by Jodi Lamm
Not until now.
“Where is Phoebus?” she says.
I cringe. “Please, don’t say his name like that, for both our sakes. You have no idea what it does to me—what he’s done. He’s… He’s ruining everything. He’s made you think he loves you, hasn’t he? He doesn’t, but you believe him.” I realize I’m scolding her, and that’s the last thing she needs right now. She doesn’t deserve this. “No, it isn’t your fault. It isn’t mine either. I mean, it’s human nature, isn’t it? There’s just no fighting it. We want… We need to be loved. I can’t believe I’ve wasted so much time imagining I could survive without it.”
You know that feeling you get when your chest has been constricted or you’ve been sitting too long in a stifling place, and then suddenly you can breathe again? You step outside, and the clear, chill air finally fills your lungs. You feel like you could float away, and you can’t believe you were ever accustomed to asphyxiation. That’s how I feel right now. Every chain I had wrapped around myself, every plate of metal in my armor has just disintegrated. I feel like laughing or dancing. But when I look at Esmeralda, I am reminded of why I’m here.
“Sorry. We should probably go now.” I reach out my hand to her.
She refuses to take it. “Where is Phoebus?”
“Please,” I say between my teeth. “Please don’t.” I’m shaking again, but not from nervousness. This time, I’m overcome with rage. I hate myself this way. “Esmeralda.” The sound of her name quells the anger in me. “Esmeralda, if you had any idea how much I loved you, how much you’ve changed me, you wouldn’t be so cruel. You couldn’t. I would do anything for you—I honestly would. No other guy will say that to you and mean it, but I do. Ask anything of me. Every dime I make will go to you. Every hour I live will go to you. My heart is yours. My mind is yours. Every work I produce in life, I’ll dedicate to you. Just stay with me.”
At first, I can’t read the expression on her face, but when she finally bursts out laughing, I know it for what it is: contempt. “Look at you,” she says, with more venom than I could have imagined would come from that perfect mouth. “You’re pathetic.”
Her words hurt—I won’t lie—but I know I should have expected them. She knows I stabbed Phoebus. Of course, she hates me now, but we can sort all this out later. “That’s fine. I’m pathetic. Insult me all you want. It won’t change how I feel about you. Hate me and call me names. Just come with me. It’ll be dawn before you know it, and those guys are coming back here with a rope and a ladder and God knows what else.” I take her by the wrist and try to pull her to her feet, but she resists me.
“Where is Phoebus?”
“Please, Esmeralda.”
“Where is Phoebus?” She’s mechanical. She’s ruthless.
I can’t stand it any more. “He’s dead,” I say.
She looks almost as though she expected to hear exactly what I said. She most definitely believes it. Her whole body sags. She looks like she’s going to be sick. I know I’m doing this to her, but I can’t stop. No, I don’t want to stop. Her horror, her hatred of me is far easier for me to handle than seeing her dream of love with him.
“If he’s dead,” she says, nearly spitting the words at me, “you’d better leave me here because I have no intention of surviving this.”
I can barely see her through the red in my eyes. How dare she show me such beautiful possibilities, and then snatch them away. How dare she. I can’t understand it. I can’t understand anything. But suddenly, I want Phoebus to be dead more than I’ve ever wanted anything. And my reason for wanting this is what truly disgusts me. I don’t want it for any hatred I have for him. I want him dead so she will suffer. I want to punish her for loving him, for choosing an asshole over someone who would have died for her, for daring to prove false everything beautiful I saw in her. She is not intelligent. She is not different from other girls. She’s just like them, in fact. She’s just like every last one of them.
“He’s got to be dead,” I say, desperate to convince myself. “The knife went too deep. I must have killed him. I must have.”
She lunges. I expect everything but rage from her. In my mind, she’s not allowed strength after I’ve just discovered her feebleness. But she lunges, and she hits me hard. I fall back into a rotting table stacked with old, plastic planters.
So this is what they mean when they talk about cruel fate. I control nothing. I wonder whether she feels it, too: that she’s being pushed into place like a chess piece, that she has no choice in this matter. Her actions are someone else’s moves. We’ve been pitted against each other. Star-crossed, I imagine.
“Get away from me!” she screams, her accent heavier than ever. “Freak! Murderer!” Then she loses her English completely and starts screaming in a language I don’t understand.
I clamber to my feet, toppling several more stacks of plastic planters as I do. She hates me. Even if she didn’t before, she does now. And I both love and loathe her. “He’s dead,” I repeat, if only to see the pain in her face. Phoebus is our mutual weapon. She swung at me with his name, and I will slice her with his fate. I can be crueler. She shouldn’t have woken the beast in me. She should have accepted my kindness. “He’s dead!”
I back toward the door, and she sinks to the ground, defeated and ready to die. I can already feel the tears burning my own eyes. Lucky Esmeralda. It’s much more pleasant to freeze to death than it is to burn. It’s much easier to fall asleep in the snow and just give up. When you’re on fire, you can’t stop fighting, even though you know you’ve already lost.
BOOK NINE
The only thing left for me to do is run.
I doubt I’m even human any more. That’s the truth. I’m fleeing like a hunted animal, but the shadow I can’t escape is my own. It is forever at my heels.
After an hour, I board a city bus, breathless and exhausted. I don’t bother to see where it’s headed. I don’t care. I just have to keep moving. I have to get away. The moon has set, and soon the sun will rise. I wish I could freeze time, but it wouldn’t matter. If I approached Esmeralda again and offered to save her a second time, if I reached out my hand to her, wouldn’t she just slap it away? Wouldn’t she just tell me she’d rather die alone than spend another second with me? How can I fight that? Who am I to take from her the tragic end she so badly wants?
Three people sit in the seats across the aisle from me. Two of them are making out. It takes me several minutes to recognize them. The third-wheel’s name is Tristan. He plays defense, I believe, although I’ve never actually been to a soccer game, so I couldn’t say for sure. The other two, the boy and girl who can’t seem to separate their faces are—it pains me to report this—Lily Darling and Phoebus. He’s just fine, a little stiff maybe. I can see a bandage peaking out from under his shirt.
I pull my hood strings tight and wish to God I’d stabbed him deeper.
“You know they’re only doing this because they think you’re dead, right?” I hear Tristan say.
Phoebus pulls his face away from Lily. “I think they’re doing it because they want to do it. Wouldn’t make any difference whether I got involved or not, most likely. Those guys are brutal.”
For a moment, Tristan seems troubled by Phoebus’ complacency. “Yeah, but it could make a difference. I mean… don’t you care?”
Lily pulls Phoebus back into her arms and gives Tristan a look that would be more appropriate on a mother grizzly standing over her young. “Why should he care? She tried to kill him. I’m not letting him get anywhere near that bitch ever again… not even to save her life.” For a moment, I see regret in her expression, but whatever goodness Lily Darling has buried at her core doesn’t stand a chance against her fear, her jealousy, and her terrible animal instinct. She punctuates with a timid, “Fuck her,” which is even less convincing than her new attempt at behaving like a proper slut.
In the past, I couldn’t understand why one person would go through so much to secure the affections of another.
I scoffed at it. I saw the way people changed who they were for the sake of a crush or even love, and I thought them stupid for doing so. Now I know the truth. The change in you doesn’t happen because you want it to. It happens regardless of your intentions. And, like quicksand, the more you fight it, the faster it pulls you in.
II
Long after Phoebus, Lily, and Tristan have gone, I’m still sitting in the same uncomfortable seat, riding the bus to the end of the line. I don’t want to be anywhere near the school or church at dawn. I don’t want to be able to find my way back.
It’s clear to me now. My own reflection is finally coming into focus. All along, what I thought was a hero’s cape was really a monk’s cowl: the dark costume of the gothic villain. I am the freak, the lurking shadow, the breath on the other end of the line. I’m not supposed to save the girl; it’s me she must be saved from. Probably this idea is laughable to you, but let me show you what it looks like from the inside.
My first thought is of my brother, how right he was. It was ignorance of myself that led to this, my own belief that I could choose what I became. Every good deed I ever tried to do was twisted, from my earliest days, into something destructive.
I spoiled my brother; now he’s an addict.
I befriended Valentine; now he’s been accused of assault.
I tutored Peter; now he’s hanging out in the Court of Miracles.
I fell in love…
Love, in anyone else, is the highest of human virtues. But in me, love is warped. In me, it’s a fire, devouring everything I wanted to become. It’s hopeless. Poor Esmeralda. To be loved by a thing like me… Every girl I scorn walks away with a free after-school alibi. I despise Phoebus, and he’ll probably be more popular than ever because of his injury. But Esmeralda I love, and for that, she’ll be killed.
And then I think about her killers, how they’ve stripped her, how they’ll handle her. She’s a holy vessel, and those animals will deface her. This thought is followed by two more I only wish I could attribute to madness. First I’m angry with her for letting them touch her. She had a chance to escape and she threw it away, just because it came from me. Second—and this I am most ashamed to admit—I envy her killers. Because they’ll put their arms around her body. They’ll embrace her to hoist her into the noose they’ve made, and she won’t reject them the way she did me. This thought, this first glance at the demon in me, is enough to make me shiver in fear and disgust.
I exit the bus at a stop I don’t recognize. It’s rural, away from the city. If I can just get far enough from the world I know, maybe I can outrun this. I wish I could just keep going until I hit the coast. I want to stand in the sea and taste the salt in the air. I want to feel small and believe that nothing I ever do could possibly matter.
I walk down the old road, run my hands along the rotting fences, and breathe in the dawn. The cattle and horses are just starting their day. I feel like I’ve stepped into another world, and suddenly, I wonder if I really could. Is the idea of all possibilities existing at once more than just popular science fiction? Could another me exist on another plane, a me who is not a monster or “the priest”? Have I, somewhere, held Esmeralda in my arms, kissed her, told her how much I treasure her, and has she responded with equal love? Do we travel in the summertime? Do we go walking along the coast? Do we study together during the school year? Are we part of each other’s lives?
I swear if she loves me on another plane, we are the happiest couple that ever lived. I swear no one ever loved another person as much as I love her. But in this twisted world of mine, that only means no one has ever hated another person as much as I hate her.
The cock crows a third time, and my mind swells with the guilt the universe intends to inflict on me. Yet when I examine myself more deeply, when I dig under that pretentious layer of remorse, I can see the truth in me. I’m not sorry. Right now they’re tying a rope around her neck and clumsily attempting to string her at an appropriate height. Right now someone is trying to match her handwriting and compose her suicide note. But all I can think about is how, right now, she does not belong to Phoebus. And she never, ever will. So how monstrous will you think I am when I tell you that every decision I have made to this point, I would make again and again?
Still I can’t shake the vision of her struggling for her life. I see her tears, in my mind’s eye, soaking into the rope I’ve slipped around her perfectly sculpted neck. I see the discoloration of her face as she suffocates. The blood. The sweat. The fear dripping off her.
My knees give way, and I fall to the ground. I’m shivering with horror, gasping for air. My skin tingles. I recognize hyperventilation, but I can’t seem to stop it. I bring a hand to my face, only to find I’ve been crying all this time. I am soaking in my own tears. I can’t even hold myself up any more. My vision tunnels. And I collapse.
III
The first thing I see when I open my eyes is a dewdrop glittering on a blade of grass. The first thing I hear is a bird singing gleefully as though spring has come early this year. Cattle low in the distance. A cool breeze sweeps through the pasture and pushes the hood from my head. The day is crisp and the sun is high in the sky.
By now, Esmeralda is dead. And I am laughing. I can’t do anything but sit in the mud and laugh. Probably there’s something wrong with me. This is not your typical laughter; there’s no joy in it. Perhaps this response is, as I have heard, the relief one feels at the passing of danger. But though the danger has passed, I feel no relief.
I hate that the earth continues to turn after Esmeralda is dead. I hate that the sun still rises and the cows still come out to pasture, that ants still build their nests and birds still sing. I hate that nature is still lovely, even though today, Esmeralda will begin to rot.
I’ve got to get out of this damned fresh air. It’s too normal, too exhilarating. I want to remain in my stupor. The last thing I need is a lucid mind. I start back the way I came and take the bus into town. Each person who boards after me is a shining beacon of innocence. Every one of them condemns me, and they’re right to do so. I’m a murderer like Esmeralda said. I proved her right, in the end.
I swim dizzily through this dream and imagine the bus I’ve boarded is, in reality, a train headed straight for hell. Hours later, I begin to wonder whether the smoke will get to me before the fire does. And I wonder how long it will take me to beg for death, as the scriptures claim I will do. Somehow, I doubt I ever would. I’d be the only person in hell too cowardly to ask for annihilation. Even in that situation. Even then, I would fight to go on living.
At dusk, I find myself walking the streets of a strange city. I don’t remember getting off the bus at all. I’m just… here. I wander aimlessly until I find another bus stop and climb aboard another bus. I don’t know what I’m doing. It’s better this way. Let me wander until I’m thoroughly lost.
I lean my face against the window and feel the chill on my fevered skin. The bus stops, and I hear the snake-hiss of its brakes. Someone sits beside me. I don’t show my face. He smells like liquor and smoke. He smells like Gene. When his phone rings and he answers with an audible lisp in his voice, I know it’s no coincidence. This is Gene. Drunk. Alone. Stupid.
“On my way, bro,” he slurs into his phone. “Naw, I’m not nearly wasted enough… Well, I had to catch up to ya, didn’t I?… ‘S cool, man. My brother was good for it… He’s always good for it….”
I wish I could cover my ears without being obvious about it. Every word Gene says is rock-solid proof that it’s my fault he turned out this way. It’s my fault for being selfish—for giving in to him because he made me laugh and because I wanted him to love me.
“Man, the guy next to me is passed out already. Bet he’s having a hell of a night.” He laughs and laughs. “Naw, it’s nobody we know. Some old guy.”
Some old guy. My hood had fallen from my head, but I cradled my face in my arms in the hopes that I wouldn’t be recognized. What good did it do me in the end? He saw
me for what I am.
My brother gets off two stops later, and I’m left alone again.
The last stop is just outside my church. I shouldn’t have picked a bus at random. I should have expected this. I am in hell, after all.
I can hear Valentine practicing from outside the building. It still sounds like home to me. I wonder how it’s possible that earlier today, I became a monster. I don’t feel like a monster. I feel just as I always have. Does this mean I was a monster all along? Does it mean there never was a transformation, just a sad pantomime finally coming to an end?
Inside, the church is dark, which is fine by me. Valentine is all about the conservation of energy. He often practices in the dark, letting his fingers read the keys far more accurately than any concert organist. Strange as that probably sounds to you, to us it’s comfortable. The organ is our hearth, and the shadows have always been our safe place, our shelter, our sanctuary.
Normally, I move through the darkness with ease, but tonight, I find myself gripping the backs of the pews as I stagger toward the altar. The floor is a tumble of waves beneath my feet. Somewhere in the shadows, I know a beast waits to devour me. Valentine’s music spills over the loft like a waterfall that threatens to wash me away. My once-home has become a perversion of itself. It’s a horror-movie funhouse, filled with the distorted familiar.
The Virgin Mother waits for me at the altar, holding her baby in her arms. The child looks like a miniature adult, with his perfectly understanding eyes, his slender arms and hands reaching out to the darkness. In some distant, other place, I hear a clock announce the midnight hour. Have they found Esmeralda? Is she waiting on a cold slab in the city morgue? Or is she still hanging in that tree, slowly becoming food for the local wildlife. I prefer to imagine her alone in the forest, where she’ll only be seen in the dreams of her killers, who will tremble and sweat when they realize they’ve destroyed the only beautiful thing in the world. I imagine the tree wrapping its branches around her, holding her close, keeping her warm in my place.