by Poss, Bryant
Cillian stared at Ben, who looked as if he’d kicked a grizzly cub in front of its mother. Face mangled, leg swollen, blood everywhere, it seemed that his every breath was a workday’s effort. Alice’s stained hair kept flashing in his mind, the pool of blood under her head that was propped up by the machete buried in her skull. Her vacant eyes that stared into the void of whatever lay beyond. Straining to break the image from his mind, he pictured Lo bending over the sink in the pizzeria, water running down her skin and dripping from her hair, not a stitch on her, and she hid nothing. Continuing to struggle with the image of Alice, he turned to the spot in this very room where Lotus had kissed him and pulled him to her then he glanced past the spot at the teacher’s office where he’d just been with Alice such a short time before. The happiest, most blissful moments of his life had happened in this room, and now they were gone. Not only were the moments gone, he couldn’t repeat them, not now. Alice was gone. Lotus was Ben’s. Cillian was left in worse shape than when his brother took his fingers. Now he knew what forbidden fruit tasted like, and as far as he knew, he may never taste it again because that’s how the world was now. Perhaps there was nothing left. He didn’t even know what he meant in thinking that. His thoughts were swarming, incapable of righting themselves. Again, her face gripped his mind like an image burned on a television screen from being there too long. Her true face seemed to be beyond his memory because all he could see was her propped head on that stairway with blood pooling under her fine hair.
A moan brought him from his stare and his thoughts, and Cillian wiped his mouth when he realized he had been drooling so deep were his visions. Ben moaned again, and a weak cough made the man look all but dead. Cillian stood looking at him, his jaws clenching over and over. Everything was so muddled. Staring at Ben, he tried to focus on his face and the mess it was so he’d stop seeing her, but the attempts were unsuccessful. Ben’s blood kept turning into hers, and her face replaced his. Lo could help him. She would help him. She could make him whole again.
The wind shook the metal door again, a sound so common now it went unnoticed by the occupants, but Cillian heard it now. Stepping toward Ben, he kicked Luck that sat on the concrete in the middle of the floor, but he ignored it and kept walking, his feet shuffling across the dusty concrete.
The room was warmly lit and warm itself from the flames beneath the pots, but the rolling didn’t stop, and Luck went into the uncovered drain, the light ceasing, the warmth replaced by cold darkness, and the last sounds other than the wind pushing the door outside were the shifting of feet and the moans until there was nothing but the darkness, or the absence of light with all else fading away to a concept.