American Goth

by J. D. Glass

  The lock shimmered before me and I hesitated. My father, my Da, had been the last person to open and close it, and in my mind’s eye I could see his hands setting the clasp, then setting the bar through, giving the tumblers a final twist to scramble them before letting it loose to bounce back against the hasp. How could I disturb what his hands had wrought, who knew how long before he’d been taken from me?

  Then again, whatever was in there was mine, was what I had left of him and maybe, just maybe, would provide me some insight into who I was and what I was doing.

  I inhaled slowly before I took the lock into my hand, half expecting it to move, or be warm, or perhaps shock me in some way. Instead, the brass was cool, and I received a very clear image, hands firmly set upon the trunk, and a sense of finality, of resignation, before the tumblers were spun for the last time.

  What would he have set as the combination? The two most important things in his life, or so I’d been told, had been me and my mother, and I smiled as I remembered how he’d joked more than once as I’d gotten older that they ordered me the moment they’d gotten married, they’d wanted me so much.

  I’d never doubted the love, but now I wondered how much of what I’d thought was a joke had been true. I did a quick calculation; my birthday marked the beginning of the last week of July. Maybe…

  I dialed in the numbers that signified my parents’ anniversary, a day of delight for many American children. First the ten, then the thirty-one, then finally the last two numbers of the year before my birth. I tugged the lock. Nothing. Damn.

  No, I was doing this wrong. Perhaps…I reversed the order. Thirty one first, then ten, then the next—there was an audible click as the last number fell into place, the lock popped open in my hand, and I knew my father had told me a partial truth: I hadn’t been ordered, but I’d been planned.

  I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding and took another as I laid my hand on the latch. This was it, the moment of decision. Forward to perhaps a dead end, or leave it forever unknown. My hands were steady as I shifted the brass, then opened the footlocker.

  The first thing to greet me was the scent, the familiar coal-tar and smoke scent, and right on top of everything lay his bunker boots, neatly laid over an FDNY sweatshirt that covered most of what was beneath it.

  I carefully lifted the boots out and set them on the side, then took out the sweatshirt, the slightly faded navy blue fleece with its worn patch. It was soft against my face and I let myself miss him as the scent washed through me bringing memory upon memory, things I’d thought forgotten: his laugh, his smile, the pride he couldn’t hide when he came to my swim meets, first at the community club, then when I was in high school.

  I missed him, I missed my father, his comforting solidity when I was small and snuggled into him on the sofa where we’d watch Disney movies or karate flicks on a rainy afternoon; later, sitting side by side, shoulder to shoulder, we’d sit out on the deck in back of the house and talk, about everything: school, girls, cars, and even—sometimes, not too often, but occasionally—my mother.

  Enough of that, I told myself and sighed as I folded the sweatshirt then placed it behind me. Inside the trunk itself there were two well-packed and distinct piles. To the left were a few more articles of clothing, the first a T-shirt of mine that I’d outgrown at about the ripe old age of six. It still proclaimed “Fireman’s Kid,” and the sharp lines of the folds indicated that it was wrapped around something—in fact, it seemed like several shirts had been used in exactly that way, considering the stack that lay beneath it. I picked it up, felt the weight and solidity under my fingertips and, removing the shirt, stared. My mother, her hair loose and tossing about her, sunlight streaming over her in the park I’d played in, twirling me about by the hands and caught in the act of laughing. We had the same smile, and I traced hers with a fingertip through the glass.

  I put that down too and picked up the first book on the other side. Bound in leather the color of blood, it too had a lock, a hinged flap of leather with a brass button, the sort that you push to the side and release and lock with a little key in the center. I tried to shift it with my thumb, first left, then right, and when it wouldn’t budge, I put it down, frustrated. There had to be a key somewhere.

  There were three more volumes like it underneath, then below them photo albums and scrapbooks, filled with old school reports and cards I’d made for him and photos my father had taken of us, of his friends from work and their families, and a few of him as well. I glanced quickly through those; many of his coworkers I’d seen last in full dress uniform, their wives in black and their children similarly dressed at my father’s funeral.

  I sat back on my heels. The key. Where was the key for all of these books? The very fact that they were locked convinced me more than ever there had to be something in them that could shed some light on the current situation.

  Frustrated, I pulled all the albums and scrapbooks out in a heap, and as I lifted them over the edge, an envelope fell out.

  Hope thrilled through me and as I unfolded the legal-sized flap that hadn’t been glued shut. But it quickly dissipated when no key materialized as I unfolded the papers within.

  They were documents. My parents’ original marriage license—and when I read it again, I realized it was dated five years before I’d been born. Behind that was a copy of my mother’s death certificate. It listed the usual information, such as her name and dates of birth and, of course, death. I read quickly through the primary cause, pulmonary embolism. I’d known, of course, what had killed her, from the initial “Mommy had something in her lungs” explanation to the fuller one I’d received when I was old enough to understand. But it was the contributing, or secondary, factor that caught my attention: spontaneous abortion.

  That rocked me so hard I almost dropped the paper. I’d almost had a brother or a sister and instead, I’d lost my mother. I wondered that my father had never told me, then thought better of it. My poor Da; he’d lost his wife and a child—how could he have told me? What would he have said?

  Maybe he would have told me sometime, I thought as I separated that paper from the ones behind it, then folded it back into the envelope. He’d obviously taken care to make certain it was preserved.

  The slip between my fingers told me there were two more documents left. The first was my birth certificate, or a copy of it at least, a black background and white type. It contained all of the information I’d expected, female infant, 7.5 lbs, 22 inches, the time, the date, father’s name, mother’s name, and mine: Samantha Joan Cray.

  Everything was in order and after I’d put it away with the others, I read the last. The paper was as old as the rest, printed with a coral-colored ink. Certified Copy of an Entry of Birth, it read in the upper left hand corner. There was a shield in the center, and Given at the GENERAL REGISTER OFFICE on the right.

  Another birth certificate. Also made for Samantha Joan Cray, for the same date and year, except for the glaring differences: the hospital Saint James, not more than a quarter mile from the shop in Leeds, and the unmistakable seal in the bottom right corner, two lions rampant surrounding a shield, encircled by the words “X General Register Office X England.”

  My mind reeled as I placed everything—save the sweatshirt, which I put on—back into the trunk, then closed it up again. The fire was almost gone and the chill of fall was once more creeping through the room despite the hum that said the heat was on.

  Answers. I’d been looking for answers, but as I went downstairs, heart full with the new information I had, hurting again for my father, I grabbed my jacket to walk outside to the shop and to Cort’s workshop. I now had more questions than when I’d started.

  *

  By the time I trudged back up the stairs to my room I was numb, overloaded from the work, slammed on all sides with new information that conflicted with so much I’d thought I’d known, and gnawed at from within by questions still unanswered. Fran was already in bed, but she sat u
p and switched on the light by the nightstand as I opened the door.

  “C’mere,” she said and opened her arms to me.

  I kicked off my shoes and went right to her. Her body was all sleepy warm, even under the tee she’d worn to bed, and I rubbed my face against the satin of her neck.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked. Her fingers drew comforting lines against my spine.

  “No.” I shook my head and sat up straight. “I didn’t even go through the whole thing. I found—” I shivered and Fran drew me back to her. I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know what to make of the welter of questions and news that squirmed in my head.

  “I found out that I have dual citizenship,” I said finally, attempting to smile, “and that my parents were married longer than I’d thought.”

  Her eyebrows raised at the first part and stayed that way for the second as she studied my face. “And?” she prompted. “What does that mean?”

  “Well, there are two very legitimate birth certificates, one from Richmond County, New York, and the other… Well, according to Uncle Cort, I was actually born in Leeds, in Saint James Hospital, and didn’t actually hit American soil until I was about six weeks old.”

  Fran started at that. “Are you serious?”

  I nodded, unable to speak because my throat tightened around the lump of grief that rose with that admission, because it brought to my mind not only the loss of my mother, but of the second loss my father hadn’t shared with me. There were other losses as well—Cort told me of grandparents I’d vaguely known about, childhood events I had no memory of. I’d lived for two years, from the time of my mother’s death until I was four, in the same house I’d just summered in, with Cort and Elizabeth—why didn’t I remember that? And he told me my father had thought there had been hints, signs, of a gathering…darkness, for lack of a better term…that seemed to be growing, had been gaining strength for some years now. But why?

  Fran stroked my cheek and caught the tear that had fallen. “What’s this mean for you now?” I knew she was aware that there was more, but that I wasn’t ready to discuss it yet, and I was warmed by both the touch and her readiness to let me speak when I would be better emotionally equipped for it.

  “It means…” I said, then caught her hand with mine to kiss her fingers. “It means that I’m not the one who really changed the rules. Somehow, during the time between our move and my Da’s…murder…” I almost choked on the word, the first time I’d consciously used it. “Someone found out…something.”

  I slammed my free hand down onto the bed. “I wish I knew what it was.” I was frustrated, frustrated and torn between wanting a moment to absorb, to reflect, and to properly mourn losses that were new and refreshed for me, wishing I’d never known, and the gut-level certainty that there was something vital I was missing. But through all of that, there was one thing that was clear: I’d been very right in thinking Fran’s proximity to me brought her into more than mortal danger. Beneath my thoughts anger smoldered, the beginnings of a rage at the unfairness of it all, and for the first time in my life, I doubted how wonderful my Da had been, because if what I understood was right, my mother’s death as well as that of my potential sibling had in all likelihood had some connection to him. And there was no way he wouldn’t have recognized that possibility.

  Fran stroked my hair back from my face. “You’re overloaded,” she said quietly, “on every imaginable level.”

  “You understand, don’t you?” I asked, latching onto the one thing I could fully comprehend, desperate to convince her for her own sake as well as mine. “This…this between us…it can’t, it just can’t continue—not if—”

  She quieted me with her lips on mine and gently pushed me down beneath her. “I understand,” she said, “I understand that there are things you don’t know, things out of your control.”

  I wasn’t going to, hadn’t meant to let her kiss me again, or help her hands undress me as they licked along my sides.

  “Let it wait right now, let the Circle complete,” she whispered. “Nothing, but nothing, can be done till then.” Her energy weaved through me, sweeping mine with it, her body silken warmth as her thighs embraced mine. She ground against me in a way that took my breath from me when her knees met my ribs and she reached between us, spreading us both, the contact shifting from subtle to sublime, her cunt on mine as amazing as her tongue.

  The expression on her face as she settled that incredible body over me, the mask of the day gone, replaced with the love and desire that shone from her eyes, curved her lips even as she licked them was enough to— “You need me, right here, right now.”

  And she needed me too, needed me to remind her that I loved her, that we were still here, that there were things that existed beyond what we’d known and learned, that as deeply as we could hurt we could love as well and not only in spite of it, but also because of it.

  I felt the embrace of her body and filled my hands with her curves, her breasts rolling under my palms, in my mouth, hips gripped and marked by my fingers because I pulled her closer, tighter, ground back into her, glanced down to see the working muscles of her stomach as her breath blew hot past my cheek, and that just so fucking set me off I could only sink my lips against her neck, then wrap my arms around her, filled with need, filled with blood and fire and once more the tearing knowledge that all I had, all we had was now and now was all that mattered as I lifted her and set her on her back.

  “Oh God,” she groaned as her spine hit the mattress, her own shock and heightened arousal at my having done that an echoing wave through me and into the slick glide that resulted. The rock of Fran’s cunt under mine found us with her hands tight on my ass, shifting me, holding me, pulling me even harder against her when I grabbed her hips, eased my hands around the perfect globes of her ass, let my fingers wrap around and spread her further beneath me. I loved her, loved the way she felt, the blazing pure power that flowed between us, intense, so, so intense it drove me out of my head and I couldn’t resist playing my thumbs against that gorgeous entrance.

  “Please,” she gasped, her hips a smooth wave under me, pushing against me, drawing me further in until… “Oh yes.”

  I couldn’t pretend for one moment that being inside her didn’t turn me on even more, because it did, it so did, and the fit was so close, so very, very close, and even better when she bore down on me. “So…fucking…tight,” I breathed out, my heart pounding as hard as my clit. “I love that—I love you,” I whispered against the tendon that strained in her neck, then traced it with my lips, my tongue, as I moved within her, filled her, stretched her, let her scratch deep lines into the muscles of my back and loving it even as she grew tighter around me, and I felt the tension build in her, in her cunt, in her stomach and the way it heaved under me, the toss of her head and the way she bit back on her lip when I gazed down at her face.

  “Say it,” I asked, knowing there was something, something deep, something desperate, she needed to let out.

  She shook her head once and her hips lifted as she worked with me, shoving me harder within her.

  “Please,” I asked again. “I want to hear it, I need to hear it.” And it was true, I did, I wanted and I needed her to be free, as free as she could possibly be with me, it meant so much to me—it meant everything.

  “Ah, fuck, Sam,” she groaned out. “Fuck me—just fuck me.”

  That. Was. Hot. It was so fucking hot I felt it everywhere, my clit, my toes, my chest, my fucking head that felt like it could come too as I thrust deeper, harder, able to move only because she was so beautifully wet, she held me so snugly.

  “Oh my God,” I managed to grind out between teeth set in muscles that had locked, with air that almost didn’t exist, “you’re gonna make me come.”

  “Good,” she managed to gasp, “because I’m gonna…just…just—Sam…”

  I felt it when she came, the pulse of her body, the wish that came from her heart, from mine, to stay
in this eternal now, and I came too, a deeper burst that started in my chest and spilt colors before my eyes before I was blinded by the flood of Light, floating in it, until I came to rest, back in the skin, back to earth, and cushioned from it by Fran, who smiled and laughed even as tears streamed from her eyes.

  We held each other closely, with loving, soothing strokes, with the most gentle of kisses, and as we finally settled in to sleep, Fran securely over me with her head on my shoulder, and her breath across the hollow of my throat, she nuzzled my neck and whispered, “It will all work out—you’ll see. Have faith, Sammy Blade, have faith.”

  I kissed her head, drew her to me just that much more, and resettled the comforter firmly over us. I closed my eyes to drift, the rapport between us so easy and clear, and something I hadn’t understood earlier about Fran became suddenly transparent: she had faith, and I loved her for it, wanted her to keep that. It was part of what made her soul, her spirit, so beautiful. It made her innocent in so many, many ways.

  My mind played with that, stretched it farther. If Fran had faith, it was because she had hope. I, on the other hand, I knew that in my world hope was a dangerous, perhaps even fatal luxury, and ultimately a fool’s errand. I shivered as I realized what it meant: I would do what I had to for no other reason than because there was no one else to do it, or at least, that’s what everything I’d been taught implied. Hell, hadn’t I been told it outright—otherwise, why would there be a need to leave a blood heir?

  But before that happened, part of what I had to do was to keep that fool’s errand called hope alive for others. And I couldn’t help but think in some small part of me that this… Really. Sucked.

  The First Cut

  Those things that nature denied to human sight,

  she revealed to the eyes of the soul.