Flood

by Maria Quinn

“By who?” I question in surprise.

  “No one knows, though no one is trying very hard to find out,” he squeezes my hand.

  Good, I think to myself.

  “How…” he starts hesitantly.

  “What?”

  “How did you know, about the others?”

  “What others?” I’m confused.

  “You painted his previous victims…” he sounds tense, not wanting to push me in my state.

  “I...I didn’t...I don’t know, I just saw them, all around me.” They were warning me I now know.

  He takes my hand in between both of his, “he can’t hurt anyone else, and that because of you.” He sounds angrily proud.

  My mother and Lea bounce in, “oh my god she’s awake!” Lea fails to stifle a yell.

  “Baby!” My mother crouches near me in tears, stroking my hair and quickly holding my hand.

  “I made you trail mix, well chocolate trail mix, you know, in case you get hungry.” She sounds nervous.

  “Thank you,” I weakly smile.

  With my broken arm in its newly minted cast I reach up to take my mother's hand, “I’m fine really, just tired.” I try to comfort her, ignoring the searing pain of my burns.

  “Maxine and pounce can’t wait to see you,” she shakily says through her tears.

  “When can I go home?”

  Lea chimes in, “I'll go find the doctor and ask!”

  “There’s no rush, just rest,” James soothingly says, gently caressing my arm.

  Looking around I had hoped to see Greg.

  “What is it sweetie?” My mother asks worriedly.

  “Greg never came back?” I ask sadly.

  “Oh honey…” tears well and floods her eyes as she continues stroking my hair behind my ear.

  Looking at James for an answer; he had a devastating look on his face.

  “He…” he pauses thinking how best to tell me, “he was found by the cabin…” he inches closer squeezing my hand, “buried next to Austin.”

  I’m speechless, I feel scooped out like a pumpkin, my best friend is gone, and I callously thought he ran away from me. All I can do is sob uncontrollably.

  Trying to sit up my body tensed at my wounds and I fell back into my pillow. Crying hurt, everything hurt, the emptiness even hurt. I don't know what to do with myself.

  “When...when is the funeral,” I manage to say through the tears.

  “Tomorrow,” Lea answers as she reenters, the room, crying as well.

  Sitting up fervently, “I'm going,” I state resolutely wiping my eyes, staring out into the exploding storm outside to ignore the one within.

  No one fought me; they knew they wouldn't win. There is no winning in this situation.

  79

  Greg's funeral is met with the entire school in attendance. The small funeral home struggles to service the influx of visitors, running out of prayer pamphlets within an hour. I stood watching over him in a melancholy trance, his beautiful face made perfect by the mortician. He is devastatingly hard to look at, but like an accident on the side of the road, I can't seem to look away.

  It's like going to a puppet show and the puppet is lying there dead with its strings cut, the music is still playing, and the scene continues on around him, and he doesn't move. Everyone just kept moving past him, while I'm here waiting for him to get up and hug me like nothing ever happened. I feel like a limb has been amputated, I still feel him but he's not here.

  The funeral procession is long and beautiful. The ancient graveyard where he will spend eternity is a hauntingly beautiful place with old limestone headstones from the 1800s and angel statues with flower bouquets dotting the lawn.

  It's strange how some of the most beautiful places in the world are so full of death and sadness. It’s not the place itself that holds that sadness, it's the congregating of sad people and the burying of their grief, and I guess we build such beautiful things on these places to distract us from our morning, or at least for the moment forget about the scariness of death. But there is no beauty in death, just decay, atrophy, and nothingness, unless of course you wait long enough, then our bodies become fertilizer and can grow something beautiful eventually...or just weeds.

  Pushing my thoughts aside I attempt to focus on the sermon and friends sharing stories, but everything is distant and muffled from wherever I am. James holds my hand the entire day, not letting go once while my mother stands at my left keeping my broken body from falling over. Dizzy and exhausted, I try and push down my discomfort as this is only the first funeral of the day, Lucy's is in the afternoon.

  80

  He didn't break me, but something in me has changed, but I can't quite place it. It's like I'm a crumpled piece of paper, you can smooth it out but it with never be perfectly flat again. The urge to leave this town is within me now more than ever

  People who live in tornado alley, or on the coast where hurricanes hit every year, why do they keep coming back to the same place that gets destroyed every year? How much devastation does it take to finally leave? That is what this town is to me now, nothing but bad memories and pain. The only thing keeping me here is my family. I just don't know if they are enough.

  And the ghosts are gone, but their effects remain; still messing with my mind. It wasn't until I saw their pictures—his victims—in the newspaper that I realized my rose necklace is the same one that one of the victims was buried with. I don't know what to make of this, of anything anymore, I'm not sure I care.

  And something happened at the bottom of that river, it was like that dream I had where I could breathe underwater, except it was real. I swear it was real. The flowers are real, the body was real, the necklace is real, why not this? I just need to get away from all of this.

  81

  A week goes by before I'm able to enter Lucy's house without crying. I’m all she had and I left her alone in the end. There's so much left unsaid. I still can't believe she left me all her things, her house, her life. There's so much to go through, stacks upon stacks of books and cabinets full of antiques and memories hanging on the walls. But she left it to me, and it's my duty to sort through everything and remember her through it. Staring at an old photo of her in her early twenties, I catch myself imagining what it would be like to know her back then, I imagine we would have been the best of friends as she was prone to finding trouble as I am.

  The afternoon was spent organizing items into cardboard boxes, unsure as of yet what to do with the boxes beside stack them in the front room. James will come soon to help rifle carefully through her things and organize what's left. Things have been still between us since the incident; he's afraid of breaking me, as if the wrong word might shatter me. But I'm not so delicate, it will take more than words to break me and I've proven that; the stillness lingers only in my need for quite healing.

  Thinking how to eventually break this stillness, I mindlessly stack books into an almost full box on the kitchen table. Hearing the front door open and close I turn to greet James with my arms full of books. Turning around, I am stunned to find Robert standing where I expected James to be.

  One of the tattered books slips out of my arms and onto the floor, he gently picks it up handing it to me as if it were a peace offering. Having no reason to fear or trust him I steady myself to question his intrusion into a place that really will never be mine.

  “What are, why are you here?” I ask eyeing him suspiciously, thumbing the owl necklace James gave back to me earlier.

  He scans the room with a sad tinge to his face, “just wanted to see the place one last time…” he trails off.

  “One last time? Before what?” I say stacking more books in the box, not taking my eyes off him.

  “Before you decide to do whatever your gonna do with it.”

  What am I going to do with it? I question myself in the silence, then him, “what do you mean by one last time? Have you been here before?”

  “Many times, lucy was my grandmother.” He looks at a photo of
her on the wall.

  Shocked not really but the information, but that she would leave everything to me and not a relative. The implications are curious, but I know better than to nose my way into family business.

  “Oh,” I say surprised. “Is there something of hers you wanted?” I question, scanning the room.

  “No no, I came here to see you.” He says staring at me.

  “Me? Why?” My book stacking comes to a slow.

  “To see how you're doing.” His voice is warm and trusting, but I trust no one in light of recent events.

  “I'm fine really; I wish people would stop fussing over me.”

  “It means they care.”

  “And you...you care?” I ask, trying not to sound so rude.

  He gives me an incredulous look, “always.”

  My confused look prompts him for an explanation.

  “You don't remember, do you?”

  Immediately I flashback to our shared past, “You mean, when I called for help, in the woods?” That was a long time ago to still feel like he owes me something.

  “You saved my life, even not knowing who I am, or what I've done.”

  “It's not my place to judge, and besides I was so young I wasn't thinking…”

  “That's right, its instinct for you, it's never been that way for me.”

  “I really didn't do much…”

  “You really don't remember everything…” he looks into the distance and smirks.

  “Remember what exactly?” my eyes fixate on his hands, his barely healed bloodied knuckles.

  James said Miller was beaten to death; it must have been him. And that pedophile beaten half to death across town I can probably safely assume was his doing as well. But what could I have possibly done and not remember to derive such devotion from a man like Robert?

  He sees me eyeing his hands; he feels his wounds almost self consciously.

  My eyes dart to the window to see James pulling in the driveway. Robert quickly turns to go out the back door.

  “Wait…” I say, wanting to ask him a thousand more questions but surprisingly, even to myself, I hug him and whisper a thanks in his ear for what he did. It lingers a little too long for strangers and too deep for just friends.

  He stares intensely into my eyes as we part, I'm unable to place the emotions in his eyes. Watching him leave I'm still no further to knowing our connection than before. His short cryptic answers and my uneasiness did not help the situation. The door slams behind me, I turn and run into James's arms.

  “Whoa, are you all right?” He says embracing me, stroking my hair.

  “I am now,” I say meaning every word.

  “Did something happen?” He asks with a hint of anger. He pulls me impossibly close, our bodies fitting together like puzzle pieces.

  “I miss you.” I quietly say, squeezing him tighter. I look up to him resting my chin on his chest, “I love you,” I finally admit.

  His eagerly smiles as he pulls me in for a soft kiss and holds me for a long time, like he just pulled me from the river, and in a lot of ways, he has.

  82

  I love him, at least I think I love him, I’m not really sure since I’ve never loved before. All I know is that all my best memories are with him and he makes me forget the worst of mine. When he's close I feel happy even without saying a word, and the first time I’ve ever felt peace and truly safe was that night when I woke up in his arms, and all those times he asked me what my favorite things where—favorite smell, memory, feeling—and all I could do was smile in silence was because he was all those things.

  He is the first person I've ever fully trusted, and I've tried really hard not to, but I just don't know how to untrust him. I know that whenever he's really close to me he makes me feel sick, but in a way that I want this illness forever. I know that when I’m hurting the worst or feel the happiest I've ever been all I want is to share it with him. I know that when he's hurt, something stabs me in the chest that hurts worse than any of my real wounds ever have.

  I know that time I almost died—when everything started going black, and I couldn't see or hear anything—I knew everything was going to be all right because I could still feel him holding me. I know I want him to be happy, I would do anything to make him happy, even if it’s not with me. I know if it came down to it, I would kill for him, but I would also die for him.

  And when I think of all these things I can only conclude that what I want the most in this world is to live with him, love with him, and to die with him. Even if he gets seriously maimed, goes bald, forgets who I am, or grows to enjoy golf, I will always love him.

  Prologue

  "Origins," the lettering is in silver foil on a small black leather-bound book. It is old and worn with bent pages and papers sticking out making it thicker than the binding. Wiping off the dust and debris I ask James, “where did you find this?”

  “In her bedroom, under her floorboards,” he replies uneasy, sitting down next to me as if what's inside is of danger to me.

  My interest piqued, what else will we find renovating Lucy's house? Sitting on my porch enjoying the last bits of sun between the trees I carefully glance through the book. James is to my right, hand in mine, lightly kissing my arm where my cast has just been removed. Cringing at the tidbits of content I read, I’m in utter disbelief. Always, I always knew I was different, especially after everything that's happened. But according to this book, this book of provenance, I am so much more.