by O'Brian Gunn
Adam suddenly finds that he can’t look at his wife. “So what do we do now?”
She rubs her fingers across her lips and looks out of the window. “There’s adoption.”
He shakes his head with conviction. “Absolutely not. The only child I want to hold in my arms is one who is a part of me, the fruit of our love.” He runs a hand through his hair. “What’s the use of dwelling on something we can’t change? I don’t want to fight about this.” He slides closer to her. “We—we may not be able to create a child of the flesh...but we can create one of the spirit. One that exists in our hearts.” He takes her hand, kisses it and cradles it. “Can you hear it, Maggie?” He whispers. “Can you hear our child laughing?” He presses their bodies together. “Can you hear it?”
She is silent for a moment, forehead pressed against his. “I want to, Adam.” Tears glimmer. “God, I want to.”
Bisset stands and watches the shadows stretch and unfurl on the wall of her darkened apartment. She feels The Dragoness emerge on the edges of her consciousness.
She sways out of the murk, sheathed in nothing but air and bare confidence. Her hair is straight and shimmering, skin glowing flawless and supple, eyes glistening in the pane of light. She stands a few feet away from Bisset, a shaft of shadow shading her breasts.
“I like him.”
“Who?” Bisset doesn’t even turn to acknowledge her.
“Adam.” Bare feet pad on the floor. “He’s so...” A deep inhale. “Light.” She wrings her lips into a grin and partially hoods her unfocused gaze with her eyelids.
“I really think he’s going to be able to help me get rid of you.”
The twin in her head snorts. “Yes, it worked so well when he tried to exorcise me.” She rests her chin on Bisset’s shoulder. “Guess that proves I’m not a demon.”
“Guess so.”
The Dragoness grips her hostess by the arms. “Then what am I, Bisset?”
Bisset stands silent and still.
“Exactly. You don’t know.” She glides fingers soft and warm down Bisset’s arms to her forearms. “I hear a bit of hesitation in your voice. You’re no longer convinced of what I am, of what you are.”
Bisset takes a breath through her nose.
“But I’ll do it for you.”
“What?” Bisset seizes still.
The Dragoness’ unbinds herself from Bisset. “You heard me. I’ll prove to you what a vicious demon I can really be. You should have accepted the terms you were initially given, it would have made all of this uncomplicated.”
Bisset turns.
The Dragoness isn’t there.
“Remember when you let me speak to Adam, allowed me to take control of your mouth?”
A nervous swallow.
“You really shouldn’t have done that.”
Bisset’s hands start to move of their own accord, moving slowly to the buttons of her shirt, undoing them slowly one...by...one.
“Now I’m learning how to take full control of your body, of our body,”
Bisset slides out of her shirt. The cool air caresses the bare skin of her stomach, slipping around to kiss her spine. Her hands find her pants.
“You desire this, Bisset, you desire me and all that I represent.”
Bisset tries to stop her arms from starting to remove her pants.
“Now I’m going to give it to you.”
“S-s-stop this. You don’t have my permission to do this.”
“I am your permission. As you sat there in that pew making doe-eyes at Adam, I could feel your craving. Curling, licking, and stroking its way in your head. You and I both saw what was behind those silver eyes. That man isn’t as righteous as he thinks he is. And we’re just the ones to show him that.” The Dragoness suddenly appears in front of her in an exact mirror image.
Bisset stands in nothing but her underwear.
She shudders as her arms, hands, fingers reach back for her bra. “No, this isn’t—STOP IT!”
Her fingers stop. Her reflection straightens.
“I only want you to experience yourself…unfettered…in all your natural glory.” The Dragoness vanishes, leaving behind nothing but an afterimage of her golden-green eyes that slowly fade in the air.
Bisset’s breaths shake and tremble as her eyes dart around her apartment.
She scrambles to find her medication.
Forty-seven years of age cross her visage like a story etched in wrinkles, laugh lines, creases, and a pleasant sense of weariness.
Anita Johnson isn’t sure that the story is a true one.
She slowly smooths her fingers through her straight auburn locks. Her face turns in the mirror, crow-feet framed eyes analyzing every crevice on her face.
Charles spits out white toothpaste foam. “Honey, I’ve told you, you’ve got beautiful, and perfect, imperfections.”
His wife wrinkles her nose and shakes her head. “I saw that picture of us in The DC Domain yesterday, I’ve got grandma hair.” She turns to him. “I want you to be honest, didn’t your mother have this hair color the last time we saw her?”
Charles pauses with foam dripping slowly from his lips as he takes in her hair. He slowly turns back to the mirror and shoves the toothbrush in his mouth, scrubbing at his molars.
Anita groans, dropping her hands. She goes to the bed, plops down, and wrings the bedspread in her fists. She welcomes the throbbing pain that comes when she bites down on the inside of her cheek.
Charles comes out of the bathroom wiping his mouth. “Anita, it’s not that big of a deal. We’ve finally got enough money rolling in that you can have any hair color and style you want.”
She jerks her head at him. “Charles, it’s not the damn hair in the picture! It’s the article that was next to the picture.” She sucks in air. “They’re saying that our gift either kills people or makes them crazy. Just yesterday Julius Banks started laughing and couldn’t stop, he nearly asphyxiated.”
Charles kneels at her feet and takes her hands. “What happened to him wasn’t our—”
“YES, IT WAS!” Her eyes are wide. “It was. We damaged that man, Charles. This family mentally damaged that man, I know it.” She rocks slightly. “I thought our gift was supposed to help people realize their dreams.” Charles’s arms are around her, squeezing her, his shoulder cradling her head. “What have we become?”
The doorbell chimes.
“I’ll get it.” Annabelle from downstairs.
Charles glances out the window at the cars parked in the guest parking lot.
Blood drains from his face and his limbs slacken.
“Annabelle, don’t—”
Downstairs, Annabelle Johnson opens the door with a smile that’s obliterated when she sees who it is. A gloved hand smashes into her freckled face and shoves her inside of the condo. The intruder walks over the threshold and slams the door shut.
The welcome sign swings back and forth on the door.
FADE OUT
DCBN Newscast - 7:05 A.M, October 22nd:
“GOOD morning, I’m Carmen Alexandra with DCBN News. Earlier this morning, the Johnson family was discovered savagely murdered in their new condo in Cade District.
“Authorities found their bodies around five o’clock this morning after a neighbor arrived home and noticed a suspicious woman coming out of their residence with what looked like blood on her jacket.
“I’m here at the scene, and, while we’d like to spare you the grisly details, we do want to let our viewers know what happened here. What I can tell you is that the family’s wrists were slashed, and each of them had a note nailed to the chest that reads, quote: As unto others, so unto yourself, end quote.
“So far offic—Detective. Detective West! Carmen Alexandra, DCBN News. Can I get a statement from you? Are you able to tell us exactly what happened in there?”
“From what we were able to gather, we know the murderer was either invited in or let in, probably by Annabelle Johnson, as hers was the first body we found
upon entry. From there, the murderer moved on to Charles and Anita before killing Miguel up in his room. The ME has found traces of an as-of-yet unknown chemical in their bloodstreams, we figure that’s what killed them.”
“So the murderer slit their wrists out of sheer spite?”
“The exacerbated mutilation to the corpses was a message. The person or persons obviously didn’t like what the Johnsons were doing.”
“And what about you, detective? Do you think the Johnsons deserved to be murdered?”
“No one deserves to be murdered, Miss Alexandra.”
“But surely you must have an opinion on all this one way or another. This family has been in the news for weeks, and now their deaths will cause even more of a frenzy. What are your thoughts?”
“I think you should focus more on the story at hand and less on the sensationalism. Now, if we’re done here, I have four murders to investigate.”
“Actually, I just have—”
“You have a good day, Miss Alexandra.”
“Detective West...DETECTIVE WEST!...Godda—”
“Still live, Carmen.”
“Oh, I—The Johnsons were a family of Alpha-Omegas with the ability to grant what was many people’s greatest wish: to be happy. In their short time in the limelight, the family made great strides in repairing ties between A-Os and non-powered Americans, ties that some say had become either tangled or destroyed since the discovery of the A-O gene.
“The next question on many minds tonight following this grisly crime is simply: what next?”
EPISODE SIX: -position
THE television set blips off.
Noir stretches out on his couch and stares at his reflection on the dusty screen. “When I said someone should kill ‘em, I was just jokin’...a lil’. Whoever they are, what that sick fuck did to that family is beyond fucked up.” He shakes his head. “Damn.” He grabs the lit cigarette from the rim of the open beer can on the table and takes a long drag. He exhales from his nose and rolls his eyes up to his houseguest. “You smoke?”
Giorgio studies him from the well-worn leather armchair, one leg flopped over the other knee with his elbows on the armrests, posted up like royalty on a secondhand throne. He sniffs delicately. “Not anymore; the deep-seated craving has left me.”
“Oh, word?” Noir pinches the cig between his thumb and index finger and raises it to his lips. “Woulda figured you thought yourself well-above such a pedestrian habit.”
“Just yesterday I witnessed you brutally murder a handful of people and now I’m watching you cringe at a simple newscast.”
Noir closes his eyes and massages his forehead. “I don’t kill kids. Ever.”
“So it’s the souls of little Annabelle and Miguel that’s got you smoking out of frustration?”
He shrugs and brings his hands behind his head, scratching at his scalp. “They were a good family, helped people.”
“There were allegations that their powers drove people mad, made them kill themselves.”
A crooked eyebrow. “Least they died happy, hellava lot more than what most people get.” A scoff around the cig. “Lot more than what most people deserve. If you’re gonna go out, might as well do it with a smile in your face and a song in your heart.”
The animated corpse goes silent before—
“We should investigate the murders.”
Noir gives him a look. “Pretty sure we were watching the same news report, deadbeat Dan. ’Member those guys in the creased black suits flittin’ around in the background goin’ in and out o’ the house, tapin’ up yellow party streamers? They’re called the police. They investigate the murders, not us.”
Giorgio stands, goes over and slaps Noir’s feet from the tabletop. “Now we’re investigating them, too.”
Noir looks up at Giorgio with smoke and a smile curling from his lips. “Why?”
The living dead man winces and looks down at his hand painted in sunlight. He goes to the window and yanks the curtains closed. “It’s been almost two weeks since I woke up in a woman’s bed with her corpse next to me.”
“Wait, lemme get a pen and paper to write this down, could become the next bestseller.”
“Nearly two weeks since I died and the kiss of a necrophiliac brought me back to unlife. In that time, I’ve watched my mother have a conversation with my sister and ask herself if she loved me, if she’s sincerely saddened by my passing. I’ve hallucinated that I talked to God, who looks like me, and learned that death and decay bring me life and I bring death and decay to life.”
Noir rubs at the wrist Giorgio had grabbed.
“My Alpha-Omega gene killed me and brought me back to give me a second chance to live my life right.” He looks at Noir, eyes glittering like emeralds dipped in golden dust.
Noir deposits the finished cig in the can. Hsss. “That why you were yabbin’ at me about the quality of life last night? You don’t want me to waste my life like you did yours?”
Giorgio ponders. “Yes.”
Noir gestures out the curtained window and leans forward on his knees. “Got a whole city o’ people equally, if not more, demented than my ass.”
Giorgio tips his head to the side. “I’ve got time. It’s not as if I’m going to die any time soon.”
“Unless the gene that killed you and brought you back to life offs you again and makes it stick this time.”
Giorgio goes still and seems to step out of time.
“Din think about that, didja?”
Giorgio walks back to the chair, but doesn’t sit. “Death doesn’t hold the same meaning for the living as it does the dead. Our brothers and sisters with blood still streaming warm in their veins only know that when a person dies, they’re gone. No more. But to us, it simply means leaving.” He sits. “And when something leaves, it has to go somewhere.”
Noir stares at him, specifically, at the crook of his arm beneath the delicately rolled-up sleeves of his linen shirt.
“What?” Giorgio looks down at his smooth, normal-looking flesh.
Noir shakes his head and reaches for another cigarette.
“Someone is killing God’s divine creations, and that doesn’t sit well with us.”
Adam swallows and nods from where he sits on the other side of Bishop Martin’s desk. “The death of the Johnsons.”
“The murder of the Johnsons.” The older man jabs a finger at the air, stabbing emphasis into the word with a pinched brow.
“The police are doing all they can to bring the murderer to justice.”
Bishop Martin leans forward on his desk, interlacing smooth fingers before him. He weighs his words before breathing them into existence. “I truly hate to contradict you, Brother Kensie, but I really don’t think the police will invest that much diligence into this investigation.”
Confusion coats itself across Adam’s face in light brushstrokes. “And why is that?”
“Because none of them realize what a blessing the Johnsons a...were.” He curls a finger over his mouth, taps his lips. “To them, that family is nothing more than four corpses. They don’t realize what a vital weapon the light has lost.” Gray eyes gleam in deep sockets. “We need to make an example of the perpetrator, punish them. They have to face God’s judgment.” A beat passes. “Your judgment, Sovereign.”
Adam shakes his head. “God’s judgment is the only judgment that matters.”
“And maybe God has seen fit to bless you to carry out His judgment, His will. Maybe it’s time that Sovereign went public, showed the entire world who he is. Starting with Dominion City.”
The younger man rubs the sweat building on his palms over the knees of his dress pants.
“I feel that God is telling us that now is the time to act, the time to respond and make our voices heard, His voice heard.” Sunlight pouring through the windows behind him halos his head in gold. “I’ve been talking about it with a few other members of the congregation; we think you should let Dominion City, and especially the murderer, know
that we of the Apostolic faith won’t tolerate those who interfere with God’s work. There’s no telling if something like this will happen again. We need every soldier we’ve got in the trenches for this war, Adam.”
Adam hears Dr. Hannigan’s words resound in his head as he explains the chances of him and Maggie successfully conceiving a child. He recalls Bisset’s poorly restrained distress when he first stumbled on her on his porch, Seraph’s uncertainty about them banishing The Dragoness. He feels the remnants of Alan’s doubt at the thought of being able to love himself again. Each of them instances of Satan interfering with The Most High’s perfect plan. Resolution burns like fire confined in his bones.
“Alright, I’ll talk with some of my connections at the police department and see what I can find out.”
The response makes the bishop smile. “Praise the Lord.”
Perry rubs his forehead in frustration. Images of the Johnsons’ bodies look up at him from his desk.
Blood soaked into the carpet. He can still smell the lingering copper scent at the crime scene.
Brains scooped out of their skulls. The image doesn’t do the real thing justice.
Limbs splayed out on top of one another. A family that died together.
He wraps his fingers around his mouth and takes a deep breath through his nose. He looks up, raises his voice. “’Ey, Birkoff, hand me that file there, will ya?”
The older officer turns, yellow-white mustache twitching underneath his bulbous nose. “You actually lookin’ into this, West?” He hands over the thin file. “Waste of your time.”
“Not called an investigation for nothing.” Perry opens the file and scans the paper.
“Tomato, potato. I’m just here for the overtime.” He slurps from his coffee mug, red-rimmed eyes blinking blearily.
Perry rolls his eyes up and peers over the rim of his reading glasses. “Are you—Jesus, Birkoff, it’s ten o’clock in the morning.”