The Exquisite and Immaculate Grace of Carmen Espinoza

by Rebecca Taylor

  When the first stretching heads of his flesh found mine, I felt them begin to burrow into my chest. More tears erupted from my throat but I shut my eyes against them.

  With what few seconds I had left, I needed to think, not panic. All the offenses had a key—what was the key I needed here.

  “I want you,” his words groaned at me. “I want you so much.” When he shifted, my own skin shifted as well, the sensation made bile rise up in my throat.

  “I don’t want you,” I sobbed.

  A release. So tiny I almost thought I imagined it, but it was real, I felt my fingers able to move, only slightly, inside of him.

  How had that happened?

  “I don’t want you,” I whispered and felt several of the small attachments between us slide from my skin, like a doctor removing a needle but it wasn’t enough, most of me was still tangled and undefined. “I don’t want you,” I said again and watched the rest of the small connections wither and recoil.

  Now how do I separate from him completely—what was the answer?

  This offense was about lust. The minute I had walked in I had wanted it, my body had practically screamed out for it and it didn’t matter who showed up, I was completely enthralled in the physical pull of the attraction.

  All around me were people, no, things having sex. Sex with strangers. Sex without love.

  And then I knew, exactly, what the key to this offense was. My eyes again flew to the place I knew Ray stood watching.

  The key was Ray.

  I knew exactly what I needed to do to free myself from this nightmare—and still, I hesitated.

  When I saw the small pieces of flesh again reaching for me I took a breath and forced the words from me, “I love someone else,” whispered past my lips.

  My hands came free, like boots pulling from a muddy bog, the slurp and suction was loud and difficult, but I was finally able to see them again.

  “I love someone who loves me back.” My voice was bolder, more sure. ‘Loves me for me, not just because he wants me.” The boy’s legs separated from mine. All that remained were his hands buried deep into my sides.

  I stared at the place I knew Ray stood and declared the truth out loud. “I love you. Somehow, I have always loved you and I know, with all my heart, that I am your everything.”

  The feeling was awful, like the boy had been gripping my organs and then was suddenly forced to release them. My stomach heaved and my intestines twisted, but the rolling mass of flesh and desire was pushed from me completely. I watched, horrified, as it contracted back onto itself, writhed like a slug on the ground before me, and then began to slowly reform into the beautiful boy I had first seen.

  He was blind to me now, and as the last of his leg changed from a disfigured lump of skin into the sculpted shape of a muscular calf, he turned from me and began kissing another girl, lost and wandering, wanting and longing, they both began to quickly melt into each other.

  Breathless and weak, I got to my feet just as the space to escape opened before me.

  There, on his knees, tears streaming down his face, Ray waited for me to return to him.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Rage

  I didn’t want to touch him. Thankfully, he didn’t try. As if he knew, again with that uncanny ability to somewhat know what I was feeling and needing, Ray gave me space even though I could see from his face that it pained him to do so.

  Still stunned and shaking from my encounter in the last offense, I could see that Ray was too. He had almost lost me, he had come very close—he knew, and he was helpless to do anything but watch me recede into the nightmare.

  He said nothing, only stared at me, waiting for the chance to sweep me up into his arms and hold me close, press me to him—just like that boy.

  Not yet. The visceral, suffocating memory was still too fresh, too real. Right now I needed air. Space. Boundaries between myself and everything else.

  I existed, independent, free. I pulled air into my own lung and exhaled through my own mouth. After several moments of this, I nodded my head once, I was okay, and extended my hand for Ray to take.

  That would have to settle him for now. Anything more physical than that was liable to spiral me back into a panic. “We should keep moving,” I said because I could see that Ray was unable to. He didn’t want to push me on or see me again almost lost.

  In the distance, the moon hung just above the dark tree line near the gates—the choice to not go on was not ours to make.

  We moved, slow and deliberate through the raw scrub landscape. Our feet pressed into the front of our shoes as we continued down, not able to stop and not wanting to reach the next obstacle. The collection of faints trailing after us had grown and seemed like a cloud now hanging over my head—a constant reminder of what waited for me should I run out of time in this place.

  Without any trees to block the view, I could see the next archway ahead of us. Like a strange stone monument erected out of the dessert it stood waiting for me to reach it. A wave of dread rolled through me and Ray’s grip tightened on my hand. I felt tired. The effort to keep picking up my feet and moving them forward took everything I had. I worried about having the strength to make it through the next offense.

  But I didn’t say so.

  Still far away, the voices from inside reached us easily and the closer we got the louder they became. Standing at the arch and looking it, a hard and stony pit settled in my stomach.

  Rage.

  I stared into the scene of blood and violence before us. Angry, shouting faces. Fists swinging like hammers into the heads and backs of others using their feet to stomp and kick. Bodies laid broken and trampled, piled into hills that squirmed with further attempts to bite and claw out eyes.

  The tears on my cheeks felt cold in the wind. “I can’t do this,” I said.

  Ray said nothing. He folded me into his arms and held me up while I fell limp against his chest. I wished, more than anything, that I could stay inside the protective circle of him forever. His hand pressed my head gently to his chest and I felt his lips in my hair. “You’re stronger than you know Carmen.”

  I shook my head and wiped my tears against his shirt. “I don’t want to do this.”

  “I know.” His head bent down and his lips brushed mine. “It’s going to be okay,” he said, but his body trembled and I knew he was afraid.

  I took a deep breath and blew it out with a shaky force. On my toes, I kissed Ray one last time, turned without another word, and walked straight in.

  Everywhere, people were shouting, shaking fists, screaming in pain. An angry mob of chaos and destruction burned with rage all around me. At first, I couldn’t even move. Groups of people beat each other, shouted incompressible accusations, grabbed clubs and bats and chased each other until someone fell and they would being scrabbling around in the dirt, shoving faces against the ground, hammering skulls with large rocks.

  I wondered for a moment if I could simply avoid it, keep away from everyone while I tried to figure out what to do—quickly. Suddenly I was careening forward, my knees landed hard in the rocky dirt and I felt the sting of my palms grazing hard. Someone had shoved me from behind.

  When I tried to get up, I felt someone’s boot on my butt right before I was again shoved down, my face grating against a hundred tiny rocks. Faster now, I flipped over on my back to face my attacker.

  She stood, wide stance, sneering down at me. Her long blond hair a tangled mess of violence, her broken and bleeding manicure curling into her palm. When she opened her mouth to scream at me, her bloody and broken teeth snarled behind her lips.

  My heart pumped hard and begged me to make a move while my brain was confused and thought of Debbie from Nebraska.

  The rabid girl leaped at me and without even thinking, I rolled away just before she landed in the dirt beside me and screamed in frustration. She was not Debbie, but she looked a lot like her.

  I didn’t wait to figure out why she was so angry with me, scrambl
ing to my feet, I started running before she could get ahold of me again. My feet slipped in the dirt but I kept going. When I was a several yards away, I dared to look back—she was right behind me, running and yelling. She was going to kill me if she caught me.

  In front of me, there was a cluster of large boulders that didn’t seem to have anyone near them. I didn’t have any idea what I could do once I reached them but at least I could get behind one to keep her back while I tried to figure it out.

  When I looked back again, she was right behind me but my legs, exhausted and weak, wouldn’t move any faster. Her dirty hand reached out, I felt the tips of her fingers run down my back, they just missed taking hold of my shirt.

  A few more steps, the boulders were right in front of us.

  I moved left then shifted right and shot around the backside of a large rock to face her. With my hands on the stone and my legs spread wide, I waited for her to make a move so I could keep the rock between us.

  I had no idea what I would do next.

  She lunged across the rock and clawed at my face, but I needed to lean back only slightly to keep away, the rock was too big.

  “You fucking bitch,” she seethed. “I’m going to kill you when I catch you.”

  I narrowed my eyes at her, somewhat surprised by my own sneer that rose off my teeth. “You can try,” I shot back. In my chest, I felt a hot flame ignite.

  The corner of her mouth rose up slightly, a defiant smirk, right before she shot left and came around boulder.

  For some reason, I didn’t move. Without a thought, I turned to face her, crouched lower, opened my arms wide and invited her attack.

  Because I wanted to hit her back.

  The tiny flame in my chest exploded into a raging fire, I couldn’t wait to dig my fingers deep into her face. Gouge her eyes. Punch her stomach. Kick her back. I wanted to beat the crap out of her.

  A swish of force tore through the air and a sickening crack broke the moment. Before me, a long wooden bat was connecting with the back of the girl’s head. At the other end of it a guy completed his swing and then turned to chase after an old man who was trying to drag his broken body through the dirt.

  Random. The guy with the bat knew the girl as much as she knew me—not at all. And yet we all wanted to kill each other.

  The girl slumped against our boulder, her arms spread over it like she was in love. She was completely passed out, and still, I punched her in her back before running deeper into the formation of rocks behind me.

  What was happening?

  I forced myself to stay low, to weave between clusters of rocks that were growing larger, denser. Drove myself deeper because, for some reason, the fire in my chest was fanning higher and asking me to turn back.

  I wanted to fight.

  There was only a small corner of reason that knew that was exactly what not to do. Releasing that urge to start tearing into someone was like giving into that urge to melt into one thing with that boy in the last offense.

  I had to remember, I was inside an offense—I needed to get out of it.

  Escape would require me to think clearly instead of giving way to this hot and insistent impulse growing inside me. When I was sure I was alone, I pressed my back again one of the large rocks and made myself just breathe.

  My arms twitched with the urge strike, so I pressed myself harder against the rock behind me and closed my eyes.

  What was the answer to this burning desire to smash someone’s face in?

  Around me, the wind shifted. I had grown used to the chaotic swirl of my hair blowing in every direction, but now, suddenly, the wind came straight at me. A warm breath on my face, and with it, the soft tinkling sound of water.

  My eyes flew open, was the reflection pool here? The possibility of this all ending now excited me—I pushed myself forward and tried to follow the sound.

  Because it seemed to be coming from that direction, I kept my face pointed into the wind. Around, over, in between, I moved through the garden of boulders giant and small trying to find the source of the sound. After several minutes I stopped and looked back and realized I didn’t know where I had come from, the entire landscape behind me was bulbous stones with no discernible path or marker to help with direction.

  I turned back to the wind, my only guide now, and could detect the sharp scent of swampy growth. I was close. The prospect of finding the answers I needed to save Daniel, and myself, made me hurry.

  Ahead of me, the rocks became smaller and spaced further apart. The closer I moved the more I could see, there was a space, a clearing, encircled by a series of perfectly sphered boulders that came up to my waist. I stopped and stared, in the center was a large pond, it’s rippling surface reflected shards of light, like erratic twinkling stars burning bright then blanking out completely.

  My steps slowed, something felt strange to me, almost…familiar.

  The closer I came, the more visible the scene became. An inch at a time, from behind the ball shaped boulders, I could see something was there.

  Someone.

  A woman sat in a chair.

  A kitchen chair. Our kitchen chair. Inside the circle, I stopped walking and stared at my mother, sitting in one of our kitchen chairs, reading her bible.

  Her back was to me.

  My eyes fixated on the details of her sloppy bun. Her hand holding down the pages. Her feet, crossed beneath the chair, brown and bare. From this angle I could just make out the curve of her chin leading up to her jaw. “Mom,” I tried to say but the sound was too faint to travel the distance between us. I cleared my throat, “Mom?”

  She didn’t turn, or even stir.

  I walked towards her. The sound of my shoes crunching it the dirt felt like a disturbance in this strange and quiet place. In here, even the wind had stopped blowing. “Mother,” I whispered, hoping she would turn, acknowledge my presence, a silent permission that it was okay for me to be here in this place.

  Still, she didn’t move.

  I was close enough to see the pond more clearly, I couldn’t be sure but it seemed as if there were things swimming and slipping beneath the surface—fish maybe? Which was odd because the entire time I had been inside The Between I had not seen a single animal besides the two pups that had picked me and Ray up and carried us up the mountain. No animals, only faints.

  When I was only a few steps away, her hand moved over the page before her.

  It was blank.

  I had seen her in this very position so many times during our life, I had assumed she was reading her bible, but this book had no words. What was she staring at? “Mom?” I tried again.

  This time, at the sound of my voice, she closed the book and rested her hand on its black cover.

  Suddenly, I was afraid. What was she doing in this place? Was this a trick? An illusion of this offense—a test?

  Was this even my mother?

  It was the smallest of movements, a slight inclination of her head was all, but it was enough to reveal the length of a black bruise running around her throat.

  “What happened to—”

  Out of the corner of my eye, movement in the pond drew my attention. Glancing at my mother, I walked to the water’s edge to see more clearly what was swirling round and round beneath the surface.

  Eyes. Hundreds, thousands of pairs stared up at me from just below the glistening surface. Haunted, ghostly faces with surprise wide mouths. When they saw me, some began trashing around, reaching their faintly arms towards me as if in a desperate plea for help. Others turned away, as if they couldn’t see me at all, pushed and pulled in the current created by the splashing frenzy.

  Why were these faints here?

  “Mom?” I asked and turned my head just as she laid her blank book down on the ground and began to climb, slowly, carefully holding the back of the chair for support, up onto the seat. What was she doing now? “What is this place?”

  She either couldn’t hear me or was continuing to ignore me, either way, the sm
all smoldering flame in my chest began to flare again into a fire. “Why won’t you answer me?” my voice was louder, demanding.

  She, trying to keep her balance, straightened herself to standing and began to turn, in tiny shuffling steps, towards me.

  Our whole life was like this. My questions, both spoken and silent, always ignored or, at best, answered in vague words that frustrated more than satisfied. Living with her had been like living with some strange half human ghost. My anger spread from my chest and through my veins like poison. “Why don’t you answer me?” I yelled. “Daniel is here!”

  I expected some shock—just the mention of his name out loud should have been enough. But she was peering above her head, arms stretched up, fiddling with some invisible task. “He is here, trapped here for all these years! He needs me, needs us!”

  Was I invisible to her? “I’m going to be trapped here too! What happened to him? You know—I know you know.” I was screaming at her now. “You have to tell me so I can help him before its too late!”

  She pulled something only her eyes could see and then slipped something else over her head, like a necklace.

  When she lifted her head, her fingers brushed against the snake like bruise that I could now see wound all the way around her neck.

  And then, I knew exactly what she was doing.

  “What have you done?” I asked.

  With two swift movements, she rocked the chair violently beneath her feet until it crashed onto its side beneath her. She hung in the air by some invisible force, her neck stretched long while her fingers clawed at her throat. My mother was hanging herself.

  “Stop!” I shouted and ran towards her. When I reached her I tried to grab her legs, wanted to push her up so whatever was wrapped around her neck would stop strangling her.

  My arms passed through her like she was made of air.

  I tried again—nothing.

  I grabbed for the chair to place it back beneath her. It too was like trying to catch a projected picture.

  Her movements slowed and her hands stopped grasping at her neck. Her feet stopped trying to reach for the chair. After another minute, my mother hung still in the air in front of me. My mother was dead.