by Rue Volley
“Almost two years,” she said.
“How old am I?” I asked her.
“Nineteen, you came to us when you were just seventeen.”
I blinked and looked over at the window.
The snow was falling slowly. A bird landed on the windowsill and I stared at it.
“You okay?” she asked me.
I looked at her, a little surprised that she would ask that question of me.
I am in an asylum, obviously I have problems that I don’t even know about.
I laughed at her and rubbed my head.
“Sure… I am insane,” I muttered.
“No… you just have no memory, Rue. It’s a different thing, than being insane,” she said.
I looked at her nametag.
“Listen, Brooke… is it?” I asked her.
She smiled at me.
“Why did I come here?” I asked her.
She shook her head and walked to the door.
“For the hundredth time, you were in a car accident, hit your head,” she said.
She walked out and I looked back at the window.
“I don’t remember,” I muttered to myself… whoever I am.
Thank you for the love and support:
Holly Buckler for editing Blood and Light and this monster. You are my hero!
Laurie Lambert, Kimberly Morgan, Samantha Hicks, Joshua Hicks, Melanie Fella, John Fella, Jackae Johnson, Mina Matlock, Josh Matlock, Jason Milner, Michelle Fenley, Brittany Boyd, Keisha Bankhead, and William Hicks.
Once again many thanks to my husband, Von. Sorry I sacrificed so many date nights.
Oil and Water
Rue Volley
The right of Rue Volley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him/her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it was published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Cover Design by
Rue Volley
Copyright© 2013
All rights reserved
Vamptasy Publishing
This book is dedicated to finding hope in life.
What a beautiful thing to discover.
Oil and Water
Chapter 1
Cocktail for Volley
I sat there in my awesome white asylum gear, twisting my “Volley, Rue” wristband. I was waiting for my doctor. My doctor… really? Will I recognize this person; will he or she just sit and smile at me, scribbling down whatever I say? I looked up at the ceiling and at the walls. White, white, white… more white. Even my chair was white. God.
I heard the door open and I turned to look. A woman walked in and smiled at me, holding a clipboard and a pen. She sat down across from me and crossed her legs. I squinted, trying to read her nametag. Does that read “Holly”?
She cleared her throat and my eyes went to my hands.
“My name is Holly, Rue,” she said as she smiled at me some more.
I thought about grinning, but I didn’t want to look crazy. Yea, right.
“Okay,” I said.
She tapped her pen on her clipboard and relaxed in her chair.
“Well, tell me… how do you feel today?” she said.
I laughed out loud. She wasn’t seriously asking me how I “felt”, right?
“What is so funny?” she asked me.
“Oh, I don’t know.” I looked at my white shoes and then around the room.
“Okay, if you want me to just let you express yourself, then you go ahead.”
I tilted my head at her and waited. What do I say? Express what?
She started to write something down on her clipboard. I leaned up, trying to get a peek at whatever she was doing. She raised her eyes to me and held her clipboard up to her chest and bit on the end of her pen.
“Are you really a doctor?” I asked her.
She sighed and laid her clipboard down. I glanced at it and saw the word ‘loner’.
She laid her pen down on the paper and looked at me.
“Yes I am,” she said. “In fact I am your doctor, have been for almost two years now. We do this every day, Rue.”
I blinked and leaned up in my chair.
“I have never seen you before,” I said to her.
I know it sounded crazy, big surprise.
“You say that everyday too,” she said.
“Well, that’s awesome,” I said.
“Why do you think it’s awesome?” she asked me.
“I don’t,” I said as I fidgeted on my chair.
“Okay,” she said as she picked up her clipboard and wrote something down.
“Why did I come here?” I asked her.
“You were in a car accident; you were hurt. After you healed in the hospital, you never regained your memory and they sent you here,” she said.
I leaned back and crossed my arms.
“Uh huh,” I said.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” she asked me.
“I don’t even know you,” I said.
She grinned. I didn’t.
She stood up and walked to a table, a white table of course, and picked up some cards. She walked back to me and sat down. She lifted a picture to me, looked like someone hurled black ink on, and looked at me.
“What do you see?” she asked me.
I stared at it for a moment and shook my head.
“Umm, I guess it looks like a severed head,” I said.
She looked at it and wrote on her paper. I waited, I didn’t know if that was a pass or fail situation. I would assume that a ‘severed head’ didn’t fit into a normal category. She held up another one and I bit my lip.
“And this one?” she asked me.
“Oh I don’t know… looks like a dead bird, on the road,” I said.
She looked at that one too and wrote again.
I looked up at the ceiling and tried to find a break between the white tiles.
She cleared her throat and held up another one.
“Rue?” she said. I looked at her.
“I’m sorry, I just find this boring,” I said to her.
“I know, but it’s necessary,” she said.
“Really?” I asked her.
“Please, just a couple more and then you can go,” she said.
I sighed and looked at her sign. What’s next? A dead kitty?
I stared at it and my head started to hurt. I closed my eyes and took a breath.
“What is it, Rue?” she asked me.
I opened my eyes and looked at it.
“I need to lie down,” I said.
“Would you tell me what you see?” she asked me.
“I see a broken heart,” I said as I looked down at my hands.
She looked at it and wrote again on her paper. I waited for her to tell me that I could go.
“Can I go now?” I asked her.
She stood up and walked to the door. She turned back to me.
“You know, today was the first day that you said that you saw a broken heart.” she said to me. I stared at her for a moment.
“Well, what do I normally say?” I asked.
“You always say that you see yourself,” she said as she turned to leave.
“Great.” I muttered to myself.
She opened the door up and a boy walked in. I stood up and he took my arm. I didn’t know why I really needed an escort, maybe I don’t want to know. I was crazy right? We walked down the hallway and I peeked in a room. A girl sat there rocking on the edge of her bed. She kept talking to herself. I didn’t want to stare, but I just couldn’t help it. I looked at her door. Room 314. Funny, for some reason I know that number. We stopped at the elevator and the boy pressed the button. I looked over at him and he grinned a
t me.
“What are we doing?” I asked him.
“It’s medicine time,” he said to me.
We stepped onto the elevator and I watched him press his number in, it was a series 369457 or something. He glanced over at me and I looked straight ahead… Evidently, I shouldn’t know the code, I didn’t work there. I was the REASON that people worked there.
The elevator stopped on the fifth floor and the door dinged open. He started to step out and he reached back in and took my arm. I really didn’t like him touching me. It was so unnecessary. I could walk on my own. I watched a girl run past us and another boy in white chased after her. The boy who held my arm pulled me out of the way and he bumped against me. We stood there for a moment while they wrestled her to the ground and shoved a needle in her arm. She yelled out something and then started to slow down. God, I hoped that wasn’t me there. I really do. He grinned at me again and started to walk with me in tow. We walked up to a window and a girl in white looked up at him.
“Cocktail for Volley,” he said to her.
She reached behind her and pulled a chart. I had a ‘chart’… that is just fantastic. She read it and looked at me. She then started to drop pills into a little white cup and handed it to him. I looked at her and she went back to reading her book. The boy turned and pulled me along by my arm. We walked to the large window, overlooking the woods, and he sat me down. I looked up at him and he handed me the little white cup. I took it and looked into it. It had three pills, one red, one blue, and one black. I stared at it and he sat down in front of me.
“Are you going to go easy on me today… or are we going to wrestle?” he asked me.
I looked at him, trying really hard to remember anything about him.
He smiled and looked at my cup. I tipped it into my mouth and grinned as I swallowed.
“Open,” he said.
I looked at him, kind of confused.
“Your mouth,” he said.
I realized that he didn’t trust me. Great.
I opened my mouth and stuck out my tongue at him.
“Don’t hate,” he said to me.
“I would guess that I would only hate you if you pissed me off,” I said to him.
He tilted his head at me and smiled.
“What?” I said to him.
“That is the first time that you have ever talked to me, like normal,” he said.
“Like normal?” I asked him. He laughed.
I hoped that he didn’t think I was accidentally having a moment here.
I don’t feel insane; I hoped that I was not.
“Yea… it’s usually all ‘you must burn the circus’ and ‘find my horse’,” he said to me.
I blinked at him and bit my lip.
“What the hell does that even mean?” I said to him.
“Beats me,” he said as he shrugged his shoulders.
“How long have you been here, I mean with me?” I asked him.
He sat back and looked at me.
“Oh... well let’s see. I am interning here; I started a month ago… you were here when I got here,” he said.
“So, you have not been here for two years with me,” I said, like a statement… not a question really.
I looked over at a boy watching his own hands tremble in front of his face.
“No, I have not,” he said. I looked back at him.
“So… do you know who brought me here?’ I asked him.
“No clue,” he said.
I sat back and I started feeling light headed. It must be the crap I swallowed. My head started to feel like it was too heavy for my neck. I tried to hold it up, but it was a battle. He leaned forward and said something to me. It sounded like an echo. He reached out and stood me up. We started to walk back to the elevator and I glanced over at the girl behind the counter.
“You don’t know who I am!” I yelled at her.
“Oh, here we go,” the boy muttered to himself.
He grabbed both of my arms and got me onto the elevator.
He started to punch in the buttons. I raised my hands and started to sing.
“369457…369457,” I sang as I swayed.
“Rue… Rue!” the boy said to me.
I leaned against the side of the elevator and looked at my hands.
I swear that I saw a color.
“RUE!” he yelled again.
I looked up at him and raised my finger to him.
“You don’t yell at me… I am royalty,” I said to him.
“Uh huh,” he said as the door dinged and he started to walk out.
He held out his hand and I took it. I don’t know why.
“Kiss it,” I said to him. He looked back at me.
“What?” he said.
“Kiss my hand,” I said to him. He shook his head.
“Absolutely not,” he said to me.
I lunged at him and knocked him down.
“You don’t know who I am!” I screamed at him.
He struggled to roll me off of him. Another intern ran down the hallway towards us. I tried to hit him in the face and he blocked me. The other boy stopped and looked at him fighting me off. He grabbed me around the waist and picked me up, while I continued to swing and kick my legs.
“Dude, I can’t believe that you can’t handle a 90-pound girl,” he said to my victim.
“Shut up,” he muttered as he pulled himself up.
I continued to swing until I suddenly felt really tired. I started to slow down until I finally stopped and my head fell back on his shoulder. He grinned and walked me back to my room. He laid me down and locked my door behind him. I tried to keep my eyes open, but I couldn’t. I had won the battle, but lost the war.
***
“Lord Barrington?”
Josh turned from the window. He looked up slowly and sighed.
His eyes were dark and the circles under his eyes were gray.
“Is it time?” he asked.
“Yes… the council awaits you,” the young guard said as he turned and walked back out into the hallway. He waited just outside the door.
Josh turned and looked out the window; he watched the clouds drifting slowly by him. “Rue,” he whispered.
He clinched his fists and released them. He knew that he was living his last moments as himself. Soon he would become what he was meant to be. He had dreamed of this day as a boy and now, as his opportunity approached, he dreaded it with all of his heart. Sophia had allowed him to live in his pain for over a month, perhaps it was her sick way of reminding him that she truly had all the power.
He stepped back from the window and took a deep breath. He closed his eyes and smelled the sweet flowers that permeated all of Valon. He opened his eyes with a flash of Rue’s face in his mind. If he could only hang onto one thing that reminded him of her, maybe this would be okay. When you have nothing, you have to dream.
He walked to the door and the guard escorted him down the long hallway and then they stopped at a large door. The guard reached and it opened before he could turn the handle. A young girl stepped out and looked up at him. She grinned. Josh stared at her for a moment and then looked inside.
Sophia stood on the platform, facing the mirror. She held her hands out as everyone chanted around her. Josh stepped into the large room and the chanting stopped. Sophia opened her eyes and looked at him. She held her hand out to him and he walked to her slowly. He stepped up onto the platform and turned to her.
“Lord Barrington, today you become what you should have been long ago. Valon’s protector, her people’s protector… a servant to the creator,” she said.
Josh looked into the large mirror and watched it wave like water. He looked down at his hands and felt a slight vibration in his fingers. Sophia leaned over to him and turned her back to the many protectors who stood in the room.
“You would be wise to make a speech, proclaiming your loyalty to our city and to the protection of her people.”
Josh closed his eyes and turned to
the many protectors awaiting his speech.
He looked at his hands and then at all of them again.
“I, Joshua Barrington, am the last remaining ‘Lord’. I pledge my life to the protection of Valon and all who reside within her walls,” he said, not all too enthusiastic.
Sophia sighed and stepped up to the edge of the platform. She held her hands out and stared at all who had gathered to witness the birth of a Lord.
“It is known that my son, Caine, was also a Lord. He is unfortunately no longer walking on this plain. I would only hope that my sweet son has found peace in death, which immortality could not give him here. We are fortunate to witness the rise of our last Lord. He will serve us well, hopefully producing an heir, to carry on his lineage.”
Josh stared at her and clinched his fists. Sophia turned to him and smiled; she stepped up to him and touched his face. He closed his eyes and fought back the urge to rip her head off. He felt a vibration well up in his chest and Sophia whispered in his ear.
“You have done well in your decision to protect your home. Let me rid you of your pain… it is beneath you,” she said.
Josh shook his head and turned to face the mirror.
Sophia raised her arms and started to sway back and forth. All protectors in the room closed their eyes and a murmur started to rise. Josh watched as the mirror rolled slowly and he took his shirt off. Sophia walked to the large table and picked up her blade. She slowly ran her fingers along the blade and let it slice into her fingertips. Her blood started to swirl on the metal. She turned to Josh and he held his hands out.
“I am the beginning and the end,” he whispered.
Sophia smiled at him and cut him across his chest. He hissed and kept his hands out.
“I am blood and light,” he said.
Sophia cut him deeper and he tried to stand his ground.
“I am,” he said. Sophia stared at him and tilted her head.
“Continue, Joshua, for your benefit,” she whispered.