by Rashaad Bell
Chapter 8
Is it over yet…
“I’m okay.” I managed, cutting off any response she could muster. I wasn’t in the mood to explain myself. Not right now. All I wanted was the safety of my own bed. I didn’t want to talk, didn’t want to explain what happened to me at The Dave’s, nor did I wish to speak of dreams I could vaguely extrapolate the meaning of.
Ethan parked the car. My Ethan. My beautiful Ethan with the emerald, treasure chest eyes. How could someone be so beautiful? It was more than that though, something deep rooted that was impossible to explain, yet remained evident nonetheless.
Even as he opened the car and helped me out the back seat, a part of me was glad he wasn’t there with the gunman. He would have tried to do something, tried to save me, tried to prevent...everything. More than likely, he would have just ended up getting hurt.
He is only human.
I hugged him in the driveway, refusing to let go. I felt safe in his arms, as if nothing could harm me as long as he was around. I breathed in his scent, smiling inwardly. He really did smell like oranges.
I loved it.
I could hear Abigail and Aiden talking in the background. Their voices were muted; it was difficult to make anything out. I had buried myself in Ethan’s embrace; everything else was just static cling, the entirety of the world second in my mind. This was important. This moment right now. I couldn’t envision it more clearly, more perfectly.
The bullshit that made the world go round was irrelevant, superficial. Once you were able to make that connection, able to pierce through to the heart of it, everything else made perfect sense. The past is irreversible. The future was paradox, always present, yet never promised. There was only the moment. The right now. There was nothing else.
It was all so strange, this closeness that I felt with Ethan. Even though we had just met, it was like our souls had become intertwined, as if in another place, another lifetime ago we had been the dearest of confidants, only just now having the luxury of reconnecting all over again.
“Where do you live Ethan? I’ll drive you home.” Abigail volunteered. She was concerned, I could tell she didn’t want to leave me alone, that she wanted to stay with me. There was a reason why she was my best friend.
“It’s okay, I’m good.” Ethan replied. “I’m not that far from here actually. I can walk it.”
I frowned. “Really? You live down the street from me?”
“Well, it’s really more like, down the street, up the block and around the corner.” He responded whimsically. “But it’s all good.”
“That sounds like too far to walk to me.” Abigail countered.
“It’s nothing I haven’t done before.” He answered. “Besides, it’s late, I should be heading back.”
He kissed me softly. “That is if you’re okay? I could stay a little while longer if you like; wait till you fall asleep before I go.”
I wanted him to stay. I wanted to fall asleep in his arms, but I was just being selfish. It really was late and I didn’t want him walking home by himself at all, let alone heading out even further into the early morning.
“No, it’s okay.” I grumbled. “You’ve already been inducted into enough of my madness for one night. Will I see you tomorrow?”
“Sooner than you think.” He responded. “We’ll talk more then.”
He kissed me on the forehead once, backed away and disappeared into the night. No goodbyes, no waiting for a response, just a quick little back pedal out the driveway and a brisk walk down the street.
I watched him for a minute and when I couldn’t see him any longer I made my way towards the door where Abigail and Aiden were waiting patiently.
We went inside and I locked the door behind us setting the alarm. I had never done that before, actually taking the time to punch in the code for the house alarm. I never thought we needed it here and mom was always yelling at me for not using it. To me, it was just a waste of time, yet time has a way changing everything.
Abigail turned to Aiden. “Hey, can you give us a sec?”
“Uh, yeah, sure.” He answered warily.
I could tell he wanted to talk, but there seemed to be something going on between them, their own personal language expressed with eyes alone. Unspoken dialogue. They were so good at it, there were times I could swear they were having whole conversations without having to speak a word.
“If you need me lil sis, just holla.” Aiden hugged me and then jetted up the steps, taking them two at a time until he was out of eyeshot.
I slumped down on the couch, Abigail following after, sitting next to me.
“Alright, so what’s going on, what happened?” I could see how sincere she was. It was welcoming to be around her. Abigail was anything but fake and it was easy to see why my brother was in love with her.
“Someone tried to steal the car.” I sighed.
“What?” Abigail was astonished.
“Yeah.” I continued. “They had a gun and everything.”
“Oh my God, are you okay?” She grabbed my hand, still in shock.
“I’m fine now, I guess. There was some kid, he was at the party, really cute kid, about our age, he did some, I don’t know, Marine Corps, James Bond with the kung-fu grip type move on him and snatched the gun out the dudes hand and shot him in the leg.”
“Wait a minute; he shot him in the leg?” She was completely stunned. “Like for real-for real, shot him in the leg?”
I rolled my eyes. “No Abigail, for play-play. Of course for real.”
“That’s insane!”
“I know, shits crazy right? The gun is still in the trunk of the car.”
Abigail shook her head in disbelief. “Right now?”
“Yea.”
“Oh that’s madness. This whole thing is madness.” Abigail commented. “Wait, where was this guy at, the James Bond dude? When we showed up, you were alone.”
“Yeah, see, this is where it gets creepy.” I began.
“You mean there’s more? I should have made some popcorn for this.”
That made me laugh. Abigail always said things that made me laugh at the most inappropriate times. Thank goodness for the little things.
I leaned closer, regardless of the fact that we were already sitting directly next to each other. “He wouldn’t even tell me his name, I mean, I asked him, but he got all douchebaggy on me. But get this, when he left, he just like, up and disappeared.”
Abigail squinted her eyes. “What do you mean by disappeared? He ran off?”
“No, he disappeared. Like, I don’t know, dude just vanished. Star Trek style. Beam me up Scotty.”
“You sure he didn’t just leave, Madison?” I could tell she doubted me and honestly why wouldn’t she? I almost got shot to death over a car that isn’t even mine and here I am talking about the incredible vanishing man.
“You don’t believe me.” It wasn’t a question, more like me verbalizing the statement, giving it credence and validity.
Abigail stared at me, the wheels in her mind turning. I could almost see it in her eyes; see her mind working it out, digesting everything, letting the pieces fall together in their proper place.
She didn’t speak for a while, gazing intently at me without blinking. “Yeah.” She said finally, nodding in agreement. “Yeah, I believe you.”
“I’m telling you Abby, after everything that happened, after the whole ordeal, that moment frightened me the most. Everything else I could handle, the gun, the carjacking, that’s just life you know, shit happens, I can process that. But when that guy just vanished in front of my eyes, people don’t do that, people just don’t evaporate into thin air.”
“Before my Grandmother died, she told me this story.” Abigail stated.
“Uh, random, but okay.”
“Just listen Madison.” Abigail interjected. “She told me and this was on her death bed at the hospital the night she died mind you. She told me when she was young, maybe eight or
nine, she was out playing in the woods with her friend, this little black girl. The girls mom was like, I don’t know, their cook or the house cleaner or something. Anyway, Grandma is old, like, really old, so this is back in the day in the deep south, before civil rights and Martin Luther King, it’s before all that.”
“Well they were out playing and they came across this guy. Black dude, Klan got to him she figured cause he was all strung up to a tree by his neck, dead. Well, they got to screaming, my Grandma and her friend, when the men who did it, the men who killed that black guy, heard all the yelling and came running over. There were about six of them.”
“They were gonna kill them both, that much she knew for sure, cause they were talking about it amongst themselves. Gonna kill her friend just cause she was black, you know, cause that’s just how they rolled and they was gonna kill my Grandma cause she’d seen them, could put faces with names, that sorta thing.”
“Well they strung up her little friend. Right there in front of her, hung her up to the tree right next to the dead guy. She watched her friend die and there was nothing she could do about it. When it was her turn, they put a hood over her head, said since she was white; they could do that much for her.”
“She said what happened next was hard for her to say, cause it happened so quick and with the bag over her head she couldn’t see what was going on, but she said there was a lot of screaming and then nothing but silence.”
“Someone pulled the bag off her head and it was a young boy, just a little older than her, maybe thirteen at most. She said he was very pretty, but strong, kind of a dick though. He grabbed her hand and told her to close her eyes and not open them. So that’s what she did and he led her away, all the way back to her doorstep.”
“But at the moment he took that bag off her head, she said she saw everything, everything around her. She said they were all dead, every one of the men. Blood was everywhere, a massacre and she was so scared because she knew it had to have been the boy; there was nobody else around but the two of them. She didn’t know how he did it, but he killed them all. A thirteen year old boy killed six grown men, ripped them apart she said.”
“While he was leading her back home, he told her that he was in the woods, that, that’s where he lived, but he had gone out hunting for deer and heard them screaming. He said he ran towards the noise, but was too far away to save her friend and he apologized for not being able to get there in time and save the little girl’s life.”
“Now Grandma described him fully to me that night and she claimed from that point, from the moment she met him, she would still see him every once in a while, every couple of years or so, just watching her from a distance. Just another face in the crowd, until she recognized him and he would just disappear and she wouldn’t see him again, not for another five or six years or so.
“She said he never aged though. Regardless of how many years passed, he always looked the same, just like he did when they first met in the woods all those years ago. Now Grandma was pretty doped up by then, cancer had just ate through her body by this point, so you couldn’t really trust if what she was saying was her or the morphine anymore. She told me this and I just let her talk, cause she liked it when I listened and when she was done, she was done and she went to sleep and I had to piss really bad.”
“So I left her there, went to the restroom, stopped at the snack machine, got some chips and what not and came back to tell her I was leaving. So the closer I got to the room, I could hear her voice you know, she was awake again, talking to someone. I figured it was just a nurse checking in on her or maybe the doctor.
“I got to the room and by her bed was this little kid. He was holding her hand and they were talking about something, the boy was speaking so low I could barely hear him, but tears were coming down her eyes, yet she didn’t really look sad, you know. Well this boy looked up at me and just smiled. Freaked me the hell out and then he just, I don’t know, dissolved is what I wanna say.”
“Grandma was dead before I entered the room, but she looked, peaceful. At ease. Thing is though, I've seen that boy, that same kid who was standing next to my dead Grandmothers bedside, three times in the past seven years and he’s just as my grandmother described him when she was a child. I’ve seen him three times, just for a moment mind you and he still hasn’t aged a day. And he always evaporates, star trek style, just like you said your boy did.”
“I don’t know if he’s a ghost, or maybe both me and my Grandma are just crazy, but I believe you. When you say you were saved by a person who vanished afterwards, I believe you, because it’s not the first time I’ve heard that kind of story from someone I trust before.”
There was silence between us. I wasn’t really sure what to say, it was just so much to digest. So random and yet, set within the events of tonight, more plausible then I would like to have admitted.
“Awk-ward.” Abigail laughed.
“No, I’m just absorbing everything, Abby.” I said reassuringly. “And you’ve seen this...boy repeatedly since your grandmother died?”
“Yeah.” She admitted.
“What did it look like when he, you know, disappeared?” I needed to compare the similarities, I wondered if she was just trying to humor me, make me feel not as insignificant as I already do.
“It’s hard to explain, I guess.” Abigail stated. “It’s like he was there and then he wasn’t.”
“Abigail!” Aiden’s voice interrupted us, cutting through the conversation like a real life commercial break. “Do you know where my PlayStation controller is?”
Abigail let out a frustrated sigh. “That boy couldn’t take a shit without me demonstrating toilet paper first.”
I chuckled. “I’m tired anyway. I just wanna sleep and try to forget this night even happened.” That was a lie of course. There was too much adrenaline pumping in my veins for me to even attempt going to bed. Too many things running through my mind, untamed and unchecked, mental imagery that I lacked the proper motivation to contain or control.
“Are you sure?” She was still being protective. “I am not thinking about Aiden and his nonsense right now.”
“No, it’s fine Abby, go to him. Besides, he’s gonna want to know what went down tonight and I’m not up to talking about it again. What’s past is past. It’s done. It happened and now I just wanna move forward and not have to relive it all over again.”
“Fair enough.” She finally conceded.
“You are staying though, right? Spending the night, I mean?” Just cause I wanted to be alone didn’t mean I wanted to be alone.
“Yeah, of course.” Abigail gave me a hug. “I wasn’t planning on leaving, not tonight.”
“Are you gonna get in trouble for staying out all night?”
“No worries Madison.” Abigail got up from the couch. “I’m eighteen, plus as long as I stay honor roll, my Mom doesn’t really care what I do.”
“Abigail!” Aiden yelled out again.
She breathed in deep, gaining her composure. “Did you check the closet floor?”
“The closet floor? Why would his controller be in the closet?” I asked.
“Because your brother is an idiot.” She responded coolly.
“Found it! Thanks!” Screamed Aiden.
“Point proven.” She said feeling completed vindicated.
I just laughed. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” She was bouncing up the steps, heading towards Aiden’s bedroom and I found myself suddenly alone.
Talking to Abigail soothed my nerves, giving me the time I needed to unwind somewhat, the edge slowing leaving. Maybe sleep was possible, though I doubted that I was going to get up from the couch tonight.
I stretched out on the sofa, getting comfortable, declaring a good position for the long haul, then switched the television on, flipping through the channels. If I was gonna sleep, it needed to be soon, cause school was about four hours off. I had considered cutting class again, it’s not like I didn’t have a good
reason for it this time around, yet decided against it. I didn’t want to be in the house all day by myself. Maybe I’ll just come in late. Nothing serious was happing in first period anyway.
I was flipping through the channels at turbo speed; slowing down occasionally, warp speeding through all the Spanish and Jesus channels when something caught my eye.
I was already four or five channels past it before the image registered in my brain and I clicked back a couple of stations until I found what I was looking for. It was a news broadcast, a local one at that. I turned up the volume frantically, hoping I hadn’t missed everything the Anchorwoman was talking about, because right there, plastered across the right hand side of my TV screen was a photo of the man who tried to carjack me earlier tonight.
“...found dead near Flagler Beach earlier this evening. The unidentified male was found behind a dumpster on the corner of Palm Coast Highway with an apparent gunshot wound in his upper left thigh; yet preliminary autopsy reports confirm that cause death was attributed to strangulation. Police have no suspects at this time.”
“On a stranger note, another alleged mutant sighting occurred in the San Francisco yesterday. This marks the United States seventh unconfirmed sighting in the last fifteen months, five of which were in the State of California, one in Seattle and one Texas. Oakland and the San Francisco Bay area seem to be the epicenter for...”
I couldn’t believe it! He was dead. Just like that. I knew it was him, not just from the photo, but from the gunshot he took in the leg as well. They said he was unidentified, but I recognized him well enough and after seeing him up on the screen like that, seeing a close up of his face, I swear I had seen him earlier today as well. He was at the beach where Aiden and I first met. He sold us ice cream.
Last meals are always on the house.
A shudder rumbled its way across my entire body as I remembered his words, placing the drunken slur of a voice against that of my late night attacker. Of course they matched, just like their faces when placed together in my mind.
But then...if he was the same guy, the same drunk clown who sold me ice cream, then that can’t be just a coincidence right? I mean, once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern. I didn’t see him three times in one day, but still...
What’s so important about you in particular that a man using a three thousand dollar gun would try to kidnap you?
My Saviors voice echoed in my head, the words taking on new meaning as his interpretation of the events superseded my own. Maybe he was right; maybe it was more than just a random carjacking. What if he was targeting me directly?
“Doesn’t really matter now, he’s dead.” I whispered to myself and upon hearing the words aloud, I breathed a sigh of relief.
The Bogeyman couldn’t hurt me anymore.
He was worm food now. This made me happy. It made me content, yet the fact that his death was serene in my eyes gave me pause. Despite what happened to me, murder was not something that I condone, yet not only the fact that he was dead, but also the overwhelming fact that he was strangled and his body discarded like trash, these things should not give me any semblance of joy and yet they did.
I resigned not to let this attack weaken me; make me afraid to live life the way I normally would. If I do that, then the terrorists win. I refused to let it change me, yet I could feel it rearranging my outlook, coloring how I view the world. A part of me was colder, meaner and uglier now. Utterly jaded. A small portion of my innocence had been taken, stripped from my soul as if it didn’t belong there in the first place.
I didn’t want to think about it anymore. Enough was enough. I shut everything off, powering down anything that took electricity and headed back upstairs towards my room. Once inside I locked the door the behind me, stripped down and grabbed my leather jacket.
I tossed the current painting in the corner, replacing the finished portrait with a fresh canvas on the easel. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do yet, simply staring at the blank whiteness, doing brushstrokes in my mind before I even picked up the paint.
It was like that for at least twenty minutes. Me just standing there in nothing but my old, battered jacket, which was sporting enough paint on it for twenty pictures. I grabbed the brush, dipped the point in black paint, closed my eyes and freed myself. The restraints of the world began to break free, broken shackles crumbling to rust strewn metal around me.
Nothing else mattered other than the brush in my hand and the paint on the canvas. It was all I saw, all I wanted to believe existed for that singular moment in time. It was all that mattered to me. I rarely opened my eyes this time, just when I needed to add more paint to the brushes tip or to take a quick glance at my work. Then I would close them again, visualizing what it was I wanted to create, my hand tracing out the picture on the canvas as I imagined.
It was something I had one day realized that I could do. That if I was able to find that zone, that inner place within where words didn’t exist, where it was just raw abstract emotion burning its own eternal flame of brilliance in the space between spaces. If I was able to come to that place, I no longer needed to look at what I was painting, because it was all just part of me, there inside my mind. My body would just project that inner vision onto the canvas.
These paintings, the ones that require little to no sight to produce, these were some of the best that I’ve ever produced and tonight I was in that place, in the space between spaces, the thought between thoughts and my hands were just an extension of this, working tirelessly to recreate what I saw there.
I replaced this canvas with another, barely even recognizing what was happening, only knowing that there was no more blank portions for me to express myself on. I had filled them all up with parts of my soul, yet my story wasn’t complete, it demanded to be told in full and if it couldn’t be visualized on one canvas then another would do.
There was a noise outside my door which pulled me away from myself and begrudgingly I opened my eyes, my muse working its way back to her internal hideaway, that locked portion of my mind that I crawl into in order to have conversations with her.
Someone tried to open the door, realized it was locked, then tapped softly against the hard wood.
“Madison? You awake?” Aiden asked in a small whisper.
I cracked the door open slightly, just enough for him to see my face. “Yeah, what’s up?”
“You staying home today or you going to school with us?” He asked.
“You’re asking me this now?” I tried to hide my frustration at his intrusion, but I’m sure it played out in my tone somewhat. “You couldn’t have asked me this in the morning?”
“Uh, hello, it is morning Madison, first period started like, fifteen minutes ago. Me and Abigail overslept, but we’re heading out in like thirty. You coming with or you staying in?”
I glanced at my alarm clock, the one I forgot to set. It was already past nine in the morning. “Umm...yeah, I’ll...I’ll be down in a few.”
“Are you sure? You kinda look...”
I closed the door before he could finish. He was saying something sarcastic now, but I paid him no attention. I had been up all night painting and hadn’t even realized it. Sometimes I get a little OCD with it, painting for hours nonstop without even recognizing how much time had elapsed, like tonight, or today rather. I hardly ever sweat it though.
It is what it is.
I looked at the easel and found the face of my savior staring back at me from the painted canvas. Even though I had only met him once, I captured his likeness within the thick brush strokes, to the point you would have thought he was in the room posing for the portrait the entire time.
I hadn’t realized how hauntingly beautiful he was until now, the eyes almost eerily hypnotizing. I’d never seen eyes that color before come to think of it, being an odd combination of both gray and amber. His hair reminded me of something a roman soldier would wear in one of those old bible movies, yet it framed his fa
ce perfectly and didn’t seem out of place or old school.
Yet no matter how gorgeous he appeared, there was something about him that seemed hard and violent. Something in the scowl that spoke violence with his brow. Or could it be that I witnessed firsthand how dangerous he actually was? You would think he would make me feel safe, he did rescue me when there was no one else who could, yet if I never saw him again, I would be okay with that.
My attention was pulled to the first painting I completed and I realized that it was yet another image from my recurring dream; however, this time it wasn’t the mysterious stranger that was stalking me through the ancient forest grove. Instead, it was the item that lead to his eventual annihilation at my hands.
It was The Blade of Osiris.
Honestly, this was the first time that I consciously got a good look at the thing, for in my dreams it wasn’t something that I took the time to examine, except for the last nightmare, when I was able to take full possession of the dreamscape around me. Even then, it let off such brilliance that it was almost blinding to look at it head on.
Here it was now, painted in exquisite detail and I was in awe. The Blade itself wasn’t very large, about the size of a butcher’s knife if I had to make a comparison to something I knew. It was all black, yet a clear, pristine ebony that you could almost see through if you looked at it long enough. The tip of the Blade was etched in some type of Azure, brightly glowing hieroglyphic, something you might see on the side of a tomb in ancient Egypt.
Yet it didn’t look ancient, not in the least, instead, its style and design seemed ultramodern in appearance, almost alien in nature. It was just odd. I’m not even into to science fiction like that for me to have dreamed up a weapon such as this. Maybe I saw something similar in one of those lame space movies Aiden always has me watching with him.
It wasn’t important though, because what I really needed to do at this moment was get dressed, we were already running late. I needed to shower, random parts of my body were streaked in paint, but honestly, I wasn’t up to it. I grabbed a pair of skinny jeans and a black tee shirt, the one with the cartoon drawing of Snow White aiming a double barrel shotgun at her evil stepmother, then rushed to the bathroom, brushing my teeth and putting on some deodorant.
When I came downstairs, they were already waiting, kissing on the couch and staring into each other’s eyes.
“I’m ready.” I announced and the two of them jumped up, still hand holding hands in that playful way couples do when they are excessively into each other.
“Hey, Abigail told me what happened.” Aiden began. “I’m sorry lil sis, if I was there...”
“You would have just gotten yourself shot.” I really wasn’t in the mood for this right now.
Aiden was unfazed by my remark. “That’s one theory.” He continued. “But I’m gonna put the word out, it’s a small town, somebody must have seen him before...”
“It’s not necessary Aiden.” Here we go...
“What do you mean it’s not necessary?” He demanded. “I don’t know why we didn’t call the police last...”
“Because everybody was drunk and high. If the Cops show up, it’ll just cause more drama then it’s worth.” I said.
“Yeah, but still Madison...”
“He’s dead anyway, so it doesn’t matter.” I was looking for the keys. I couldn’t find them.
Again.
“What do you mean he’s dead?” Abigail questioned. “When did that happen?”
“I don’t know, sometime last night I guess. I saw it on the news after you went upstairs.”
Where are the keys? I thought I left them on the counter last night.
“I’ve got the keys Madison, stop looking.” Abigail grabbed my hand. “Where did they find the body? A dumpster?”
“Yeah, well, behind a dumpster.” I responded. “How did you know?”
“It’s Florida. Dead bodies are either found in the ocean or in dumpsters here.” She replied.
“You’re way to morbid first thing in the morning you know that? But yeah, behind a dumpster, strangled to death.” I grabbed my schoolbooks off the lounge chair. I had a science paper due, well, today I reckon. Oh well, I could get an extension, I guess.
Abigail seemed confused. “Wait, I thought you said he was shot.”
“He was. Guess he tried to carjack the wrong person after me.”
“If you say so Madison.” I could tell by the look on her face that she wasn’t going to let it go. “You sure you’re okay? You seemed kinda detached.”
“What do you want me to say? The dudes dead and I’m kinda stoked about it.” That came out a little more caviler then intended.
“Hell yeah, you should be stoked. Mofo got what he deserved.” Aiden proclaimed.
“Look, I don’t wanna talk about it anymore. Can we just drop it?” All I wanted to do was leave. Either that or stay here and paint. What I didn’t want to do was have this discussion any further.
“Yeah, no prob lil sis, it’s time to leave anyway, we’re late enough as is.”
I knew Aiden, knew him my entire life and when I said I didn’t wanna talk about something, he recognized when to leave well enough alone.
With Abigail however, I could see this conversation wasn’t over by a long shot, but at least she let it drop for now and for the moment, that was good enough for me.