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My life is a reoccurring nightmare...or is that never ending. I’d gotten up at some point and moved from the front room to my bedroom repeating the mantra: I will go to school, I will go to school, it was the best I could do. I’ve tried, I do not love Max and I will not cry. They were too much of a lie to work. I remember locking all the doors and how hot it is in my bedroom after checking my window for the thirtieth time before I fell into a sleep that had nothing to do with reviving the body and everything to do with a healing broken heart. On average I’m sleeping about fourteen hours a day. There was no reason for me to be tired.
I wake up in a room thick with darkness. The kind that you can’t see your hand in front of your face and sometimes your eyes play tricks on you as they try to make out the things you know are there. There is someone on the bed with me. I know it’s bad.
The first time Pops broke in he smelled like booze and cigarettes. The stench that choke me now smell like he’s spent his last week or so lying with dead things...think road kill. I don’t know how I know it’s Pops since I can’t see him, but everything in me says it is. I don’t have time to scream, don’t have time to move, but neither does Pops. As soon as I realize he’s in bed with me, he’s not.
My room is the smallest in the house but I’ve managed to squeeze a full size bed and a dresser with mirror in it. That leaves me about three feet of clearance from the side of the bed to the wall and only about two at the foot. The fight ensuing in the tiny space has the opponents touching everything in it.
The sounds made are definitely animalistic. I hear growling and snarling in addition to grunts and the deep meaty thumps of flesh hitting flesh and proof someone was getting a proper beating. I scream when the fight lands literally on my feet. I draw them up to my chest after scrambling to the head of the bed. I scream loud enough to wake the dead before scurrying off the bed but get slammed into the wall when I try to make the two steps it takes to get out of my room. When the unknown fighters slam against the wall next to me the light switch is thrown on and I have a minute where my mind shuts off.
The nightmare of Pops coming back for seconds has nothing on what’s taking place in my room. Pops has on dark pants, they could be jeans, could be navy Dockers, it doesn’t matter because they’re wrinkled, ragged and dirty, as is the rest of his clothes, which explained the smell. There are long scratches running down the side of his neck, four of them, and blood joined the rest of the filth on is shirt, or what remains of it. The front of it is in strips and the only thing holding it on his body are the sleeves and the thin band of material left around his neck. The front is completely destroyed. As he moves around...correction...as he’s thrown around, I see his chest and stomach. I scream again at the sight it’s so shocking. Pops is pushed against the window and I hear it break, but Pop doesn’t fall out of it. Oh no, his opponent grabs him and pulls him back in. Pops may have gotten away the first time, but there’s no escaping the wrath of the beast in the room tonight.
And that beast is Max.
The growling and snarling is coming from Max. His mouth is open and his lips are pulled back to display a mouth full of teeth that canines have grown into sharp pointed—fangs? His shirt is as bad as Pops but it hasn’t been ripped from his body, he’s out grown it. His already big body has gotten bigger, ripping the arms, neck and chest of the t-shirt. The usually baggy shorts are stretched tight across his thighs and I watch as one leg splits up the middle from the bottom when he picks up Pops and body slams him on the bed with enough force to break the frame.
Pops tries to push Max off him but is successful in only rolling them both onto the floor. I scream again, because hey, what else was I going to do? Pops punches Max several times in the face. If I wasn’t standing there looking at the fight I’d never believe that the small man had it him to get the upper hand in the fight. Max is covered in blood, Pops I hope, when he grabs the older man’s head with two big hands that nails have grown into—claws? Max’s hands ...claws...whatever, grabs Pops by his shoulders and he places his feet in Pops ruined stomach and pushes him off. Pops hit the wall next to the shattered window hard enough to break through the wood paneling but he doesn’t fall down, he pulls a damn knife.
Pops takes the stance of every knife wielding villain ever recorded in cinema fighting. You know the one. Legs apart and bent at the knees, arms held out wide in front of him, he’s gently swaying from side to side and a little back and forth as he waits for Max to make his move. Max mirrors Pops but with no knife. Who needs a knife when each fingertip is the equivalent of a dagger and he has ten of them.
Since I’m obviously not going anywhere I look for a weapon of my own. There’s a pair of wood bottom clogs at my feet and I grab one. I clutch the shoe to my chest as I watch the two men that are no more than two feet from me. Pops tire of waiting on Max to make the first move so he charges ahead. In all the things Pops has done, this one makes me certain of his insanity. Max is a six foot tall, fang baring, claw having, growling, snarling solid wall of muscle. For Pops to advance instead of trying to break through the busted paneling and then the brick on the other side to escape makes him card-carrying crazy in my eyes.
The two men come together like waves crashing on the shore and Max slings Pops back onto the caddywhompus bed where the rest of the frame let go, breaking completely. From the sound of it the box spring is going to need replacing as well. The two men roll, giving Pops the un-freaking-believable upper hand again and I see my chance.
Maybe I should ask to borrow Pops’ crazy card.
Pops straddle Max’s body, sitting high on his chest with his knife wielding hand raised high above his head. I bring the shoe down across the back of Pops’ bald head breaking the skin and adding to his overall bloodiness. Instead of knocking him out, I only distract him, which would have been a good thing, except now his attention is on me. But it isn’t for long. With Pops upper body now pointed in my direction Max grabs the arm holding the knife at the wrist and plunges Pops knife into the man’s chest. Pops doesn’t even turn around to look at the damage. He just stares at me with shocked eyes. Blood fills his mouth and then spills out of it, covering his chin and running down his throat and he falls backwards onto the floor...dead.
I look at Pops and then Max. At Pops and then Max. The shoe is still in my hand, clutched to my rapidly rising and falling chest. I don’t move...I can’t. I just keep looking between the two men in my room. One dead, the other alive; both covered in tattered clothes, both covered in blood. A part of my brain tells me I’m struck in a dream. I finally focus on Max. He’s the better dream.
“What are you doing here,” I finally ask. Okay...I might have yelled.
“I told you I would never let anything bad happen to you,” he answers as if he hadn’t just moved back to Michigan a few days ago.
If Pops dead body wasn’t lying at our feet, if I wasn’t half out of my mind with fright and shock, I would have slapped the taste out of his mouth. Instead I say, “Let’s go to another room.”
“Do you trust me Josette,” he asks.
“Absolutely,” I answer without hesitation.
“I fell in love with you. That’s why I left.”
I know he loves me but hearing him say the words still makes my heart skip a beat. The shock of what has happened is wearing off, or maybe just taking a back seat to the anger building up in my chest.
“How could you do that to me? How could you just leave me the way you did?”
“There’s a lot that I can’t tell you right now, but know that I never wanted to leave you. I refused.”
Oh.Hell.No.
I shake my head at the madness of the words. He refused? Where the hell has he been? If he tells me he’s been down the street all this time I’m going to snap.
“I had two choices, I could be forced to go back to my family or just watch you from afar. I opted for the second. But it meant I couldn’t talk to you anymore. You had to beli
eve that I was gone. My grandmother would go postal if she knew that I left you that ring.”
I try not to scream. “You love me so you left, but you really didn’t leave, you just left a note saying you did. Nothing coming out of your mouth makes any damn sense Max.” I rub my hands across my face, trying to get a grip.
“It was my mother’s, the one that my dad gave her when he asked her to marry him. It’s the ring my grandfather gave my grandmother when he asked her to marry him,” Max says. “It’s the ring that has been worn on the hand of every bride in my family for hundreds of years. It’s meant for the woman I plan to wed.”
Didn’t that just shut me right on up? My mouth open and close, and then open and close again. I tilt my head to the side as I try to come up with something to say but I have no words.
“Are you okay, Josette?”
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. Then I open them. I can see the worry in his eyes. Am I okay?
“Will you marry me Josette?”
We are sitting on the couch and the light is on. There’s no one here but us. The TV and radio are off, so it’s quiet. Max is facing me. I can see and hear him just fine. I cock my head to the side and lean over closer to him because I’m certain I’ve misheard him.
“Excuse me,” I say.
“Will you marry me,” Max says again. There’s no smile on his face, just a look of determination and nervousness.
I’m in crazyland with him. I know this because a sane person would say no. Never mind we haven’t known each other a full month. Never mind I’m seventeen and he’s only a grade above me or that my mother will dig his heart out with a wooden spoon. Never mind Max has blood on him or that he’s killed my next door neighbor.
“Yes or no.”
I take in a deep breath and exhale very, very, slowly and close my eyes. When I open them Max is staring at me like he’s willing and prepared to wait for the next ten years for his answer.
“With everything that’s happened you can’t possibly expect me to give you an answer on this right this second.”
“Yes I can,” he says and actually leans back on the couch.
“Are you insane?” I ask stunned. What the hell is going on?
“No,” he says and leans over and kisses me.
Max is the first boy I’ve really ever kissed. The first boy I’ve liked; the first one I’ve loved. His places a hand behind my head and holds it in placed as he presses his lips firmly against mine. He exhales and I take his breath as I inhale and it’s like taking a part of him inside me. A pressure builds; filling me up until my body feels heavy. The air holds a charge like static electricity and I feel the hair on my arms stand up. I put my hand on his face and he pulls back, just a little, until our lips are not touching, but I can still feel the heat of his mouth on mine.
“I love you Josette, I want you to be my wife,” he whispers, before letting me go. Leaving me pretty much stuck on stupid. He’s stolen my words with the kiss.
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PART TWO
Now it happened that...
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Chapter Eight
Lupa (Second Edition) Page 13