by J. D. Palmer
I did not notice, or feel, the moment I lost her.
The moment that some ghost of Stuart took over.
Only that she was too still. That the smile, if there had been one, was gone.
“Beryl?”
Nothing. Vacant eyes slowly swivel up to look at me.
The fucking bath. He always gave her a bath.
“Beryl! Hey! Hey… Come back to me!”
I pause, grimacing at my own words, before cupping her face in between my hands.
“I’m here. I’m here. Harlan is here, whenever you’re ready.”
And she does come back. And with her comes shame. And anger. And whatever moment we had is sorely diminished by the wall that, we both know, will reside between us and anything physical.
“I don’t care,” I say. But she doesn’t say anything in response. And ten minutes later, after drying herself, slowly, she dresses in clothes provided by Cyrene. Clothes I wouldn’t have picked for her. Airy. Open. Too bright.
After buttoning the last button she turns to me and heaves in a shaky breath. “You’re an idiot, Harlan.”
But she gives me that smile.
“The debt. What is it?”
Cyrene pouts. “Are you in such a hurry to be done with me?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then.” She pauses, as if to deliberate.
There is little doubt in my mind of what she wants. “To fuck,” Sheila had said, and for once those words passed her lips derisively. And I can’t help but agree with her. Cyrene has made her intentions very plain. And not because I think she eyes me with some sort of sexual desire. No, this is a woman who enjoys power. Dominance. To have her way with me is secondary to subjugating me to her will.
If this is the price I have to pay… Well fuck. I am a person far too degraded to put much stock in this; a carnal act without love, friendship, or even respect. In fact, it’s astounding how much emphasis sex held in my life before. Jessica will understand. Beryl will… understand. I think.
She steps closer to me. Close enough that I see Beryl arch an eyebrow. She leans into my space, head in my chest as I stand stony, still, waiting for her to finally speak. She inhales deeply, breathing in my scent in an act both intimate and grotesque, before suddenly wheeling and walking to her chair.
“Outside this tent is a car. Two of my people will take you to where you need to go. When you get there, you will kill a man by the name of Erik.”
“What?”
Her face is stone. “Did you think that I would ask for something else?”
I’m completely flat-footed. I feel my face flush as I realize how much I have been played. Manipulated for the sake of manipulation.
“You want me to kill a man?”
“Yes.”
Silence in the tent. Even Sheila is dumbfounded.
“Why?” I finally croak.
“Why you? Or why him?” She paces over to the sideboard and pours a generous amount of tequila into a glass. A glass that she hands to me. “You, well, you were picked because…” She gestures towards the tent’s entrance. “I don’t have fighters. I don’t have… killers.”
“I’m not a killer.”
“No? How many does it take before you are?”
The question sits in the tent and I know I’m not the only person counting their tally.
Does a city count?
“And him… Erik.” The name comes from the back of her throat. A history giving the name rage and violence that raises the hair on my arms. “It only matters that his death will be a fulfillment of a promise I made long ago.”
I take a sip of tequila that turns into a sloppy gulp, the liquor spilling down my chin and pattering onto the floor.
“Why?”
“Because it’s your debt.”
I’m tired of being manipulated. “Tell me why. Or we walk out. I don’t care about this deal.”
“Your word means nothing?” She steps closer, mouth parted and teeth bared. “Don’t test me, Harlan. I will be the end of you and all you hold dear.”
“Fuck you.”
Beryl’s hand appears on my arm. Not to hold me back, but to let me know she is here. I know she either has a knife in her hand or is close to it. I see Sheila shift. She moves almost sensually, a casual rearranging of her limbs that I now know is the precursor to violence.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Josey says. “You need to rethink this.”
Cyrene casts a look about the tent. Venomous. Angry. “You think I haven’t thought of this? Do you truly want to test me?”
“Your people aren’t fighters. And apparently,” I take a step towards her, “you’re in here with a killer.”
She takes us all in. The stillness. The tension. The air metallic with violence. Then she laughs. “Fine. Fine. If you need to know why to do this, then I will tell you. But…” She gives me a long look. “You will do this. Or she,” a finger pointed at Beryl, “will die. Her life was the deal. And I take these things very seriously.”
I almost grab her. I can feel my hand around her throat. The danger to Beryl bubbling and gasping and then gone.
I take a step and I see Sheila begin to uncoil. I feel the whisper of movement as Beryl moves behind me. But it’s the meaty hand of Theo falling on my shoulder that halts everything.
“The old man is in here. He has a gun,” he whispers. A whisper that doesn’t fool anybody.
It suddenly makes sense why the tent is so big on the outside. So small on the inside.
“He’s not the only one. There are four rooms in here.” Cyrene is confident again. Calm. She takes my half empty glass and takes a sip. Gives it back to me. “Let’s be friends again. Yes? I tire of this.” She snaps her fingers and people file into the room, her father at the head. He carries a small bag in his hands, a grim smile on his face. Those behind him carry weapons.
My gun is out and up and at her head in an instant. We are a circle, tidy and closed and efficient. And ready. “Another step and she dies.”
“I think not.” Cyrene almost seems disappointed. She nods to her father and he opens his bag and flips it over, spilling bullets onto the ground. “My people aren’t fighters… But we have our skills.”
I pull the trigger. I know that my gun is empty, but I’m really hoping she’ll flinch.
She doesn’t. She just smiles as hands slide the guns from our grips. As we are pushed down onto our knees, as if made to kneel before royalty.
“I told you, a leader does what they have to. And…” Her mask drops again. “I would not ask this of you if I didn’t believe in it.”
“What do you mean?” Josey says.
“You all still pretend. Still act like you haven’t seen monsters. Been monsters. You are surprised that others have seen darkness as well.”
None of us respond.
“I… was not equipped for this world.” She steps closer to me. Her voice drops and the others make a circle encapsulating us. The players and the played.
“I was… A different person,” she whispers to me. “My job was taking pictures of myself and posting them online.” Her eyes find her father’s. “Dad was rich, never home.” A hard look and then back to me. “Mom was not my mom. When this happened… I was in a hotel. I…” She gathers herself. Slowly rebuilds her mask piece by piece as we watch. When she starts to speak again she is back to Cyrene the sibylline. The queen in her court. “I didn’t know how to survive. But I met someone who did. Someone who saved me.”
“Erik?”
“No.” The slightest flick of her eyes as she looks at Theo. “Darrell.”
The way she says it means that he’s dead. And the silence is one that we know not to break. There are certain names that you know, you just know, the ramifications. Jessica to me. Mickey to Sheila.
Stuart.
“Erik runs a town up north. It’s blocked off. Now, it’s blocked off. When we wandered in there it was much, much smaller. They were just starting. They call themse
lves the Preservationists. They want to keep everything Christian. Everything… white.”
“Darrell was a brother?” Theo rumbles.
“Yes.”
The story is unsaid but laid out before us like a map. We have only to look from one side to the other to understand where the valley cuts through the mountains.
“How do I know this is true?”
She looks at the ground. I can’t tell if it’s genuine sadness or another role she is playing. “Does it matter?” she finally says, fiery eyes slowly raising to mine. “She stays here until it’s done.”
“And how will you know it’s done?” I say, eager to find any loophole that will get me out of this.
“He has a tattoo on the back of his head. Bring it to me.”
What?
I do not know what to say. I had been prepared to deal with a different bargain. A different agreement. One only reflected upon myself, not on others.
“Why not do it yourself? Why me?”
Her face darkens. “I told you. My people are not fighters. They would fail. And you…” Her eyes go to Beryl. “You have no choice but to succeed.
“No?”
“No.” A sharp rebuke. All playfulness gone. “Don’t kill him and she dies. Don’t come back, she dies. Try to deceive me… you all die.”
Cornered. Backed into a small space. The animal inside of me pacing back and forth, waiting to be set loose. To take a chance on fighting, or running, rather than this insanity. But me, Harlan, I know I have to agree. I know that I must wait, and it makes me petty.
“Shitty way to treat people. Shitty example for those who follow you.You fucking liar. You fucking bitch.”
She gives me a look of disappointment. “You lead people, so you know it.”
“Know what?”
“That those who lead cannot operate in the same way. We do things, horrible things, and we take the consequences unto ourselves. And we do it quietly. Because those ideals, those religions, those wonderful things that allow people to hope… can’t exist without someone cleaning up the mess.”
The price. It’s hard not to dwell on my own stupidity for not asking what it would be. For assuming it would take some other form. Something less sinister. Something, that once paid, wouldn’t still cost me.
Had Cyrene told me to murder someone and then I’d find Beryl… I wonder if I would have done it.
I know I would.
But this… Killing this man. Even painted as someone who has killed for nothing more than to preserve his idea of a way of life… Am I any different? I executed Don. I killed…
I can’t think about that.
I should say no. I shouldn’t dabble in other’s anger. Or madness. Or hatred. I shouldn’t keep adding to the darkness that covers this world.
Do I somehow subdue these men driving us? Tie them up? Return to the encampment and break the others out?
They aren’t fighters…
But Beryl will die. That… That had been promised should I break the pact. She would be killed. Offered as some sort of sacrifice. And maybe the others as well. “Blood for blood,” she had said that night before slicing my palm. Gods, I was so blind. And she sure as hell meant it. This… mission… had been stewing inside of her for a long time. An obsession finally revealed.
I don’t want to do this. That is true. But what bothers me isn’t the killing. It’s the fear that I will get caught. Or captured. Or killed. That I won’t make it back to the others. Or to Montana.
Those fears are there. But I’m not worried about the killing. Or at least that is what I try to tell myself. My hands are tied, his life or Beryl’s. I realize that the worst part about it is what I imagine Jessica would think of me if she knew. Or my mom. I use the unseen eyes of others to try to figure out what I should feel about murder. Murder in order to save…
“Will you stop that?”
I realize my hands have been drumming a beat on my lap. Nervous hands, knowing what their future holds. I clasp them together and give up on trying to unravel the thoughts in my head. I can’t help but wonder what John would say. What he would ask me to do here.
Fuck it. I have no choice.
The men driving us are the same that picked us up. I don’t know their names nor do I want to. For them, they vacillate between open hostility and nervous questions. Something about me going on this venture, something so important to Cyrene, offends them. They feel incapable. Which they fucking are.
“You a good shot?”
The driver tilts the rearview mirror down so that he can look at me. The mirror also shows me the truck trailing behind us. Cyrene’s father, there to monitor and report.
“Am I a good shot?”
“Yeah. Like, you gonna snipe him?”
I snort derisively. “Yeah. That’s what I’m going to do. Perfect.Then just wait for them to throw out the body. Brilliant.”
The driver glares at me before angrily flipping the mirror upwards, as if by erasing our eye contact he can end the conversation.
I should be careful. I know I’m goading them into conflict to explore an avenue of escape. A way out of this.
There isn’t one.
Theo has his arms crossed. Chin in his chest and eyes closed. As if making peace with what he’s going to do.
“You shouldn’t have come.”
“I know.”
Cyrene had allowed him to accompany me. Sheila and Josey also tried, but she wasn’t letting more of us out than were staying in. Which was a smart move, if I’m honest.
Theo has his eyes closed, thick fingers slowly kneading his elbows and forearms. I’m glad the brute has come along. To share whatever onus this casts upon us. To, hopefully, make sure we both get out of this. Physically and metaphorically.
But I also want to be alone. To write this small, dark chapter of my life and then rip the page from the book and burn it. If no one reads it then, perhaps, no one truly knows…
I am a monster.
February in Montana. The thickest part of the winter. The hardest to get through. The time when it truly seems as if the sun will never return and you start to resign yourself to life in an ice age.
Hard snow. Frozen layers windswept or shoveled into small mountain chains around neighborhoods and streets. We stand by the lake. Old footprints are preserved in ice and kept uncovered by the howling wind.
“We aren’t doing this.” I say. I almost have to yell it just to get through the heavy scarf wrapped around my mouth and nose.
I can’t see Jessica’s face, just her eyes, but I know she’s smiling at me. That mischievous smile, the one that dares me to back down. She holds up a hand and slowly pulls off a glove. Wiggles pale fingers in the cold. Then the other hand.
I scan the area behind us. The cabin a hundred feet up the hill. The two neighboring houses. Empty. Or at least no smoke from the chimneys.
When I turn back around Jessica is already down to her t-shirt. She plops down on the ground and starts to pull off her boots. “You better hurry up.”
Fine.
I hurriedly start to strip down. “In and then out. This would be a stupid way to die.”
“Well, yeah. It would be.”
She pauses, seemingly uncaring of the cold, waiting for me to catch up. “Ready?”
“Yes. Fuck! The quicker we are done the better.”
We pull off the rest of our clothes, the touch of the ice on bare feet burning like we’ve walked into a fire. We hobble down the frozen beach, me cursing and her laughing, down into the freezing water only recently devoid of its ice cover.
The plunge. “It doesn’t count unless you go all the way under,” she had said. And I know she’ll hold me to it. So I go in recklessly, hell bent on getting in, and under, and out.
I’m unprepared for the shock. This is something beyond cold. It almost feels like a physical blow. I hold my breath but the air is still forced out of me. Lungs deflated. Immune system slapped into submission. Heat and energy leeched out o
f my body at an alarming rate.
I rear back up out of the water and am already sloshing onto shore in under five seconds. I hear her gasp behind me as she also breaks the surface. “Oh my god.”
We gather our clothes and speed walk up the slope, cheeks and hands frozen and lips blue. She swats my butt as we trudge up the slope. “Better hurry up. This would be an even worse way to die.”
The steps are cleared of ice and we trot the final few up to her friend’s house and to the hot tub. The hot tub that was promised me at the end of this stupid venture. The hot tub that would make this whole thing something to laugh about.
The hot tub that doesn’t work.
The moment we take off the cover we know it’s broken. Cold, stagnant water greets us. The power button does nothing.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
She walks to the lower door and jiggles the handle. “Well. Shit.”
“You didn’t… check this before?” I want to say more but my teeth are chattering so hard I can barely speak.
“Nope. This would actually be a really hilarious way to die, though.”
She is laughing.
God, I love her.
She pokes a hole in the screen of one of the windows and pulls it off. Somehow we maneuver the window open and topple inside, wooden limbs making the whole process an arduous one. A dark hallway until we find the bathroom. The light bright on alabaster bodies hunched over to somehow keep what heat they have.
She turns the shower on, not waiting for it to get hot to climb in. Her hair is frosted into thick strands, her face a mix of purple and white. She is so beautiful… I follow her in.
We do a slow dance, rotating in a circle in each other’s arms as we share the blessed heat. We melt. And come back to ourselves. And smile at each other. Deeper smiles.
“This… This would be a good way to die,” she says, arms wrapped around me as we come back to life.
Our child was conceived that day. Sometime after doing what I thought was the most reckless thing of my life. Jumping into a frozen body of water. Breaking into my first building. Falling in love.