“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are!” She snapped with volume she rarely used. “Just because you don’t want to be, doesn’t mean you can’t be! Just because you are afraid doesn’t mean you get to pull the covers over your head and hide! I need you Lenore! I need you to quit fighting me!” I searched for something on my neck to play with, but I wasn’t wearing a necklace. “This evening with Adrian, you insisted on encouraging him, when you knew I disapproved of his presence.”
“He was just being nice. I didn’t want to be a bitch.”
“It doesn’t matter what you want! It matters what your instincts tell you. My instincts told me he was bad news. You’ve always trusted my instincts before. Why did you question me tonight?”
“I got caught up in the energy. He was cute. I just couldn’t help myself.”
“And what did you think of him after you had a chance to evaluate him for yourself? Why did you pull your hand away from him?”
I looked her over trying to decide if she was asking to know, or asking to prove her instincts were right. “I don’t know.”
“Bull shit!” She was so still even though we were arguing. The storm in her voice wouldn’t translate to her body. “What did you feel when you touched him?”
“I didn’t like it. He seemed creepy to me.” I didn’t elaborate on the extent of it, but she was satisfied.
“Your instincts are strong, but they are premature. You need to start using and developing them. Garrett has only gotten you half way to where you need to be. You need to know who to trust just by looking in their eyes. You need to be better at identifying trouble before it becomes trouble.” She paused for a beat, letting the calm yogi in her return. “Perhaps you weren’t attracted to Adrian Dorn like you think you were.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe you were drawn to him for reasons other than his looks. Maybe you just interpreted your attraction to him as sexual, when it was really primal.”
I shook my head and looked for Devin and Haden. They were making out by the truck. I looked back at August trying to formulate my question. “Are you speaking metaphorically? You mean women’s intuition or something, right?”
“No, Lenore, I mean you have the power to read danger like any common person might read a street sign. Stop shaking your head.” She scolded even before I was aware that I had been shaking it. “You are special. I don’t know how many times I have to say that to you to make you believe it, but you are.”
“I thought you meant greeting card special.” I mumbled.
“I need you to step up or step down. I’ve already spent too much time asking and begging. From here on out, you put away that chip on your shoulder and start being a first sidekick, as you put it. If you can’t do that, then we’re leaving you behind.”
My eyes went wide and I could feel the evening’s beer and hot dog start to rise. “But I need you guys.”
“I know, but if you aren’t going to live up to your potential, we won’t need you.” August walked away knocking the last of the wind out of my sails.
-Dumped-
There’s a short list of reasons to stay in an abusive relationship. One of which is love. It isn’t a good reason, since it means you have to love the abuser more than yourself, but for most people love is an outwardly drawn emotion, and not an inwardly exuded one. In essence, most people are accustomed to getting their self-esteem from the people around them rather than from themselves.
The second reason to stay in an abusive relationship is fear. Not so much the fear of the abuse, cause let’s face it, at some point that just becomes standard protocol. The fear actually stems from the change required to start a new life. No one wants to start from scratch, certainly not alone.
When August told me that she would potentially leave me again, it was more than a knife in my back this time. It was a knife in my front. She was trying to be honest about what she needed from me. The problem was she wasn’t concerned with what I needed from her. Which was, simply put, quit leaving me.
Despite the offer of scrunching in the warm cab, I chose to ride back in the truck bed with my coat and a blanket. It was colder than crap, but I wanted time to think. It shouldn’t have even been a question. I should have been willing to be anything for August in order to stay with her, but I was starting to wonder if it was all worth it.
It was true I could defend myself now, and I could appreciate that, but apparently that wasn’t good enough. Now August was asking me to do something I hadn’t even imagined was possible. She wanted me to be the hero.
This wasn’t the same old story about a scrawny teenager that gets superpowers and learns to be a hero. This wasn’t even the begrudged rich kid with enough money to exact revenge through super gadgets. I was just me: born, bred, and fed yokel. I didn’t have any ambition before the apocalypse, why would that change after. It wasn’t my self-doubt and fear that kept me from embracing this new identity. Bottom line, I just didn’t want to be the hero.
I was happy as a sidekick. More to the point, I was happy as the third sidekick. It was a cushy job with lots of perks. I wasn’t sure I wanted things to change.
My mind was made up before we got home. I intended to move on without my friends. I could defend myself well enough not to fear the world anymore. I still had Priest as my friend, so I wouldn’t be totally lonely, even if he was going to be drunk and high every time I saw him.
Without fear holding me to August, the only thing keeping me with them was love, but she had already broken my heart once. I wouldn’t let her do it again. Call me crazy, but in my head I actually thought leaving them would be easier than them leaving me.
With my decision in hand, the truck rolled into the driveway and stopped. I unfurled myself from my blanket as the others unloaded from the cab. Devin and August both shuffled out the driver’s side. I was about to call attention to my decision when I noticed they were both looking at something in the distance. I followed their gaze and I saw it.
Fire.
-Karma Smacks
and Other Such Lessons from the Universe-
It was the church.
I knew it even before I jumped down and climbed into the cab. Before I could start the engine, Devin was pushing me to the side and taking over. Haden was back in the cab beside me, and I could hear August land in the truck box.
Devin sped out with as much vigor as I wanted him too. He made the highway turn into a thin line with the speed he peaked at. On the last bit of gravel road he fishtailed, but was never out of control. I instinctively grabbed Haden’s leg as if I could hold her down when the truck rolled. I must have been pinching her because she pried my fingers off and held onto them until we reached the inferno.
I jumped out of the truck just behind Devin, taking in the little white church engulfed in flames. The smell of gasoline was still present under the smell of burnt wood. This fire was intentional. Priest had planned to burn on Earth and in hell.
I lunged forward and Devin misinterpreted my rage as grief. Even if I was stupid enough to enter a burning building, the extreme heat of the fire would have kept me away. I strained against Devin’s arms. “You can’t save him! He’s gone!” He yelled over the roar of the fire.
“I know!” I growled twisting loose of his grip. I picked up some rocks from the gravel drive and threw them at the building. Most of the stained glass was already broke, but I managed to get a few clinks of breakage. “You son of a bitch!”
I yelled a long string of profanities that was in part for him and in part for me. I had trusted him to be there for me and he wasn’t. I was facing being kicked off my own team and I had no one to turn to.
I turned back and found the blanketed alarm on everyone’s faces. They expected that this would be the straw that would break me. It was, but not in the way that they thought.
I laughed trying to lighten the mood. “Boy you just can’t get a good return on the hero gig, can you? I mean really, what did I get for my ti
me and effort, three weeks?”
I walked away to focus my mind. I was panicking and I wasn’t sure how to stop it. I could take being beaten. I could take being subjected to Priest’s rhetoric. What I couldn’t take was being alone.
I could abide anything, but being alone.
I started to hyperventilate, so I sat down in the grass off the side of the drive to concentrate on breathing. August joined me. She misinterpreted my panic attack as a response to losing Priest. She sat down beside me and rested her forehead on my shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Lenore. I tried to warn you. He was just so unstable.”
“Please, don’t leave me.” My voice cracked into tears. August was surprised by my baseless presumption, but her eyes dawned with understanding. “I’ll do anything you want. Just don’t leave me. I don’t want to be alone. I can’t be alone.”
August pulled my chin up and caressed my cheek. “I should have asked you what you wanted before I drug you into all this. A reluctant hero is not much of a hero.”
“I won’t fight you anymore, I promise.”
“It’s not me you’re fighting, it’s yourself. You have to trust yourself. Trust your instincts. Don’t be afraid to be someone important.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant, but as long as she wasn’t kicking me out, I was content to figure it out as I went.
-Angels and Demons-
Seeing a grim so close was beyond creepy. I couldn’t bring myself to look at his eyes. The sallow glaze was the only thing that made the body look dead. The pallid flesh glittered, reflecting the moonlight like the snow beneath him. He was shackled to the barn. I kept looking back at the connection to make sure it wasn’t getting weak, while he roiled at the end of his leash screaming obscenities at me.
I didn’t recognize him. He looked like someone I might have seen on the street once or twice. A familiar stranger, but that was all.
“Why are we doing this?” I asked not taking my eyes off him.
“So you can talk to it.” August answered from behind me.
“Why would I want to talk to it?” I asked.
“You need to understand what you’re fighting.” She said.
I turned back to her and joined her at the fire. This was day two of our enlightenment journey. We hadn’t gone far, a few miles to the east to a different house. There were three grim still in this house, but two of them were just babies—so to speak. We killed them and tied this one up to monitor.
We kept a constant vigil over him and the surrounding area. His screams tended to draw a crowd, thus the new location. In the two days we had been waiting for grim number three to start formulating intelligible sentence structures, I had killed nearly a dozen grim and August just a few less—only because she was letting me work on my skills.
So far my training was holding up to her expectations, as was I.
“How much longer will this take?” I asked frustrated that our camp was starting to look like a battleground, minus the blood.
“He’ll talk when he’s ready.” August looked over at the creature. “He’s just waiting to see our weaknesses. Then he’ll try to trick us.”
“I still don’t see the point to this. Grim bad, kill grim, what else is there to know.”
“You need to know the mind of your enemy. You need to understand what their goal is.”
“Their goal is to maim and kill.”
“Yes, but to what end? Are they planning to kill everyone? If so why? What happens then? Believe it or not, the grim aren’t mindless zombie-fied corpses like you think. The demons that control them have an agenda, a purpose in what they are doing. You must ask him what it is.”
“Why don’t you just tell me what it is?”
“Because like everything you hear second hand, you’ll take it with a grain of salt. I want you to hear this first hand, so you can’t deny it, or rationalize it, or pretend it’s an exaggeration. I want you to know the truth. Then you can understand what your job is.”
“What’s to understand, fight grim, kill grim, save a few lives?”
“No, that’s my job. Yours is bigger than that.”
“Remind me when I applied for this job again.”
“The application was submitted the day you were born to this earth. You were hired the day you were denied into heaven.” She smiled playing her statement off as clever repartee, but I got the feeling it was pretty close to the truth.
“And…don’t take this the wrong way, but…why can’t you do it?” I cringed at how lazy that sounded.
“I’m not capable of it. Only you are.”
I wanted to deny the assessment on both counts. August was capable of everything. I was still counting my lucky stars to be a pretty decent sidekick. “Wow, did you just seriously call me the chosen one?”
“Something like that.” She chuckled. “You are important at the very least. My instincts told me that the minute I laid eyes on you. Although, had I known you were so set in your ways, I might have settled for a different prodigy.” She winked.
“August, can I ask you something.” I said twiddling my thumbs.
“Of course.”
I looked up at her opening my mouth to ask it, but finding my mouth was dry. I swallowed hard letting the saliva come back on its own. “Are you…” I couldn’t believe the words I was about to speak. “Are you an angel?”
I waited for her to start laughing, but she managed to restrain herself, though the smirk on her face twisted pretty high before she managed to respond. “Why would you ask me that?”
“I…just feel different around you. Ever since we met, I’ve been drawn to you.” She nodded trying to understand. “Not in a…just like…familiar. You know?”
August looked down at her hands remembering something. “I’m flattered.” She looked back up at me in earnest. “Really, I’m very honored that you could think that of me.”
“Is that a no?” I asked noting that she hadn’t denied it.
Her smile grew so large that all her teeth were showing. “I’d prefer to let you continue thinking that I am, if you don’t mind. I like the way you look at me, Lenore. I like what I reflect in your eyes. You make me feel magnanimous when you look at me. There is something else to take into consideration, though.” August took in a deep breath and exhaled before going on. “Maybe I’m not projecting. Maybe you’re just sensing. If that’s the case, then I am even more flattered.”
“Would you really have left me? Before you threatened to leave me if I didn’t try harder. Would you have left me? Would you have found another prodigal sidekick?”
August’s eyes watered. I had never seen her cry. To see it, was like watching my own mother cry. Uncomfortable because she is supposed to always be strong, but heartbreaking because you know she can’t. “There was only ever you, Lenore. Only death will take me from your side and God willing, not even then.”
I was surprised to hear her speak of God. I had never seen her prey, or use any reference to Him. In fact, she had stopped me on many occasions from clasping my hands in prayer in public. I wondered if she intended that for my protection, more than objection.
“God has no will here.” The grim spoke behind us. Apparently, he wasn’t a fan of the big G.
-The Big G, and the Little d’s-
As if the puppeteer-ed corpse wasn’t creepy enough, the damn thing had to speak. Chucky dolls and rabid clowns had nothing on this demon spawn. There wasn’t even anything strange about his voice, except perhaps the clarity. The pre-loaded voice box had to be useless, but he managed to push his voice through from hell along with his marionette skills.
August stilled, prepared to draw her sword at a moment’s notice. I knew I should have been doing the same, but fear wasn’t usually an emotion I felt until my death was imminent. “What the hell do you know about it?” Snarky comments were my preferred defensive tactic.
I stood up with August immediately after me. I glanced at her for some indication of what to do next, but she only nodded to me.
Apparently, this was my show, time to introduce myself to the players.
The grim laughed when I approached him. I checked the chain connection again. There was a slight tremor where the bolt buried into the wood siding, but it was secure. When he lunged at me, as I suspected he would, he didn’t make me flinch.
Disappointed by my lack of fear, he lost his playful smile. He chanted something in Latin. He seemed wholly satisfied by his gibberish when he had finished. He panted and waited for me to do or say something. When I did nothing but stare at him, he looked me over.
“Something wrong?” I perked my brow at his disenchanted inventory.
“I cursed you.” He said leaning over slightly as if he was about to puke on his loafers.
“I see.” I looked back at August and gave her a confused look. She gave me the slightest head shake indicating she had no idea about this. “Seems to have run you down.” I pointed out returning my stone stare to him.
“You are protected. Who has protected you?”
I tipped my head back with an inhalation that should have been followed by a long, “ohhhhhhh.” Priest had blessed me dozens of times. Perhaps he knew I might need it someday. “I suppose there are benefits to having priests for friends.”
The grim glared at me through his hooded eyes. “Prayer is useless now.”
“Show’s what you know. I thought it was pretty useless before the apocalypse.”
“He can’t save you now.” He mused.
“Yeah, duh, none of us are hanging around waiting for that phone call. God’s number was pretty unlisted before, now it’s disconnected.”
“Not your god…your priest.” I momentarily lost my protective sarcasm, but it was enough for him to get a bead on me. “Oh, yes, your priest has burned.” I glanced back at August, but she had already settled back on her log, with her head down. Her sword was in hand still ready at a moment’s notice, but I got the impression she was trying to give me as much privacy as she could without leaving me unprotected.
Corn, Cows, and the Apocalypse (Part 1) Page 17