Falling Awake

by T. A Richards Neville

  Ignoring Caleb’s angry glare she said, “That You have to do whatever Blondie here tells you to do in order for him to get his wings back, and get back into heaven.” She lit up her cigarette, puffing smoke our way. “So don’t fuck this up okay? He’s depending on you.”

  “Get out,” he barked at her. “Just get the hell out.”

  She merely laughed, then walked past us, her heels clicking across the wooden floor. “You’re getting too involved Caleb,” she said, stopping at the door. “Remember what happened last time? Do not fail yourself, and her twice. Just get the job done,” she warned him, and then left, slamming the door behind her.

  “Is that true?” I asked him. He looked away, and I knew his answer before he gave me it.

  “Yes,” he said dejectedly. After everything I had heard and seen, surprisingly, this was what that cut through me the most.

  “You’re going to leave me?” I looked down at the back of him. His head hung in his hands, and he swiped his palm down over his forehead. “So, it’s really me helping you. I’m your meal ticket right? I live, you get to go home.”

  He turned to face me, grimacing at my words. “It’s not like that.”

  “It’s exactly like that.” I stood up and reached into my shorts pocket for my cell, before realising I’d left it back somewhere in the carnage that was my home.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going home,” I told him calmly, even though I was anything but calm. My insides were raging and objecting at the mere thought of him leaving. “Call me a cab please.”

  “I can drive you.” He stood up.

  “I need to be on my own.” I couldn’t think straight with him anywhere near me. I had to get out of here.

  “After everything I just told you? You shouldn’t be alone right now, it’s not safe.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t go and get myself killed, ruining your well laid out plans,” I threw at him, and he flinched at my hurtful words. It was true though. The cat was out of the bag, and now I knew he had his own agenda.

  “Okay fine,” he said. “We’ll have to go upstairs, the signals bad down here.”

  I shrugged. “Whatever, let’s just go.”

  He called me a cab from upstairs, and we stood outside of the bar waiting. He leaned against the wall facing me, and I stood next to him, wishing the cab would hurry up. I needed to get away from him, now. I needed to rationalise my thoughts.

  “I didn’t mean for you to find out like that.”

  “You mean you didn’t mean for me to find out at all.”

  I looked up into the greying skies. I checked the clock on the wall behind the bar on my way out, and it was almost seven thirty p.m. Apparently, I’d been passed out for quite a while in Caleb’s before I came back around.

  “Despite what you might think about me right now- I care about you. I care more than I should.”

  “Right, because I’m just a job at the end of the day. Don’t mix business with pleasure right?”

  He heaved out a full breath.

  “I get it Caleb,” I said, turning towards him, losing all animosity. “You need something from me, and I need something from you.”

  I looked up into his beautiful eyes. “Is this why you insist on us only being friends?” I asked. “So I won’t become a distraction?”

  “That’s one way of putting it.” He moved in closer so he was standing in directly front of me. “I can’t protect you, if the only thing I see is you.” I sucked in a sharp breath. “Because when this happens-” He lowered his head, brushing his lips across my earlobe, then moving his mouth over to my neck, he traced light kisses up to where he stopped just short of my mouth.

  “I can’t focus on anything else, but what I crave more than anything, to do to you.” I gasped, my body responding to him in all the right ways.

  “Kiss Me,” I breathed, and he encircled me in his arms, his hands roaming my bare skin under my cropped jumper, leaving sensational tingles where his fingers touched me.

  I leaned into the kiss, losing myself completely in him, as I eagerly explored his mouth with my own, tasting mint, sweetness and everything that was Caleb.

  There was desperation in the kiss, and we couldn’t seem to get close enough. Neither of us satisfied, until our bodies actually moulded together into one.

  The sound of a car horn stopped the kiss, and Caleb pulled away reluctantly.

  I was fighting a losing battle in my head. How could I be friends with someone I shared so much chemistry with? I needed him, all of him. I was sure I would be left a shadow of myself without him. He had come in and turned my world upside down, and now he wanted to leave.

  “I have to go,” I said, my heart pounding in my ears. He put his hands on the wall at either side of me, pinning me against it.

  “You have to believe that all I am thinking about here, is you.” He was convincing, I would give him that. “I would never ever do anything to hurt you.”

  I kept my eyes fixed on him as I felt the tears begin to build up inside of me.

  “Then why am I hurting so much right now?” I said, and the first tear escaped. I broke free as he looked at me stunned, and ran over to the black cab, hauling the door closed behind me, blocking Caleb out.

  “Willow Lane,” I told the driver, desperately wiping the tears from my eyes as the car pulled away.

  Abducted

  I sat in the back of the cab with my head resting against the window, sobbing quietly. I felt emotionally drained from the whole day and everything I’d seen. I didn’t want to let myself believe in a story of fallen angels, or the possibility that Caleb might actually be leaving me. But I knew in my heart that he was telling me the truth.

  He was right. I did trust him. I would literally put my life into his hands if he asked me to. There was no explanation for it. I just felt it in every fibre of my being that he would go to any lengths necessary to keep me safe.

  I regretted not staying to get more answers from him, but the painful truth that he had his own agenda that eventually wouldn’t include me, was gut wrenching, and I needed space to think this whole situation through.

  Caleb and I, we were never going to be anything. Like ever. How could he expect me to just accept that? He may be fallen, but I was falling big time, and there was no one waiting to catch me.

  I looked out the window of the cab, and the winding road grew darker around me. Overgrown shrubs, and unkempt trees, veered over scratching the side of the car as we scraped our way past. I had no idea where we were, but we were definitely not going the right way.

  I wiped my eyes.

  “This isn’t the way,” I said to the driver sitting up, and peering into the rear-view mirror. “You must have taken a wrong turn.”

  He didn’t reply. His dark beady eyes focused on the narrow road ahead. “Excuse me, are you listening? I asked, growing agitated by his ignorance. “You are going the wrong way.”

  Still ignoring me, he kept all his concentration on his driving as he guided the car over a pothole filled dirt path that was even narrower than the road before it.

  I was becoming anxious now, and alarm bells began sounding in my head. I tried the door handle, but nothing happened. I was locked in. I began panicking as I fought with it again, repeatedly pulling on the handle.

  The driver let out a low coarse chuckle.

  “I wouldn’t waste your time with that if I were you. You’re gonna need all the energy you can get for where I’m taking you.” Fear gripped my body as I recalled Caleb’s earlier words.

  You’re in danger.

  He didn’t even know where I was. For all he knew, I was reunited with my dad, safe for now under his parental watch.

  The car stopped outside of a rundown barn and my pulse raced. I knew this place. It was old man Finton’s barn.

  It used to be part of a small dairy farm he owned, but when his wife died unexpectedly one night, something snapped in his mind, and he went stark raving mad. He closed
down the farm, and left the place to rot. When authorities finally did turn up to investigate why he had as good as disappeared off the face of the earth, they found him dead in his room, surrounded by his own faeces, and his animals starved to death in the only building now remaining- this old barn.

  Or so the story goes anyway. It was a little far-fetched for my liking. It still freaked me out though, the fact that someone had brought me here.

  The bare windows lay passage to utter blackness, partially covered with nailed down beams of crisscrossing wood. There were huge gaps in between each panel of the barn, where part of the wooden frame had either rotted away, or just broken off completely.

  Moss covered most of what was left of the structure, and wildlife had taken over, claiming it as its own. Bare branches sprouted from the gaps in the wall, resembling twisted witches fingers. The building looked more than eerie; it looked like it was straight out of a horror film.

  The so-called cab driver got out of the car, and dragged me out behind him. I fought back kicking and screaming, but making no impact on him what so ever.

  There was no door now on the barn, and he dragged me straight inside. I made my body limp, hoping it would make it harder for him, but he didn’t seem to notice. There was a singular chair inside the spacious room, and he pushed me down into it, securing my hands behind my back so tightly with heavy rope, that it burned painfully into my skin.

  He secured my ankles together and put two layers of tape over my mouth, silencing my cries for help. I looked up into his face. He had his hair shaved close to his large square head, and there was a black teardrop tattooed under his left eye.

  He was dressed in camouflage cargo pants, a dark green t-shirt, and black heavy-duty boots. He was ferocious looking to say the least. His face looked like he had taken ten rounds with Mike Tyson, and his eyes sat sunken into his puffed up cheeks. His nose sat bent at an angle indicating it had been broken more than once.

  “That ought to keep you quiet for a while,” he said, pulling a small black cell phone from his pocket, and walked off behind me somewhere, his heavy footsteps fading gradually.

  There was nothing in the barn, just the hard stone floor, and a second level, where a thick ledge ran around the inside of the building, but I couldn’t make out anything up there either. There was nothing even surrounding the barn either, just overgrown forgotten landscape, where no one would ever think to come looking for me.

  The interior of the barn was in stark contrast to the outside. Where the outside looked abandoned and decaying, the inside looked like it had been well kept, or at least cleared of any debris that you would expect to find in a derelict place like this. I hoped to God it hadn’t been cleared out just for me, and tried to calm down the panic that had taken root inside of me, in order to think rationally.

  I had nothing on me that I could use as a tool, or a weapon. I had no cell phone, and no one knew where I was.

  I was off to a great start anyway.

  On a second frenzied inspection of the room- I spotted a large shovel, a handsaw, and what looked like a hunting rifle, leaning against the side of the barn. The panic rose, and boiled over the sides as I frantically tossed my restricted body, trying to loosen the ties, but instead only succeeded in managing to topple the chair over sideways, banging my head on the concrete floor.

  I strained my eyes to focus through the pain, and looked out through the open doorway from this distorted angle, pain rocketing through my head.

  It was getting darker outside, and a black van with blacked out windows pulled up. Shit, I was going to die here. But why?

  Surely this wasn’t really over something as silly as- I couldn’t even think of the right word. Magic? Maybe I could stall them, until with any luck, someone found me. It was a plan at least, and I was hopeful- and right now, all I had was hope.

  The van doors slid open, and four men piled out. They were all dressed similar in nearly all black attire, and all with large powerful frames, apart from the one in front, who was in stark contrast to the other men. He was small and boyish.

  I lay there helplessly as they marched over to me. The skinny one single handily righted the chair with one arm, my view flipping back up the right way.

  “Well look what the cat dragged in,” he said in a thick British accent. “Glad you could join us. The place needs a female’s touch, wouldn’t ya say lads?” The rest of his men fell into laughter as if what he had said was even remotely funny.

  He ripped the tape from my mouth leaving a painful sting that shocked my skin. “Sorry about that love.”

  The burly man that brought me here suddenly reappeared with a chair, and the one with the British accent took it, lounging back in it as if he had all the time in the world, and we were in some kind of informal meeting. His black greasy hair sat in a long low ponytail, and he didn’t look to be much older than in his twenties with his thin scrawny body.

  “You’re making a mistake.” My voice shook.

  “The names Michael love. Now what’s yours? Let’s get pleasantries out the way first eh?”

  “Screw you,” I spat.

  A sadistic grin spread across his lips. “Now, now, there’s no need for that.” He smiled broadly, revealing a gold tooth making him look even uglier. “I’d hate to have to kill you. It would be such a waste of your good looks.”

  “Just tell me what you want!” I shouted. The other three men came closer in unison and stood around me with their arms crossed over their chest as if I were all of a sudden some kind of a great threat. I was tied to a chair for crying out loud. I was hardly in any position to attack.

  “Get me the can,” he ordered, and one of his men went outside to the van, returning seconds later with a red canister that I recognised instantly.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, becoming frantic again. He took the can and opening it, began to pour it around the barn, then returned pouring the liquid over me, emptying the last of it as I closed my eyes and held my mouth shut. The smell of petrol was overpowering as I breathed in, becoming light headed from the powerful fumes. I was soaked through.

  “Are you ready to talk now?” he asked, sitting down and setting the can next to his chair. I opened my mouth and tasted petrol on my lips. I gagged involuntary on the metallic after taste.

  “I’m not who you think I am, so you might as well go ahead and kill me because I can’t give you what you want,” I said, half accepting that this wasn’t going to end well for me, and right now, there wasn’t anything I could do to change that.

  “Show us what you can do then”

  “What?”

  “Show us what’s so bloody special about you!” he shouted, his voice taking on an edge of enragement. “Why there’s such a high price on your head, because at the cost of you love, you must be able to do something special. So bloody show me.”

  “Magic boss,” one of his henchmen standing guard over me said. I looked up into a thin, rectangular face with a shaven head. He didn’t look like he was all there to me, like the bigger part of his brain was missing. He didn’t sound too clever either. His voice had a slow childish drone to it.

  “She can do magic.”

  “Shut up Billy. I already bloody know that you clown. It was me who told you. You do some fucking magic and piss off eh.” Looking shamefaced, Billy skulked off outside and vanished around the corner of the barn. He looked so pathetic I almost felt sorry for him.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, shaking my head. “I swear you’ve got the wrong person.”

  “You’ve got ten seconds to show me something that will knock my fucking socks off, or I will hack off every one of your fingers one at a time, until you do what I ask.”

  “Fuck you,” I spat.

  The one dressed in camouflage who had brought me here, bent down and whipping a red lighter from his pocket, flicked it to life, the orange and yellow flame dancing in my face. A jolt of hysteria ripped through me at the thought of that tin
y flame turning into a blazing inferno. I didn’t want to die, I couldn’t die. I had only just started living.

  “Just let me go,” I pleaded, tasting petrol on my lips, mixed with salt from the tears I hadn’t realised were soaking my cheeks. “I don’t know anything about any magic; I swear on my life you’ve got the wrong person.” Silence filled the room, and in that next moment I witnessed as clear as day, a fleeting look of uncertainty pass from Michael to one of his goons standing guard over me, and I knew all at once that the seed of doubt had been planted.

  The realisation was somewhat invigorating, and I felt inferior, like I might have a significant chance at deciding this outcome after all. However in no time at all, my overzealous attitude kicked into action, and my mouth was opening before I had any chance of stopping it.

  “You have no idea what to do with me,” I almost laughed.

  “You know I can’t do what you’re asking. If I had any kind of power in me don’t you think I’d zap myself out of this freaking chair?” I yelled.

  Michael’s lips twisted in a snarl and he thrust his bony finger in my face. “Magic, NOW, or you’re dead.”

  “You’ve been watching way too many cartoons,” I said. The one in camouflage glowered at me, his angular face painted intricately with infuriation as he gripped the lighter.

  “You said she was special Michael! You said she would earn us a fortune, but she can’t do shit. She’s useless.” He turned his head in Michael’s direction, giving him the full weight of his fury.

  “Calm down Eddie.” Michael raised himself cautiously from the chair, and held up his hands trying to placate him. “She’s good for it, I promise you.”

  “She’s only good for one thing.” Eddie’s teeth showed through a sly grin that peeled its way across his cracking lips. “This.”

  Time seemed to slow down and freeze as his thumb settled over the wheel, and then it dawned on me what he was about to do.

  “NO!” Michael shouted as he flicked the lighter back to life, and threw it to the ground. Sly skulking flames spilled out filling the space around me, as figures dashed for the open doorway.