he said, somewhat stunned. "Would you like to step inside for a moment?"

"Yes, sir, Dr. Tanner," Gwen said, following him into the office and taking her seat as he closed the door. She hadn't been in The Chair's office...ever. She almost made a point to avoid it.

"How are you holding up?" he asked, sitting behind his desk and folding his hands upon it.

She let out a sigh as she thought. She had to sound sincere if he was going to let her go. "Fine. I'm doing fine."

"Good," he told her, glancing down at his wedding ring in thought. "Go home."

She didn't protest right away. He would want that. "Why?"

"Gwenyth," he said, in that tone that told her she wasn't being sensible. "Your students understand what you're going through. Everyone understands, or is trying to. You don't need to act like everything is alright and you don't need to take on the world at a time like this. Lance, Susan and

Gloria know your courses very well, and they'll take your students the rest of the way through. We only have a month left, and so many people are jumping at the chance to help you out..."

"What would help me is my work," she interrupted, frustrated at his rationalizations.

"Gwenyth," he said, getting just as irritated at her ingratitude. "You have been working for four years straight--every single term, at least three classes a term. And you have been through some incredible things these past few weeks. You need a break. You need to stop for a while and catch your breath."

Whether or not that breath carried death didn't seem to matter to him.

"I will not allow you to teach until winter--at least. Now, you have a month, possibly four, if I change my mind and make you wait until spring to teach. Go home, go on a tour of Europe. If you write out the petition convincingly, maybe the university will pay for it. Who knows? I can pull some strings. But my decision stands, no matter what you want. Do not step foot in this building until January, do you understand?"

She nodded, feeling like a scolded child.

"You're going to be alright, Gwen," he assured. "We're willing to do anything to help you."

Then make it all go away.

 

******

 

She sat, watching with increasing disinterest as the clouds consumed the blue and smothered the sun. She pressed a cigarette to her lips and dragged until it made her cough--almost a fourth of the cigarette disappeared with a breath.

Three weeks had passed. Three weeks. Twenty-one nights filled with horror--the terror and torture of living and reliving and reliving that night in different times of their union, corrupting the purest of memories.

The night before, he was there, in the sweats he had worn on their honeymoon. They were baggy and gray and hanging on his hips with an accidental seduction. And she came toward him, as he sat on the bed, and he slid his arms around her. He didn't give into the eagerness that engagement builds, nor did he hint that he wanted to get to it, get at it, or dive right into it simply because he was curious or anxious. He just brought her close and rested his head against her chest, as he had done a million times before, and he just held her, tightly, and waited for her to lean down and kiss him, for her to begin it, because she was the one that had always been apprehensive. And so she did. She simply ran her fingers through his thick hair and he looked up at her, as if looking for some sort of sign, and with that sly smile, that creased the corners of her mouth just enough to make him crazy--every time--she kissed him. And with that kiss--so forceful and full of every naughty thought she had ever pushed aside--she stormed him back into the mattress with an unexpected eagerness that made him laugh. But it didn't end with a laugh, because he started to gasp, to curl and writhe in pain, to spit blood from his mouth and onto her white, silk slip, and by the time she backed away from him, she was entirely stained in red and his wounds were gushing, spurting at her. She couldn't scream, she couldn't even think, much less go to him to be of some comfort. She could only stand there, dripping with his blood, watching him die all over again. And again. And again. Again. Again. Again. And again.

It never ended. Nothing sacred was left unscarrred by a slash of red, a boom of a bullet, or an unshed scream suddenly finding her voice. Their trip to New York, their picnic in Monterrey, their walk across the Golden Gate. Everything ended with him on his knees, begging for her to help or to be condemned, and she could only stand and watch as he was torn from her by three men in masks or by the spontaneous opening of his chest where four shotguns had burst through.

Oh, God, where are You?

And so she sat, in the aftermath of a plaguing downpour of her love's blood, gripping a small work of steel in her trembling hands, staring ahead at nothing as her violent shaking brought sweat to her brow. She was almost convulsing, twitching slightly at any memory that strode through her raging mind, attacking it and smashing it with a vivid reminder of how it was ripped away.

He sat, smiling, and she sang him "I Think I Love You" in her loudest, most obnoxious voice, doing all sorts of Lambada-type moves against the bedpost to get him to laugh. He was trying not to, but with her last, and almost painful pelvic-thrust--which left her laughing on the floor--he couldn't help but finally chuckle.

Once, during one of the first nights they stayed in their new house, when the peculiarity wards off sleep, she read him poetry.

He had told her, once, a long time ago, that he wanted to make love to her in a field, in the rain, with lightning and thunder and frenzied winds. And so, one night, when she was in the middle of cutting carrots for the salad, a cloud burst and lightning clawed to the ground. Noticing the odd gleam in his eye made her pause, and she dropped the knife, backing away from him slowly, putting up both hands in surrendered protest. But he approached, nodding while a mischievous grin pulled at his lips. "Mitchell Childers, so help me..." He tossed her over his shoulder and carried her outside, laughing and screaming until he threw her down in the middle of the field and kissed her. She was drenched in seconds, in his arms in minutes, and sweetly submissive until he carried her back inside an hour later.

He kept her warm the entire time.

She kicked. She didn't know why. She just flung her foot into the stand beside the bed, sending the vase of dried roses to the floor with a crash that brought a shotgun flash to her mind and she screamed. Crawling across the bed, hugging the metal to her chest, her eyes scanned the room for any sort of threat. None crept.

She took her perch at the head of the bed and sank into the pillows with the comfort of a sleepy child before tears began to pour down her face. Bowing her head into her knees, resting her chin to the cold metal, she let out the sob of an animal in pain, an animal willing to gnaw off what hurts. And so with that, she pressed the barrel of the handgun into the soft-spot beneath her chin and cocked back the hammer.

 

 

******

 

Whimpering before clenching her jaw, she gripped the handle with a fleeing determination.

"Do it," she mumbled as more tears plunged down her sallow cheeks.

No note adorned the dresser, no lipstick explained on the mirror, no sign of why. Nothing. Only her, the pistol and his blood in the roots of the living room carpet. Reasons enough.

Her finger twitched on the trigger and she pinched her eyes shut so tight that lights danced before her. Gleaming lights. Worming lights.

They almost spelled something euphonious.

But her eyes shot open. And before her sat a man, at the foot of the bed, leaning back against the bedpost, waiting.

She relaxed everything, almost relieved to find an excuse, and stared at him in wonderment.

"Go ahead," he said. "I didn't mean to interrupt."

Clenching her eyes shut once more cleared the tears but doubled the worms and it took her a moment to focus on the darkened figure adorning the whiteness of her bedroom. With a squinting face, she defined a line between him and the rest of the shadows in the room, but she wasn't at all startled when his unfamiliarity struck her.

Her back tensed against the headboard, but that was the only obvious sign of her discomfort--he could point out a few others, but he was too busy lighting a cigarette.

"Who are you?" she asked, almost nonchalantly.

After taking a hard drag, he answered, "You don't know me."

"Why else would I ask?"

Peering at her through narrowed eyes while the cigarette dangled from his lips, he was trying to picture her as someone he once knew. It didn't work. This woman's hair was much darker, much thicker, and her eyes were emptier than the girl he knew--the girl he knew. This woman, that sat before him, was more of an animal than the girl he knew, more desperate for alleviation, seeking more peace than the world could give. This woman, like a trapped beast, was a shell of what once was... What once was beautiful, soft and tender. This woman once was a living, breathing thing, but something deeper than instinct possessed her now, and it fed off something thicker than air.

"Put the gun down, Gwenyth," he said, casually taking another drag.

She took the gun from her chin, for she had been using it as a prop, and she lowered it to aim at him. Both hands gripped it, both eyes focused on him, and every part of her was intent on pulling the trigger.

He only stared at her, not at all alarmed that insanity gripped her whims.

He cocked his head to the side, as if in thoughtful submission, before saying, "Please?"

She released the hammer, but that was the only favor she offered.

He threw his head back, as if to clear his dark eyes of the locks of dangling black hair. It didn't matter. The instant he bowed his head, his shoulder-length curls again hung over his chiseled features. The cigarette, however, stood out from the madness of his visage and glowed with each drag. She watched him studiously, not at all panicked or pushed for answers.

"Tell me why," he said, nodding toward the gun now resting in her lap.

"You tell me why."

He gave her a nod of regard. "You know where I'm from."

She didn't respond. Instead, she cocked the hammer.

"Ask God," was all he told her.

Through gritted teeth, she told him, "I haven't prayed since I was sixteen."

"I know. He misses you."

Her brow twitched.

"Sixteen," he said pensively. "Let's see. That was when your father left, am I right?"

He noted her sudden jerk, as if he had taken a swing.

"I guess so," he said, with a grin. "Yeah. I remember that. Your father beat your mother with a bar of soap in a sock until she was unconscious, and you walked in while he kept slamming it into her back. Nothing fatal, huh?"

She held the gun up, right at his face. He was only a few feet from her, lounging on the end of the bed, smiling while she winced.

"When you yelled out his name, he turned, sock in hand, and nailed you in the face. You went down pretty quick, but you got up fast, holding the baseball bat you brought and you swung--nailing that son of a bitch in the head. He didn't even see it coming. Fractured his skull, right? Split it right down the middle."

The gun was shaking. "Shut-up!" she screamed.

"But he woke up," he said, sitting up and looking at her intently. "And he got away, didn't he? And he took every cent from you, and you had to work to support your mother and your siblings. For what? For one of them to OD and the other to marry a bigger loser than your father. And what happened to your mother, Gwenyth?"

Her knuckles were white and her finger gripped the trigger.

Tears streamed down her worn cheeks while sobs rang out with each of his words.

"Seven years later, he beat your mother with a phone-receiver and left her for dead! Who's fault was that?"

She took the gun from him and placed it beneath her chin, taking a deep breath before pulling the trigger.

He lunged across the bed, knocking the gun away from her and pinning her to the mattress as she struggled.

"What!" she sobbed. "What?!"

He didn't answer.

"What?!"

He stopped, pushing her hands into the mattress by the wrists and staring at her, inches away, as she cried and begged.

"Why won't you let me?" she pled, letting out a few frustrated whimpers.

"Because he'll miss you too much," he whispered.

She froze, her face softening to blankness as he slowly released her. "Who?"

"You know who," he said, turning from her as if ashamed.

"God?"

"Him, too."

She sat up, staring at the back of his head as he dangled his feet over the edge of the bed. He could feel her.

"I have a proposition for you," he told her, not bothering to look back at her, but instead taking a pull on his cigarette. She wasn't sure if he wanted her to respond, but as seconds turned to minutes the possibilities of what it could be made her dizzy.

"What?" she asked, softly.

"It really isn't that businesslike," he told her, smashing the cigarette on the alarm clock. "It's either your damnation or theirs."

She didn't move. The tears had dried, leaving her eyes feeling stiff and her cheeks feeling sticky.

"You have to kill them, Gwenyth," he said, standing and walking toward a picture of the two on the wall. He stared at it, examining it, almost mocking it with his disdainful stare. But when his face turned, it wasn't sarcasm she saw, but a streak of hateful rage that made her grip the gun. "You kill them, and you'll be with him again."

Her head bowed, as if his words were too great a weight, and she raised her tear-ladened face to his view. "No."

His hands were to his waist and his weight was shifted, and he stared at her with a strange indifferent-confusion. "I'm afraid you're not clear on my proposal."

She was up, holding the gun toward him, her knees sinking into the mattress as more tears sunk into the creases of her eyes. "I'm very clear!" she screamed. "I'm too fucking clear!"

His hollow eyes watched her with eerie apathy.

"You want me to live another day--and that's too much!" She sunk into the mattress, dropping the gun into the blankets and sobbing into her hands. "I can't," she moaned. "I just can't. Not even one more minute."

"Why? Because he's not here?" he asked.

She nodded weakly.

He walked to her, put his hands to either side of her face and stared her down. "If you take your own life, right now, understand that you will never, ever, for all of eternity, be with him again. Let me make that fucking clear. Never."

"I don't believe in eternity," she muttered.

He gave her a wry smile. "Then you're calling Mitch a liar."

His voice cut into her and the words slit her heart.

Releasing her face and walking away, he again studied the framed photograph of their wedding day.

Her voice came to him through a grumble of thunder, and her frail figure was silhouetted by the explosion of lightning.

She was quiet, almost gentle in her careful speculation.

"You want me to kill them," she told him. "You want me to find them, somehow, and kill them. You stopped me from killing myself so I could kill those men, so I could further condemn myself to hell for taking the vengeance God proclaims His own."

He gave her a nod. "An eye for an eye."

She thought for a long moment, and with a giggle of recognition, she continued. "But I say unto you," she whispered. "That ye resist no evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also..."

"Gwenyth..."

She raised her voice. "And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain..."

"Gwenyth!"

She was sobbing when she yelled, "I say unto you, Love your enemies! Bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust."

The recital of those words, drained her, and she slumped into the mattress, sobbing into the thunder as the lightning embraced her.

"If I kill them," she said quietly. "If I kill them, I take God's revenge, and then I live a life alone. I live a life where I hear myself scream that God-awful scream, and I see him, for only a second, when he comes into the room, and I will forever see them tear him apart. I screamed!" she sobbed. "I screamed and he died because of it! And I will remember that every single day until I die. Every day. And I will always want him here, and I will always miss him, and I'll never be able to forget how horrible that night was. I will always feel how warm his blood was, and I'll always be able to see him stumble back, and I'll never forget how horrible his last breath sounded."

Between quivering lips, she managed to say, "That sounds like damnation to me."

He leaned back against the wall and slid down to where his thighs were to his chest. His elbows rested on his knees and he lit, yet another, of Gwen's cigarettes and brought it to his lips.

"Mitch talked a lot about you," he told her and smiled when he noticed her holding her breath. "Not a second went by that he wasn't telling me some stupid story about you straddling his lap when other girls got too giddy or how you'd tickle him whenever he kissed you too hard..."

She laughed. She had forgotten that. "We wanted to wait," she told him.

He nodded. He knew. Mitch had told him everything—practically every conversation that lasted at least two seconds.

"He loves you so much."

Those words paralyzed her in an expression of child-like amusement, and the warmth in her eyes slowly melted as hot tears drowned the crystal-green that managed to thrive.

"Who are you?" she whispered.

"A friend," he answered, then taking a drag.

"Of who?"

He gave her a smile that stifled the question. "You have work to do."

"Why don't you do it?" she asked.

He shook his head. "I wasn't robbed, was I?"

"Why doesn't Mitch?"

He dropped his knees and folded his legs while studying the cigarette between his fingers. "Mitch is a man of very few needs, Gwen. You know that. Mitch is at peace. He wasn't robbed of anything when he died—but he knew what would have been taken had he lived a minute longer."

Tears hung from her long lashes and a flash of lightning made them sparkle, as if they were from some place fantastical—as if they hadn't been torn from her soul.

"Sometimes people are caught," he told her. "Sometimes they can't let go of pain. And For this ye know, that no...unclean person hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God."

"Ephesians," she whispered.

"Sometimes," he said, gently, with a poetry he had come to know. "Sometimes the dead can't die. Sometimes the blood of those they loved stains too deeply, sometimes the world they left behind fails to fix it, and sometimes the earth above can't hold the anger of the man below. And sometimes they come back, and they finish it, and they create that balance that was destroyed when the pure and soft are killed and the evil remain to rule."

He took a long drag, and the curls of smoke shaded his tear-burned eyes.

"What people don't understand," he continued. "Is that you don't have to be dead to be caught between kingdoms. Death won't bring you peace, Gwen. Death will bring you eternal fire for the men who killed so many beautiful things, and it will unleash a hell in this world that will only open the gates for the slaughtered to crawl through. And they'll burn with you. And they'll ask why no one stopped it, why something so brilliant and young had to feel so much pain, and they will never forgive God for it. Mitch suffered, Gwen. He writhed in pain long before you held him, and he burned, in his own way, for you. And if you don't do this, if you take your own life and take another glow from this world, and if you break all bonds by sending yourself to hell, he will fall from grace from the torture he will embrace without you. Your death destroys both of you--forever."

She didn't move. The gun lay in her limp hand, weighing it to the mattress.

"I'm going to tell you a story," he told her, standing up from his place and looking, again, at the picture--that blessed picture. Both of them looking at each other, frozen forever in mid-laughter and in complete love. "A boy, who lives only a few miles from here, opened his door to three old friends and invited them inside for drinks. He was surprised to see them, since they hadn't talked since high school. But it didn't matter. Not many kids leave home for college around here, and it's not hard to catch up to those who do. He handed them some beers, and they barely drank them before things got loud. Apparently, it was discovered that the boy had messed around with one of their girlfriends, and started joking about it as if it were no big deal. It wasn't, really. High school becomes a joke the older you get, and girlfriends are usually the butt of it. What he didn't know was that the girl was also the little sister of one of the three--even though he treated her worse than the boy ever did--and the two who had been involved with her were outraged at the boy who joked about it. Things got out of hand, and his little sister came home."

Gwen gritted her teeth and bowed her head, and the man turned to watch her do it. He came to the bed and crouched down in front of her.

"To punish him," he told her, staring her in the eyes. “They made her cry, and scream, and bleed. Her brother watched, Gwen. He watched as they took turns, as they cut her and pounded her, for what? For being beautiful and young and for being a link to the boy they wanted to hurt. She was fifteen, Gwen. Her name was Ashley Sorensen. Ashley. She had soft blonde hair, and these bright blue eyes, and heart-shaped lips. But you've seen her, haven't you? They had all sorts of pictures of her at the funeral, showing everyone how she should have looked, how beautiful she once was.

"And to punish your husband, who was running by while they were burying her brother--who was practically beheaded by Gage's blade--they wanted to make you bleed, Gwen. They could have cared less that they broke three of his ribs, fractured his skull or shattered his cheekbone. What they wanted was to make his mistake hurt someone he loved. They wanted to give him something to kill himself over."

"And I helped them," she whispered. "I screamed. And he died because of it."

"Gwenyth," he said, gently, reaching up to push the sweaty strands of hair back from her face. "He died for you, not because of you."

She folded in her lips and bit down as more tears surged. Quietly, at the thought of the bullets exploding out his back, at the feeling of their hands ripping her clothing, and the vision of a little girl thrashing in the agony of their filth, she whispered, "What do I do first?"

 

*******

 

Her truck became an arsenal--stacked with guns of every flavor--and she drove with the recklessness of a general with too many soldiers to fear death.

Her heavy-boot anchored the pedal to the floor and her lip-sticked smile gave her an edge on insanity. Her vinyl pants, so dear and reminiscent of the day he fought for her were now bearing testament of her debt to fight for him. The tight black shirt hugged her every curve, every curve he had died to preserve as his own, and it gripped her with a silk that reminded her of his hands. With dark lipstick and heavy eye-make-up as the definition of regal femininity, she would never let them forget that the women they had destroyed strengthened the woman that would slay them.

"Turn here," he told her, his noble features hid by the darkness and by his riotous hair.

She slowed, as if a child were crossing, and pushed her truck up the steep side-road with only gravel as a guard from the mud beneath. Rain carried the pebbles toward the base, and her tires spit them out for a moment before catching and thrusting her up and up and up, toward the shanty at the top that used to house royalty. Only three rooms guard from the wind, and they were a clump toward upper-rear of the mansion. The rest of the rooms bore fanged-holes where windows once stood or doors hanging on one last rusted hinge.

"Turn off your lights," he told her.

She ignored him and pushed on, toward the house, the truck clawing over random rocks and shards of wood.

"Gwenyth, your lights."

With a flash that left her blind, the windows of her home exploded toward them, giving the startled couple no place to run, no chance to fight, not a minute to pray. This boy would know she was coming.

"No," she told him, stopping the truck before the rotting front-steps and flipping on her brights. The light flooded through the cracks and hollow smiles of the falling house, and she peered inside to see that all was still. "Is he here?"

"Yes."

"Are you coming?" she asked, leaning forward and tucking a pistol into the back of her pants and gripping a shotgun by the barrel.

"No."

She paused for a moment, staring into the house with an intent that could have burned it to the ground. "If I were dead, I couldn't die again."

"Right."

"But because I'm not, failure is possible."

After a sigh and a long pause, he said, "Be careful."

And with that, she opened the door and stepped into the downpour. By the time her boots slammed the wood of the caving steps, she was soaked through. Her hair clung into fat strings that funneled water down her back and lined her cheeks and forehead. The heavy make-up the circled her eyes, streaked her cheeks as if they were tattooed tears.

The house creaked and groaned with the stranger approaching, and the moaning of the beast the engulfed her almost spoke of a grief long dead. She listened carefully as she followed the faint and brightening glow of the back rooms. No fear pricked her, no thought of defeat hunched her. She walked, she strode heavily into the first room, standing in the doorway and glancing to each corner of the vacant office--strewn with paper and old books. The next room held nothing but a toilet and a circular, improvised shower curtain. Before she even entered the sharded light of the next door, a bullet threw plaster from the wall into her hair.

"Boyce," she said in the gentlest, most timid voice she could strain while resting the shotgun against the wall.

He paused. She could then hear him panting, like a dog.

"Don't shoot, you dickhead," she said, figuring profanity was affection in his warped world.

"Vick?" he said, his shadow crowding the light until she stepped into it and faced him at last--for the first time. His face looked like it had been chewed up by some beast with ragged teeth while the rest of him--lean and gangly--made it seem as though he had been embraced by a ferocious tree. Scarred, slashed and sliced, his skinny arms hung from the holes of the tank-top as if someone had jammed them into his stooped shoulders.

"Hello, Boyce," she said, giving him the smile of a girl that had missed him.

"Hello," he said, trying to seem as though he recognized her when nothing about her struck him as familiar.

He was young. Nineteen, maybe. Just a little boy.

He was backing up as she entered, peering at the stained and worn furniture of the bedroom as if the couch and bed cradled her dead childhood. Blood, like a butterfly, spread itself on the cushions of the blue couch, and she ran her fingers over it with a tenderness that spoke of empathetic sorrow.

"Who's is this?" she asked, quietly, and the answer came screaming through her fingers. It was his.

He didn't answer. "Do I know you?" She was still leaning over, and he was examining the curves of her hips with a gleam that made his heart steam.

She turned, the light from the faint and cracked lamp falling on her slight features with a brutality that made him flinch.

The black streaks on her cheeks did not distract him from the visage that came screaming back.

"I guess the question isn't if you know me," she told him, stepping toward him fearlessly. "But how much you wish you never did."

The gun was again in her face and she stared at it. One false move, and that was it, but she saw the sweat pushing through his skin and the shaking he tried to hide with tough words.

"You're a gutsy bitch," he told her, suddenly finding strength when noticing her vulnerability to bullets.

"No," she told him. "Just insane."

But he knew something was wrong. Insanity wasn't it. There was a desperation to her, a restlessness he knew she'd use. Girls just don't come back for more, girls just don't wander into abandoned houses with names in mind. She was dangerous, and that made his back stiff.

"I didn't touch you," he told her, as if begging.

"You watched."

"I told him to stop," he said, his shaking finally seizing the gun. "I told him to get off you."

"Before or after you shot my husband?" she said, the animalistic hatred surging into her fist as she threw it into the gun. It flew into the wall and plopped into the cushions of the couch. When he blinked, she pulled the gun from her back and shoved it in his face.

"Guess we fucked you up worse than we thought," he said, his voice shaky as he fell back against the wall.

"Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing to what I shall unfold."

He stared at her, his bloodshot eyes hidden by heavy and grievous eyelids that shut her face from his.

"Tell me what you would do to live."

His eyes suddenly found strength and he looked at her, shaking his head. "If you're gonna kill me, spare me the speech."

She stood strong, clenching her teeth and aiming the gun for his head.

"Don't expect me to beg," he told her.

"I don't."

"Then what do you want?"

"I don't barter for justice."

"Anything, lady."

"You killed everything I ever wanted."

He lowered his eyes and sighed. It all came back so quickly that he coughed to catch his breath.

"You laughed at my pain and his, and you mocked the brutality you hurled at that little girl, so don't expect me to think of your death as anything but a joke."

"What will it solve?" he asked.

"What are you afraid of?" she whispered.

He almost laughed, but it came out as a sob. "Nothing."

"Then close your eyes, hold your breath and smile..."

She cocked back the hammer and fear burst into his eyes. Refusing to think, fighting a blink, she pulled the trigger and his head exploded--dousing the walls with his blood. His eyes went blank and his stiff body tilted back into the wall before sinking to the floor, slumping over enough to expose the gape in the back of his head.

"There's the punch-line."

It was mechanical to speak. She didn't feel the words, but they fell from her lips as if they laced the air she breathed.

She stumbled from the room, falling against the wall and to her knees. The sudden fatigue, the feeling as though that trigger-twitch had drained everything from her left her to tears, and she sobbed into the emptiness of the gutted mansion.

Glancing over at the boy, the young boy with his head hollowed out, she let out a moan that preceded a strained lurch of her body. She fell back into the dusty floorboards, her boot smearing the vomit toward the boy, and she stared up at the ceiling. Tears fell down the sides of her head and she gripped the gun with same fervor she found that afternoon, and she slowly dragged it up her torso and to her chin.

"What will it solve?" he had asked. And with the same deafening echo, she heard the words "You break all bonds by sending yourself to hell."

She could see him. As she lay there, vinyl-bound and paint-stained, she swore she saw him walking toward her--down the hallway, toward the light, with that aching masculinity--and when he came to his knees, on either side of her, he leaned down and kissed her. He was there. His fingertips followed her jaw-line, his body pressed to hers and his lips revived her. And then, when she knew he would hear it, finally, when she wasn't whispering it to the air as if in pleading, she said his name, and he was gone.

And with his absence came the flood of anguish.

She groaned, rolling over and onto her knees, raising herself to her unstable feet and grabbing the shotgun as she swept from the house.

 

******

 

They drove in silence, in a silence that stung her ears.

"How did you die?" she asked, shocking the reticence into awkwardness.

He paused for a long time, desperately trying to grasp scattering words.

"It's a simple question, Stranger," she said, trying to relax him with her smile. "How did you die?"

He gave her an uneasy laugh. "Painfully," he told her.

That was it. No details.

"Who's friend are you?" she asked, slowing to a stop to see his eyes.

"I'm a dove, Gwenyth. No one shuns the bringer of peace."

"What have I done to deserve your gift?"

"You loved Mitch," he told her.

"And why should that matter to you?"

He studied her face, her intensely subtle beauty, and sighed. "Because Mitchell was crowned before he was born. He was given the gifts of simplicity, discernment, and passion, and he used them all to build something good and strong and pure. If he did nothing else, he found a sad and lost woman, and he loved her and taught her that she was good and strong and pure. He loved you with everything he had, with everything he was. That's rare, and he made Us proud. We didn't want to see that fail, and so we came here to teach you one more lesson he didn't quite finish."

With tears spilling down her cheeks she asked him what she had to learn.

"Your love isn't as fragile as you think."

 

*******

 

He lived in an old, run-down hotel-turned-tenement--middle floor. It was a skeleton of the college life that once throbbed its walls. Up one flight, and she was there, walking down the railed-sidewalk that led her to his door.

The same pistol jutted the waistband of her pants while knives bulged beneath the forearms of her tight shirt, and the bag that hung from her shoulder held a sawed-off and a small automatic.

The tightness of her clothing braced her weakening joints and her clenched fists stifled her shaking. She stood before the door, the thin and cracked door, and sighed an unsteady breath.

She knocked gently and she heard a bored beckoning from within. The knob squeaked and almost fell into her hand with her violent twist and shove. Before her was a man, wearing only torn jeans and some sandals, while the rest of him, toned and tan, tensed at the sight of her--gaunt, wrapped in black, stained with black tears. What disturbed her most at the sight of him, was his familiarity. Barely handsome, but resembling someone who was, she scowled at the boy before her. He looked like her brother. And the last sight of her brother blinded her--skinny, pale, sprawled on the floor with blood trailing from his lips and tract marks indented on his arms. She winced.

"Oh, shit," he sighed, the discernment of her figure choking him. And her eyes, her wide and seething eyes, stabbing into his.

"So smile the heavens upon this holy act..." No matter who he looked like, she had a war to win.

He stumbled back against the rusty stove of his hovel and braced himself there, frozen in her gaze. "Oh, shit! Oh, shit! Oh, shit!" he whimpered as she approached him slowly, her hips swaying to her steps.

"Oh, speak again, bright angel."

She bore no signs of fear, no hesitation, no compassion, and her boots slammed into the linoleum floor with a force that made the bottles clink.

"What's the matter, Josh?" she asked, stopping a few steps from him. "Have you just noticed the spots?"

His mouth hung open, his eyes peered at her with remarkable lucidity and he spoke words that made her fume. "We were just about to check up on you."

It doesn't hurt to play. Your boyfriend don't mind.

The idea that they would have found her dead did not cross her mind, but the feeling of his hands roaming over her made her lurch slightly as she choked back some vomit.

"Really," she groaned, clenching her fist and curling her arm over her body before swinging the back of it across his face.

The sniveling stopped suddenly and he stood up straight, grinning at the pain that knotted his cheek. He didn't attack or tease, he just smiled at her with a perversion that choked her with disgorge.

The more you beat me, I will fawn on you.

He wiped his mouth, glancing at his hand to regard the blood.

Oh! Fuck me? I think that's an invitation!

He slapped her, hard, and she staggered into the refrigerator.

Bracing herself on the handle took all of her strength, and his arms slid around her and threw her back into the wall, where he met her with his fist. She was on the floor. The gun vanished, and she heard it crash into the bottles of the counter before he started digging his hands into the waistband of her pants and pulled. The vinyl didn't budge and she thrashed viciously enough to get on her back, at least, and stare up at him. He lowered himself upon her, pinning her beneath his weight as he pushed his forearm into her neck.

"Me first, huh?" he asked, unbuttoning her pants as she gasped for air.

She ran her arm down her side, burning her elbow with the rug as her sleeve bunched and released the knife. The warm blade lay by her hip as he yanked at her clothes, tearing her underwear as her pants complied.

The steel handle disappeared into her hand as the words It doesn't hurt to play rang in her head. With a deft thrust and a sickening squirt, the knife made friends with his liver.

His howl of pain drowned out those ruthless words and brought her husband's final cry for her.

NOOOOOO!

She pushed him off of her and crawled out from beneath him as he curled into the wound, staring at the knife she gripped with apologetic eyes.

Dying--annuls the power to kill.

She sat down in the chair as he pulled himself into a sitting position before falling back against the wall.

"Hello, Josh," she said, turning the knife in her hand, examining the crimson stain.

"Gwenyth, right?" he asked, smiling at the sound of it.

She gave him a nod.

"I wouldn't've minded moaning that a few times."

She lowered her eyes from his sickness.

"That Ashley-bitch was a fighter," he told her, his smile still lingering. "I don't mind that. Hell, I'm up for a challenge--no pun intended." He enjoyed that one, and chuckled for a while as the blood trailed to the rug. "You're hot, though. Goddamn, I felt you the minute I saw you. Your man was a lucky bastard. I read the papers," he told her, atrocity lighting his eyes. "Four years, huh?"

She nodded.

"Wouldn't've been long 'nough for me," he confessed with a smirk. "If he's any kind of man, he must have busted in you couple times a day."

His words echoed in some empty, cold part of her that refused to feel them. She only stared at him and pitied him. He was a shell, an animal, a jock-rapist that bragged about his conquests and corrupted virtue with his very stare.

Standing from her chair with a sigh of dreaded-labor, she looked down at him as if he were a chore, an annoying dog that refused to stop gnawing. Her knees thudded on each side of his legs and she sat back on his shins.

"You cold?" she asked.

He shook his head lazily, licking his lips slowly. "A little dizzy."

He was close, and she saw the acne scars inset in his caved cheeks.

"Any regrets?" she asked.

His eyes held a vague relief at her softened countenance.

"Yeah," he answered, looking down at the knife crusted with his blood.

"Confess," she told him.

He gave her a deviating grin. "Walking away from you that night."

"Any others?"

"Yeah," he said, his smile spreading. "Should've rode Ashley more than twice."

She clenched her eyes at those words--tears reddened the white.

And suddenly, pain streaked her veins and stabbed her heart as she envisioned him upon that cherished child, grinding against her softness--laughing, licking and lunging. In the same instance, furthering the pain into her wilting heart, the fallen sticks of the trees stabbed into her smooth back as he drove her into the mud of the grove--she was already half-dead, but she still begged.

When she opened her eyes, she pressed the blade to his throat, pushing it into him enough to show him death lurked.

"Hell is murky," she whispered, jerking the knife across his flesh.

His eyes went empty when instinct seized him but couldn't help him. Gasping, twitching slightly, choking on the blood that spurted down his throat, he only suffered for a few seconds, and she found herself feeling disappointed when his head fell over the slash in his neck.

She rose quickly and started toward the door only to have the world go black.

She sat in their living room, alongside the front windows as the blinding moonlight fell upon the open book. Leaning back against him, feeling his strength brace her and his warm breath through her hair, she read something she disregarded the moment the last word passed.

 

Death leaves Us homesick, who behind,

Except that it is gone

Are ignorant of its Concern

As if it were not born.

 

Through all their former Place, we

Like Individuals go

Who something lost, the seeking for

Is all that's left them, now-

Emily Dickinson

 

She could feel his fingers twirl her hair and his hands follow the length of her arms, where they would stop to grip her fingers. And his voice, whispering so softly in the brilliance of the moonlight.

Her eyelids fluttered and opened at the feeling of him close, so close, taking her hands and pulling her to her feet. Standing face to face, chest to chest, mouth to mouth, she believed he had swept her home, safely home, and that he had never gone. She wanted to touch him, to feel the stubble on his cheeks or to reach the very lips that breathed life back into her, but once she broke the union of their hands she was empty of him once more.

She let out a scream of torment as she buried her face in her fisted-hands.

Death leaves Us homesick...

 

******

 

She was alone. He allowed her that, and she again graced her home with her breath. The lights remained off, the air remained silent, and soft things she once knew remained untouched. She only wanted to stand, just stand, and look around and enjoy the imaginings of her faltering mind.

 

Through all their former Place, we

Like Individuals go

Who something lost, the seeking for

Is all that's left them, now-

 

She could see him there, though he wasn't, and she could hear his voice, though he said nothing. And as she stood above the stain, he lay there dying, and when she turned and peered through the bedroom door, she was struggling and screaming. It all came back. It all proved real, and the world she was trying to recreate came like shards to her eyes and she fell to her knees crying.

 

********

 

They sat in silence. Her truck hunched on a small overlook, and the two lounged in the bed of it with an air of pining. Smoking a cigarette, swinging her dangling foot back and forth below the tailgate while sitting on her ankle, she stared at the darkened house she'd soon burn. The stranger, on the other hand, sat back against the cab with one knee standing while the other stretched toward her.

The moon had set and pitch fell. A small glow on the horizon bore testament of a distant city and small cones of moving lights spoke of cars too distant to fear. Other than that, it was black, and the two were invisible to each other.

"Something's bothering you," he told her.

She remained silent.

"I take it your husband's death isn't the only thing that upsets your contentment."

He waited for her to speak, and she took her time. "My sister hates her husband," she told him, sadly. "She's wanted to leave him, but she can't afford it. I just don't know if I helped at all."

"A five million dollar check is a good enough of a start."

She let out a laugh. "It was never my money."

"And your letter will help her fly," he assured her.

She looked to him. "Are you sure?"

"Consider her safe," he told her. "She'll be alone, but she'll be happy and free. She'll have enough spirit to find what you've always wanted for her and to finally get something as solid as what you and Mitch have."

She could finally breathe. She had said her good-byes, and made everything right that she possibly could, and she only had one more thing to do. The only person she'd leave behind was her sister, and she would no longer be beaten, or frightened, or deprived of something beautiful. She'd thrive, and that was the only comfort she found in those drowning moments.

"Why are you so scared?" he asked.

"I'm not," she snapped, irritated at the question.

He caught her fear. "This is the last one."

"He'll fight," she told him, finally confessing her concern.

"I know."

"He's stronger."

"He is."

"He'll win."

He said nothing.

"Won't he?" she asked, frustrated that the darkness was so thick.

"Define victory."

She couldn't. The words never came, and so she took another long drag on her cigarette, again reminding him of how close she was.

"You don't want to go," he told her.

She didn't respond. Shame choked her.

"If you don't kill him, you lose."

"My life?" she asked.

"Everything," he told her. "Everything you've ever loved."

"And Mitch?"

"Consider him dead forever," he told her. "Do it, or die for eternity."

She was too still to be breathing.

"Didn't Mitch propose to you somewhere around here?" he asked her, trying to remind her of what starved her.

She sighed away the smoke. "Yeah, he did," she told him, flicking the ashes over the tailgate.

That night was still fresh to her, and it even made her smile.

He picked her up from the bar and drove. He just drove forever and ever, saying nothing except when prompting her to talk. Not having much to say, she struggled and looked at him askance when he asked her questions like, "What was Kristin wearing?" or "Was tonight a beer night?" After a while she said, "What's wrong with you tonight?"

He was nervous as hell and trying to avoid something--she could tell. And with the way he was driving, she figured he was on a murder-suicide rampage.

"Nothing," he answered, somewhat gravely, pulling to a stop by a nearby hill. "I just have to do it, and get it over with."

She sat there, watching him collect himself, swallowing the tears that choked her. Thoughts clogged her brain, and fears blurred her vision. She had seen him talking to a girl the night before, as if they were old friends, and she thought nothing of it until the girl stopped mid-sentence when Gwen approached. The bar was loud and busy and she couldn't pause to talk, but she found ways to stop by the table they shared and interrupt their conversation. A few hours before closing, he told her he'd take the girl home and he'd be back in time to pick her up. He was late, and he was somewhat dazed and abrupt as he drove her home. Something had happened, she knew it, but refused to believe it.

But there he was, sweating and in pieces, trying to find words that hid beneath the thunder of his heart.

"Just say it," she told him, almost angrily, and he looked at her when her tone shook him. The tears burned her eyes.

"Gwen," he said, almost startled.

"Just say it," she said, sitting back against the door of the car.

He was stuttering.

"Was she worth it?" she asked, her crying shaking her voice.

His face paled before confusion clouded it.

"No, I wanna know, Mitchell," she said.

"Hold on, Gwen," he said, almost laughing at the misunderstanding.

Revolted by his smile, she shoved open the car door and started to walk down the road--having no clue which direction would lead her home. He ran to her, stopping her with gentle hands that she pushed away.

"If it was that important to you, Mitchell, I would have talked about it," she shouted. "But you're the one that told me sex would only complicate things!"

"Gwen, that's not it!" he yelled.

She was taken aback by that indirect confession. "Then what was it?" she yelled, not at all ashamed of her crying. "She sure as hell is not prettier than me!"

She couldn't believe he was laughing. "Gwen! I didn't do anything! I didn't sleep with Liz, alright?"

Her furious face relaxed to relief. "You didn't?"

"No," he said, with a laugh.

"But why were you late? Why were you being such a jerk?"

"Because I was scared as hell!" he told her.

She blinked, and the remaining tears fell onto her shirt.

He reached out and smoothed the tears over her cheeks.

"Because Liz finally made me realize how much I love you."

His tender smile spread to her face.

"And, last night, I was trying to figure out how to ask you to marry me."

Those words stomped the breath out of her.

"I want you to marry me, Gwen."

She started to laugh. "Really?"

He laughed with her, holding her face in his hands as his face fell to seriousness. "Say you'll marry me."

With smiling eyes and a quiet voice, she said, "I will."

Never did she think, as he took her in his arms, that she would fall further in love by the day, by the very moment. And never did she think, as she stood on the road-side, that she'd crouch for the kill only a football-field away.

She let out a laugh at the thought of their first and only fight, and their first promise to each other.

Such sweet things to hold.

"He always squeezed my hand," she told him, smashing her cigarette into the tail-gate while exhaling a cloud.

The stranger didn't respond.

"I never knew why," she said. "He would just hold my hand, and, every once in a while, he'd give it a squeeze and watch himself do it."

"He only did it on bad days," he told her.

She froze to better hear him.

"And he did it to remind himself how lucky he was."

Her heart plunged at the thought of the last time he squeezed her hand--a moment later his hand turned cold.

"Even then," the stranger told her, seeing her thoughts as his own. "Even when everything was getting dark, he never failed in his gratitude."

 

*******

 

Each window lighted one at a time and the figure that impeded the brilliance seemed shaken and tense to fight.

She walked slowly, watching as he searched his home and called out her name, as if she'd burst from behind the shower curtain with an ax--as if she were a coward.

The front door of the large, isolated house was ajar and sending a cold wind over the brick porch. She walked into it, the clean air of the conditioner filled her heavy lungs, and she shoved the door open hard enough for the knob to burrow in the wall and the glass window in the wood to shatter. His rapid footsteps followed the hallway above her, down the stairs and to the front door, where she extended a shotgun toward him.

"Are Mommy and Daddy home, you little shit?" she asked.

He was ready to lunge until he saw her face--painted in timeless agony.

"Aren't you going to offer me anything to drink?" she asked. "Or do guests assume all privileges?"

His strong shoulders slumped and he gave her a defeated smile. His short black hair was ruffled from his eventful evening--entailing the discovery of his two dead friends and the pointless search of her home. Found, cornered and powerless, he gave her a shrug while shaking his head.

He was as young as the others--though not as horrifyingly disgusting. Clean-cut, athletic, and endowed with a gleaming grin, he almost passed as human, and she could see why he carried himself with such conceit. High school must have been his hay-day.

"Dear, sweet Gwenyth," he mocked. "You win."

The shotgun remained seeking his head.

His eyes fell over her, pulling her every detail into him and making him smile.

"What's with your face?" he asked, nodding toward the make-up while sitting on the arm of the nearby couch.

She smiled psychotically. "It is easy to work when the soul is at play-

But when the soul is in pain-

The hearing him put his playthings up

Makes work difficult--then-"

"Life that bad, eh?" he asked, that smirk resting on his face again.

"Don't mock it," she told him, her lips pinching. "You killed him."

"I did not," he said with such disgust she almost slapped him.

"I don't think you understand what you've done, Gage," she said, sneering his name. "You killed my husband. It's not like he took a trip. It's not like I'll turn my head at a red light and see him in the car next to me. I won't bump into him at Wal-Mart."

"I didn't kill him," he told her, almost bored. "Boyce and Josh did."

"That's right," she said, lowering the shotgun to her side with a sigh. "You just wanted me to scream."

He seemed relieved, but barely showed it.

"You just wanted my husband to listen to me scream, as if you were raping the one thing he'd kill to protect."

He almost seemed thoughtful, briefly, as if he suddenly remembered something. "I remember that. I remember just pounding you, and you didn't make a sound. And that pissed me off, because I didn't want to hurt you. I don't know why. I couldn't give a shit about anybody else, but when we walked into that house, when I saw you, I was scared to death. Maybe I knew you'd be back, and you'd give me a fight. I don't know. Maybe I've never seen someone with so much passion. Maybe I've never hit someone so beautiful before. I can't explain it. But all you had to do was scream, and I'd leave you alone. You knew that. But it's almost like you wanted me to tear you apart, because that's the least I could do before killing your husband. And I didn't want to kill him, just because of you. I didn't want a piece of you. Riding you would have been like blaspheme. Someone who swallows pain, like you did--with such charm and devotion--is someone worth admiring."

"I'm flattered," Gwen told him.

"But just because I pay you homage doesn't mean I won't destroy you. I enjoy breaking my idols."

"I take it you'll give me more of a running chance than you did my husband."

"I gave him the chance," he told her. "The guns won."

She dropped the shotgun and lunged at him, tackling him into the floor with such unexpected strength and fury that he could barely fight back as she slammed his face with her fists. It was such a primitive brawl, lacking in such things as grace and volley, for she only knew how to clench her fists and throw them blindly. They hit him, hard, several times in the head, splitting skin here or blackening it there, but never dazing him enough for him to drop his sprawling hands. After a minute, he held both her wrists and rolled over on top of her, sending a lead fist into her face.

She lay there, staring up at the ceiling, blinking, trying to recover as he stood from her and swung his boot into her ribs. And the shotgun indented the soft rug--only a few feet away--and she'd never grip it again. She knew that. It was over.

"I was nice to you, Mrs. Childers," he said, bending down to leer at her. "I could have done so many terrible things to you, but I didn't." His foot stabbed her side. "I didn't! I was actually quite tender with you, considering my resume."

"Was Ashley grateful?"

"Ashley?" he asked, nailing her with his boot again. “Ashley was my greatest piece of work! I cracked her skull with my boot!" And with that, a frightening movement caught the corner of her eye and the ceiling blackened with the sickening sound of her cracking skull. A moment later, she rolled over and moaned, letting out a child's whimper. He was above her still, listing the things he had done to that little girl. "Are you loving this?" he asked, kicking her in the leg. She didn't respond to that. She barely felt it. "I let my boys play with her for a while. Hell, she had to be good for something. When they were done, I smashed her knee caps, kicked in her back until she couldn't move her legs, and then made happy faces all over her with my knife. How's that?" he asked, lifting her from the floor by her shirt and shoving her against the wall.

"But then there was a noise, and Ashley could still whimper, and the boys told me to finish her off, but I didn't." He was so close to her, and he licked his lips as he thought of something sweet he couldn't quite swallow. "I didn't, because I knew, if I played dumb and let her live, your man would find her. And do you know what that means? More fun."

She pinched her eyes shut at his confession.

"So I left Ashley there, naked, bleeding, crying, and he picked her up. Stupid asshole even cried for her. Surprised he didn't take a piece of her right there."

Those words violated something sacred, and she jabbed her knee into his crotch. He managed to withstand it for a moment, but then his knees buckled and he was on the floor. When she lowered her head to look at him, blood plunged through her hairline and down her face, and she could feel how his fists sent knots into her cheeks, and they throbbed. With a quick kick, her knee slammed into his face, and he fell backward--knocking his head on the coffee table. He recovered though, as if driven by the demon she had suddenly startled, and raised the shotgun that lay beneath him. Reclined, holding the shotgun up as if it were a spear, he grinned through his bruising.

She wasn't at all afraid of what the gun would do, but of the knowledge that the boy would unleash it.

"I was nice to you," he told her. "It was quick, it was clean, and it was over. I could have made you bleed for days, but I didn't."

"Wrong," she whispered. "You made me bleed for weeks."

He smiled. "Who do you think I hurt more?" he asked. "Him or you?"

"You," she answered, kicking the shotgun away from him.

He didn't scramble for it, but let out a laugh as she approached and kicked him. Grabbing her ankle with a wrenching grip, he yanked until she fell back, and then he pounced, knife in hand, and with a jab the knife was deep. She let out a weak sob as he pushed the knife further, studying her face as life fled. When he jerked the knife from her and backed away, she rolled over and started pulling herself across the carpet, toward the wall. He watched her with boredom and slammed the knife into the small of her back, causing her to scramble and back against the wall as if she had some chance of escape through the plaster. Wide-eyed, panting, gasping, she watched as he slinked toward her, holding the knife in full view.

He crouched down in front of her, grinning, twirling the knife before her eyes before raising it and hammering it below her ribs. His face contorted and his hands strained as he pulled the knife through her and to the other side, stopping it when it struck the bone of her ribs.

Lifting her shoulders from the ground seemed reflexive, and the hanging open of her mouth almost dulled the pain. Every expression left her as a droplet clung to her cold lips and she slowly sank into the plush of the carpet. He was hovering above her, staring at her as something frightening throttled her and she started to cry.

She had failed.

The sounds of hell raged in her ears as the agony of damnation stung her wounds.

She had failed.

And something dark began to spread from the four corners of the room. Her horrified sobs did not slow them, her pleading did not soften them, her efforts did not persuade them. The shadows were spreading and darkness was cold.

Slowly, Gage stood and looked down upon her as she slowly, quite slowly, relaxed and lost the war her life induced. Emptiness entered her dulling eyes and he smiled at the thought she wasn't quite dead. She could still feel.

He fell to his knees again, raising the knife high enough for her blank eyes to capture it, and then, with that hideous grin, twitched as if about to mutilate her.

But a man entered the room, a man that would not allow such a violation, and the boy paused at the phantom approaching.

"And graves have yawned and yielded up their dead," the voice droned, and Gage lowered his knife to turn his head to the man. "For the last time, don't touch her, boy."

The sight of a dead man in his living room disturbed him somewhat--enough for him to freeze completely and let out a coward's whine.

Through all the madness pain can bring, a voice pierced the chaos and her eyes shot open. Someone familiar and warm was there, and the voice spoke of it to her weakening heart. He was there. He was there. And the need to fight swelled while the pain ate away at her courage. She was frantic, panting and wheezing, her eyes swirling in all directions in hopes of a glimpse.

The boy, kneeling upon his wife, tried to stand but stumbled, crawling a ways before sprinting through the door.

With no concern for the boy, the man moved toward the woman on the floor. She was sobbing, clawing the rug and searching for something in the darkness that blanketed the room. Only one touch, only one warm hand to her face calmed her and he whispered, "I'm here, Gwen."

He smoothed the sweat from her brow and wiped away her tears before standing from her and running from the room with all of the strength and wrath his body could contain. The darkness did not daunt him, the distance did not tire him, and death did not dull him. Something deeper than life drove him now, and it fed off something thicker than air. His wife had known that as well as did he.

The boy had made it to the highway by the time Mitch was close enough to frighten him with his voice. By that time, the boy knew he was too close and he fell to his knees to catch his breath--not minding the cramping of his legs.

Mitch took a deep breath and was calm.

With one kick between the shoulder blades, Gage fell face first into the dirt and let out a moan. Something unearthly and ungodly was his captor, and he knew--no matter how much he had helped pain thrive--she wouldn't be so kind as to elude him that night.

"I would have my way with you," Mitch told him, wiping the knife on the back of Gage's shirt--smearing his wife's blood into his clothing. "But you can't rape the willing, eh, pretty boy?"

"That's what we said about Ashley," he said into the dust.

Mitch kicked him in the kidney and then slammed his foot into his hip.

After a moment's recovery, Gage managed to stand on all fours before sitting back on his heels. Mitch crouched before him, holding the blade in plain view. Gage could see his own reflection in the glint of the starry night.

"Remember me?" Mitch asked, staring at the boy with such intensity that he could have died right there.

Gage nodded, almost sadly.

"I guess you didn't think you could piss someone off so much they couldn't die without killing you, huh?"

He shook his head.

"If you hadn't touched her, you would have gotten away.

Now, isn't that a bitch?"

Gage lowered his eyes to the dirt of the shoulder of the road while Mitch looked around himself.

"I proposed to her right here," he told him. "Right here, where you're kneeling. That's where I put my knee when I asked her to marry me. Right there, I promised to spend the rest of my life loving and protecting her. You didn't let me keep my promise."

Mitch peered at him as his eyes remained pinned to the dirt.

"You tortured and killed a young girl and her brother and then me and now my wife," Mitch said with such spite his voice shook. "You gave angels hell."

He didn't move. His jaw was clenched and his shoulders hunched, and he seemed frozen in grievous humility.

"Say much, Gage?"

Their gazes locked. "Aren't you going to kill me?"

"Cowards die many times before their deaths," Mitch told him. "This is just the final stroke."

"So do it," Gage challenged. "You think I give a shit?"

"You should."

"Oh, why? Because I'm going to hell? Because I ruined your little game of house? Fuck that shit. Those who live in glass houses should be wary of the stones!"

Mitch grabbed his shoulder and shoved the knife into his stomach.

"We never threw any!" he groaned, pushing the knife further into Gage as he froze in torture. "She is my wife," Mitch told him. "And I refused to die because of what you did to her."

 

******

 

She lay very still, staring up at the ceiling and fervently fighting the death that crept toward her. He was here. He was somewhere close. She had heard him and felt him, and when she moved he didn't disappear. He was real again, and she didn't want to lose that. So she struggled and fought and shook in her agony as she awaited his return.

The crunching of glass alerted her straining heart, but her eyes no longer roamed for his face. They stared straight ahead, up at the ceiling, as her teeth chattered.

Falling to his knees beside her, he let out an anguished groan at the sight of her. Her fists were clenched, her eyes were blank, and she convulsed as she fought for the one final moment that she feared would fade. Blood drenched her as she suffered in silence, in complete silence. She didn't beg or pray or cry. She simply lay in the solitude of death, and shivered.

"Gwen," he whispered.

And with that word, she jolted and let out a choppy moan. She couldn't say his name. She wanted to scream it, because he could hear it, and he would come to her, but her chattering teeth cut her words to pieces.

When he touched her face, his gentleness directly caressed her heart and the shuddering stopped. She became still, as if his immortality warmed her veins. Her eyes settled into his, finally, but his face was quickly blurred by tears. "Let's go home," he whispered, sliding his arms beneath her and lifting her from the floor.

 

*****

 

He didn't drive or fly or blink, he simply walked and carried his dying wife in his arms. Nothing stirred or chased or questioned the man that strode--vagrantly--through the world that had bid him farewell. A dead man tread the country-side and no one would ever know that Mitchell Childers couldn't die as the woman he loved suffered. Mitchell Childers rose and fought and killed for the woman he refused to lose.

She had grown limp in their journey, unable to hold her head up or tuck her arms in, it seemed as though she was already dead. Resting her head against his chest while an arm dangled, she closed her eyes in peaceful slumber and listened to the storm of his heart as her own grew weak. Her fingertips were paling, her mind was almost black, and her brown hair was drenched in red. Blood streamed down the matted locks of hair and the droplets pounded the dust. Every inch of her was soaked by blood or sweat, and he felt her life trickle over his bare arms and saturate his clothing. Her face, bruised and bleeding, was tensed in her pain, but she made no mention of her agony. She had been beaten and slashed open, and yet she refused to give up and then refused to make mention of her flaring wounds.

But he wept for her, quietly, silently, only allowing his tears to speak of his torment at the sight of her. She was bleeding. She had been sacrificed in his name, for his lost life, for his final moments of suffering, and she bore no pride or strength--only the humility that came with reward.

The door to his home lay open, and he viewed the disaster the boy had created in his search for violence. Couches were overturned, pillows were torn, mud tracked the carpet and glass jutted from every inch of softness. The windows no longer stood, the lights no longer burned, and purity no longer prevailed. That boy's evil had corrupted their home. They had no place in such a den of hell.

 

I Years had been from Home

And now before the Door

I dared not enter, lest a Face

I never saw before

 

Stare stolid into mine

And ask my Business there-

"My Business but a Life I left

Was such remaining there?"

--Emily Dickinson

 

And so the children stood, before their castle, both longing for rest and tomb. With a stare that hollered retribution, the man stepped over the threshold, into the very footprint of the boy, and the mud glowed white beneath him. Before his eyes, at the threat of another step, the house healed and their crystal palace was resurrected for the dead that entered. Light fell upon them, the whiteness embraced them, and the windows shielded them once more. Immersed in innocence, their refuge was cleansed by their very presence and sorrowed by the pain they carried.

The blood in the roots of the carpet was lifted, and the screams the walls had embraced were softened, and the brutality that the home had once witnessed was forgotten when the angelic hosts returned.

Lowering her into the bed took all of his strength, for gentleness in rage is rare.  Her blood stained the glowing quilts and her pain tainted the safety they had known beneath the blankets.

She looked up into his face as he sat on the edge of the bed, as his bloody hand gripped hers. Gasping for air, she convulsed to breathe, and then sunk into the plush once again. He watched her and waited. Both knew what would come, both knew who would bring it, but they had to wait.

"The shower," she whispered, with a slight smile.

He let out a laugh of remembrance.

The shower. Their last peaceful encounter, where he spit water in her face, where she had laughed so easily, where she had given him a mischievous grin before wrapping herself around him--making him lean against the tile, impaled by pleasure.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, tears streaming down the sides of her head. "I almost broke everything."

He shook his head. "But I didn't allow it," he told her. "I wanted you forever. I promised you that."

She closed her eyes, enjoying the feeling of his hand around hers.

And he watched her. She was close to gone, and that moment of consciousness was brief and aching.

So long ago, it seemed, she had been so free. Her laughter rang out at the slightest tease, her body swayed to the faintest rhythm, and she'd gasp at every pleasure he'd give. But in her pain, in her every misery, she clenched her teeth over every scream and closed her eyes around her writhing soul. And she did it all to protect him from the anguish of her pain. He didn't ask her to, it tore him more that she did--that she resisted a release for his sake--but the sacrifice made the woman a saint, the crumbled soul a martyr, the complete defeat a hallowed triumph.

He had been there after each kill, embracing her and kissing her as a reminder of what she was fighting for. He had haunted her, in a way, but it hurt him to be that close and then walk away, to hear her scream and watch her cry. But she could not triumph over the last. He had known that. She would never beat him. That was the plan. She would kill until she was killed, and eternity would be ensured. The boy wasn't supposed to escape, for she was supposed to deal him a fatal blow, but she never did, and her husband gutted him for the martyrs he had made. He had gutted him, and he spoke his name as his entrails dangled. The boy finally knew pain--both in remorse and in mortality.

She was pale and stained and struggling as the moments passed where he was helpless to her pain.

And then a specter entered and stood beside the two with a reverence for pending sanctity. Mitch stood and the two looked down on her as she faded.

"Thank you, Mitch," the boy said. His long hair was back from his face and the soft light from the dimming lamp nestled on his youthful features. When he looked up at Mitch, tilting his head back, the scar that ran from ear to ear smiled.

The boy had died in every essence of pain, but he rose again to save the woman of the man who comforted the one thing he couldn't soothe himself. And as payment for the soft thing stolen, the boy dragged a butchered Gage to a tree, where he lifted him against the trunk and pinned him to it. The demon within thrashed momentarily, not willing to give up its host, but with no choice, it fled. And so the boy dangled, by a knife beneath his chin, from an oak above a hasty and unmarked grave, which embraced the Stranger and hid the sad and mangled truth.

And just as Mitch was about to answer him, a glow came from behind and moved toward them with increasing warmth.

Neither turned to see the young girl move through the room, for they could sense her all too well. She appeared at her brother's side, her golden locks tumbling over her soft shoulders, embracing her glorious blue eyes. She looked to Mitch with a smile and a nod of recognition, and then down upon his wife with a gratitude that brimmed her eyes with tears.

She said nothing, but crawled upon the bed with child-like care, and smoothed his wife's bloody hair back from her cold forehead before pushing her lips to that very spot. Gwenyth didn't stir at the brief tribute, and she didn't feel the child's tears upon her cheeks.

The girl backed away from the bed, taking her brother's hand and tugging him away.

The boy resisted gently, taking Mitch's hand as if bestowing something upon him. "The stroke of death is as a lover's pinch," the Stranger told him, quoting the Shakespeare Gwenyth had so loved. "Which hurts, and is desir'd."

The two backed away, looking to Mitch as he looked into his hand at the dove's feather the boy had given him.

He must bring her peace.

He sat on the edge of the bed, reaching out to touch her face gently, and then he leaned over her and embraced her lips with his own.

Her eyelids fluttered, her breath returned, and her arms lifted and slid around him. Her blood dried and faded, her wounds healed and sealed, and her pain simmered and flared into life. When he pulled away from her, she looked up at him and saw him as he once was, as close as he had always been, as real as he will forever be, and he took her hand to guide her up. And so she stood, beside her husband, their hands joined, their eternities woven into one, and she gave him that ever-slight smile.

"It's been a long time," she told him as he touched her cheek.

"I like to make you miss me," he told her, shedding a tear at her closeness.

When she smiled, tears spilled down her cheeks.

"Cocky boy," she whispered.

He grinned that blazing grin, and brushed his lips to hers while saying, "With reason."

And they kissed.

And his heart pounded thunder.

She was there.

He was there.

Forever began.

 

******

 

SLEEPING AT LAST

Sleeping at last, the trouble & tumult over,

Sleeping at last, the struggle & horror past,

Cold & white out of sight of friend & of lover

Sleeping at last.

 

No more a tired heart downcast or overcast,

No more pangs that wring or shifting fears that hover,

Sleeping at last in a dreamless sleep locked fast.

 

Fast asleep. Singing birds in their leafy cover

Cannot wake her, nor shake her the gusty blast.

Under the purple thyme and the purple clover

Sleeping at last.

--Christina Rossetti

 

******

 

"What now?" the suit asked, making his way to the house with the same blue-uniformed officer beside him. "How much more can this girl take?"

The house was ablaze with light--just as white as it had always been.

"Actually, sir," the blue answered. "I think she hit her limit."

"What makes you say that?" he asked as they stomped up the steps to the wide-open door.

"Well, sir," he answered, almost stuttering. "It seemed as though we're a bit confused about the situation, sir."

"What's so confusing, son?" he asked, making his way to the bedroom.

"She's dead, sir," he told him as they rounded the doorway and peered in on the young girl in the bed. Her arms lay out from her sides, slightly, her legs stretched toward them, and her hair, soft and thick, cloaked the pillow. Her face was clean and soft, with the slightest smile creasing her cheeks.

"What happened to her?" he asked, stopping at the foot of the bed with sad eyes.

"We're not sure, sir," he answered. "The medics think her heart just stopped."

"No signs of a struggle?" he asked.

"No, sir," he answered, looking around the room. "No signs of poison or medication. No note, no nothing. They don't think this was a suicide."

"Why am I here, son?" he asked.

"Well, sir," he began. "There are no marks on the body---at all. No wounds of any kind."

"We've covered this," he told him, coldly.

"Yes, sir, I know, sir," he said, looking around the room for anyone to help him out. "But her blood was found at the crime scenes of Joshua Smite and Gage Strook. Fresh blood, sir. It was found on their clothing, in the carpets..."

His voice trailed as the suit became rigid. They stared down at the girl, slowly paling beneath the blackness of her clothing.

"Look at her, sir," he said, solemnly. "She looks like..."

"An angel," he told him, giving the girl a smile. "An angel, of some sort."

The blue lowered his head. "Yes, sir."

The suit sighed at the sadness thickening the air. Everyone around gazed at the bed in united mourning.

"Let's finish up," the suit ordered. "There's nothing more for us to do that she hasn't already taken care of."

And so, gently, carefully, as if she were sacred, they wrapped her in white linen and pushed her away.

The suit watched from the front step, twirling a white feather between his fingers with a reverent tenderness. He had found it beneath the girl's fingers and he kept it for himself.

With a smile, he put the feather in his pocket. "Harmless as doves," he whispered to himself. And with a sniff, he added, while looking through the star-pricked sky, "Dear Lord, I lack wisdom, and I do not ask for it. May they rest in Your peace."

 

THE END.

 

I thought of this story after a long day full of memories that nearly drove me insane. I know how bad death hurts, how it chokes you with each and every minute without that person, and how it drives you to any length for one last touch. And so, here it is, the best way I can describe it. This is my pain and these are the things I would do for that one last touch.

When I saw "The Crow," I cried for a week afterward. I'd be fine for a few hours, and suddenly I'd collapse in a pool of tears. It was a plague, some sort of sickness that I couldn't escape, and I wanted to drive it out. When I couldn't, I used it as every inspiration, as every source of hope, as every ounce of strength. Strange, maybe, but survival is Brinked on such mysterious things.

I survived. I thrived. I finished high school and shot off to college, where I'm the black sheep that ruffles feathers. Not a bad calling. Honesty comes easily for me--almost enjoyably, and most humorously.

My name is Katherine Jeffries. Writing is what I do, it's who I am, it's how I speak. Sometimes it screams, sometimes it sings. I will be saying things until I die, so keep an eye out for another message, Folks. I'll be around for a while.

 

A version of what Gwen would look like.
 

"Weakness or strength: there you are, it's strength. You do not know where you are going; enter anywhere, respond to anything. They will no more kill you than if you were a corpse."

--Arthur Rimbaud

 

"Dry sorrow drinks our blood" --Shakespeare